Paul Robeson Quotes
Yes, peace can and must be won, to save the world from the terrible destruction of World War III.
Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. Beacon Press, 1988, p. 119.
This was in the middle of the Cold War and the political leaders had to face the fact that their major military nuclear weapons, as a practical matter, could not be used. The result was not only too destructive but retaliation would produce MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston. The military weak nations agreed with him, but the militarily strong ones did not—especially America and England which had the Atomic Bomb when others did not.
Like many in the 1920s, Dewar saw the Communist Soviet Union as the biggest potential risk to peace. However, although the Russian leaders constantly castigated the West, they did not have a large military, and were for the most part highly anti-war as they saw war as the product of Capitalistic competition and the tool of the aristocracy. They had little military equipment and almost no training or officer corps with which to build any Army. Germany in contrast had the skill, experience, officers, a history of aggression, and huge resentment over what they considered their humiliating WWI defeat and peace terms. They would start WWII, not Russia.
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass baritone concert artist and stage and film actor who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political activism. Educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University, he was a star athlete in his youth. He also studied Swahili and phonetics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1934. His political activities began with his involvement with unemployed workers and anti-imperialist students whom he met in Britain and continued with support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and his opposition to fascism. In the United States he became active in the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice campaigns. His sympathies for the Soviet Union and for communism, and his criticism of the United States government and its foreign policies, caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era.
