Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.

Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.

Of all our dreams today there is none more important - or so hard to realise - than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.

The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war.

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.

As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not.