Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement Narrative  
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No More War!
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Though a second Pauling-Teller debate was not to be, their arguments continued in other ways. When Teller got his views published in leading magazines and prepared to release a book titled Our Nuclear Future, Pauling marshalled his arguments with a book of his own, No More War! Dictated over two long weekends in March 1958, the Pauling book was part scientific analysis, part jeremiad. Early chapters were scientific in tone, focusing on Pauling's bread and butter topics -- atomic fission and fusion, the creation of fallout, the link between radiation and genetic mutations. Only occasional barbs were thrown Teller's way. Pauling answered Teller's comment that a little radiation might be good for the genes, for instance, by paraphrasing J. B. S. Haldane: My clock is not keeping perfect time. It is conceivable that it will run better if I shoot a bullet through it, but it is much more probable that it will stop altogether.

Pauling's tone became much more aggressive as the book moved into its later chapters. "Does the Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ mean nothing to us?" Pauling asked in its final pages. "Are we to interpret it as meaning ‘Thou shalt not kill except on a grand scale,’ or ‘Thou shalt not kill except when the national leaders say to do so’?" He then restated his call for a significant program of peace research, including a World Peace Research Organization in the UN and a new US cabinet-level agency, a Department for Peace. What was needed, he wrote, was not more debate. What was needed to end the threat of fallout was an immediate ban on the testing of nuclear weapons.

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Video Clip  Video: Increases in Mutation Rates. 1958. (3:11) Transcript and More Information



See Also: Letter from Linus Pauling to Dr. Willard F. Libby. March 5, 1958. 
See Also: Letter from Linus Pauling to W.B. Lewis. August 23, 1958. 
See Also: Letter from Linus Pauling to R.R. Williams. October 6, 1958. 
See Also: Letter from J.D. Bernal to Linus Pauling. November 12, 1958. 

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"No More War!" 1958.


Page 1
A review of Linus Pauling's "No More War!" by Philip Noel-Baker. 1958.

"There came in February the issue of Life saying on the cover "Dr. Teller Refutes 9000 Scientists"... I wrote to Life and said first that Teller hadn’t refuted 9000 scientists and second I felt that they should publish the article that I had written... They sent the article back and said that they didn’t want it and then I offered it to Look. The editor of Look called me and said they couldn’t get into a controversy with Life. Then I offered it to the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal and Readers Digest and none of them were interested in it. And then I thought, ‘What shall I do? I’ll have to write a book and see if I can’t get it published.’"

Linus Pauling
August 24, 1965
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