The Atom: Decision to Test

Despite the signs of thaw, one of the coldest of cold war decisions could not be held off much longer. Last week, discussing the possibility of a nuclear test agreement with the Soviet Union, President Kennedy left the door open—but just barely. He urged that the two great cold war adversaries make a final try for a test-ban treaty at an 18-nation disarmament conference in Geneva next month; he insisted at his press conference that the U.S. would not only demand monitors to detect Russian tests, but would require an inspection system against any Soviet test preparations. At the...