Approach to sanity

IN MAY this year, 1959, I was the Chichele Lecturer at Oxford University, giving two lectures. The title for the lectures was 'The conflict between East and West'. Each lecture was broadcast the same evening in the Third

Programme of the B.B.C., and later was broadcast to the Russian people in the overseas programme. I have received many requests that the lectures be pub lished in book form. It seemed to me that, if this was done, certain articles written by me in the Sunday Times since I withdrew from active employment in NATO should also be published since they have a general bearing on the whole subject of the conflict.

On the 4th April 1959 we celebrated the tenth anniver sary of the signature of the instrument setting up the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. An article by me, entitled 'NATO-Past, Present and Future' appeared in the Sunday Times on the 29th March 1959. Since NATO has played a foremost part in preserving peace during the post-war years, this article is a natural starting point.

Mr. Macmillan had visited Moscow the month before, in February. His visit was the beginning of a new personal relationship between the statesmen of East and West; it opened up possibilities of relaxing the tension between them. But it would need to be followed up. And this was arranged, it being announced later that the Foreign Ministers of Britain, the U.S.A., France and Russia would meet in Geneva on the 11th May 1959.