Statement by the President Following the Soviet Union's Attack on the Disarmament Proposals.

IT IS DEEPLY disappointing to all true lovers of peace that the Soviet Union should have already attacked, with such scornful words, the proposals which Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the United States are putting forward at the United Nations Disarmament Subcommittee in London. It is noteworthy that this attack coincides with the boastful statement by the Soviet Union that they have made advances in the development of means for bringing mass destruction to any part of the world.

The Western Powers at London are completing their presentation of a rounded and interdependent first-stage proposal which, among other things, would, on a supervised and safeguarded basis,

(a) provide a measure of protection against massive attack;

(b) suspend for two years the further testing of nuclear weapons;

(c) seek that outer space shall be used only for peaceful, not military, purposes;

(d) provide a date after which no fissionable material will be produced for weapons purposes and existing nuclear weapons stockpiles will begin to be reduced by transfers for peaceful purposes;

(e) begin a reduction of armed forces and armaments.

It would be tragic if these important first-stage proposals, fraught with such significance for the peace of the world, were rejected by the Soviet Union even before they could have been seriously studied and before the Western presentation is complete. Such a Soviet attitude would condemn humanity to an indefinite future of immeasurable danger.

So far as the United States is concerned, we shall never renounce our efforts to find ways and means to save mankind from that danger and to establish a just and lasting peace.