Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Frank Kelly

  • Breaking Free from Nuclear Deterrence

    This speech was delivered by Commander Robert Green at the 10th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on February 17, 2011 in Santa Barbara, CA.


    Commander Robert GreenWhen David Krieger invited me to give this lecture, I discovered the illustrious list of those who had gone before me – beginning with Frank King Kelly himself in 2002. I was privileged to meet him the previous year when my wife Kate Dewes and I last visited Santa Barbara.  So I feel quite a weight on my shoulders. However, this is eased by an awareness of the uplifting qualities of the man in whose memory I have the huge honour of speaking to you this evening.


    As I do so, I invite you to bear in mind the following points made by Frank in his inaugural lecture:


    •  “I believe that we human beings will triumph over all the horrible problems we may face and over the bloody history which tempts us to despair.”


    • Some of the scientists who brought us into the Nuclear Age made us realize that we must find ways of living in peace or confront unparalleled catastrophes.


    • A nun who taught him warned him he would be tested, that he would “go through trials and tribulations.”


    As President Truman’s speechwriter, Frank discussed the momentous decisions Truman had to make – including this one:


    • “When I asked him about the decision to use atom bombs on Japan, I saw anguish in his eyes. He made it clear that he felt the weight of what he had done.”


    • “My experience in the Truman era indicated to me that the American people were not well informed about what was really going on in other countries and in the United States.”


    I have done my best to take all this wisdom to heart in what I now have to say about breaking free from nuclear deterrence.


    First, I will try to answer two challenging personal questions. People often ask why I am the only former British Navy Commander with experience of nuclear weapons to have come out against them. Others in the peace movement ask why it took me so long.


    A Child of the Nuclear Age


    In some ways, I am a child of the Nuclear Age. I was five days past my first birthday when 24-year-old Theodore Van Kirk, navigator of the Enola Gay, helped conduct the first nuclear atrocity, on Hiroshima. In 1968, I too was a 24-year-old bombardier-navigator when told that my Buccaneer strike jet pilot and I had been chosen as a nuclear crew in our squadron aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Eagle. After being cleared to see top secret information, and indoctrinated about the honour and heavy responsibility of this role, we were given our target: a military airbase on the outskirts of Leningrad. We had to plan how to get there undetected from somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. This meant choosing the shortest route, over Sweden – a neutral country with very capable air defence. Our mission was to deliver a ten-kiloton WE177 tactical nuclear bomb, and then try to get back to our carrier, or at least bale out over Sweden or Norway. When I discovered there would not be enough fuel because the target was at the limit of our aircraft’s range, my pilot shrugged and said: “Well, Rob, if we ever have to do this, by then there won’t be anything to go back for.”  So we submitted our flight plan, and celebrated our initiation into the nuclear elite.


    Thirty years later, I was shocked to land at my target, to attend an anti-nuclear conference on European security on the eve of the 21st century. During the taxi drive into St Petersburg, I understood how my bomb would have caused massive civilian casualties from collateral damage. On TV that evening, I apologized to the citizens of Russia’s ancient capital. Then I told them I had learned that nuclear weapons would not save me – or them.


    Back in 1972, after retraining in anti-submarine warfare, I was appointed as senior bombardier-navigator of a Sea King helicopter squadron aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Ark Royal. Our task was to use variable-depth sonar, radar and other electronic sensors, plus a variety of weapons, to detect and destroy enemy submarines threatening our ships. However, our lightweight anti-submarine torpedoes were not fast enough and could not go deep enough to catch the latest Soviet nuclear-powered submarines. So we were given a nuclear depth-bomb, an underwater variant of the WE177 design.


    The problem was that, if I had dropped one, it would have vaporized and irradiated one Soviet nuclear submarine, a large volume of ocean – and myself. This was because, unlike a strike jet, a helicopter was too slow to escape before detonation. So it would have been a suicide mission. Also, my leaders ignored the fact that there would have been heavy radioactive fallout from my bomb, plus the submarine’s nuclear power plant and any nuclear-tipped torpedoes it carried. And I might have escalated World War 3 to nuclear holocaust. All this, just to protect my aircraft-carrier.


    This time I did complain. I was reassured there would almost certainly be no need to use nuclear depth-bombs; no civilians would be involved; and the Soviets might not even detect it. Besides, I had a glittering career ahead of me, and did not want to spoil my prospects, did I? As I was ambitious, and no-one else raised concerns, I fell silent. In due course, I was promoted.


    However, the experience of such military incompetence and irresponsibility shocked me into a less trusting, more questioning frame of mind. That potent military tradition, carefully nurtured to carve out and hold down the British Empire, was immortalized in Tennyson’s Crimean war poem The Charge of the Light Brigade about an earlier suicide mission: “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.” That attitude was alive and well, in an all-volunteer Royal Navy. This was when I realized the significance of the fact that, unlike most of my colleagues, I had no military pedigree. My father worked in the Ministry of Agriculture. His father was a priest and divinity teacher at Trinity College, Dublin; and my paternal great-grandfather was an engineer. On my mother’s side, her father came from a line of professional gardeners and horticulturalists.


    UK Polaris Replacement and Falklands War


    In 1979, Margaret Thatcher swept into 10 Downing Street as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. I was working just across the street as a newly promoted Commander, in the Ministry of Defence. In my position as Personal Staff Officer to the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy), I watched my Admiral facilitate the internal debate on replacing the four British Polaris nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines. The nuclear submarine lobby insisted upon a scaled down version of the massively expensive, over-capable US Trident system, despite threatening the future of the Navy as a balanced, useful force. Mrs Thatcher rammed the decision through without consulting her Cabinet; and the Chiefs of Staff, despite misgivings, were brought into line.


    My final appointment was as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to Commander-in-Chief Fleet. It was a stimulating time to work in military intelligence in the command bunker in Northwood, just outside London, where operational control of the British Navy was coordinated. The Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan; the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc was pioneering the East European challenge to them; and new Soviet warship designs were emerging almost every month. I ran the 40-strong team providing round-the-clock intelligence support to the Polaris submarine on so-called “deterrent” patrol, as well as the rest of the Fleet.


    In 1981, the Thatcher government, desperate to find savings because of her determination to have Trident, announced a major defence review. With projected cuts to the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, my chances of commanding a ship – the next step to higher rank – were slim. So I took the plunge and applied for redundancy.


    Notification of my successful application came one week into the Falklands War. In 1982, Britain suddenly went to war with an erstwhile friend, Argentina; and the Royal Navy’s role was pivotal. So the war was directed from Northwood by my boss, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. At one point the outcome was in the balance: our ships were being sunk, and some friends and colleagues killed. If Argentine strike aircraft or submarines had sunk an aircraft-carrier or troopship before the landing force got ashore, the British might have risked defeat. What would Mrs Thatcher have done? Until then, she had been the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history. Now she had become the ‘Iron Lady’, and needed a military victory to save her political career.


    Polaris had not deterred Argentine President Galtieri from invading the Falkland Islands. With victory in his grasp, would he have believed, let alone been deterred by, a threat from Mrs Thatcher to use nuclear weapons against Argentina? Yet after I left the Navy I heard rumours of a very secret contingency plan to move the British Polaris submarine on patrol south within range of Buenos Aires. The submarine was fitted with 16 launch tubes, each housing an intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with three 200 kiloton warheads. Then came corroboration, from France. François Mitterrand was President in 1982. In 2005, his psychoanalyst’s memoirs revealed that in his first counselling session Mitterrand had just come from an extremely stressful phonecall with Thatcher. A French-supplied Exocet missile fired from a French-supplied Argentine Navy Super Etendard strike jet had sunk a British destroyer. Mrs Thatcher had threatened to carry out a nuclear strike against Argentina unless Mitterrand ordered his brother, who ran the Exocet factory, to release the missile’s acquisition system frequencies to enable the British to jam them. Mitterrand, convinced she was serious, had complied.


    These nightmarish rumours led me to confront the realities of operating nuclear weapons for a leader in such a crisis. Defeat would have been unthinkable for the British military, and would have ended Mrs Thatcher’s career. She was a true believer in nuclear deterrence. Yet if she had threatened Galtieri with a nuclear strike, he would have publicly called her bluff and relished watching President Reagan try to rein her in. The Polaris submarine’s Commanding Officer, briefed by me before going on patrol, would have been faced with a shift of target. Had he obeyed the order, Britain would have become a pariah state, its case for retaining the Falklands lost in the international outrage from such a war crime, especially against a non-nuclear state. Nuclear deterrence failure would have compounded the ignominy of defeat. 


    Redundancy, Roof-thatching and Murder


    Back in 1982, on terminal leave after the British retook the Falkland Islands, I was 38 years old, with no qualifications except my rank and experience. Tired of weekend commuting to high-pressure jobs in London, I decided to try my luck and find local work which allowed me to be home every night. So I became a roof thatcher, enduring many painful jokes with stunned former colleagues. For eight idyllic years, I loved working with my hands in the open air restoring fine old houses, with a bird’s eye view of some of the most picturesque parts of southwest England. 


    Thatching proved vitally therapeutic in 1984, when my beloved aunt Hilda Murrell was murdered. My mother’s unmarried elder sister, she had become my mentor and close friend after my mother died when I was a 19-year-old Midshipman. Hilda was a Cambridge University graduate, and a successful businesswoman who ran the family rose nurseries. In retirement she became a fearless environmentalist and opponent of nuclear energy and weapons. At the age of 78, she applied to testify at the first British public planning inquiry into a nuclear power plant. Mrs Thatcher was determined to introduce a programme of reactors of a design which failed at Three Mile Island. Hilda, who had a formidable network of establishment contacts, did her homework about the insoluble problems of nuclear waste. A true patriot, she was not prepared to let the nuclear industry ruin and poison her country – and potentially the rest of the planet with nuclear weapons.


    Rumours of nuclear conspiracy swirled around an incompetent police investigation into her bizarre murder. Then in December 1984, a maverick member of parliament announced in the House of Commons that I had been suspected of leaking secret documents about the controversial sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano in the Falklands War, and hiding them with my aunt. I had done nothing so stupidly treasonable; yet several reliable sources agreed that State security agents had allegedly searched her house. A cold case review resulted in the 2005 trial and conviction of a petty thief, who was 16 years old in 1984. I have evidence that he was framed; and I am completing a book about this. 


    First Gulf War and Breakout


    Implicating me in Hilda’s murder radicalized me. Then after Chernobyl, I took up her anti-nuclear energy torch. I learned that the nuclear energy industry had begun as a cynical by-product of the race to provide plutonium for nuclear weapons. My case for supporting nuclear deterrence crumbled with the Berlin Wall. However, it took the 1991 first Gulf War to break me out of my indoctrination.


    From the moment in November 1990 when the US doubled its original figure for ground forces to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait, I realised this was to be a punitive expedition. My military intelligence training warned me that the US-led coalition’s blitzkrieg strategy, targeting Iraq’s infrastructure as well as the leadership and military, would give Saddam Hussein the pretext he needed to attack Israel in order to split the coalition and become the Arabs’ champion. If personally threatened, he could order the launch of Scud ballistic missiles with chemical or biological warheads. If such an attack caused heavy Israeli casualties, Prime Minister Shamir would come under massive pressure to retaliate with a nuclear strike on Baghdad. Even if Saddam Hussein did not survive (he had the best anti-nuclear bunkers Western technology could provide), the Arab world would erupt in fury against Israel and its allies, its security would be destroyed forever, and Russia would be sucked into the crisis…


    In January 1991, I joined the growing anti-war movement in Britain and addressed a crowd of 20,000 in Trafalgar Square. A week later, the first Scud attack hit Tel Aviv two days after the Allied blitzkrieg began. For the first time, the second city of a de facto nuclear state was attacked and its capital threatened. Worse still for nuclear deterrence, Iraq did not have nuclear weapons. The Israeli people, cowering in gas masks in basements, learned that night that their so-called ‘deterrent’ had failed in its primary purpose. Thirty-eight more conventionally armed Scud attacks followed, causing miraculously few casualties. When US satellites detected Israeli nuclear armed missiles being readied for launch, President Bush rushed Patriot missiles and military aid to Israel, which was congratulated on its restraint.


    Meanwhile, in Britain, the Irish Republican Army just missed wiping out the entire Gulf War Cabinet with a mortar-bomb attack from a van in central London. A more direct threat to the government could barely be imagined. What if instead they had threatened to use even a crude nuclear device? A counter-threat of nuclear retaliation would have had zero credibility.


    Coming out against nuclear weapons was traumatic. My conversion was no sudden Damascene experience. I knew about indoctrination, the Official Secrets Act and top security clearances, linked to the carrots and sticks of a career requiring me uncritically to accept the nuclear policies of my government. My circumstances were unique. I went through a process of cumulative experiences, including the murder of my aunt and mentor in which British state security agents were allegedly involved. Nuclear weapons and power seem to make superficially democratic governments behave badly.


    Belatedly forced to research the history of ‘the Bomb’, I learned that the British scientific-politico-military establishment initiated and spread the nuclear arms race. Having alerted the United States to the feasibility of making a nuclear weapon, Britain participated in the Manhattan Project. On being frozen out of further collaboration by the 1946 McMahon Act, it began to develop its own nuclear arsenal. Thus Britain became a role model for France, and later Iraq and India: the first medium-sized power with delusions of grandeur to threaten nuclear terrorism. Also, I learned that nuclear deterrence does not work; it is immoral and unlawful, and there are more credible and acceptable alternative strategies to deter aggression and achieve security.


    Legal Challenge to Nuclear Deterrence


    Having given up thatching as the 1991 Gulf War loomed, after my breakout I became Chair of the British affiliate of the World Court Project. This worldwide network of citizen groups helped persuade the United Nations General Assembly, despite desperate countermoves by the three NATO nuclear weapon states, to ask the International Court of Justice for its Advisory Opinion on the legal status of nuclear weapons. In 1996, the Court confirmed that the threat, let alone use, of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal. For the first time, the legality of nuclear deterrence had been implicitly challenged.


    One aspect of the Court’s decision was especially important. It confirmed that, as part of international humanitarian law, the Nuremberg Principles apply to nuclear weapons. This has serious implications for all those involved in operating nuclear weapons – particularly military professionals who, unlike a President or Prime Minister, really would have to “press the button”. What is at stake here is a crucial difference between military professionals and hired killers or terrorists: military professionals need to be seen to act within the law. Nuclear weapons should be stigmatized as chemical and biological weapons have been, so that no military professional is prepared to operate them.


    The next year, recently retired General Lee Butler spoke out far more powerfully than I could. He is still encouraging me to keep going. Then in 1999 I found myself with David Krieger in a delegation to Tokyo not only with Lee Butler, but Robert McNamara too. In a heretical team of that calibre, I knew what I was doing was right.


    Why Nuclear Deterrence is a Scam


    It was the American writer H L Mencken who quipped: “There’s always an easy solution to every problem: neat, plausible, and wrong.” Nuclear deterrence fits this nicely. To make it acceptable to political leaders and those in the military who have to operate them, the appalling effects of even the smallest modern nuclear weapon have been played down, and that “there would almost certainly be no need to use them.” In fact, they are not weapons at all. They are utterly indiscriminate devices combining the poisoning horrors of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, plus inter-generational genetic effects unique to radioactivity, with almost unimaginable explosive violence. Yet nuclear deterrence is not credible without the will to use them. This is why a state practising nuclear deterrence is actually conducting a deliberate policy of nuclear terrorism.


    My next fundamental objection relates to the fact that, if deterrence based on conventional weapons fails, the damage is confined to the belligerent states and the environment recovers. What is at stake from nuclear deterrence failure is the devastation and poisoning of not just the belligerents, but potentially most forms of life on Earth.


    Closely related to this is a crazy reality: nuclear deterrence is a scheme for making nuclear war less probable by making it more probable. The danger of inadvertent nuclear war is greater than we think, when nuclear deterrence dogma demands that the United States and Russia persist with over 2,000 nuclear warheads between them poised for launch at each other inside half an hour. What are they playing at, over twenty years after the Cold War ended and when they are collaborating in the so-called “war on terror”?


    I now suspect that nuclear deterrence is an outrageous scam, devised sixty years ago by the US military-industrial monster dominating US politics and foreign policy. President Barack Obama’s vision for a nuclear weapon-free world, in his Prague speech in April 2009, was immediately contradicted by a caveat. He said: “…as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies…” This is old, muddled thinking, because a rational leader cannot make a credible nuclear threat against a nuclear adversary capable of a retaliatory strike. And a second strike is pointless, because it would be no more than posthumous revenge. This is why enthusiasm for a nuclear weapon-free world is hypocrisy if some nuclear weapons will be kept “for deterrence as long as anyone else has them.”


    The deception deepens when the nuclear weapon states, aware that extremists armed with weapons of mass destruction cannot be deterred, plan pre-emptive nuclear attacks in “anticipatory self-defence” of their “vital interests” – not last-ditch defence of their homeland. Thereby, their unprovable claim that nuclear deterrence averts war is cynically stood on its head.
    Extremists would not only not be deterred by nuclear weapons. They could provoke nuclear retaliation in order to turn moral outrage against the retaliator and recruit more to their nightmarish causes.


    Consequences of Nuclear Deterrence Failure


    With such an irresponsible example from the five recognised nuclear weapon states, it is no surprise that India and Pakistan are trying to emulate it, locked toe to toe in hostile rivalry. Indian governments became convinced that the fetishistic power of nuclear deterrence held the key to guaranteed security and acceptance as a great power; whereupon Pakistan promptly followed suit.


    I will never forget a public meeting in Islamabad in 2001. The nuclear physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy had persuaded General Aslam Beg, one of the “fathers” of Pakistan’s Bomb, to join a panel with himself and me. Beg warned against raising awareness about the effects of a nuclear strike on a Pakistan city, “in case it scares the people.” He had a simplistic faith in nuclear deterrence, ignoring all the added dangers of a nuclear standoff with India. He is not alone: my experience is that most believers in nuclear deterrence refuse to discuss the consequences of failure. I will now confront them.


    Economic Consequences. In April 2005, an internal report for US Homeland Security appeared on the web. Titled Economic Consequences of a Rad/Nuc Attack, the report examined what it would take to recover from the detonation of just one nuclear device in various cities. Much depends on the size of bomb and level of decontamination, but the economic consequences for New York alone would be around $10 trillion. That is roughly the annual Gross Domestic Product of the entire US economy. Just one nuclear bomb, on one city.


    Environmental and Agricultural Consequences. A deeply disturbing article, published in January last year in Scientific American, reported on recent climate research about a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which about only 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear devices would be detonated over cities. Apart from the mutual carnage and destruction across South Asia, enough smoke from firestorms – let alone radioactive fallout – would be generated to cripple global agriculture. Plunging temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere would cause hundreds of millions of people to starve to death, even in countries far from the conflict.


    Health Consequences. In 2004, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War published their findings regarding casualties from a Hiroshima-size nuclear warhead detonated over New York. Total fatalities were estimated at about 60,000.  Another 60,000 would be seriously but non-fatally injured. These would clearly utterly overwhelm any hospitals surviving the explosion. Again, this is just one nuclear weapon on one city.


    In 1985, the Pentagon accepted the theory of ‘nuclear winter’ was valid. However, its response was reflected in this statement to Congress by US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle: “Rather than eliminating nuclear weapons, the most realistic method of preventing nuclear winter is to build enough weapons to make sure that the Soviets will be deterred from attacking.” Redundant warhead numbers have been cut, but little has changed in such thinking.


    Nuclear Deterrence Does Not Work


    In London in 2008, Kate and I attended one of the last public lectures by Sir Michael Quinlan. Known as the British high priest of nuclear deterrence, he advised successive governments on how to justify nuclear deterrence. Almost twenty years after the end of the Cold War, he asserted that rejecting any threat or use of nuclear weapons amounted to “full-blown pacifism”. Ignoring conventional deterrence options, Quinlan swept aside any objections that:



    • Nuclear deterrence has a credibility problem;

    • It incites nuclear arms racing and the spread of nuclear weapons;

    • Nuclear weapons cannot be used discriminately or proportionately; and

    • Nuclear weapon use would inevitably risk escalation.

    He failed to take into account the environmental and health consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange, avoiding any mention of the word “radioactivity”; and he dismissed abolition as unrealistic. In light of the World Court Advisory Opinion, Kate asked him for a legal use of nuclear weapons. Revealing his disturbing Cold War mindset, he gave the Russian naval base at Murmansk.
     
    The 2009 report Eliminating Nuclear Threats by the Australia-Japan International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament challenged the assumption that nuclear weapons have deterred major war. It acknowledged that avoidance of nuclear war has been due more to luck than deterrence. It agreed that nuclear weapons are worse than useless to deter terrorists.
    It correctly argued that, just because nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, this does not mean they should not be outlawed and abolished as chemical and biological weapons have been.


    Surprisingly, the report, chaired by former Foreign Ministers of Australia and Japan, also questioned the need for extended nuclear deterrence, arguing that conventional deterrence was adequate. Yet, having admitted that extended nuclear deterrence undermines progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world, it failed to follow the logic of its criticisms. No doubt this was because, unlike New Zealand, Australia and Japan continue to fall for the hoax of nuclear deterrence. 


    The report should have concluded that extended nuclear deterrence does not make Japan or Australia secure, and is not credible. The misnamed “nuclear umbrella” has helped the US maintain its military alliances and bases in both countries for its own purposes. However, the “umbrella” is really a lightning rod for insecurity, because the US risks being pushed past the nuclear threshold when its own security is not directly threatened.


    Why would any state attack Australia or Japan, let alone with nuclear weapons? If it did, the US would almost certainly not respond with nuclear weapons because it would risk inevitable, uncontrollable escalation to full-scale nuclear war. Instead, if the US decided it was in its national interest to come to their defence, it would rely on its formidable conventional firepower.


    Nuclear deterrence has not prevented non-nuclear states from attacking allies of nuclear weapon states. Examples include China entering the Korean War when the US had a nuclear monopoly in 1950; Argentina invading the British Falkland Islands in 1982; and Iraq invading close US ally Kuwait in 1990, and attacking nuclear-armed Israel with Scud missiles in 1991. In all these cases nuclear deterrence failed. The US in Korea and Vietnam, and the USSR in Afghanistan, preferred withdrawal to the ultimate ignominy of resorting to nuclear weapons to secure victory or revenge against a non-nuclear state.


    Safer Security Strategies


    The main security threats in the 21st century include climate change, poverty, resource depletion and financial crises as well as terrorism. Nuclear deterrence, provoking hostility and mistrust, prevents rather than assists the global non-military cooperation required to solve them.


    For all these reasons, all but about 35 states feel more secure without depending on nuclear deterrence. After Japan and Australia’s admirable leadership through co-sponsoring their recent report, they, South Korea and NATO’s non-nuclear members should therefore join the 140 states now supporting negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention.


    In Britain, a defence budget crisis has revived the debate about replacing Trident, and uncritical British support for US foreign policy. Indeed, the black hole in defence spending has been caused by desperate attempts to keep up with the Americans. Such poor decisions were driven by British nuclear dependence on the US.


    Instead, making a virtue from necessity, the British government should reassert its sovereignty and announce that it will rescue the dysfunctional nuclear non-proliferation regime by becoming the first of the recognized nuclear weapon states to rely on safer and more cost-effective security strategies than nuclear deterrence.


    A new world role awaits the British. By far the best-placed candidate for ‘breakout’, Britain’s nuclear arsenal is the smallest of the five recognized nuclear weapon states; and they are deployed in just one system, a scaled down version of Trident. Its government has to decide by 2016 whether to replace Trident with whatever the US decides. The minority Liberal Democrats, in coalition with the Conservatives, oppose Trident replacement. The alternative – nuclear-tipped Cruise missiles launched from attack submarines – has been ruled out, because the Obama Administration is scrapping its nuclear-armed Tomahawk missiles.


    All Britain has to do is decide not to replace its four Vanguard class Trident-armed submarines. British ‘breakout’ would be sensational, transforming the nuclear disarmament debate overnight. In NATO, Britain would wield unprecedented influence leading the drive for a non-nuclear strategy. British leadership would create new openings for shifting the mindset in the US and France, the other two most zealous guardians of nuclear deterrence. This would heavily influence India, Israel, Pakistan and states intent on obtaining nuclear weapons. The way would then open for a major reassessment by Russia and China, for all nuclear forces to be stood down, and for negotiations to begin on a Nuclear Weapons Convention.


    The key is to see nuclear disarmament as a security-building process, moving from an outdated adversarial mindset to a co-operative one where nuclear weapons are recognized as an irrelevant security liability. Mikhail Gorbachev was the first leader of a nuclear weapon state to understand this. In 1986, three years before the Berlin Wall was torn down, he briefly broke the grip of Cold War security thinking. Tragically, the opportunity to abandon Mutual Assured Destruction at the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Iceland was defeated by the US military-industrial complex’s vested interests over ballistic missile defence, and the spurious US need to extend nuclear deterrence to its allies. Here was an example of how nuclear deterrence undercuts the political stability its proponents claim it creates. 


    Conclusions


    To conclude, I hope I have explained why I rejected nuclear deterrence, and why it is the last major obstacle to a nuclear weapon-free world.  Finding our way back from the nuclear abyss, on the edge of which nuclear deterrence has held us hypnotised and terrorised for sixty-five years, will not be easy. As with all advances in human rights and justice, the engine for shifting the mindset has to come from civil society.


    I recall what Mahatma Gandhi said in 1938, as he launched the final push towards evicting the British from India: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” The American anthropologist Margaret Mead added: “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”


    A surprisingly small network of individuals drove the campaign to abolish slavery. As with nuclear deterrence, slavery’s leading apologists were the power elites of the United States, Britain and France. They argued that slavery was a “necessary evil”, for which there was “no alternative”. They failed, because courageous ordinary British, American and French citizens mobilised unstoppable public and political support for their campaign to replace slavery with more humane, lawful and effective ways to create wealth. The analogy holds for nuclear deterrence, which can and must be discarded for more humane, lawful and safer security strategies if civilisation and the Earth’s ecosystems are to survive.

  • Frank Kelly: An Advocate of Joy

    These remarks were delivered at Frank Kelly’s memorial service in Santa Barbara, California on July 16, 2010.

    We are here today to remember a good and decent man, who lived a long life with many notable achievements.  It is not so much what he accomplished, though, as how he lived that makes his life a powerful lesson and one worth celebrating.

    Frank was a very dear friend, the kind of friend that one is graced to have.  I first met Frank when Carolee and I came to Santa Barbara and I worked at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.  We shared the experience of being a part of that remarkable organization headed by Robert Hutchins.  That was 38 years ago.  

    Ten years later, in 1982, Frank and I would work together to found the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  Over the 28 years that the Foundation has existed, we were very close, conferring on our work on nearly a daily basis.  For many years before Barbara’s death, Frank and Barbara and Carolee and I shared our birthdays together.

    Frank was a unique individual who lived a unique life.  Here are some of the characteristics that impressed me about Frank:

    He was always generous with his smiles and his praise.

    He always managed to find and encourage the best in each person he knew.

    He believed that all of us are, in his special language, “glorious beings.”

    He recognized that each of us is a miracle and should be celebrated as such.

    He was optimistic that a better world was possible and could be achieved.  

    He believed that each of us deserves a seat at humanity’s table.

    He felt the world needed far more women as leaders at all levels of society, and he was as insistent as he was persistent in urging leadership roles for women.

    He was a loyal and devoted husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather and friend.  He was proud of his children and grandchildren and delighted by his new great-grandson.

    He was a sparkling storyteller and had a rich storehouse of memories to draw upon, ranging from his childhood memories of his father coming home from World War I, to his days at the Kansas City Star, to speechwriting for President Truman, to his work as the assistant to the Senate Majority Leader, and his close relationship to Robert Hutchins and many other luminaries of the 20th century.

    He loved music of all sorts, and had a special fondness for Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “It’s a Wonderful World.”  He also loved the special concerts that his son Stephen performed for him and was Stephen’s greatest fan.

    Frank had a deep spirituality – a spirituality rooted in our connections with each other, with the Earth, and with the infinite.  

    Most of all, Frank was an advocate of joy, and he loved these lines by William Blake, “He who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”  William Blake might well have envisioned Frank as he wrote those lines.

    Frank will live on in the hearts of those who admired and loved him and in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future.

    I hesitate to say farewell to Frank, as I believe his spirit will remain with us in our efforts to create a more peaceful and decent future for humanity.  If we can build some joy into our efforts, I think we can be assured that Frank will be smiling down on us.

  • Remembering Frank King Kelly

    Click here to view our Frank K. Kelly memorial page, which includes photos, reflections and more.

    Frank King Kelly lived a long and full life.  He died peacefully just one day before his 96th birthday.  He was a fortunate man and all of us whose lives were touched by him were fortunate as well.

    Frank was married to his great love, Barbara, for 54 years.  She was his rock, his partner and his strongest booster.  She also kept his feet on the ground, or at least tried.  Frank had two sons, Terry and Stephen.  He was very proud of them and of their wives.  He took joy in their accomplishments and those of his three grandsons.  He was delighted by the recent birth of his great grandson. 

    Frank had a remarkable career.  He was a reporter for the Kansas City Star, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a soldier in World War II, a speech writer for Harry Truman, assistant to the Senate Majority Leader, vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and a founder and senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. 

    To everything he did, Frank brought creativity and optimism.  He believed firmly that everyone deserves a seat at humanity’s table, and he worked for this goal throughout his life. 

    Frank loved to tell stories and he had many of them.  As a young boy, he would be sent in to awaken his father who had recurring nightmares after returning from World War I.  His father’s strong and lasting torment from the hand-to-hand combat he had experienced was Frank’s initiation to the trauma of war.

    As a teenager, Frank wrote science fiction stories.  He often finished 15,000 word stories at one go, with no revisions required.  The editors to whom he sent his stories thought they were publishing the work of an older man rather than that of a teenager.  In 1996, Frank would be inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame, an award for contributions to science fiction dating back more than 30 years.

    At the Kansas City Star Frank met Ernest Hemingway, who told him that he would have to leave Missouri if he ever hoped to be a writer.  Frank did leave, and over the course of his lifetime wrote ten books, including one only a few years before his death. 

    As a soldier and reporter in World War II, Frank interviewed many dying soldiers.  At the end of their young lives, he said, they all cried out for their mothers.  Frank was with the first group of American troops to liberate Paris.  He loved it that they were greeted with such warmth and excitement, but Frank had seen enough to have a deep loathing for war and its consequences.

    Frank was asked to write speeches for Harry Truman in his 1948 campaign.  Most of his friends thought that Truman was a sure loser and that Frank would be crazy to take the job, but Barbara encouraged him and he did take it.  Throughout his life, Frank was fiercely loyal to Truman, a man he admired greatly.  When Frank introduced his mother to Harry Truman in the Oval Office, she told Truman how wonderful she thought it was that Frank and he had won that election.

    Frank next took a position as assistant to the Senate Majority Leader and then as staff director of the Senate Majority Policy Committee.  I don’t think he enjoyed that experience of power politics, and he was happy to accept a series of new assignments.

    In 1952, Frank served as Washington director of the Harriman for President Committee.  In 1952 and 1953, Frank was the US director of the Study of World News, conducted by the International Press Institute.  In 1953 and 1954, Frank directed a national campaign against book censorship.

    In 1956, Frank became the vice president of the Fund for the Republic, a nonprofit organization funded by the Ford Foundation, which was established to “support activities directed toward the elimination of restrictions on freedom of thought, inquiry and expression in the United States….”  The fund was a staunch opponent of McCarthyism. 

    When the Fund established the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara in 1959, Frank and Barbara moved their family to Santa Barbara.  Frank worked closely at the Center with its founder and president, Robert Hutchins, for the next 17 years.  At the Center, Frank initiated two major international convocations around Pope John XXIII’s papal encyclical, “Pacem in Terris.”

    It was at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions that I met Frank when I joined the staff there in 1972.  Later, after Robert Hutchins had died and the Center for all practical purposes had ceased to exist, Frank wrote a seminal book about it, The Court of Reason.

    Frank and I worked together in founding the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  At first, he thought it was a farfetched idea that we could create a new organization that could make a difference in building a more peaceful world, but he believed we should try and we did.  We founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 1982, along with three other Santa Barbarans.  We had no resources to start with, but a fervent belief that peace was an imperative of the Nuclear Age and that it would be necessary for citizens to lead their leaders.  That was 28 years ago, and throughout that time Frank and I conferred on almost a daily basis.

    Frank’s wife, Barbara, was a poet and, after her death in 1995, the Foundation established the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards in her honor.  Each year these awards are given “to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit.”  The awards are given in three categories: adult, teenage, and 12 and under.

    Frank had many wonderful characteristics that stand out.  He was unfailingly optimistic and believed that better days were ahead.  He was a staunch advocate of women, and believed that their nurturing style of leadership was needed to build a better world.  He was deeply loyal to his friends and colleagues.  He had a special sense of humor and couldn’t resist a good pun.  He was committed to ending war, abolishing nuclear weapons and building a better future for humanity. 

    In 2002, the Foundation established the Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future.  These lectures are given annually by a distinguished individual “to explore the contours of humanity’s present circumstances and ways by which we can shape a more promising future for our planet and all its inhabitants.”  Frank himself gave the first lecture.  He entitled it, “Glorious Beings: What We Are and What We May Become.”  He believed that each of us is a glorious being.

    Frank lived by one of the core values of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: shameless idealism.  He was an idealist without regret, a visionary who saw that a better future was not only necessary but possible.   He worked daily throughout his life to achieve a more decent world.

    I would sum up Frank’s life by saying that he was decent, kind and loving, and he never gave up his desire to create a better world.  His life brought dignity to being human.  He was a glorious being.

    Frank was fond of quoting this line by William Blake, “…he who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”  Frank had a special relationship with joy, and I believe he continues to live in “eternity’s sunrise.”

  • Reflections on Frank Kelly

    The following comments were made by NAPF Board members and staff in reaction to the news of Frank Kelly’s death on June 11, 2010.

    * * *

    I have sad news.  The world lost a great and indomitable soul when Frank Kelly passed away earlier this morning, just one day shy of his 96th birthday.  I had stopped in to visit him and he was resting quietly.  He was very peaceful as he passed on.  I know he had high hopes of reuniting with his beloved Barbara.

    Frank lived a long and good life, one which deserves to be celebrated, as he celebrated life itself.  He never wavered from his belief that what we were doing at the Foundation was critical for humanity’s future, and he always believed that by our efforts we would create a more secure and decent future for humanity.

    David Krieger

    * * *

    How terribly sad for us all.  We have lost a friend and a major source of inspiration.  Yet for Frank, there is now peace.

    I had looked forward to attending his birthday party tomorrow.  Instead, I’ll spend that hour thinking about how he affected me over the past 25 years.  When I think of the term, “smile,” I honestly can’t come up with a better visual than Frank’s face.  Nor can I think of a better exemplar of dedication to task.  He was single-minded without being dogmatic.  And who will ever forget his gentle reminders about what Harry Truman would have said about war and nuclear weapons.  

    Sometimes, I caught myself thinking — hey, this is not on the agenda; this is not a part of the present discussion.  But then, I’d come full circle.  Frank had noticed that, though focused on the issues of the day, we might have lost sight of the larger picture…so he was going to remind us why we were gathered around that table; he was present to help us focus on the more important issues — how to move the planet closer to a system based on peaceful conflict management and how to eliminate nuclear weapons from humanity’s collection of “helpful” gadgets.

    Frank was one of a kind.  There will be no replacing him, but perhaps he can still serve as that gentle reminder, especially when we experience a difficult moment at a Board meeting, stressing about an insignificant “this” or an absurd “that”….perhaps his spirit will, once again, remind us about why we are there.  His was the clarion call to purpose.  

    I will truly miss him though I know he will be at every meeting, smiling…and gently reminding us to stay on task.

    Peter Haslund

    * * *

    Peter, your comments are beautifully and accurately stated. You were the one at the last board meeting that affirmed Frank for reminding us of our higher purpose.  It was a perfect and familiar meeting with Frank always at the end of the table in his wheel chair.  Sometimes we thought he was sleeping or nodding off…but he never missed a beat. He was always present.  And, as you said, he never missed a chance to admonish us about the more important goal.  I mentioned to someone today, there were no idle words from Frank Kelly.  He always made meaningful statements.

    You are right.  There will never be anyone like him.  We were all so blessed to work with him for all these years.

    Anna Grotenhuis

    * * *

    This is truly very sad news.  I had just written a card to Frank late last night.  His life has made this world a better place for so many reasons.

    Frank Kelly’s life is one to celebrate in the best way we can at the foundation.  He was a founder and cared so deeply for our cause.  I still remember his admonitions at the most recent board meeting.

    We have lost our hero.

    Anna Grotenhuis

    * * *

    Frank was such a lovely man.  He thought and felt deeply about the wellbeing of all humanity.  At the same time, he was warm and funny and optimistic in his outlook.  I will miss his smiles and hugs, but I am glad he is at peace.  My heart goes out to his family.

    Lessie Nixon Schontzler

    * * *

    For too many people, joy is a rare –or at best occasional — feeling.

    For Frank, joy was a way of living.

    He always had a twinkle in his eye, an idea in his head and a song in his heart.

    Both fiercely dedicated and embracingly kind, he lived in his own circle of grace — blessing those around him even as he appreciated the blessings they brought to him.

    I miss him, but what an extraordinarily good and joyful life he led.

    To a true wager of peace and appreciator of humankind!

    All love and honor to you, Frank.

    Steven Crandell

    * * *

    I too share the sense of loss following Frank Kelly’s death.  He was a radiant spirit, blessed with a sunlit disposition, generous of spirit, and profoundly dedicated to a peaceful and feminized and denuclearized future for humanity.  We will miss his presence, but I feel that his legacy will serve us well as guidance and source of inspiration.

    Richard Falk

    * * *

    In addition to his moral leadership and vision for a more just, peaceful, and (as Richard puts it) feminized world, the quality which most endears Frank to me was his talent for making his partner in conversation, whoever that may be, feel especially intelligent, perceptive, and full of insight.  Suffice to say that a visit with Frank did no harm to one’s self-esteem.

    Rob Laney

    * * *

    Perhaps because I am here in France where the reminders of World War II are so present and the honor and glory of military victories and wars are celebrated so often with marches and holidays that I feel especially close to the days of Harry Truman and Frank Kelly and appreciate even more than I would have at home, how extraordinary a man Frank was for his time.

    I feel very privileged to have known him on the Foundation Board–look at the guidance his beliefs have given us!  I also really appreciate the gusto he has shown over these last few years.  I am especially happy that we could celebrate his 95th birthday last year in such grand style and that he enjoyed it so much–that is a wonderful memory to have.

    Laurie Harris

    * * *

    Although I am a new board member and did not have the pleasure of meeting Frank Kelly, I have had the opportunity to get to know how wonderful he was through your kind words.

    Yolanda Nunn Gorman

    * * *

    We were so looking forward to the party tomorrow.  We loved Frank so much.  He was my idol in the organization.  A truly great human being.  We will miss him very much.

    Jill Dexter

    * * *

    I am so sad to hear of the news about Frank. He was so lucid, so full of emotion and seemed so pleased to have visitors last month. I will always be grateful to have spent some of the afternoon with him during our visit to Santa Barbara. He sent us with several books including his most recent.

    It is so rare to find someone remaining true to shameless idealism to the very end! He left a wonderful legacy in NAPF, and I feel so fortunate to have been influenced by his vision. The best compliment to his exemplary life is to continue working for a more just and peaceful world ourselves.

    Leah Wells

    * * *

    Roxanne and I remember him well. He was always so kind and welcoming and keen to share stories. I am certain he will be missed by very many people. And what a tremendous legacy.

    Marc Kielburger

  • Glorious Beings: Creating a New World Culture

    I came into the world in a thunderstorm in June 1914, when great changes were beginning to happen. It was in a year when the First World War engulfed Europe and Africa and Asia, when the powers of science and technology brought down the barriers between nations – and great scientists gave us glimpses of our place in the throbbing universe.

    Dr. Brian Swime, a noted physicist, said “The vastness of this universe couldn’t have been otherwise…This universe, which is 30 billion light years across, the smallest universe we could fit into…The universe had to expand at this rate to enable our existence.  We belong here.  This is home.  This has been our home for 15 billion years…If you altered the origin of the universe even just slightly, none of us would even be here.  That means then, that our existence is implicit.  We don’t only stand on our feet, we stand on the original fireball; we stand on the expansion of the universe as a whole.”

    When I gaze at your luminous faces, I am convinced that Dr. Swime is right.  I am also sure that Albert Einstein was right when he said that if we could understand what we really are we would know that we are glowing fields of electromagnetic energy.  We are also collections of dancing atoms filled with negative and positive charges.

    There are auras of light around your amazing bodies and your immortal souls are shining through your eyes.

    Look at one another.  Listen to one another.  Touch one another.  Become aware of what glorious beings you are.  You are far more involved in shaping the future than you have begun to realize.

    Humanity is in a tragic situation.  You are surrounded by more dangers than any generation before you.  And yet you have more strength, more technological knowledge, more allies to help you than any previous people who came into existence in the years past.

    How do I dare to make such statements to you?  I dare because I have lived in this body for more than 90 years – and I have experienced many miracles.

    In my youth, I poured out stories of man’s incredible achievements.  I became known as a pioneer of wonder. I brought the book to show you what came forth from me when I was writing science fiction.

    One world was not enough for me.  I leaped from planet to planet.  I was drawn to the stars, as many young people in my time were.  When I walked at night in my father’s backyard and gazed at the blazing lights in the sky, I didn’t feel dwarfed by them or overcome by their intensity.  I saw them as playgrounds for my mind and spirit – and I still do.

    I believe that we human beings will triumph over all the horrible problems we may face, and over the bloody history of our failures.  We pray and we play.  We have divine sparks in us.  We discover what Einstein and other great ones among us discovered.  Einstein wrote: “Everyone who is involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifested in the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and we must be humble in our awareness of that Spirit moving among us, shaping the future with us.”

    Through play we discover our kinship with the Almighty Being who brought us into life.  God laughs and dances.  God gave us the power to find endless joy in celebrating the mysteries and wonders of this life. Some of our scientists brought us into the Nuclear Age and made us realize that we must find ways of living in peace or confront unparalleled catastrophes.

    I grew up in a praying and playing family and the Glorious Beings I have encountered seem related to me.  I went to Catholic schools where the nuns taught me that I shared in the creative mightiness that had shaped the stars.  I felt that I was made to speak freely in all circumstances.

    As a young reporter on The Kansas City Star I was sent to a press conference sponsored by Franklin D. Roosevelt, just after he had won re-election by millions of votes.  I was given a chance to speak directly with him.  He said in a soft voice: “As a journalist you have much power, Mr. Kelly.”  “Not the powers you have,” I said.  He tilted his head and said, “But I think I missed my calling.”  “You did?” I said.  “Yes,” he answered: “I wanted to be a journalist,” he muttered.  “You can ask anybody anything – and people have to respond.  And nobody tells you what you have to say.”

    “That’s not the kind of power you have,” I replied then.  He shook his head.  “Everybody tries to tell me what to do,” the President responded.

    I left his presence with amazement.  He was famous and beloved by millions of his fellow citizens.  But he didn’t have the kind of power he wanted!

    I realized that some of the Glorious Beings who seem to tower above us do not realize how much strength they have.  I had already experienced many frustrations as a journalist, but I didn’t feel defeated or crushed by the limitations on me.

    In my many years of pursuing “truth” and “solid answers” in my contacts with leaders in many fields, I became aware that it was a special gift to feel “glorious.”

    In my program here tonight I want you to realize that many “creative beings” serve humanity with a demonstrated dedication to public service but feel in their hearts that they can never attain the fulfillment they are encouraged to seek.

    Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King met violent deaths although they were dedicated to non-violence.  Albert Einstein and other great scientists knew that they had helped to build devastating weapons that endangered life on earth.  Eleanor Roosevelt never succeeded in putting an end to the arms race.  She travelled over many parts of the world, demonstrating her willingness to exhaust herself in the noble efforts of the peacemakers.  Harry Truman tried to rebuild areas of the earth, which had been savagely scourged by his use of military power.

    When I entered journalism in 1935, I spent my first 10 months on The Star’s staff primarily on death notices.  In those months, I gained a deep appreciation of the significance of each human life and its impact on all those in the same stages around them.  I realized that Kansas City was a segregated place in those years.  Blacks and other minorities were in the background, living in their own atmosphere.  They had their own churches, their own emergency services, their own hospitals, their own cemeteries.

    I became disturbed by the fact that I knew little by the black people and the many poor families existing in my city.  After I became an expert in briefly describing many lives, I was suddenly hurled into the hectic atmosphere of the General Hospital.  I rode in ambulances with drivers and doctors to the scenes of accidents, explosions, fires, murders, and domestic violence.  I saw people lying in the streets or bleeding in back rooms of apartments and boarding houses.  I discovered that many men were brutal.  They pounded their wives and children with their fists and straps, they crashed into one another with their autos and motorcycles, ran over pedestrians, and exploded with rage when they were frustrated.  They had to be shackled or thrown into jails by tough policemen.  I became gradually convinced of the superiority of women and began to believe that women should rule the world.

    My estimates of women were affected by the fact that women rarely engaged in violent acts themselves. I was always grateful for the kindness of women, for their tenderness and nurturing affections for their parents, their sisters and brothers, their lovers and husbands, their children and their friends.  I knew they had human faults and failings; I knew they could be angry and speak harshly about other people; they could be dominating and vindictive; and occasionally inflict blows on other women and men; but they were rarely killers.  I became convinced that the flourishing of humanity depended partly upon the civilizing influences of women.

    My father demonstrated the aggressive qualities of men.  When he got drunk, he was ready to use his fists and any weapons he carried.  When I was 3 years old, in 1917, he responded aggressively to President Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war against Germany after the Germans sank some American ships.  He rushed off to enlist in the army.  He was eager to execute the German Kaiser, to make the world safe for democracy.  He put me into a little soldier’s suit that made me look like a young soldier.  He taught me to salute him and all other officers.  He was eager to get into combat in France.  He killed Germans in face-to-face struggles in the trenches.

    He was severely wounded by a piece of shrapnel that lodged in his neck and his face was twisted by a scar on a deep wound.  When he came home, he suffered from nightmares of face-to-face attacks.  I had to wake him up from those screaming moments, and his yelling haunted me for the rest of my life.

    In war, men sought glory by wounding one another or killing their opponents.  The young Germans he encountered in the bloody trenches were often as brave as he was, as sure as he was that the murders they committed were justified.  Millions died, striving to validate their manhood.

    I remember the Armistice Day – November 11 – in 1918 – when church bells rang and victory sirens sounded.  I also remember the weeping and wailing of a woman in the boarding house where my mother and I stayed while we waited for my father to return from France.  That woman had received a telegram telling her that her husband had been killed in one of the last battles.  For her, as for many others who received similar telegrams, the victory was bitter.

    Why did glorious beings kill one another?  Why did young men, charged with the energy of youth, use heavy weapons to tear off the heads and arms and eyes of their labeled “enemies?”  Nobody could answer those questions for me.

    I had taken part in World War II, after the United States was directly attacked.  I was assured that there would be peace and lasting joy after Hitler and the Japanese militarists had been eliminated.  They were smashed in 1945 and those who had fought against them celebrated wildly.

    But then we learned that Russia was dominated by a communist dictatorship and Stalin and his minions had to be eliminated, too.  I was asked to write speeches for a president, Harry Truman, who had been compelled to make a horrendous decision – to use atom bombs against Japan to end the Second World War.  I discovered that he had given much thought to the creation of a global organization to save humanity from the scourge of war.

    Truman carried in his wallet a poem by a Glorious Being – Alfred Tennyson – written in 1842, predicting a final war involving aerial navies, which led to the formation of a Federation for the World, a Parliament for Humanity.

    A humble man who never exalted himself, Truman had a glorious agenda.  He had helped to launch and uphold the United Nations, and he was determined to make it effective in helping all countries to enter an unprecedented era of lasting peace and prosperity.  He strove to get the rich nations to devote some of their tremendous resources to aid the poor nations to reduce or eliminate poverty all over the planet.  He proclaimed that “a decent, satisfying life” was “the right of all people.”  He shared General Eisenhower’s view that war was a theft from the resources of people.

    In the 1948 campaign I helped Truman make the people aware that “the destiny of the United States is to provide leadership in the world toward a realization of the Four Freedoms.”  Those Freedoms were articulated in an address to the Congress in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  F.D.R. asserted that the American heritage had developed a full understanding of the basic freedoms vital for human progress: Freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want by assuring a healthy peaceful life – and freedom from fear, by reducing military arms everywhere.

    The U.S. had emerged from the horrifying struggle of World War II with a booming economy – and a future with unlimited possibilities.  They felt that the future of humanity depended on the ethical behavior of a giant nation.

    I shared the hopes of those leaders.  I had lived through the transformation of the U.S. from the Depression years, with millions of unemployed and desperate citizens, into a place with dazzling opportunities in every field.

    When Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas became chairman of the Center’s board, I worked closely with him. He was a “glorious being,” full of courage and willing to take the initiative in many ways.  He advocated Centers in all the major cities of the world.

    The Center gave much attention to all the major problems facing humanity, especially the arms race and the Cold War.  Two Center pamphlets written by the noted analyst Walter Millis – one on Individual Freedom and the Common Defense and one on The Constitution and the Common Defense – were widely circulated.  Millis described what he called “the war system,” and he declared that would have to be dismantled if humanity really wanted to survive.  He predicted that the devastating power of nuclear weapons would force the great nations (those with thousands of those weapons) to agree on a nonproliferating treaty to avoid a nuclear holocaust.  Albert Einstein, the scientist recognized by all countries, said that the maintenance of such weapons might lead humanity to “drift into an unparalleled catastrophe.”  The dire commentaries of many brilliant scientists enabled humanity to avoid that catastrophe during the years of the “cold war” between the U.S. and the Soviets, but the dangers had to be seen for decades.

    Nuclear war was avoided but the U.S. plunged into an extensive disaster in Vietnam under several presidents.  The Vietnam War brought poverty and slaughter to millions for many years.  President Nixon took four years to sanction an American withdrawal.

    The “glorious beings” at the Center sponsored a trip to Vietnam by two directors – Harry Ashmore and William Baggs, who went to Vietnam and returned with proposals that could have ended the war in the 1960s.  But the leaders on both sides were not ready to settle their differences.

    The Center tried in many ways to build foundations for peace through exchanges of ideas and proposals by leaders from many countries who participated in an intervention convocation at the UN based on Pope John’s encyclical Pacem in Terris.

    Scholars at the Center were active in many ways.  It issued warnings on the decay and disarray of democratic institutions long before the Watergate scandal appeared in the headlines.  Other Center publications warned of the creeping pollution of the planet, long before millions of people realized that the web of life might be destroyed by such pollution.

    In advance of actual developments, people at the Center revealed the thinking of radical students, the changing attitudes of the young toward the whole society, the implications of the changes in race relations, and the demands of ethnic minorities.  The Center showed the defects of the mass media at a time when people were not aware of the corruption of the media and the pervasive impact of the press and broadcasting industries on every facet of modern life.

    Six years of discussions, involving dozens of meetings and thoughts of 200 consultants (including historians, judges, political scientists, economists, and others) went into the Center’s drafts for a new American Constitution.  A model for the 20th century was finally published in 1970.  The principal drafter was Rexford G. Tugwell, a former member of President Roosevelt’s “brains trust.”  But the man who pushed it into publication was Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, the elected head of the Center in Santa Barbara.

    The model Constitution was not designed for ratification and implementation but as an instrument for thinking about the issues of the 1970s.  At a time when American institutions did not seem to be functioning effectively, the Center scholars hoped that the model might awaken hope in millions of apathetic citizens and bring new vitality to a sagging democracy.

    But the development of that model document turned out to be one of most controversial projects in which the Center had ever engaged.  It was regarded as foolish, futile, and possibly dangerous to the American system.  It stirred hot arguments for years, but it did not produce the long-range effects Hutchins had tried to evoke.

    When internal strife occurred at the Center in 1967 and 1975, it became evident to people outside the Center that the scholars on Eucalyptus Hill were not able to solve their own constitutional problems.

    In spite of its own internal failures, in spite of all the defects and limitations of its own projects, the Center had an impact on scholars, editors, broadcasters, political leaders, lawyers, economists and others in many fields in many countries.

    Admiral Hyman Rickover, commander of the American nuclear submarines, took part in several Center conferences and once donated $1,000 to help keep the Center going, said he thought the Center’s budget was relatively small.  He referred to the billions he could get from Congress for nuclear ships ad said he thought the Center was more vital for the future of humanity than submarines or other weapons.

    Paul Dickson, in his book on American research organizations entitled Think Tanks, said its dedication to future problems gave it a unique role.

    Many “glorious beings” were connected with the Center.  The threat of annihilation still hangs over humanity’s future.  The best thinking of the bravest people will always be needed.

  • Saving Humanity from the Fiery Threat of Nuclear Annihilation, Through the Power of Women

    In my youth, I wrote stories about the possible destruction of the beautiful planet on which I lived, deceiving readers into thinking that I was an embittered old man.  I leaped into the future as far as I could see, and I saw creatures coming from other worlds with the weapons to destroy the world around me.  I was haunted by the screams of my father, who had to kill other men in hand-to-hand combat in the global war that raged from 1914 to 1918.

    In 1943, I was drafted into the American army to stop Hitler and his murderous followers from conquering Europe.  I was trained to shoot and stab other men, just as my father had been trained in his generation.  I was selected as a war correspondent to write about the atrocities suffered by other men in bloody battles where they had lost their arms and legs, and sometimes their brains and testicles.  I lived through glorious days after I came home unwounded, but I had to face the grim realities created by scientists who had acted on the wild possibilities I had envisioned in my science fiction stories.

    In 1932, I had published a story titled “Red April 1965” about a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union—and I was confronted early in April of 1965 by a madman who rushed into my office screaming about the imminent occurrence of such a war on the very date when I had predicted it.  The war did not happen then, but I still had a deep fear that atomic bombs would destroy our civilization.

    In 1948, I wrote speeches for President Harry Truman, who had used nuclear weapons on Japan to save the lives of thousands of civilians and end the Second World War as quickly as possible.  After his action, the world embarked on a nuclear arms race, which has continued for many years.  Life on earth is under the fiery threat of annihilation.

    In 1982, David Krieger asked me to join him in founding the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization, which has become a voice of conscience for the community, the nation, and the world.  Its message is that nuclear weapons threaten the future of all life on our planet, and that it is the responsibility of all of us, working together, to end this threat forever.  Nuclear weapons were created by humans, and they must be abolished by us.  Peace in a world free of nuclear weapons is everyone’s birthright.  It is the greatest challenge of our time to restore that birthright to our children and all future generations.

    In 1983, I was invited to go to Moscow by the Council of Citizens, a nonpartisan organization based in New York.  In Russia, I was given an opportunity to speak to 77 Soviet leaders in the Kremlin.  I urged them to take the initiative in getting rid of nuclear weapons.  I said that I hoped my own government—the U.S. government—would do that, but I was afraid that American leaders would not do it.

    The Soviets listened to me, and my speech was quoted in Pravda.  I was interviewed by Radio Moscow, but the Soviets told me that if they discarded their nuclear weapons, they would be regarded as “weak” in many parts of the world.  I felt that my mission to Moscow did not have the positive results I had hoped for.

    Now, I believe that a worldwide initiative by women has the best possibilities of ending the nuclear threat.  Courageous women are making a difference in all nations; in fact, many countries have elected women to the highest offices in their governments.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has many notable women on its board of directors, its council of advisors, its associates, and staff.  Its development and progress is largely due to the generosity and activities of these women.

    The Foundation’s financial survival was largely dependent on the gifts of Ethel Wells, a Santa Barbara resident.  In the 1980s, the Foundation coordinated an International Week for Science and Peace.  Mrs. Wells reasoned that scientists were at the heart of creating constructive or destructive technologies, so she contributed $50,000 for a prize for the best proposal for a scientific step forward.  The winning proposal came from the Hungarian Engineers for Peace and called for the formation of an International Network of Engineers for Peace.  A short time later, the engineers joined with a group of like-minded scientists and established the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.  That organization continues to thrive with a large list of supporters.

    In 1995, friends of Barbara Mandigo Kelly, my wife, established an annual series of awards through the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit.  These awards are offered to people in three categories—adults, young persons 13 to 18 years old, and youth 12 and under.  Thousands of poems have been received from people of all ages, from all over the world.  The prize-winning poems have been published in book form, in anthologies and on the Foundation’s website.

    For many years, the Foundation offered prizes, financed by Gladys Swackhamer, awarded for essays by high school students all over the world, who shared their thoughts on nuclear policy and peace issues.  Many of these essays have been published in magazines in many places, and the authors include many young women from a wide variety of backgrounds.

    The necessity for cooperative action was highlighted recently in an article published in the Wall Street Journal signed by four men who have served in high positions—George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Senator Sam Nunn.  They expressed the belief that “We have arrived a dangerous tipping point in the nuclear era, and we advocate a strategy for improving American security and global security….We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe.”  [Emphasis added.]

    I think the time has come for the formation of a Women’s Task Force for Nuclear Peace, composed of leaders of women’s organizations with millions of members around the world.  The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is prepared to work in cooperation with these organizations to awaken humanity to the urgent need of preserving life on earth.

  • Humanity’s Great Future

    Address in Saint Paul’s Cathedral San Diego, California April 27, 2008

    In this ever changing life, upon this glowing transforming globe, I have lived for nearly 100 years, traveling inwardly and outwardly, in my thoughts and in my dreams, realizing that there are no limits to the paths which can be explored in the thunderous days and illuminated nights of this journey.

    I was born in a thunder storm with lightening flickering around my mother’s body. I have landed on a torn beach in Normandy, leaping from a small boat onto a strip of sand covered by parts of bodies and wreckage. I have ridden through villages smashed by allied bombs and shared in the liberation of the city of Paris on a blazing day in August 1944.

    I have ridden with a President threatened by defeat and hidden assassins, and sat close to him on the day of his inauguration when the sky was filled with war planes and thousands of men went marching by. I have worked in a huge office in the Capitol of the United States – an office once occupied by the Supreme Court. I have hidden in a cavern under that majestic building, made fearful by reports of a possible attack by enemy bombers.

    In all many places I have had glimpses of the Creator who shaped all life. I have seen His awesome power in clouds and volcanoes, in giant animals pacing in cages, in the smiles and wails of little children, in old men and women with authority, in the beauty and delight of love and in nightmares when I thought I heard the cries of a dying Savior asking why he had been forsaken.

    I was born in 1914, a year when nations plunged into the catastrophe known as World War I. When President Woodrow Wilson took this country into that war in 1917, proclaiming that it was a war to end war, my father volunteered for military service. He was sent to Camp Funston for training and became a captain in the infantry. But when he went overseas with thousands of other men to crush the German Kaiser, my mother and I felt strangely abandoned.

    My father ordered me to wear a little soldier suit – and forced me to salute him and other men in uniform. He ordered me to take care of my dear mother while he bloodied his hands in the Wilsonian crusade. I did not begin to understand the murderous nature of war until he’d returned from France horribly wounded. I did not recognize him. He had a scarred hole in his neck and he woke up at night in savage struggles, fighting in trenches hand to hand confronting the bloody bowels of men he had ripped open with a bayonet.

    His nightmares afflicted me – and still do. Our house in Kansas City was filled with deep pains I had not earned and those memories have remained with me all the years of my life. I had been taught that God was good but the world he had made reeked with evils.

    To escape from the planet of terror on which I had been born, I leaped toward the stars. It seemed to me that all those glistening spangles in the night skies were there to be explored by voyagers from earth. The stars to me seemed the very signs of God. I was a very religious boy and I felt His arms around me, pulling me into ecstasies.

    In my early teens, I wrote science fiction stories about traveling to other planets. When I saw the astronauts landing on the moon many years later, it seemed to me that they were dressed exactly as I had depicted them in my stories. The explorations of space seemed to me very relevant to the questions I had wrestled with in my youth.

    My first teachers were Catholic nuns who taught me that the powerful God who gleamed in the stars had also made me. This God loved to make stars, beasts and beetles and millions of other living beings and he loved everything he made. He had created me to love Him and to serve Him and to be happy with Him forever. That was what they taught me.

    Yet there were perils which had to be faced. The nuns taught me that there were angels and demons around at all times. Invisible spiritual warfare was even worse than the slaughter in which my father had participated. It was going on around me and around us all. There were dark powers and principalities seeking to devour me and resplendent angels defending me. So they convinced me that I was very important to God and to the enormous power called the devil.

    My favorite teacher was a beautiful nun who was not frightened by the questions I hurled at her. She encouraged me to write stories of wonder, to let my mind run freely, to leap toward the farthest places if I felt like jumping high. She told me that God had given me some of his creative power, some of his courage, some of his strength. I was a pioneer of wonder – so I had to be brave and strong.

    As I tried to spring higher and higher, I encountered the marvelous eloquence of a scientist, Brian Swimme, who declared: “The vastness of this universe could not have been otherwise….This universe, which is 30 billion light years across, is the smallest universe that we can fit into….The universe had to expand at this rate to enable our existence….We belong here. This is our home. This has been our home for 15 billion years. If you altered the universe even just slightly, none of us would even be here. That means that our very existence is implicit! We don’t only stand on our own feet….We stand on the original fireball; we stand on the expansion of the universe as a whole!”

    Now when I stand here in this great center of worship, built by the tremendous surges of creative power, I’m sure that Brian Swimme and other physicists are right. The unfolding of this universe, the Big Bang that occurred billions of years ago, had to happen just as it did.

    The first book of Moses, commonly called Genesis, puts it another way, saying that in the beginning the earth was without form and utterly dark and then there was a great burst of light. The whole process began with the emergence of the shining brightness that brings forth the understanding which transforms everything forever. When God said, “Let there be Light,” everything changed.

    There are many possibilities for despair in the age of turmoil in which we live. I have often reached the edge of darkness but I’ve always been suddenly aware of those ringing words: “Let there be Light.”

    As I gaze at the shining faces that glow before me this morning, I see glorious beings – reaching everywhere.

    You are glorious because you are connected to the starry skies – that blaze above and beyond this hall. You have radiating through you the glory of this vast universe! The Big Bang brought you here!

    I am sure that Albert Einstein had a glimpse of reality when he said that if we could envision what we really are, we would know that we are glowing fields of electro-magnetic energy. We are collections of vibrating molecules composed of dancing atoms filled with positive and negative charges. And yet we are more than all that! The physicist can describe what we are but cannot convey who we are.

    There are auras of light around your amazing bodies, and your immortal souls are visible through your eyes. Look at one another. Listen to one another, to the breathing that goes on, to the heartbeats, to the throbbing of pulses.

    Become fully aware of what towering beings you are. You are far more involved in the survival of your planet, in shaping your future, than you have ever begun to realize.

    You know that humanity is involved in a tragic situation today. You are surrounded by more dangers than any generation before you – and yet you have more strength in big and little matters, more technological knowledge, more allies to help you than you have fully understood.

    How do I dare today to make such statements to you? I dare because I have lived in this body for more than 90 years and in that long life I have experienced many miracles. In my science fiction in the 1920s, I predicted some of the transformations through which humanity has already passed – and glimpsed many more.

    In the presidential election of 1948, I had the privilege of writing speeches for Harry Truman, who had attained the Presidency without seeking it, who had survived a war without expecting to be elevated to the highest levels of political power. In a personal interview he revealed to me the principles he had learned from his mother and from reading the Bible. He felt, as I did, that he had to carry the whole world on his shoulders.

    He had been taught, as I had, that he had to be an obedient servant of the Creator, a man who prayed publicly and privately to carry out his obligations. In his diary, Truman recorded this prayer: “Oh almighty and everlasting God, Creator of Heaven, earth and the Universe, help me to be, to think, to act on what is right because it is right; make me truthful, honest, and honorable in all things….”

    His philosophy was based on confronting what he regarded as reality. In describing how he made what he called the most terrible decision any human had to make in the history of humanity – the use of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities – he spoke in very personal terms. He told me that General LeMay, commander of the B29 Bombers that dropped fire bombs on many places in Japan, thought that Japan could be defeated by those blazing attacks. Truman made a sweeping gesture with his right arm and said: “LeMay told me we didn’t need to use those new atomic weapons. We could burn up Japan from one end to the other. That would have meant setting fire to millions of mothers and children. I couldn’t sanction that!” He leaned toward me: “You know Frank, those Japanese are just as human as we are. Could you have burned up your mother?” I understood his burden. Most of the people in the world felt that the use of the Atom Bombs brought a speedy end to World War II. Mr. Truman believed that, but he thought of it as saving millions of mothers and children.

    Later I served as one of Truman’s representatives on the committee which developed the national Democratic Platform in 1948. Mr. Truman told us that he would treat that platform as much more than an instrument to win votes. He reminded me that he had taken steps to rebuild Europe after World War II. We had supported the United Nations fully and we had pledged fully to participate in international programs leading to the development of the UN, which would truly constitute an effective parliament of the world’s peoples.

    Mr. Truman carried in his wallet a poem by an English writer Alfred Tennyson, predicting the eventual creation of such a parliament. In that poem written in 1842, the English author wrote:

    For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that could be; Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Heard the heavens filled with shouting and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue Till the war drums throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled In the parliament of man, the federation of the world….

    When I was released from the American army in 1945, I was sent by the Associated Press to cover the first sessions of the United Nations. I witnessed Truman’s use of power to get the Soviets to withdraw their soldiers from the Northern part of Iran. I used the knowledge I gained then to write a novel about the United Nations entitled, An Edge of Light, showing Truman’s determination to keep the military strength of nations to be used for the averting of bloody clashes. He insisted that strength had to be an imperative element for maintaining peace. He got the Soviets to back down.

    In my conversations with that President, I was enormously encouraged by his confidence and hope. He predicted that the Soviet system would collapse, and that Americans and Russians would work together in meeting the needs of people in many places. In 1983 I was invited to go to Russia under the auspices of the Council of Citizens to discuss steps toward cooperation. I found that many Soviet leaders were eager for peace with Americans. Truman’s efforts to rebuild Europe were known and appreciated in Moscow.

    In addition to working with Truman and later serving as assistant to the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, I had the benefit of being Vice President of the Fund for the Republic, an educational foundation, dedicated to preserving the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. With financial backing from the Ford Foundation and other donors, the fund helped many non-profit organizations to uphold civil rights and liberties in a period of expanding challenges to those rights and freedoms.

    The Center for the Study of Democratic institutions created by the fund for the Republic was active for 22 years. It helped to prevent a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It fostered efforts to end the tragic conflict in Viet Nam. It was a pioneer in the environmental movement. It sponsored discussions of the constructive and negative effects of organized religions. It called attention to the positive and negative effects of the mass media, the skeptical clashes between the press and the people, and the destructive impact of commercial television. It published a model Constitution for the World. It brought thousands of people into dialogues and conferences in New York, Geneva,, San Francisco, Washington and many other places. It became “an early warning system” for humanity.

    In my 16 years of participation in the Center’s work I gained a full appreciation of the value of long-range thinking. I read and heard the ideas of brilliant people from every field – atomic scientists, philosophers, generals, military strategists, novelists, bishops, priest, theologians, psychologists, poets, science fiction writers including Aldous Huxley and those who’d experimented with LSD and other mind-altering substances, peace activists, Supreme Court judges, senators, governors, presidential candidates, labor leaders, university administrators, state and local officials, economists and others. I argued with Nobel Prize winners and offered questions to the scholars who were employed by the Center, to make major revisions in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

    On the Center staff, we planned meetings on science and world affairs, on the demands of technology, on the prospects for democracy in the new nations that had arisen after the collapse of the European Colonial Empires, on the possible changes in the American character in an affluent society, and the connection between American problems and world problems. We had an insatiable thirst for knowledge about everything in every area of human activity. We were intensely concerned about the effects of current events on the lives of coming generations. We were accused of fostering a new sin – the sin of intellectual gluttony. I was among those guilty of that sin -of wanting to know everything there was to know about everything. I am still guilty of that thirst to know as much as God does.

    THE NATIONAL PEACE ACADEMY CAMPAIGN

    I left The Center in 1975, after it went through a drastic reorganization. After several years of writing books and articles, I had another chance to engage in a project with impacts on humanity’s future. I was invited to join the board of directors of The National Peace Academy Campaign, which had been created to get congress to approve an idea which had been around for almost two centuries – the formation of a federal institution to “promote and preserve perpetual peace.”

    In 1793, when George Washington was President, two far-seeing citizens – a Black mathematician named Benjamin Banneker and Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of The American Declaration of Independence, deplored the fact that the new nation had a War Department but no Peace Department. They launched a proposal to create a Peace Office for the United States. They didn’t get much support.

    In the 19th Century, various members of Congress and other citizens had tried to bring a Department of Peace into existence, but they couldn’t get enough public backing to put it over. In the 1970s, in the connection with the Bicentennial celebration of the American Republic, Senator Hartke of Indiana and Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon sponsored a bill to “establish an educational institute” to promote understanding of “the process and the state of peace.” The United States had been involved in many wars and they thought it was time for this country “to consider the dimensions of peaceful resolution of differences.” Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, who had been my executive assistant in Averell Harriman’s campaign for the presidency in 1952, held hearings on the Hartke – Hatfield Bill and suggested the formation of a national commission to examine proposals for a Peace Academy. The commission came into existence in 1980, and conducted public hearings in various locations ranging from Hawaii to Massachusetts and finally urged the Congress to establish the Academy. In 1984, through an amendment attached by Senator Hatfield to a huge Defense Department of Appropriations bill, a few million dollars were allocated to make available to what was then called the United States Institute of Peace. At last, the United States had an agency engaged in full time programs for peace. Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson must have rejoiced!

    Remembering my father’s years of nightmares – and the sufferings of wounded men I had seen in World War II, I hoped that my sons and my grandsons – as well as the children of millions of other veterans – would not have to settle disputes by stabbing or shooting or bombing one another. When I spoke in honor of President Truman in a recent meeting in Kansas City, a man in the audience came up and gave me a copy of a science fiction story I had written in the 1920s celebrating the erection of a giant peace tower in the 21st century America, signifying the increasing progress for peace made by Americans.

    When the Peace Academy Campaign was at its height, I was invited to become a founder of another organization with a global mission – The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, launched by David Krieger, Wallace Drew, Charles Jamison and myself in 1982. That Foundation initiates and supports worldwide efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, to strengthen International law and institutions, to use technology responsibly, and to empower young people to create a more peaceful society.

    The Foundation publishes a journal and sponsors and co-sponsors meetings, dialogues and conferences with schools, colleges, universities, women’s organizations, and other peace groups. It has consultative status to the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council, and is recognized by the UN as a Peace Messenger organization.

    I am grateful to be connected to this inspiring foundation. Its vision is a world full of joyful activities, free from aggressive assaults and the threats of mass destruction. We try to develop an atmosphere in which human beings realize how glorious they are, how many gifts they have, how the future may unfold with beauty and unconditional love everywhere.

    We work daily to make that future possible. We honor people who have demonstrated leadership in advancing peace and justice. We have presented awards to educators, scientists, religious leaders, artists and others. Among them are Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, Mairead Maguire of Ireland, The Dalai Lama of Tibet, Dr. Linus Pauling, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, Yehudi Menuhin, Queen Noor of Jordan, Senator Claiborne Pell, Jacques Cousteau, Admiral Gene LaRocque and others.

    We also acknowledge the dangers of the modern world. People from 80 countries died in the wreckage of the World Trade Towers in New York after they were attacked from the air. Everyone now knows that terrorists may strike again at any time, anywhere. The “preventive war” launched by the US in Iraq in 2003 has brought many deaths and much suffering to millions of people in the Middle East. The war in Afghanistan destroyed one terrorist group, but there are now reported to be such groups in 65 nations. People everywhere are now fully aware of the vulnerability that has to be faced in big rich countries and small poor ones.

    That awareness of vulnerability has made us all realize that we are all connected. We had a large meeting in Santa Barbara in 2001 to present peace leadership awards to two young people for their bravery.

    One went to Hafsat Abiola, who founded the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy on the African Continent. The other was given to Craig Kielberger, founder of the Free the Children organization, who started a movement that led to the liberation of thousands of children from slave labor.

    When these two young leaders described what they had done, the people there gave them standing ovations. Bursts of admiration and affection flashed through the men and women of all ages in that gathering. The young leaders had shown how constructive human beings could become.

    I thought then of the triumphant joy I had felt on the day in August 1944, when I had taken part in the liberation of Paris. That beautiful city in France had been occupied for years by the gray legions of Hitler’s army. Thousands of Frenchmen had been taken away to German prison camps.

    As a member of General Patton’s army, I had ridden into that city to the sound of applause. I saw the Nazis running. French people came to our trucks and embraced us. We were kissed by bearded men as well as women. We were hailed as Heroes. The city was bubbling like a fountain of champagne.

    In that glorious moment, I remembered the men who had been wounded or killed on the roads after we had moved inland from Normandy. I thought of the bodies on the beach, the torn legs and arms, the eyes and limbs we had passed over. Why had we been spared? Why were we given a share in that tremendous celebration? I had been in a training camp for “replacements” for months before D-Day. Then an officer from General Eisenhower’s headquarters had come to our camp looking for men with journalistic experience. Because I had worked for the Associated Press, I had been taken out of the ranks and given patches on my uniform, which had proclaimed me to an “Army Correspondent.” I still carried a rifle but I was not asked to use it. I was ordered to interview the bloody wounded for the army newspaper Stars and Stripes and hometown publications. I was supposed to depict every soldier as a hero even though he might be crying out for his mother or weeping for his dead friends.

    Even now, I can’t explain why I was pulled from the edge of death and carried into a bright city full of hugs and embraces. Years later, when I was asked by Admiral Hyman Rickover to explain the miracles of my life, I could only bring forth words put into the mouth of Hamlet by the great poet William Shakespeare: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

    In preparing for the talk I am delivering here today, I examined the draft of the new constitution I helped to write many years ago. In that document, I saw the signs of a global community arising from the efforts of people in many nations. I advocated the creation of a Center for Humanity’s Future at that time.

    I thought then and still do now that the Center should be dedicated to celebration – to foster the release of everyone’s finest thoughts and everyone’s dancing spirit. Celebration means more than a never-ending party, although it does include all aspects of joy, because human beings are at their best when they are joyful, feasting and frolicking.

    This Center could spread the light of eternal sunrise over our beautiful earth. It would honor all the works of compassion going on in many places, sparking many dialogues, and loving exchanges, inviting everyone to open up and communicate with people of all ages.

    Now there are many thousands of non-profit organizations, engaged in providing food and medicines for the poor in many countries, learning from one another, striving to end wars, and to send aid to people struck by hurricanes, tornadoes, epidemics, and other natural disasters. This Center could work with all of them.

    I have to mention that the Center I have described here today is simply a revival of a proposal I made in 1962 in the Saturday Review. It came to the attention of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower through the recommendation of Everett Clinchy, then head of The National Conference of Christians and Jews. Eisenhower endorsed the idea in a letter to me and it also received support from 15 members of the US Senate, but it never went into operation.

    I know that people in this great Cathedral have demonstrated their concerns for humanity’s future in many ways. I am very grateful to the Reverend Richard Lief for giving me a chance to express my confidence in the greatness of human beings.

    I am encouraged by the recent creation in Hamburg, Germany of a World Future Council, which was designed to link moral authority with political power. Jacob Von Uexkull, one of the founders of this Council, recently gave a Frank Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, financed by 100 donors who share these ideas.

    Von Uexkull said, “This Council will work closely with policymakers worldwide to implement national legislation and to create binding international agreements based on best-practices solutions. It will expand the boundaries of what is regarded as politically realistic, building on previous initiatives, which had been too narrowly focused or lacked the necessary follow-ups.” “The World Future Council is a uniquely broad institution with members from governments, parliaments, civil societies, businesses, science and the arts. Councillors – ‘planeary elders,’ global pioneers and visionaries – are world citizens, serving in a personal capacity. I am very happy that David Krieger, President of the NAPF, has accepted the invitation to join the Council, as has Frances Moore-Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet.”

    Today I have taken you with me through the long journey of my life, which began in 1914 and still continues (to my amazement) with high vitality.

    In closing, I must say that this speech today is a song of thanksgiving – for all the blessings, for all the wonderful people who have helped me and guided me – for the Franciscans, the Catholics of all kinds, the good Protestants, for Harry Truman, for Robert Hutchins, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eleanor Roosevelt, Barbara Mandigo Kelly, Christine Boesch, for the Liefs, for Fr. Virgil Cordano, for Terry and Mary, for Stephen and Misa, Carol Ann Manzi and Tom Heck, for Maryellen Kelley, Sisters of the Holy Nativity, Fabio Duran, Ernest Hemingway and thousands of others who have inspired me to believe in the greatness of humanity.

    Frank Kelly is Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • Celebrating Humanity’s Greatness

    In my 93 years on this planet, through times of trials and tribulations, I have witnessed one great transformation after another, supporting the enormous values of hope and creativity in producing tremendous achievements.

    I saw the world recover from the terrible economic depression of the 1930s.  I saw the League of Nations rise and fall – and the emergence of the United Nations with more strength than the League.  I saw Europe torn by centuries of national antagonisms evolve to a European Union.  I saw totalitarian regimes in Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Asia, Africa and South America give way to governments more responsive to the needs of the people.  I saw women attaining their rightful positions in many cultures.  I saw the leaders of many religious organizations finally working together.  I saw the development of a new world communications system through the Internet.

    To serve the global community of the human family now evident all over the world, I advocate the creation of a Center for Humanity’s Future embodying hope and creativity on the largest possible scale.  Such a Center should be a place of light and listening, a place of friendly explorations and encouragement for people to become even greater than they are now—a launching pad for good ideas from everywhere.  It would enable us to travel into new dimensions; to open new paths before us; to dance forward into the future with high expectations, celebrating life with everlasting expansions, rising and traveling far and fast.

    This would be a revival of a proposal endorsed by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1967 for an Annual Celebration of the Creative Powers of Humanity.  That was a proposal I made in an article published in the Saturday Review, an American magazine edited by the late Norman Cousins.

    I originally offered that proposal from ideas generated by my experience as a founding officer of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, led by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins.  The Center was created in 1959 by the Fund for the Republic, an educational foundation established by the Ford Foundation to help uphold the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  It had a major impact on the world’s horizons for 22 years.  It helped to prevent a war between the United States and the Soviet Union.  It fostered efforts to end the tragic conflict in Vietnam.  It was a pioneer in the environmental movement.  It shed light on the political and economic activities of corporations and labor unions.  It sponsored discussions of the significant roles of religion in a free society.  It called attention to the strength and weaknesses of the mass media.  It published a model for a new American Constitution, designed to protect civil liberties, wipe out racism, and give legal foundations for human responsibilities.  It brought together thousands of people in public dialogues and conferences in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Washington, Malta, and Geneva.  It gave early warnings of the dangers developing in the nuclear age.

    In my 16 years of participation in the Center’s work, I gained a strong appreciation of the values of unconditional love and global thinking.  I heard the ideas of brilliant people from every field, voiced in open dialogues with all insights welcomed—the flashes of brilliance that came from atomic scientists, anthropologists, astronomers, biologists, philosophers, theologians, human rights advocates, bishops, novelists, poets, painters, labor leaders, Supreme Court Judges, Senators, governors, Congress members, economists, and explorers from all fields.  I found that unconditional respect for persons from all cultures led to a tremendous joy in life.

    On the Center staff, we planned meetings on science and world affairs, on the systematic study of revolutionary technology, on the prospects for creative democracy in the new nations that arose after the collapse of colonial empires, on the possible changes in the American character in an affluent society, and the complex connections between American problems and world problems.

    The dangers presented by global warming and the atomic arms race have produced pessimistic views of humanity’s future.  But I continue to believe that the creative powers of human beings, manifested in many ways in the 20th and 21st century, will lead human beings to new heights.

    In my article for the Saturday Review, I advocated an Annual Report Celebrating the Greatness of Humanity, to be presented around the earth, revealing the glorious connections of human beings to the highest possibilities in the universe.  It attracted the attention and support of former President Eisenhower and other leaders when it was first published forty years ago.

    Eisenhower, who had commanded millions of men in battles that led to the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s forces, saw the terrible effects of war.  He said that “people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.”  He declared: “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

    I was delighted when Eisenhower expressed a strong interest in talking with me about my idea for a Global Celebration of Creativity, which could lead the human family into a recognition of the importance of human unity and unconditional love.  Like Harry Truman, he wanted every human being to be freed from poverty and desperation.  Mr. Truman told me in the White House that we must acknowledge the fundamental unity of the human family.

    General Eisenhower said bluntly: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”  I was taken to see him by Everett Clinchy, head of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.  He greeted me warmly, saying: “You’ve got a great idea here.  It’s too big for me, Mr. Kelly.  You should have taken it to my brother Milton, who has served as president of a great university.  His endorsement would mean more than mine.”  I had met Milton Eisenhower, who had been president of Kansas State University, and I knew that Milton was a fine man.  I acknowledged that his approval would carry weight.  But I said to Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I admire your humility, sir.  But you have been elected President of our country twice, sir.  I share Mr. Clinchy’s view that your endorsement, if you’ll make it publicly, might enable us to carry out this idea.”

    We talked for an hour, and then General Eisenhower said: “You’ll hear from me in four or five days.  You can use my letter publicly, if you wish.”  Five days later, I received an envelope with five stars on it.  In it was a one-page letter signed by General Eisenhower, expressing full support for my proposal.

    I brought the letter from the former President to the attention of several Senators, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin introduced a proposal in Congress, advocating an Annual Report on Humanity’s Achievements to be sponsored each year by the Congress.

    But Proxmire and the others who sponsored it were never able to get a majority in the Senate or the House endorsing it.

    It is still my hope that Nobel Peace Prize winners will take it up—and make it a reality.

    An annual report showing the cosmic connections of all human beings could help to prevent a nuclear war.  Eisenhower grasped the revolutionary significance of nuclear weapons when he heard of the enormous impacts of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    “In an instant many of the old concepts of war were swept away,” Eisenhower declared in his book, Crusade in Europe.  “Even the bombed ruins of Germany suddenly seemed to provide but faint warning of what future war could mean to the people of the earth.  I felt and hoped that this latest lesson, added to all the others that six years of unremitting war had brought to the world, would convince everyone everywhere that the employment of force in the international field had to be abjured…I gained increased hope that this development of what appeared to be the ultimate in destruction would drive men, in self-preservation, to find a way of eliminating war.  Maybe it was only wishful thinking to believe that fear, universal fear, might possibly succeed where statesmanship and religion had not yet won success.”

    Eisenhower felt strongly that the United Nations had to be supported by the United States in the nuclear age.  He refused to endorse some of the devastating proposals made by his advisors on the use of hydrogen bombs and other extremely destructive weapons.  He proposed that the enormous energies in atoms be used for peace, not war.  Documents found by Stephen Ambrose, one of Eisenhower’s biographers, showed that Eisenhower rejected “the near-unanimous advice of the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and the Sate Department to use atomic weapons to achieve a victory in Korea.

    In his book entitled Eisenhower: The President, Ambrose wrote:  “The truth was that Eisenhower realized that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unimaginable, and limited war was unwinnable.  This was the most basic of his strategic insights.”

    In my meeting with Eisenhower, I found that he shared the vision of humanity’s new situation, which led years later to the formation of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  David Krieger, Charles Jamison, Wallace Drew and I realized that a new kind of civilization had to be built and extensively supported by leaders all over the planet.

    For 25 years we have participated in efforts to spread recognitions of the strategic insights of an American President who tried to get everyone to realize the costs of war and the possibilities of fostering an atmosphere in which human beings realize how glorious they are, how many gifts they have, how the future may unfold with beauty and unconditional love everywhere.  We work daily, as Eisenhower did, to make that future glow upon our horizons.

    We honor people who have made sacrifices to advance peace and justice.  We have circulated the ideas and initiatives of educators, scientists, religious leaders, artists, and others who embody the noblest characteristics of men and women in every culture.  Among them are Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Mairead Maguire of Ireland, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, Yehudi Menuhin, Queen Noor of Jordan, Admiral Gene La Rocque, Senator Claiborne Pell, Jacques Cousteau, Linus Pauling, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, and many others.

    There are many glorious beings on our planet today and many more are emerging.  We must unite ourselves with the flood of creativity pouring through the universes around us.  The poet William Blake said: “That one who kisses joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”  We are learning to celebrate each moment and each other and all the forms of life.

    The horizons that stretch before us in our swiftly changing world are surrounded by dangers and possibilities.  The future pulls us, shapes our dreams, opens many paths before us.  Let us welcome our days with great expectations!  Let us dance forward into it, celebrating life with everlasting hope.

  • Humanity’s Future: Creating a Global Republic of Conscience and Creativity

    All my life, I have felt connected to the stars. As a boy, I walked at night in the garden of my grandfather King’s house, looking up at the dazzling lights in the sky. One world was not enough for me. I wrote stories about the explorations of the stars that I knew human beings would undertake. My tales landed me in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in a book entitled Pioneers of Wonder.

    As I went through my long life I encountered one glorious being after another. I began to become aware of the tremendous role played by humanity in the development of the amazing planet called the Earth.

    I became aware of the spiritual wisdom of the saints and prophets; the writers of the Gospels and the soaring poets, ranging from Rumi to Shakespeare; the creators of great music, ranging from the singers of songs in all languages to the deep composers, Bach and Puccini and Beethoven, realizing that there were no limits to the creations pouring forth from the human soul. I found everlasting pleasure in the lines of William Blake—The one “who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

    I have just put together a book, which encompasses my life’s experiences with the many kinds of writing I have composed—beginning with my imaginary trips to the far stars and the pains of hunger endured with many people in the dark days of the 1930s. When I went to the University of Kansas City, my professors encouraged me to shift from science fiction to the practice of journalism.

    My last story for an interstellar magazine was called “Star Ship Invincible.” It described what happened to a group of people who attempted to travel from Earth to Jupiter in a new vessel built to be strong enough to pass through any pressures brought against it. But that ship was not invincible after all. It fell into a Black Hole, a void in space that could not be passed through.

    The ship was absorbed into another universe from which it could not escape. The attempts of human beings to go into other dimensions were not achievable. They could not tell what had happened to them. They had traveled beyond their finite limits.

    My next experience was to write a story about a man caught in the tortures of hunger—whose only solace came from a recording of human laughter. In a day of desperation he tried to sell that recording to an old pawnbroker, but the old man did not find it worth more than a few dollars. The old man was wounded by the anguish in that roar of laughter. “Shut it off,” the broker said. “Please shut it off.”

    The young man went back into the freezing night from which he had come. The old man was alone with the echoes of that defiant mirth in his shop filled with the precious things sold to him by people who were dying of thirst and hunger. That was the state of the world for many people in those years of pain and poverty.

    That story was broadcast on the NBC radio network and reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, edited by Edward O’Brien in England. It caught the attention of editors on the Kansas City Star, and I was hired by that paper as a reporter although I had never taken a course in journalism. The managing editor, C. G. Wellington, said he was reluctant to take me on—because I reminded him of Ernest Hemingway, a writer he had employed there in 1917. Wellington said Hemingway had promised him to make a lifetime career on the Star—and then had run off to be an ambulance drive in World War I.

    Hemingway came to Kansas City soon after the publication of his great book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, based on the Civil War in Spain when General Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic and created a dictatorship there. Hemingway visited the Star on a night when Wellington was not there—and I had a chance to show him some of my stories. “You’ve got good stuff, kid,” Hemingway said. “But if you want to get anywhere, you’ll have to get out of Kansas City. The world is changing fast, kid. You have to go places.”

    I followed his advice and went to New York in January 1941. I landed a job on the Associated Press staff in Rockefeller Center, and dealt with news pouring in from all parts of the planet. Then I was appointed to a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. In January 1943, I was drafted into the United States Army and became a war correspondent.

    I landed in Normandy in 1944 and rode with General George Patton’s Third Army across France and into Paris. The liberation of Paris on a golden day in August was one of the most exhilarating joys of my life. The Nazi forces which had occupied that beautiful city in 1940 retreated from our troops in disarray. As they retreated, they were fired upon by the Free French under the command of General Charles de Gaulle.

    We were aware of the fact that Adolf Hitler, the Nazis’ leader, had ordered the German general in command of Paris to set fire to the city. But he had refused to do so. Hitler kept asking: “Is Paris burning?” but no answer was given to him. The innate humanity of a German officer was more powerful than Hitlerism.

    I was one of the American soldiers who were received with hugs and kisses when we entered the city. I appreciated the warm welcome given to us by the French people, particularly the French girls.

    We rushed into the bars, followed by the girls. While we drank bottles of champagne, we rejected the offers of the girls for unlimited sexual services. When I shouted: “I’m a married man!” the girls murmured: “When the war’s over, you can go back to your wife, but you’re over here now. You ought to be grateful for what we can give you now.” I didn’t take advantage of the offers. I wanted to survive—and get back to my wife in New York with a good body. On our honeymoon, she had given me everything a woman could give to a man, and I hoped we would have many years of such enjoyments.

    When the Nazis surrendered, I flew home. I had received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, one of Gen. Eisenhower’s deputy commanders, and I returned to the AP with a sense of recognition that I had given three years of my life to the struggle against Nazism. Many of my friends had been wounded or killed—and I had interviewed many wounded men as a War Correspondent. Yet, I had not been crippled or injured. I thanked the Lord of the Universe for the blessings he had given me, but I had not received the punishment I expected.

    The AP did not give me the raise in salary I expected. Barbara and I celebrated my return by deep lovemaking and we had produced a wonderful child, a boy we named Terence Francis Kelly. The cost of living was rising and so I moved from the AP to the National Housing Agency, where I served as an information specialist and earned a much larger salary. During the war a housing shortage had developed, and President Truman had launched a large-scale building program designed to meet the needs of millions of veterans and others whose lives had been disrupted by the war.

    I liked the Housing Agency and I knew that its work was important. But I could not resist a tempting offer from a public relations agency, the Fitzgerald Company, which had been founded by a friend of mine. I left that agency to become a consultant to the National Book Publishers Council and then to serve as the U.S. director of the Study of World News conducted by the International Press Institute, which had received a large grant from the Ford Foundation.

    Before I joined the Study of World News, I served as the Washington director of Averell Harriman’s 1952 campaign to become the Democratic candidate for president. Harriman had the kind of experience that I thought a president should have. He had been the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the director of Truman’s Security Agency, and one of the administrators of the Marshall Plan, which had revived Europe after the war. I went with him across the United States in a chartered plane, and wrote speeches for him indicating that he was dedicated to the liberal program on which Truman had won his victory in 1948. But the nomination went to Adlai Stevenson, who had been elected governor of Illinois that year.

    Stevenson offered me a place on his staff, but I was eager to get out of politics and I became vice president of the Fitzgerald agency again. Then I leaped over to take part in the Study of World News, which had been started by the Ford Foundation under the leadership of Lester Markel, Sunday editor of the NY Times.

    The study got under way in September of 1952, when staffs were organized in Zurich, Switzerland; New York; and Madras, India. W. MacNeil Lowry, formerly chief Washington correspondent for the Cox newspapers, was given operating responsibility for the entire project. Lowry asked me to take charge of the work in the United States.

    Arrangements were made with a group of ten leading researchers in American journalism schools, headed by Dr. Ralph Casey of the University of Minnesota, to measure the amounts of foreign news printed in American papers. The news flowing on agency wires from all over the world was surveyed by the IPI staff in New York. The wire reports of all the major news agencies were made available by the agencies for study during the same weeks.

    Ninety-three of the American papers were put on the list through a statistical sampling method used by Dr. Chilton Bush, head of the Institute for Journalistic Studies at Stanford University. The list gave fair representation to morning and evening papers, papers in different regions of the countries, papers representing a cross-section of American journalism.

    For purposes of comparison with this list, a separate list of large papers was prepared. Papers in Europe and India were selected by the IPI staff in consultation with editors involved. Forty-eight papers in Western Europe and 28 in India were chosen for examination. The communist papers in the Soviet bloc and in China were not included however. It was assumed that these papers were instruments of government propaganda.

    When all the phases of the IPI studies were completed in the spring of 1953, the IPI had the largest assemblage of facts and ideas about the handling of news around the world. The reports eventually released by the IPI showed the gaps and discrepancies in the handling of such information—and created enduring controversies about the prejudices shown by editors who favored certain countries and disfavored others.

    Lester Markel had declared in 1952 that “the main objective of the Institute is to bring out greater world understanding through a better flow of information.” My participation in this vast project led me to believe that the task was almost impossible.

    In my 92 years on this planet, I have been a professor of communication and disseminator of information to illuminate the tremendous tasks of the human species. I have been appalled by the human capacity for evil and uplifted by the enormous capacity for good.

    We are evolutionary giants with origins linked to the cosmic explosion that brought the universe into being. We are composed of whirling atoms and glowing molecules beyond our comprehension. Albert Einstein, the greatest thinker of the 20th Century, who brought us into the nuclear age, which may destroy us all, decided that we were created by a Spirit we could never understand. We can never understand how far we have come and how far we may have to go.

    We are electromagnetic fields of energy and yet many of us may become Glorious Beings rising like mountains on new horizons. As the poet William Blake said, we can kiss joy as it flies and live in eternity’s sunrise. We can respond to the never-ending allurements we were born to enjoy.

    I have come here tonight to talk about humanity’s future and to hear your views on what the future may hold for us. When I was a young writer of science fiction, I walked in darkness, fearing the terrible disasters that might lie ahead of us. Yet, I went from one great experience to another.

    My mother gave me the name of King. That was her maiden name—Martha King—and she wanted me to have it. She married a man named Kelly, who sacrificed much of his manhood on a battlefield in France, and she did not want me to be completely identified with an Irish name and Irish history. So I have gone through life with a resounding name—Frank King Kelly. When I am down, overwhelmed by the awful things I have endured, I shout my name out loud: “Frank King Kelly!” and I feel related to all the Kings and Kellys in the amazing history of humankind!

    How was it possible for me as a boy to endure the blows of bullies in my first years in school? Why was I given a scholarship at the U. of Kansas City? How did one of my stories get into a collection of Best American Short Stories when I was 21? How did I get the advice I needed from a great writer, Ernest Hemmingway, who urged me to get out into the world and overcome my fears?

    When I went to New York, I couldn’t sell enough stories to survive there, even though I got some unexpected income by writing about the frustrated lives of girls in New York and Washington. I was given a chance to write these “true stories” for a magazine edited by a man who was a friend of one of my professors in Kansas City. He persuaded me to put more “zing” in those stories—and I made enough money to live well in New York until I got a good job on the AP staff. One of my stories was featured in a volume of these “true romances,” and I wrote about them in an article for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “Synthetic Sin.”

    In Manhattan I became a special correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other papers across the country. I wrote an article about the successful campaign against prejudice being conducted by a state commission against discrimination, which had been fighting against racial, religious, and national group prejudices for 2 ½ years. Commission Chairman Charles Garside disclosed that the AFL Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, and Express and Station Employees had repealed regulations that had restricted Negroes. The union had also eliminated from its constitution all the provisions that restricted membership to White persons.

    I was happy to write about such actions because I hated the treatment then given to Blacks, immigrants, and other minorities in American society. When I was a reporter on the Kansas City Star, I rode ambulances from the General Hospital to the scenes of fires, murders, and accidents. When we saw Black people in any of those painful situations, the ambulance went speeding by. The ambulance drivers told me: “We don’t stop for Blacks. They’ve got their own hospitals and their own ambulances.” I was horrified by the separation of human beings in the city where I had been born.

    I tried to get the city editor of the Star to let me do a series of articles on the brutality I had seen at the city jail, where police officers routinely beat homeless men who were arrested for wandering in the streets. “We can’t get the cops down on us,” he said. “We need their help in many places.” I saw the corruption in the police force and other agencies, but I quickly gave up my efforts to expose what needed to be done. I found out that I wasn’t a crusader.

    When I was offered a job as a researcher and speech writer for President Truman, I knew he had been elected with the backing of a notorious political machine—the Pendergast organization, run by Boss Tom Pendergast. My liberal friends urged me to keep away from that organization. “If you work for Truman, you’ll be regarded as a crook or subnormal mentally,” one of these friends said.

    But I had been told by reporters who investigated Truman that he was not personally involved in any of Pendergast’s chicanery. Pendergast had endorsed Truman because he was widely admired for his personal integrity. My wife and my literary agent, Mary Abbot, were convinced that Truman was a fine man. They admired the work he had done in trying to eliminate overcharging by the corporations, which had made huge profits in World War II.

    When I got a call from the White House in the spring of 1948, asking me to do research and writing for Truman in the Presidential campaign that year, I was reluctant to take it seriously. I didn’t know anyone on his staff. I was astonished when I learned that Kenneth Birkhead, one of my friends who had been a student with me at the University of Kansas City, had recommended me. He had told Clark Clifford and Bill Batt, the two men who were organizing Truman’s “whistle stop” train trips, that I was a fast writer who had written articles for many newspapers and I shared Truman’s ideas about giving full rights to people of all colors and creeds.

    So I went to Washington, helped to draft the Democratic platform, wrote drafts of many of the speeches Truman delivered from the backend of his campaign train, and shared in Truman’s unexpected triumph at the polls.

    I hadn’t sought any appointment on Truman’s White House staff. I was prepared to go back to the Fitzgerald agency, but my friends at the Atlantic Monthly had persuaded the president of Boston University to offer me an appointment as a professor of communications there. The Atlantic press had just published my first serious novel—a book entitled An Edge of Light, about my role as an AP editor in New York—and they said that a professorship at Boston University would give me a stable income and enough free time to write books.

    On the night in November when Truman’s so shocking triumph set off celebrations by delighted Democrats in Washington and other cities, Barbara and I drank champagne together and packed our few belongings into suitcases and prepared to move to a house in a Boston suburb. We didn’t realize that we would spend only a few months in Boston. When I arrived at the university, a secretary told me: “A Senator with a fancy name has been calling you from Washington. I’ve put a note on your desk.”

    The Senator was Scott Lucas of Illinois. He told me that he was scheduled to be the Majority Leader of the Senate, succeeding Alben Barkley of Kentucky, who had been elected Vice President on the Truman ticket. He said he needed a speech written and asked me to join his staff in January of 1949.

    The president of Boston University was negative toward the idea when I talked to him about it. “You want to run back to Washington when you’ve just been appointed here as an associate professor?” Daniel Marsh said, angrily. “I won’t give you a leave of absence for any such purpose.”

    My friends at the Atlantic Monthly were negative also, and urged me to stay in Boston. Members of the White House staff said, however, that Lucas would be a key factor in getting Truman’s proposals enacted by a Senate largely controlled by conservative Southern Democrats.

    I stayed four months on the faculty in Boston, and I found my students responsive to my arguments for the kind of progressive agenda offered by Truman. Truman had strongly supported the formation of the United Nations; he had desegregated the American armed forces; he had favored an expansion of the social security system and a national health program. In his inaugural address in January 1949, he had declared that every human being had a right to “a decent, satisfying life.” He offered encouragement to the rising movement for women’s attainment to the highest positions in every field.

    I found that the students I had in my classes at Boston University—most of them war veterans—backed the creation of international laws to bring principles of justice into the world community. They admired Truman’s willingness to confront critics and reactionary opponents. I finally returned to Washington to work for the Senate leader and to participate in struggles against McCarthyism, the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and other bigots.

    I had lived through the oppressive years when one-third of the people had lived in poverty and despair while the federal government under President Hoover had been virtually paralyzed. I favored a new democracy with places for everybody.

    But Senator Lucas was defeated when he ran for re-election—beaten by a man named Everett Dirksen, whose nickname was “the Wizard of Ooze.” The American Medical Association sponsored pamphlets denouncing Truman’s health plan and many doctors took part in the opposition to Lucas because he had supported that plan.

    After Lucas was rejected by the voters, I stayed on for two years with his successor as the Senate Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona. McFarland was a good-hearted man, but he was not a very progressive legislator. I left my job as the staff director of the Senate Majority Policy Committee, and plunged into other activities.

    I helped the American Book Publishers Council repel attempts by right-wing groups to censor books, and I served as the U.S. director of an International Press Institute study of international news. That study revealed that many American newspapers carried only small amounts of news from other countries—and revealed that many Americans were not aware of significant developments in other parts of a rapidly changing world.

    When the Soviet Union succeeded in putting a man into space, I urged my fellow Americans to applaud that achievement. I was an advocate of cooperation between the two powerful nations. I proposed that a statue be presented to the people of the Soviet Union as a gift from the American people just as the gift to the United States of the Statue of Liberty from France symbolized friendship between two great nations.

    My proposal came to the attention of leaders of the U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. Citizens’ Dialogue, which had been promoting exchange visits since 1979 to create “trust and understanding” between the two countries. I was one of 29 Americans invited to make a trip to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1983. I made a speech in the Kremlin, emphasizing the dangers of nuclear weapons. I said that those weapons endangered the survival of life on earth.

    I also told the Soviets about my participation in efforts to establish a National Peace Academy. The Academy was dedicated to the education and training of professional peacemakers and to the dissemination of information about the developing art of peaceful conflict resolution. I had participated in a citizen’s movement with 30,000 members, which led to the approval of the Peace Academy project by both houses of Congress and the construction of a U.S. Institute of Peace on the mall in Washington.

    The part of my speech in Moscow, which aroused the most discussion, was my suggestion that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union should dismantle half of its nuclear weapons and invite the world to witness that event. “Would not that nation open a new era, with humanity set free from the nightmare of a nuclear war?” I asked the Soviet leaders who took part in our dialogue. Afterwards, a Soviet official approached me and said that he personally liked the idea. Then he added: “But wouldn’t the nation that endorsed such a proposal be accused of weakness?”

    I said that I didn’t think that the building of thousands of such bombs should be considered a sign of strength. The arms race is a road to planetary suicide, I said. Why do you consider the present situation as a state of progress? The American people believe that you are prepared to inflict catastrophic blows on the Western countries—and you believe that we are prepared to kill millions of men, women, and children in the Soviet nations.

    When I visited Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union in 1983, the Soviets like Brezhnev were believed to be firmly in control of enormous forces. None of the commentators predicted the rise of a Gorbachev and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire. No one predicted that Ronald Reagan, a right-wing Republican, would take big steps to end the Cold War.

    On my visit to the Soviet Union in 1983, I found that the people there had a deep fear of another war. Many young people had seen films and television programs that depicted how many things Americans had—houses, cars, many personal possessions. The Soviet young people no longer believed in the promises of communism. They wanted to be free to pursue happiness in the American style. When I came back and reported on their commitment to peace and their friendliness toward Americans, many people in Santa Barbara thought I had been brainwashed and deceived. When I reminded them that President Truman had predicted to me that the Soviet system would collapse—and that Russia would seek friendly relations with the United States—many Americans did not accept such a hopeful view of the future.

    Like Truman, however, I had come close to death many times, and I shared his deep feeling that human beings could be “glorious beings,” eventually capable of building a global society. I shared his admiration for the poem by Alfred Tennyson entitled” Locksley Hall,” written in 1842. Truman carried a copy of it in his wallet, and frequently referred to it.

    The English author wrote:

    “For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
    Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that could be;
    Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
    Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
    Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
    From the nations’ aerial navies grappling in the central blue;
    Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
    In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world…”

    I was amazed by Tennyson’s predictions in that poem and pleased by Truman’s long look forward. But I, too, had expected human beings to build a planetary organization and enter into a global acceptance of all creeds and cultures.

    When I worked on the Democratic platform, which Truman advocated in his 1948 campaign, we approved statements supporting “the effective international control of all weapons of mass destruction, including the atomic bomb.” Truman insisted that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified steps to end the most terrible war in history but he did not want to place such power in the hands of national leaders in any conflict in the future. If Truman’s plans for international control over nuclear weapons had been adopted, the insane nuclear arms race of the last 50 years could have been avoided—and humanity could not have been brought to the brink of annihilation in later confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

    That 1948 platform also endorsed Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel and the help he had given to the new Jewish nation to survive during the bloody conflicts in Palestine.

    Truman was accused of acting emotionally—succumbing to the pleas of Eddie Jacobson, his former partner in a clothing store, and other Jewish friends—or of pandering to the wealthy American Jews who gave large amounts of money to his candidacy and other nominees of the Democratic Party. But I and others who worked on that 1948 platform knew that the president was genuinely convinced that the Jewish people should have a homeland. His primary motivation came from his reading of the Bible. His religious faith came from the scriptures in that book regarded as holy by Jews and Christians.

    Truman was one of the few American leaders who tried to save the Jews from Hitler’s concentration camps. In April 1943, after he learned that Jews had been herded into slaughter houses “like animals,” he voiced his indignation in a fiery speech to 125,000 persons in a Chicago stadium. Saying that “no one can any longer doubt the horrible intentions of the Nazi beasts,” Truman urged all the governments then at war with the Nazis to help the Jews before it was too late. He asked for the opening of “free lands” for the Jews and other persecuted minorities.

    If his plea had been heeded, millions of lives could have been saved—including thousands of the most gifted people who ever lived on this planet. It is still impossible to accept the failures of many of the people (including myself) who did little to save the human beings destroyed by the racist Nazis. “Today—not tomorrow—we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and a place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers.” He begged all of us to “draw deeply on our traditions of aid to the oppressed—and our great national generosity.” He said: “This is not a Jewish problem, it is an American problem—and we must and we will face it squarely and honorably.”

    We did not face it squarely and honorably on the scale that it called for. We did finally join other nations in crushing Hitler’s Nazis and the Japanese warlords. As a member of General Patton’s Third Army, I had the joy of liberating Paris from the German occupation forces in 1944. I must note that it was the humanity of a German general—commander of the Nazi forces in Paris—that kept Paris from being destroyed. Hitler had ordered that general to set the city on fire, but he refused to do it. Hitler died in the wreckage of his bomb shelter in Berlin.

    In the years since World War II, there have been many savage events on our planet. The United Nations—created by Truman and other farsighted leaders in 1945—has not been as effective as its founders and supporters hoped that it would be. The destructive forces that have been manifested all through the long history of human beings have produced wars, persecutions of minorities, mass killings, the committing of tortures against international law, have made me wonder whether we will ever evolve into the “glorious beings” we were designed to be.

    But we now have an International Bill of Rights drafted by leaders in many countries—and there is a growing awareness of the fundamental value of every person in the developing world culture. President Truman in his inaugural address in 1949 declared that every person is entitled to “a decent, satisfying life.”

    The fact that we live in a nuclear age when enough weapons exist to destroy all nations and bring down our whole civilization must awaken in every one of us a sense of personal responsibility for getting rid of those weapons. The leaders of the nuclear powers are not carrying out that vital task. So we the people must demand action to get every government to act for human survival.

    The Declaration if Interdependence adopted by this Institute on July 4 thirty years ago indicates the right path for humanity’s future. Let me remind you of the 10 points in that great statement:

    1. To explore the classical and renaissance traditions of East and West—and their continuing relevance to emerging modes and patterns of living;
    2. To renew the universal vision behind the American Dream through authentic affirmations of freedom, excellence and self-transcendence in an ever-evolving Republic of Conscience;
    3. To honor through appropriate observance the contributions of men and women of all ages to world culture;
    4. To enhance the enjoyment of the creative artistry and craftsmanship of all cultures;
    5. To deepen awareness of the universality of humanity’s spiritual striving and its rich varieties of expression in the religions, philosophies and literatures of humanity;
    6. To promote forums for fearless inquiry and constructive dialogue concerning the frontiers of science, the therapeutics of self-transformation, and the societies of the future;
    7. To investigate the imaginative use of the spiritual, mental and material resources of the planet in the service of universal welfare;
    8. To examine changing social structures in terms of the principle that a world culture is greater than the sum of its parts and to envision the conditions, prospects and possibilities of the world civilization of the future;
    9. To assist in the emergence of men and women of universal culture, capable of continuous growth in non-violence of mind, generosity of heart, and harmony of soul. I call these persons “glorious beings”;
    10. To promote universal brotherhood and to foster human fellowship among all races, nations and cultures.

    Many of the topics were the subjects of long dialogues I had in the 1950s with Raghavan and Nandini Iyer when I served as vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The Iyers—and their brilliant son, Pico—certainly had the qualities of “glorious beings” and I want to express my gratitude for the inspirations they gave to me and to many others, including the founders of this Institute.

    In closing, I want to thank all of you who participated in our meeting here tonight. You affirm my belief in the statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said: “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end”

    We are all rising together in Eternity’s sunrise!

    Frank K. Kelly, Senior Vice President, is a former speech writer for President Truman and staff director of the U.S. Senate Majority Policy Committee. He served for 17 years as Vice President of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

  • Humanity’s Future: Creating a Global Republic of Conscience and Creativity

    All my life, I have felt connected to the stars.  As a boy, I walked at night in the garden of my grandfather King’s house, looking up at the dazzling lights in the sky.  One world was not enough for me.  I wrote stories about the explorations of the stars that I knew human beings would undertake.  My tales landed me in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in a book entitled Pioneers of Wonder.  


    As I went through my long life I encountered one glorious being after another.  I began to become aware of the tremendous role played by humanity in the development of the amazing planet called the Earth.


    I became aware of the spiritual wisdom of the saints and prophets; the writers of the Gospels and the soaring poets, ranging from Rumi to Shakespeare; the creators of great music, ranging from the singers of songs in all languages to the deep composers, Bach and Puccini and Beethoven, realizing that there were no limits to the creations pouring forth from the human soul.  I found everlasting pleasure in the lines of William Blake—The one “who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”


    I have just put together a book, which encompasses my life’s experiences with the many kinds of writing I have composed—beginning with my imaginary trips to the far stars and the pains of hunger endured with many people in the dark days of the 1930s.  When I went to the University of Kansas City, my professors encouraged me to shift from science fiction to the practice of journalism.


    My last story for an interstellar magazine was called “Star Ship Invincible.”  It described what happened to a group of people who attempted to travel from Earth to Jupiter in a new vessel built to be strong enough to pass through any pressures brought against it. But that ship was not invincible after all.  It fell into a Black Hole, a void in space that could not be passed through.


    The ship was absorbed into another universe from which it could not escape.  The attempts of human beings to go into other dimensions were not achievable.  They could not tell what had happened to them.  They had traveled beyond their finite limits.


    My next experience was to write a story about a man caught in the tortures of hunger—whose only solace came from a recording of human laughter.  In a day of desperation he tried to sell that recording to an old pawnbroker, but the old man did not find it worth more than a few dollars.  The old man was wounded by the anguish in that roar of laughter.  “Shut it off,” the broker said.  “Please shut it off.”


    The young man went back into the freezing night from which he had come.  The old man was alone with the echoes of that defiant mirth in his shop filled with the precious things sold to him by people who were dying of thirst and hunger.  That was the state of the world for many people in those years of pain and poverty.


    That story was broadcast on the NBC radio network and reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, edited by Edward O’Brien in England.  It caught the attention of editors on the Kansas City Star, and I was hired by that paper as a reporter although I had never taken a course in journalism.  The managing editor, C. G. Wellington, said he was reluctant to take me on—because I reminded him of Ernest Hemingway, a writer he had employed there in 1917.  Wellington said Hemingway had promised him to make a lifetime career on the Star—and then had run off to be an ambulance drive in World


    War I.


    Hemingway came to Kansas City soon after the publication of his great book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, based on the Civil War in Spain when General Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic and created a dictatorship there.  Hemingway visited the Star on a night when Wellington was not there—and I had a chance to show him some of my stories.  “You’ve got good stuff, kid,” Hemingway said.  “But if you want to get anywhere, you’ll have to get out of Kansas City.  The world is changing fast, kid.  You have to go places.”


    I followed his advice and went to New York in January 1941.  I landed a job on the Associated Press staff in Rockefeller Center, and dealt with news pouring in from all parts of the planet.  Then I was appointed to a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard.  In January 1943, I was drafted into the United States Army and became a war correspondent.


    I landed in Normandy in 1944 and rode with General George Patton’s Third Army across France and into Paris.  The liberation of Paris on a golden day in August was one of the most exhilarating joys of my life.  The Nazi forces which had occupied that beautiful city in 1940 retreated from our troops in disarray.  As they retreated, they were fired upon by the Free French under the command of General Charles de Gaulle.


    We were aware of the fact that Adolf Hitler, the Nazis’ leader, had ordered the German general in command of Paris to set fire to the city.  But he had refused to do so.  Hitler kept asking: “Is Paris burning?” but no answer was given to him.  The innate humanity of a German officer was more powerful than Hitlerism.


    I was one of the American soldiers who were received with hugs and kisses when we entered the city.  I appreciated the warm welcome given to us by the French people, particularly the French girls.


    We rushed into the bars, followed by the girls.  While we drank bottles of champagne, we rejected the offers of the girls for unlimited sexual services.  When I shouted: “I’m a married man!” the girls murmured: “When the war’s over, you can go back to your wife, but you’re over here now.  You ought to be grateful for what we can give you now.”  I didn’t take advantage of the offers.  I wanted to survive—and get back to my wife in New York with a good body.  On our honeymoon, she had given me everything a woman could give to a man, and I hoped we would have many years of such enjoyments.


    When the Nazis surrendered, I flew home.  I had received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, one of Gen. Eisenhower’s deputy commanders, and I returned to the AP with a sense of recognition that I had given three years of my life to the struggle against Nazism.  Many of my friends had been wounded or killed—and I had interviewed many wounded men as a War Correspondent.  Yet, I had not been crippled or injured.  I thanked the Lord of the Universe for the blessings he had given me, but I had not received the punishment I expected.


    The AP did not give me the raise in salary I expected.  Barbara and I celebrated my return by deep lovemaking and we had produced a wonderful child, a boy we named Terence Francis Kelly.  The cost of living was rising and so I moved from the AP to the National Housing Agency, where I served as an information specialist and earned a much larger salary.  During the war a housing shortage had developed, and President Truman had launched a large-scale building program designed to meet the needs of millions of veterans and others whose lives had been disrupted by the war.


    I liked the Housing Agency and I knew that its work was important.  But I could not resist a tempting offer from a public relations agency, the Fitzgerald Company, which had been founded by a friend of mine.  I left that agency to become a consultant to the National Book Publishers Council and then to serve as the U.S. director of the Study of World News conducted by the International Press Institute, which had received a large grant from the Ford Foundation.


    Before I joined the Study of World News, I served as the Washington director of Averell Harriman’s 1952 campaign to become the Democratic candidate for president.  Harriman had the kind of experience that I thought a president should have.  He had been the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the director of Truman’s Security Agency, and one of the administrators of the Marshall Plan, which had revived Europe after the war.  I went with him across the United States in a chartered plane, and wrote speeches for him indicating that he was dedicated to the liberal program on which Truman had won his victory in 1948.  But the nomination went to Adlai Stevenson, who had been elected governor of Illinois that year.


    Stevenson offered me a place on his staff, but I was eager to get out of politics and I became vice president of the Fitzgerald agency again.  Then I leaped over to take part in the Study of World News, which had been started by the Ford Foundation under the leadership of Lester Markel, Sunday editor of the NY Times.


    The study got under way in September of 1952, when staffs were organized in Zurich, Switzerland; New York; and Madras, India.  W. MacNeil Lowry, formerly chief Washington correspondent for the Cox newspapers, was given operating responsibility for the entire project.  Lowry asked me to take charge of the work in the United States.


    Arrangements were made with a group of ten leading researchers in American journalism schools, headed by Dr. Ralph Casey of the University of Minnesota, to measure the amounts of foreign news printed in American papers.  The news flowing on agency wires from all over the world was surveyed by the IPI staff in New York.  The wire reports of all the major news agencies were made available by the agencies for study during the same weeks.


    Ninety-three of the American papers were put on the list through a statistical sampling method used by Dr. Chilton Bush, head of the Institute for Journalistic Studies at Stanford University.  The list gave fair representation to morning and evening papers, papers in different regions of the countries, papers representing a cross-section of American journalism.


    For purposes of comparison with this list, a separate list of large papers was prepared.  Papers in Europe and India were selected by the IPI staff in consultation with editors involved.  Forty-eight papers in Western Europe and 28 in India were chosen for examination.  The communist papers in the Soviet bloc and in China were not included however. It was assumed that these papers were instruments of government propaganda.


    When all the phases of the IPI studies were completed in the spring of 1953, the IPI had the largest assemblage of facts and ideas about the handling of news around the world.  The reports eventually released by the IPI showed the gaps and discrepancies in the handling of such information—and created enduring controversies about the prejudices shown by editors who favored certain countries and disfavored others.


    Lester Markel had declared in 1952 that “the main objective of the Institute is to bring out greater world understanding through a better flow of information.”  My participation in this vast project led me to believe that the task was almost impossible.


    In my 92 years on this planet, I have been a professor of communication and disseminator of information to illuminate the tremendous tasks of the human species.  I have been appalled by the human capacity for evil and uplifted by the enormous capacity for good.


    We are evolutionary giants with origins linked to the cosmic explosion that brought the universe into being.  We are composed of whirling atoms and glowing molecules beyond our comprehension.  Albert Einstein, the greatest thinker of the 20th Century, who brought us into the nuclear age, which may destroy us all, decided that we were created by a Spirit we could never understand.  We can never understand how far we have come and how far we may have to go.


    We are electromagnetic fields of energy and yet many of us may become Glorious Beings rising like mountains on new horizons. As the poet William Blake said, we can kiss joy as it flies and live in eternity’s sunrise.  We can respond to the never-ending allurements we were born to enjoy.


    I have come here tonight to talk about humanity’s future and to hear your views on what the future may hold for us.  When I was a young writer of science fiction, I walked in darkness, fearing the terrible disasters that might lie ahead of us.  Yet, I went from one great experience to another.


    My mother gave me the name of King.  That was her maiden name—Martha King—and she wanted me to have it.  She married a man named Kelly, who sacrificed much of his manhood on a battlefield in France, and she did not want me to be completely identified with an Irish name and Irish history.  So I have gone through life with a resounding name—Frank King Kelly.  When I am down, overwhelmed by the awful things I have endured, I shout my name out loud:  “Frank King Kelly!” and I feel related to all the Kings and Kellys in the amazing history of humankind!


    How was it possible for me as a boy to endure the blows of bullies in my first years in school?  Why was I given a scholarship at the U. of Kansas City?  How did one of my stories get into a collection of Best American Short Stories when I was 21?  How did I get the advice I needed from a great writer, Ernest Hemmingway, who urged me to get out into the world and overcome my fears?


    When I went to New York, I couldn’t sell enough stories to survive there, even though I got some unexpected income by writing about the frustrated lives of girls in New York and Washington.  I was given a chance to write these “true stories” for a magazine edited by a man who was a friend of one of my professors in Kansas City.  He persuaded me to put more “zing” in those stories—and I made enough money to live well in New York until I got a good job on the AP staff.  One of my stories was featured in a volume of these “true romances,” and I wrote about them in an article for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “Synthetic Sin.”


    In Manhattan I became a special correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other papers across the country.  I wrote an article about the successful campaign against prejudice being conducted by a state commission against discrimination, which had been fighting against racial, religious, and national group prejudices for 2 ½ years.  Commission Chairman Charles Garside disclosed that the AFL Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, and Express and Station Employees had repealed regulations that had restricted Negroes.  The union had also eliminated from its constitution all the provisions that restricted membership to White persons.


    I was happy to write about such actions because I hated the treatment then given to Blacks, immigrants, and other minorities in American society.  When I was a reporter on the Kansas City Star, I rode ambulances from the General Hospital to the scenes of fires, murders, and accidents.  When we saw Black people in any of those painful situations, the ambulance went speeding by.  The ambulance drivers told me: “We don’t stop for Blacks.  They’ve got their own hospitals and their own ambulances.”  I was horrified by the separation of human beings in the city where I had been born.  


    I tried to get the city editor of the Star to let me do a series of articles on the brutality I had seen at the city jail, where police officers routinely beat homeless men who were arrested for wandering in the streets.  “We can’t get the cops down on us,” he said.  “We need their help in many places.”  I saw the corruption in the police force and other agencies, but I quickly gave up my efforts to expose what needed to be done.  I found out that I wasn’t a crusader.


    When I was offered a job as a researcher and speech writer for President Truman, I knew he had been elected with the backing of a notorious political machine—the Pendergast organization, run by Boss Tom Pendergast.  My liberal friends urged me to keep away from that organization. “If you work for Truman, you’ll be regarded as a crook or subnormal mentally,” one of these friends said.


    But I had been told by reporters who investigated Truman that he was not personally involved in any of Pendergast’s chicanery.  Pendergast had endorsed Truman because he was widely admired for his personal integrity.  My wife and my literary agent, Mary Abbot, were convinced that Truman was a fine man.  They admired the work he had done in trying to eliminate overcharging by the corporations, which had made huge profits in World War II.


    When I got a call from the White House in the spring of 1948, asking me to do research and writing for Truman in the Presidential campaign that year, I was reluctant to take it seriously.  I didn’t know anyone on his staff.  I was astonished when I learned that Kenneth Birkhead, one of my friends who had been a student with me at the University of Kansas City, had recommended me.  He had told Clark Clifford and Bill Batt, the two men who were organizing Truman’s “whistle stop” train trips, that I was a fast writer who had written articles for many newspapers and I shared Truman’s ideas about giving full rights to people of all colors and creeds.


    So I went to Washington, helped to draft the Democratic platform, wrote drafts of many of the speeches Truman delivered from the backend of his campaign train, and shared in Truman’s unexpected triumph at the polls.


    I hadn’t sought any appointment on Truman’s White House staff.  I was prepared to go back to the Fitzgerald agency, but my friends at the Atlantic Monthly had persuaded the president of Boston University to offer me an appointment as a professor of communications there.  The Atlantic press had just published my first serious novel—a book entitled An Edge of Light, about my role as an AP editor in New York—and they said that a professorship at Boston University would give me a stable income and enough free time to write books.


    On the night in November when Truman’s so shocking triumph set off celebrations by delighted Democrats in Washington and other cities, Barbara and I drank champagne together and packed our few belongings into suitcases and prepared to move to a house in a Boston suburb. We didn’t realize that we would spend only a few months in Boston.  When I arrived at the university, a secretary told me:  “A Senator with a fancy name has been calling you from Washington. I’ve put a note on your desk.”


    The Senator was Scott Lucas of Illinois.  He told me that he was scheduled to be the Majority Leader of the Senate, succeeding Alben Barkley of Kentucky, who had been elected Vice President on the Truman ticket.  He said he needed a speech written and asked me to join his staff in January of 1949.


    The president of Boston University was negative toward the idea when I talked to him about it.  “You want to run back to Washington when you’ve just been appointed here as an associate professor?” Daniel Marsh said, angrily.  “I won’t give you a leave of absence for any such purpose.”


    My friends at the Atlantic Monthly were negative also, and urged me to stay in Boston.  Members of the White House staff said, however, that Lucas would be a key factor in getting Truman’s proposals enacted by a Senate largely controlled by conservative Southern Democrats.


    I stayed four months on the faculty in Boston, and I found my students responsive to my arguments for the kind of progressive agenda offered by Truman.  Truman had strongly supported the formation of the United Nations; he had desegregated the American armed forces; he had favored an expansion of the social security system and a national health program.  In his inaugural address in January 1949, he had declared that every human being had a right to “a decent, satisfying life.”  He offered encouragement to the rising movement for women’s attainment to the highest positions in every field.


    I found that the students I had in my classes at Boston University—most of them war veterans—backed the creation of international laws to bring principles of justice into the world community.  They admired Truman’s willingness to confront critics and reactionary opponents.  I finally returned to Washington to work for the Senate leader and to participate in struggles against McCarthyism, the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and other bigots.


    I had lived through the oppressive years when one-third of the people had lived in poverty and despair while the federal government under President Hoover had been virtually paralyzed.  I favored a new democracy with places for everybody.


    But Senator Lucas was defeated when he ran for re-election—beaten by a man named Everett Dirksen, whose nickname was “the Wizard of Ooze.”  The American Medical Association sponsored pamphlets denouncing Truman’s health plan and many doctors took part in the opposition to Lucas because he had supported that plan.


    After Lucas was rejected by the voters, I stayed on for two years with his successor as the Senate Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona.  McFarland was a good-hearted man, but he was not a very progressive legislator.  I left my job as the staff director of the Senate Majority Policy Committee, and plunged into other activities.


    I helped the American Book Publishers Council repel attempts by right-wing groups to censor books, and I served as the U.S. director of an International Press Institute study of international news.  That study revealed that many American newspapers carried only small amounts of news from other countries—and revealed that many Americans were not aware of significant developments in other parts of a rapidly changing world.


    When the Soviet Union succeeded in putting a man into space, I urged my fellow Americans to applaud that achievement.  I was an advocate of cooperation between the two powerful nations.  I proposed that a statue be presented to the people of the Soviet Union as a gift from the American people just as the gift to the United States of the Statue of Liberty from France symbolized friendship between two great nations.


    My proposal came to the attention of leaders of the U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. Citizens’ Dialogue, which had been promoting exchange visits since 1979 to create “trust and understanding” between the two countries.  I was one of 29 Americans invited to make a trip to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1983.  I made a speech in the Kremlin, emphasizing the dangers of nuclear weapons.  I said that those weapons endangered the survival of life on earth.


    I also told the Soviets about my participation in efforts to establish a National Peace Academy.  The Academy was dedicated to the education and training of professional peacemakers and to the dissemination of information about the developing art of peaceful conflict resolution.  I had participated in a citizen’s movement with 30,000 members, which led to the approval of the Peace Academy project by both houses of Congress and the construction of a U.S. Institute of Peace on the mall in Washington.


    The part of my speech in Moscow, which aroused the most discussion, was my suggestion that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union should dismantle half of its nuclear weapons and invite the world to witness that event.  “Would not that nation open a new era, with humanity set free from the nightmare of a nuclear war?” I asked the Soviet leaders who took part in our dialogue.  Afterwards, a Soviet official approached me and said that he personally liked the idea.  Then he added: “But wouldn’t the nation that endorsed such a proposal be accused of weakness?”


    I said that I didn’t think that the building of thousands of such bombs should be considered a sign of strength.  The arms race is a road to planetary suicide, I said.  Why do you consider the present situation as a state of progress?  The American people believe that you are prepared to inflict catastrophic blows on the Western countries—and you believe that we are prepared to kill millions of men, women, and children in the Soviet nations.


    When I visited Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union in 1983, the Soviets like Brezhnev were believed to be firmly in control of enormous forces.  None of the commentators predicted the rise of a Gorbachev and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire.  No one predicted that Ronald Reagan, a right-wing Republican, would take big steps to end the Cold War.


    On my visit to the Soviet Union in 1983, I found that the people there had a deep fear of another war.  Many young people had seen films and television programs that depicted how many things Americans had—houses, cars, many personal possessions.  The Soviet young people no longer believed in the promises of communism.  They wanted to be free to pursue happiness in the American style.  When I came back and reported on their commitment to peace and their friendliness toward Americans, many people in Santa Barbara thought I had been brainwashed and deceived.  When I reminded them that President Truman had predicted to me that the Soviet system would collapse—and that Russia would seek friendly relations with the United States—many Americans did not accept such a hopeful view of the future.


    Like Truman, however, I had come close to death many times, and I shared his deep feeling that human beings could be “glorious beings,” eventually capable of building a global society.  I shared his admiration for the poem by Alfred Tennyson entitled” Locksley Hall,” written in 1842.  Truman carried a copy of it in his wallet, and frequently referred to it.


    The English author wrote:


    “For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,


    Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that could be;


    Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,


    Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;


    Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew


    From the nations’ aerial navies grappling in the central blue;


    Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled


    In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world…”


    I was amazed by Tennyson’s predictions in that poem and pleased by Truman’s long look forward.  But I, too, had expected human beings to build a planetary organization and enter into a global acceptance of all creeds and cultures.


    When I worked on the Democratic platform, which Truman advocated in his 1948 campaign, we approved statements supporting “the effective international control of all weapons of mass destruction, including the atomic bomb.”  Truman insisted that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified steps to end the most terrible war in history but he did not want to place such power in the hands of national leaders in any conflict in the future.  If Truman’s plans for international control over nuclear weapons had been adopted, the insane nuclear arms race of the last 50 years could have been avoided—and humanity could not have been brought to the brink of annihilation in later confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union.


    That 1948 platform also endorsed Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel and the help he had given to the new Jewish nation to survive during the bloody conflicts in Palestine.


    Truman was accused of acting emotionally—succumbing to the pleas of Eddie Jacobson, his former partner in a clothing store, and other Jewish friends—or of pandering to the wealthy American Jews who gave large amounts of money to his candidacy and other nominees of the Democratic Party.  But I and others who worked on that 1948 platform knew that the president was genuinely convinced that the Jewish people should have a homeland.  His primary motivation came from his reading of the Bible.  His religious faith came from the scriptures in that book regarded as holy by Jews and Christians.


    Truman was one of the few American leaders who tried to save the Jews from Hitler’s concentration camps.  In April 1943, after he learned that Jews had been herded into slaughter houses “like animals,” he voiced his indignation in a fiery speech to 125,000 persons in a Chicago stadium.  Saying that “no one can any longer doubt the horrible intentions of the Nazi beasts,” Truman urged all the governments then at war with the Nazis to help the Jews before it was too late.  He asked for the opening of “free lands” for the Jews and other persecuted minorities.


    If his plea had been heeded, millions of lives could have been saved—including thousands of the most gifted people who ever lived on this planet.  It is still impossible to accept the failures of many of the people (including myself) who did little to save the human beings destroyed by the racist Nazis.  “Today—not tomorrow—we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and a place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers.”  He begged all of us to “draw deeply on our traditions of aid to the oppressed—and our great national generosity.”  He said:  “This is not a Jewish problem, it is an American problem—and we must and we will face it squarely and honorably.”


    We did not face it squarely and honorably on the scale that it called for.  We did finally join other nations in crushing Hitler’s Nazis and the Japanese warlords.  As a member of General Patton’s Third Army, I had the joy of liberating Paris from the German occupation forces in 1944.  I must note that it was the humanity of a German general—commander of the Nazi forces in Paris—that kept Paris from being destroyed.  Hitler had ordered that general to set the city on fire, but he refused to do it. Hitler died in the wreckage of his bomb shelter in Berlin.


    In the years since World War II, there have been many savage events on our planet.  The United Nations—created by Truman and other farsighted leaders in 1945—has not been as effective as its founders and supporters hoped that it would be.  The destructive forces that have been manifested all through the long history of human beings have produced wars, persecutions of minorities, mass killings, the committing of tortures against international law, have made me wonder whether we will ever evolve into the “glorious beings” we were designed to be.


    But we now have an International Bill of Rights drafted by leaders in many countries—and there is a growing awareness of the fundamental value of every person in the developing world culture.  President Truman in his inaugural address in 1949 declared that every person is entitled to “a decent, satisfying life.”


    The fact that we live in a nuclear age when enough weapons exist to destroy all nations and bring down our whole civilization must awaken in every one of us a sense of personal responsibility for getting rid of those weapons.  The leaders of the nuclear powers are not carrying out that vital task.  So we the people must demand action to get every government to act for human survival.


    The Declaration if Interdependence adopted by this Institute on July 4 thirty years ago indicates the right path for humanity’s future.  Let me remind you of the 10 points in that great statement:


    (1)    To explore the classical and renaissance traditions of East and West—and their continuing relevance to emerging modes and patterns of living;


    (2)    To renew the universal vision behind the American Dream through authentic affirmations of freedom, excellence and self-transcendence in an ever-evolving Republic of Conscience;


    (3)    To honor through appropriate observance the contributions of men and women of all ages to world culture;


    (4)    To enhance the enjoyment of the creative artistry and craftsmanship of all cultures;


    (5)    To deepen awareness of the universality of humanity’s spiritual striving and its rich varieties of expression in the religions, philosophies and literatures of humanity;


    (6)    To promote forums for fearless inquiry and constructive dialogue concerning the frontiers of science, the therapeutics of self-transformation, and the societies of the future;


    (7)    To investigate the imaginative use of the spiritual, mental and material resources of the planet in the service of universal welfare;


    (8)    To examine changing social structures in terms of the principle that a world culture is greater than the sum of its parts and to envision the conditions, prospects and possibilities of the world civilization of the future;


    (9)    To assist in the emergence of men and women of universal culture, capable of continuous growth in non-violence of mind, generosity of heart, and harmony of soul. I call these persons “glorious beings”;


    (10)    To promote universal brotherhood and to foster human fellowship among all races, nations and cultures.


    Many of the topics were the subjects of long dialogues I had in the 1950s with Raghavan and Nandini Iyer when I served as vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.  The Iyers—and their brilliant son, Pico—certainly had the qualities of “glorious beings” and I want to express my gratitude for the inspirations they gave to me and to many others, including the founders of this Institute.


    In closing, I want to thank all of you who participated in our meeting here tonight.  You affirm my belief in the statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said:  “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end”


    We are all rising together in Eternity’s sunrise!