American leaders have not shown a comparable solicitude for our security needs. After the Second World War, the United States had a conventional military establishment rivaling the Soviet Union’s, and an absolute monopoly in nuclear power. The former weapon we hastily and irresponsibly dismantled. The latter we failed to exploit politically, and then we proceeded to fritter away our lead by belated entry into the hydrogen bomb and guided missile fields. The result is that we are out-classed in the conventional means for waging land warfare; regarding nuclear weapons, we are approaching the point, if it has not already been reached, where Communist power is equal to our own. To the impending physical parity in nuclear weapons must be added a psychological factor assiduously cultivated by Communist propaganda. The horrors of all-out warfare are said to be so great that no nation would consider resorting to nuclear weapons unless under direct attack by those same weapons. Now the moment our leaders really accept this, strategic nuclear weapons will be neutralized and Communist armies will be able to launch limited wars without fear of retaliation by our Strategic Air Command. I fear they are coming to accept it, and thus that a military and psychological situation is fast developing in which aggressive Communist forces will be free to maneuver under the umbrella of nuclear terror. It is in this context that we must view the Communist propaganda drive for a permanent ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, and the inclination of our own leaders to go along with the proposal. There are two preliminary reasons why such proposals ought to be firmly rejected. First, there is no reliable means of preventing the Communists from secretly breaking such an agreement. Our most recent tests demonstrated that underground atomic explosions can be set off without detection. Secondly, we cannot hope to maintain even an effective _strategic_ deterrent unless we keep our present nuclear arsenal up to date; this requires testing. But the main point I want to make is that tests are needed to develop _tactical_ nuclear weapons for possible use in limited wars. Our military experts have long recognized that for limited warfare purposes we must have a weapons superiority to offset the Communists’ manpower superiority. This means we must develop and perfect a variety of small, clean nuclear weapons; and this in turn means: testing. The development of such a weapons system is the only way in which America will be able to fight itself out of the dilemma--one horn of which is superior Communist manpower, the other, the impending neutralization of strategic nuclear weapons.