The French bomb
Sir: 1 recently read an article in the Pacific Islands Monthly for June 1973. It was entitled ' Even a Nuclear Cloud can have a Gold Lining.' It was from a special correspondent.
The article contained what seems to be a plausible explanation for the French nuclear tests in the Pacific, particularly when one considers the standards of French behaviour in international matters of morality, which the world has lately come to accept. The writer points out that the French proudly boast that they are the world's largest dealers in arms, next to the US and the Soviet Union. They have, he says, a version of the Mirage fighter bomber capable of carrying a small H-bomb. He goes on to say that if France can make its bomb opera, tional (i.e. small enough) it would be in a position to market it, but that the process of making it operational would involve atmospheric tests and would explain the French determination to continue with a bomb so insignificant, from the point of view of French or European defence.
The French, the writer points out, have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact. What then is there to stop them selling both the Mirage and the bomb as a package deal to what he describes as the dictators of banana republics, or anyone else for, that matter, in exchange for the requisite number of bars of gold?
I found the ideas contained in this article grim reading particularly as the argument seems to fit the facts so well and explains the apparently irrational behaviour of the French with their bomb. 1 am sure other readers of this article would share with me a strong desire to hear more about this from informed sources, especially if there is some evidence that the suggestions made in the article referred to above could never come to pass.
P. T. Bowater PO Box 60, Mendi, SHD, Papua New Guinea
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