Peace and Pugwash: The 1957 Conference

Fifty-five years ago this month, people from around the world listened and reacted to Bertrand Russell’s public announcement of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.  (See “Remembering Our Humanity” for the full text of the manifesto.) This was his first step in advancing the goal of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction.  He hoped it would lead to a quick second: holding a “congress” of scientists who would persuade themselves and then the public that mankind should destroy nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons destroyed mankind.

Just four days later, Cleveland industrialist Cyrus Eaton responded with an offer to host such a conference.  Here, in full, is his letter:

July 13, 1955
TransAtlantic
Air Mail

My Lord:

Your brilliant statement on nuclear warfare has made a dramatic world-wide impact.

As a trustee of The University of Chicago, I take great pride in your one-time association with that institution, and I have long felt a special interest in your many brilliant achievements. I have read all of your fascinating books again and again.

Could I help toward the realization of your proposal by anonymously financing a meeting of the scientists in your group at Pugwash, Nova Scotia? I have dedicated a comfortably equipped residence there by the sea to scholarly groups.

Julian Huxley is coming from England to join a small company of American and Canadian scholars at Pugwash during the first part of August. If the location appeals to you, it is at your disposal any time from August 20th on. I should, of course, want to be host to you, and your fellow-scientists not only during your stay at Pugwash, but on your journey to Pugwash and return.

If you feel that some other place might be more convenient, I should still be happy to be of assistance. I suggest Pugwash because I believe you could more readily focus the attention of the world, on the problems you wish to stress by meeting in such a relatively remote and quiet community than by choosing one of the great metropolises where the gathering would be but one of a number of events competing for public notice.

With all good wishes,

Cyrus Eaton

There is no question that many other places would have been “more convenient”, on several levels. Eaton’s invitation was audacious.  Here was one of the last and biggest of the “Robber Barons” offering, at the height of the Cold War, to host physicists from behind the Iron Curtain and elsewhere across the globe.  And where? In a small and remote fishing village in Nova Scotia.  Transportation alone would be daunting, never mind political obstacles and translation issues.  Acceptance was not immediate.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru also endorsed the idea of a congress, offering India as its venue, but his plans were derailed by the outbreak of the Suez Crisis.  In stepped Aristotle Onassis with an offer to finance a meeting in Monaco.  It was rejected forthwith and firmly.  Eaton and Nova Scotia carried the day, and many months and years more.

The first Pugwash Peace Conference was held in July, 1957, with twenty-three scientists attending the first conference.  Seven hailed from the United States; three each from the Japan, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom; two from Canada; and one each from Australia, Austria, China, France and Poland.  In addition to a handful of translators, there was also one lawyer from the US.  And, of course, Mr. Eaton. One of the translators was suspected of being from the KGB; perhaps that was Vladimir Pavlichenko, who was regularly accused of twisting and inserting meanings in moving from one language to several others.

All of the scientists were brave to participate.  In the United States, for example, they could lose their grants and appointments by comporting with The Enemy.  In communist countries they could also lose their lives.

The courage of Chou Pei-Yuan is particularly notable.  To get to Pugwash, he had to endure an appallingly circuitous series of flights, changing planes in the Soviet Union, Sweden, and the United Kingdom before finally landing in Canada on his way from China.  Ten years later, back in China during the Cultural Revolution, he continued to speak for the truth.  “Aren’t you afraid?” he’d be asked.  “No, why should I be afraid?” this man of complete integrity would reply. He felt armored by honesty.

Cyrus Eaton was also unafraid – or perhaps he felt his mission was worth the danger.  So tempestuous were the times that he was simultaneously reviled as a “capitalist pig” and a “commie lover” in the United States.

Joseph Rotblat had the guts to follow his ethical imperatives and leave the Manhattan Project when he realized the magnitudes of its ambitions and learned that its stated raison d’etre, to counter Germany’s nuclear developments, was based on fears, not facts.  As a polyglot born and educated in Poland before moving to the UK, he also had the nerves and knowledge to speak out when Pavlichenko distorted the record.

More on these gentlemen in a later post.

The atmosphere was strained the first day in Pugwash.  But then the scientists began to relax and work together.  Eaton had chosen well when he set up “The Thinkers’ Lodge” on pristine shore and inlet.  The place was simple, with no buzz of events, no crowding, no external noise other than wind and the susurration of the sea. It was a place to listen.

Eaton also chose well when he asked Anne Kinder Jones to be his hostess.  This brave young woman, bound to a wheelchair since polio in her early twenties, had an observant eye,  an inquiring mind and a rapier-like wit.  In Pugwash, she told the participants, there was nothing to do but “ think or swim”.  This quip went over well in English, she observed, but lost something in translation.

Trust was not just built by serious and seated conversations.  It also grew through humor, over drinks, on walks and in fiercely competitive battles on the croquet field.  Some of the best work was made possible by the play.

Until now, other heroes of the first of the Pugwash Peace Conferences have been unsung.  They are the young women and men of Pugwash who also contributed to the ambiance of care, comfort and serenity through their quiet jobs as waitresses, maids and chauffeurs and by putting up guests in their homes.  Some times they also put on plays and entertained with square dances.

“History” is well named.  It is so often “his story”.  As of last week, oral histories of “her story” have begun to be part of the Pugwash peace record.  I feel proud and privileged to be part of this development, and shall share more as  summer progresses.