第3巻第3章 トラファルガー広場
公開状に対し,即座と言ってよいほど早く,フルシチョフ首相から返事が送られてきた。アイゼンハワー大統領からは何の返事もなかった。二ケ月後に,ジョン・フォスター・ダレス(国務長官)がアイゼンハワーに代わって返事をくれた。(参考:和田耕作「バートランド・ラッセルの公開状に対するフルシチョフとダレスの解答について」)この返事がフルシチョフ首相を刺激し,ダレス長官が指摘した多くの問題点に回答する手紙を再び私のところに書き送ってきた。これらの手紙は全て,ニュー・ステーツマン紙(注:英国の評論週刊紙(誌)。1931年『ネーション』Nation紙と合併して『ニュー・ステーツマン・アンド・ネーション』となったが,1957年に元の名に戻った。)に掲載された。そしてそれらは,間もなく,同紙の主幹キングスレー・マーティンの序文と,ダレス長官とフルシチョフ首相への私からの最後の返事を加えて,単行本として出版された。彼らの手紙は,彼らの立場や見解をよく表しており,私の返事は彼らの手紙の内容に対する私の見解を述べている。ダレス長官の手紙に示された彼の心の,自らの正しさを信じきった,断固たる表層(外観)は,フルシチョフ首相の怒号(痛烈な批判)や時々見られた彼の主張の矛盾よりも,はるかに大きな不吉な予感で私を満たした。フルシチョフ首相の手紙は,(主張が対立する場合の)'代替案'や'現実'について,ある程度,その基礎的な理解を示しているように私には思われた。しかしダレス長官の手紙にはそれらのものは何も含まれていなかった。 |
v.3,chap.3: Trafalgar Square These sad happenings and the fact that my wife fell ill of a bad heart attack in early June dislocated and slowed up our activities for some months. I got through little that could be of any conceivable public interest for some time. By November, however, my concern with international affairs had boiled up. I felt that I must again do something to urge at least a modicum of common sense to break into the policies of the two Great Powers, Russia and Ameriea. They seemed to be blindly, but with determination, careering down a not very primrose-strewn path to destruction, a destruction that might - probably would - engulf us all. I wrote an open letter, to President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev, addressing them as 'Most Potent Sirs'. In it I tried to make clear the fact that the things which they held in common were far more numerous and far more important than their differences, and that they had much more to gain than to lose by cooperation. I believed then, as I still believe, in the necessity of cooperation between nations as the sole method of avoiding war; and avoidance of war is the only means of avoiding disaster. This, of course, involves rather disagreeable concessions by all nations. A decade later, Russia seemed to have recognised the need of cooperation - except, possibly, in relations to her co-Marxist State, China. The United States continued to confound cooperation with domination. But, in 1958, I had hope, though slight hope, of both Great Powers coming to their senses, and in this letter I tried to lay my case before them. Almost at once a reply come from Premier Khrushchev. No answer came from President Eisenhower. Two months later John Foster Dulles replied for him. This reply stung Premier Khrushchev into writing to me again answering various points made by Mr Dulles. All these letters appeared in the New Statesman. They were soon published in book form with an introduction by that paper's editor, Kingsley Martin, and a final reply from me to Mr Dulles and Mr Khrushchev. The letters speak for themselves and my final reply gives my point of viev on them. The righteously adamantine suface of Mr Dulles's mind as shown in his letter filled me with greater foreboding than did the fulminations and, sometimes, cotradictions of Mr Khrushchev. The latter seemed to me to show some underlying understanding of alternatives and realities; the former, none. |