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BEYOND COEXISTENCE by Edward Ed. Reed

BEYOND COEXISTENCE

By

Pub Date: Dec. 13th, 1968
Publisher: Grossman

A distilled transcript of the panel discussions during Pacem In Terris II, a conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Geneva in 1967. As Robert Hutchins observes in his afterword, the participants are almost unfailingly polite and ""generous"" in spirit. U.S. representatives included a few eminences grises like Galbraith, plus symbols and proselytizers like Brooke, Farmer, Martin Luther King, Pike, Pell, and Joseph Clark (who lost his cool and cried ""Don't despair of the U.S.A.!""). Topics ranged from Vietnam and Germany to international law, development, and a theological report. The political spectrum was rather narrow, inasmuch as the reactionaries and revolutionaries with whom everyone was preoccupied were conspicuously absent, as well as the protagonists who declined invitations (China, Russia, North Vietnam, Israel and the Arabs). David Horowitz and Pastor Nicmoller provided some intellectual cream, while the Thai foreign minister and a Ugandan official added political bread-and-butter. Then there was a South African bishop who couldn't go home again. The consensus of the group was what you might expect: anti-Vietnam war, pro-U.N. with universal membership, anti-Cold War, pro-foreign aid, anti-racial discrimination, pro-neutralization of Southeast Asia. Which is not to dismiss the book; it is worth its weight in documentary value.