STRENGTH OUT OF WEAKNESS SIR.—I will attempt to reply to
Mr. Diemer's court- eous and pertinent letter. Because of the genetic risks to their own people and because of the disadvantage to them of destroying the economic resources of the rest of the world, I should think it improbable that the Russians would launch an all-out strategic nuclear attack on the Western world. But admittedly they may go mad and do so. If we should somehow receive certain warning that they were going to do so, great evil as it would be, it would probably be the lesser evil to 'capitulate' as far as the military challenge went, and to rely on other than military means, long and painful as the process would be, to regain our freedom. But, however that may be, all that I was concerned to argue was that once, as will happen in a few years, the destructive power of strategic nuclear weapons is such that their possessor can destroy his opponent in a single attack, then the possession of such weapons by a defending country becomes pointless. They are valueless as a defence since they can never be used as a defence, and the possession of them, by increasing nervous tension, makes it somewhat more probable that the aggressor will go mad and start dropping them.—Yours faith- fully, CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS
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