part0032

These lines from Easter 1916 are certainly the most famous (and perhaps the greatest) political stanza that William Butler Yeats ever wrote; and I cannot cross Dublin without thinking of fragments of it, as I pass Connolly Station, say, or Pearse Station, or the General Post Office on O'Connell Street where the rebels of 1916 made their last stand. My couplet, "I, a pacifist, feel pride / For the ghost of John MacBride" in a poem earlier in this anthology refers, among other things, to the fact that Major MacBride refused the blindfold when the British shot him, saying in effect that he had faced enemy bullets too often to fear them any longer.

Hugh Kenner may have been the first exegete to wonder what it cost Yeats, emotionally, to use the name of John MacBride in a crucial, rhyming position in this stanza; for Major MacBride had the fortune to marry the woman Yeats loved, Maud Gonne. Isn't it strange how all things relate to all other things? Yeats once tried to persuade Maud Gonne to join the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and she refused, distrusting all Freemasonic groups equally; yet the Golden Dawn has more to do with the publication of this anthology at this time than most readers will guess.

The following article is a conversation with Sean MacBride, who is the son of Major MacBride and Maud Gonne, and also one of the most canny Elder Statesmen in Europe. In a few pages, I shall list some of the honors, including the Nobel prize, that Sean MacBride has won; these are of interest as documentation of the high regard in which he is held in Europe. It is, to me, extremely curious that this book represents the first publication in the United States of this conversation with a major European politician and intellectual. The magazine which originally commissioned this interview, New Age, suddenly decided not to publish it (although they paid me a generous "kill" fee for my time and effort). Other leading U.S. magazines, including Playboy and Penthouse , also declined to publish it. It has appeared thus far only in a Swiss newspaper.

None of the political opinions expressed by Mr. MacBride are considered at all "extreme" in Ireland or most of Europe. They are the normal attitudes of normal statesman and philosophers in ordinary European nations. I wonder why they seem so alien and weird to those whose view of the world is based only on what they read in the American media?

At the age of 80, Sean MacBride, a former member of the Irish Republican Army, is the best-known anti-nuclear activist in Europe, and as a lawyer and founding member of Amnesty International has probably done more than any man in history to secure the release of political prisoners all over the world. Because of his non-partisan opposition to injustice wherever it appears—an outgrowth of traditional Irish neutralism in the wars of the Great Powers—MacBride is the only living human being to have received both the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government (1977) and the American Medal of Justice from the United States (1978). He has also received the Nobel Peace Prize (1974), the International Institute of Human Rights Medal (1974), the UNESCO Medal of Merit (1980) and the Dag Hammerskjoeld Prize for International Solidarity (1981). And at the age when most men have been retired for 15 years, Sean MacBride shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.

When I first tried to contact him for an interview, MacBride was in New York, testifying at an extradition hearing. Before we could meet, he stopped in Paris for a Human Rights conference, jetted to Wales for a conference on the effects of satellite TV on local cultures, and spoke in Dublin at a rally of Irish pacifists planning demonstrations against Ronald Reagan, then visiting Ireland. Looking over his Vita, I found that he still serves as President of the Irish sections of Amnesty International (he was Chairman of the international Executive Committee of Amnesty, 1961-74) and is also President of the Nuclear Safety Association, Vice-Chairman of the Irish Civil Liberties Associations, President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, President of the UNESCO Commission for the Study of Communication, President of the International Peace Bureau and serves more than a dozen similar posts, including President of the Literary and Historical Association of University College Dublin, member of the Foundation for the Prevention of Childhood Handicaps and even Vice-President of the "Trees for Ireland" Association, a reforestation group. The taxi-driver who took me to MacBride's home in Clonskea, a Dublin suburb, told me he once asked MacBride, "How can you keep so busy at your age?" MacBride answered with typical Irish self-mockery, "If I quit now, who'd pay the bills?"

Actually, Sean MacBride has been extremely active—an engage, as the French say—since he joined the I.R.A. in 1919, at the age of fifteen. He had already been imprisoned by then, at fourteen, as a suspected revolutionary (he quickly escaped) because his father, Major John MacBride, one of the leaders of the Easter Uprising in Dublin, 1916, had been executed by the British. (Sean's mother, Maud Gonne MacBride, although best known to students of literature as the inspiration of some of the poetry of William Butler Yeats, is best known in Ireland as an often-imprisoned leader in the struggle of the Irish peasants against English absentee landlords.) At sixteen, in 1921, Sean was one of the I.R.A. delegates to the Frankfurt Congress Against Imperialism, where he met Nehru and Ho Chi Minh; it was there that he began to see Ireland as part of the Third World, an idea that he retains to this day. ("We are an undeveloped country, a part of the Third World," he said in a recent speech, "no matter how much the smart young executives pretend that we are a sophisticated, developed economy.") At seventeen, in 1921, Sean MacBride was the youngest member of the Irish delegation to the London Treaty Conference which ended the Irish War of Liberation on terms he still finds unacceptable. He therefore remained in the Irish Republican Army during the Civil War that followed and was imprisoned by the Irish Free State in 1922 and again in 1930; ironically, the Free State eventually became the Republic of Ireland which gave him a medal in 1938 for his 1919-1921 military activities against the British, elected him to Dail hEirann (roughly, the House of Representatives) in 1947-58, and made him Minister of External Affairs in 1948-51. "He could be President of Ireland anytime he wanted," I was recently told in a pub, "but his interests are more international now."

Americans—even Irish-Americans—often find it impossible to understand Irish politics in the years when MacBride was an officer of the I.R.A., 1919-1937. Eamon DeValera (often called "the George Washington of Ireland") was, for instance, MacBride's superior officer in the I.R.A. in the early 1920s; the two were military enemies after DeValera entered the Free State government in 1927; they became political enemies after 1937, when MacBride, having become a lawyer, secured the release of hundreds of I.R.A. members and alleged I.R.A members imprisoned by DeValera. Today, MacBride speaks of DeValera with respect tinged with reverence. "Dev lost the civil war of 1922-27," he says, "but in the first five years he served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) he won everything back that had been lost in the civil war." It was the accomplishments of those first five DeValera years 1932-37, that convinced MacBride that DeValera's nonviolent but constant pressure on England that led MacBride to resign from the paramilitary organization. When asked about some of DeValera's more intolerant policies, which were decidedly unfair to Protestants, MacBride says simply, "He was wrong then." When pressed for further comment, he repeats woodenly, "He was wrong, I said," and waits impatiently for the next question. Dev was wrong, his tone implies, but haven't all the rest of us been wrong sometimes?

It was as Minister of External Affairs, 1948-51, that MacBride developed what has been dubbed his "sore thumb policy": any international tribunal on which he serves is sure to find that the question of the partition of Ireland has become part of the agenda, officially or otherwise—much to the embarrassment of the British delegates. And although separated from the old I.R.A. since 1937, and having denounced the terrorist tactics of the new, Provisional I.R.A. often, MacBride wrote an introduction to the autobiography of Bobby Sands, the Provisional who starved himself to death in protest against British occupation of the Six Counties, a non-violent tactic Gandhi would have approved. Although Margaret Thatcher denounced Sands after his death as a "man of violence," everywhere one travels in Ireland one sees graffiti, stark in their simplicity, saying only BOBBY SANDS R.I.P.

Sean MacBride lives in Roebuck House, a rambling old Georgian mansion southwest of Dublin. Despite all I knew of his active life, I was astonished at the youthfulness of his complexion and the buoyancy of his walk. He dressed casually, as the Irish generally do, and looked mildly embarrassed when I said it was an honor to meet him. His secretary announced that, although I had been promised an hour and a half for the interview, the time would have to be cut to an hour due to another urgent appointment that had come up. He spoke unhurriedly, without seeming to be pressed by the lime limit, and still managed to answer all my questions with succinct precision.

Yes, of course. But I was also one of the drafters of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights in 1950, which I regard as a very important step forward in developing an international rule of law, but by 1961 some of us saw the need for a non-governmental agency that would bring world attention to individual cases where human rights were being violated. The Human Rights treaty was dependent upon the good faith and good will of the governments that signed it. Amnesty International was created in 1961 to take on cases irrespective of the wishes of governments—whether the governments liked it or not.

Amnesty is concerned only with political prisoners. We divide them into two groups—"prisoners of conscience" and "other political prisoners." We define "prisoners of conscience" as those who have been imprisoned only for their political or religious views, who are not accused of violent acts or advocacy of violence. We demand immediate release in such cases and bring every possible pressure on the governments involved, to secure immediate release. The "other political prisoners," those who have committed or advocated violence, we treat differently. We do not demand release, of course, but we monitor these cases to see that they are treated humanely and decently, that they are not tortured, and that the prison conditions conform with norms of human rights laid down by the United Nations.

We have a "borderline bureau" that scrutinizes cases of that sort, and we have developed a rather elaborate internal jurisprudence in evaluating the evidence before we make a decision. Even so, some cases have to be reclassified when new evidence is uncovered. We had one case I remember in which the prisoner himself caused us to change his category. That was a Black civil rights leader in South Africa, whom we had classed as a "prisoner of conscience" while he was awaiting trial, but then, in his closing speech to the Court, he stated that the only way of protecting the Black people in that country was by armed force. We had to transfer him to our "other political prisoners" category, since he was advocating violence, and we stopped asking for his release, which was a very hard decision.

I did not say that; I said that the ordinary provisions of the rule of law are not complied with there. Firstly, there are trials without juries, which is always dangerous and particularly nefarious in political cases. Then there is the fact that judges regularly admit as evidence the sort of thing that is specifically forbidden by normal legal standards in democratic states. Finally, there is the notorious "supergrass" system. "Supergrasses" are known criminals themselves and testify against scores and scores of persons in return for immunity from prosecution.

I supported the position that Amnesty should oppose capital punishment in all cases. I have many reasons for this. First of all, I think that if the State takes upon itself the right to kill, then inevitably those who oppose the State will arrogate to themselves the same right. Revolutionaries and terrorists do, in fact, use exactly that argument, with some sincerity: "If the State can take life, then we can also take life." After all, they generally claim that they represent the people and that the State doesn't. I am opposed to the cheapening of human life created by that rhetoric on both sides. Secondly, I don't believe that any human institution has the right to take life as punishment or retribution; you may have to take life in self-defense or in armed conflict against injustice where there are no alternatives—no legal means of struggle—but taking life as revenge is never justified. Thirdly, as a lawyer I have seen too many errors made by judges to believe in the infallibility of courts. I have had personal experience of at least three cases where to my certain knowledge an innocent person was condemned to death. You cannot believe in capital punishment after seeing that happen.

It varies, and it varies both in quantity and quality—in the number of victims and in the degree of atrocity. In the Soviet bloc, conditions have improved since Amnesty was founded. Probably at the moment the worst offenders are the governments in Central and Latin America, especially Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and Guatemala. I think that is the area where human rights are more viciously and extensively violated than anywhere else. The assassination squads in those nations are the worst kind of terrorism. Those countries have disimproved, especially in the last few years, and to a certain extent I blame this on President Reagan who has condoned these atrocities and even supported them financially and militarily.

I would not call Russia an ideal society from the human rights standpoint, but it has definitely improved since Stalin; it has not disimproved. That is one of Amnesty's successes. In the first years of Amnesty in the early 1960s, there were vast numbers of political detainees in camps in Siberia and other places in the Soviet Union and other Marxist countries in Eastern Europe. There, Amnesty was very successful in making the new leaders feel the weight of world opinion. We obtained the release of thousands—I would say, of at least ten thousand persons. Partly, this was because we made the Soviets realize that these people had been imprisoned for advocating exactly the policies the new, post-Stalin government was following.

Yes; definitely yes—even more free of that threat than they were ten years ago. Based on Amnesty's studies, there has been great improvement there. I am not saying that the human rights situation there is as it should be, but there has been tremendous progress. It speaks well for the Soviet leadership that Amnesty can get adequate information and do know what to protest in their treatment of political offenders. Letters from there to Amnesty are delivered without interference; groups of dissidents there send us reports and even have long phone conversations with our London office. By contrast, China is still the most closed society in the world. We can't even learn the number of political prisoners there, and we have no adequate information about civil liberties there at all.

Yes, yes, and that delights us. The fact that we are attacked by both sides is proof of our neutrality and objectivity.

Certainly. We work through outreach groups, called Adoption Groups. In order to ensure the neutrality of each Adoption Group, we insist that they adopt three prisoners—one from the Western block nations, and one from the Communist bloc, and one from the Afro-Asian bloc. Each group is then pledged to work equally for the three adopted prisoners. You can't say "I'll only work for prisoners in Communist countries," or "I'll only work for prisoners in Capitalist countries"; You have to work equally for political prisoners in each of the three major power blocs. I think this system guarantees Amnesty's objectivity and therefore our credibility.

That was hysteria, and it had nothing to do with Amnesty anyway. They were annoyed by a report which I helped to write for UNESCO on Communication and Society, the so-called MacBride Report. I believe that they had not read the report, because they claimed that it urged the imposition of new controls and limitations on journalistic freedom. Exactly the opposite is true. The report is, I believe, the most advanced and progressive document ever written in that area—we specifically urged greater freedom for journalists. We want them to have access to things governments are trying to hide. What we did wish to limit was the monopolization of the media, and I personally have urged steps to encourage the decentralization of ownership and control of the media. But before we leave this subject, let me just note that the Wall Street ]oumal did not mention that I have received the American Medal of Justice in Washington. I believe that I am the only person not an American citizen to have received that award. Considering the vast C.I.A. dossiers on every dissident in the world, the U.S. government would hardly be so careless as to give that award to a Communist agent.

As a lawyer and President of International Peace Bureau in Geneva and a member of the International Commission of Jurists, I have studied this question for many, many years. I have submitted my legal opinion to the Federal Court in New York. I believe the deployment of these weapons is a clear-cut violation of international law and an act of terrorism. We won't have time for your other questions if I present my whole legal argument here but briefly I can say this much: as early as 1874, the International Declaration concerning the Laws and Customs of War specifically denied that governments have "an unlimited power in the adoption of means of injuring the enemy," and the Hague convention of 1907 prohibits "bombardment of towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended." All the laws against poison gas adopted after World War I are so worded that it is their clear intent to criminalize the indiscriminate killing of non-combatants. These were some of the precedents with which Nazi officials were found guilty of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg. But the Nuremberg judgements went further and laid down in 1946 that planning and conspiring to wage war against civilian populations is itself a crime. This was felt necessary at the time, and is, in fact, based on common law, where conspiracy to commit a crime is itself a crime.

Yes. The Nuremberg tribunal precisely ruled that planning, preparing and conspiring to commit mass murder is criminal. The United Nations General Assembly in 1950 again reaffirmed that planning for wars involving "wanton destruction of cities" is a crime, and so is preparing "inhuman acts done against any civilian population."

The Rand Corporation understands the law as I understand it. In a report of January 1982 they stated that the policy of Assured Destruction, as it is called, which underlies the deployment of these missiles "is unlawful under the international law of armed conflict" and that, under the Nuremberg and other precedents, not only states but individuals can be judged criminally liable for such acts. The Rand Report specifically warns that "Following military orders or ignorance of the law are insufficient defenses, for the individual and his or her superior officers are obliged to know the law and to recognize manifestly unlawful orders." General George S. Brown made the same points when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1976. Military men in general understand these laws because they are obliged to. As the Rand Report said, the current U.S. policy is "more the creature of civilians than military minds." Reagan and his advisors are ignorant civilians who do not realize that they are criminal terrorists under international law, even though the Rand Report tells them so and tells them that they are obliged to know these laws.

I don't know. The main reasons for that, I imagine, is that Reagan and his advisors know they would be condemned by the Court if it heard the evidence concerning their crimes against international law in Central America, especially the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua, and their terrorism in Lebanon. I was there, in Lebanon, and I saw what they have done. Whole cities, which had no connection with the struggle at all, have been obliterated.

Absolutely. President Reagan has done more harm to the United States, in the eyes of the world, than the Soviets could have accomplished in decades. The U.S. government has lost all moral credibility. I fear that Reagan has damaged the U.S. irreparably, which is a shame because he has thereby weakened the cause of democracy.

Well, first of all, I would like to explain that the planned protest demonstrations are against Reagan only. Ireland still has great affection and admiration for the American people. Apart from their undoubted contributions to democracy in the past, the American people will always react in favor of justice and against injustice, in my opinion, once the facts are placed before them. The Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were largely inspired by such Americans as Eleanor Roosevelt and Averill Harriman. The Irish as a people have a special debt of gratitude toward the United States for giving shelter to Irish emigrants in the past and for supporting our struggle for national liberation early in this century. Nobody in this country regards the American people with anything but warmth and affection. You could see that in the enthusiastic welcome we gave President Kennedy when he came here. But the present government, the Reagan government, are regarded as international terrorists. The shelling of Lebanese villages was well reported here in the press and shown on TV. The invasion of Grenada was a cause for horror and distress, also, and we share with most Europeans a keen feeling of moral revulsion at the nuclear missiles being deployed all around us. And because of the number of Irish priests and nuns who have served as missionaries in Central America, we perhaps know more than other Europeans about the atrocities committed there by governments financed and armed by Reagan's administration. From my own experience as UN observer in Namibia, I am satisfied beyond doubt that were it not for U.S. support of South African tyranny, Namibia would now be free and independent.

Nobody will believe them; there will be too many priests and nuns in these protests. Informed Americans know as well as we do that the government of El Salvador was responsible for murdering an Archbishop while he was saying Mass, for murdering and raping four nuns, and for a daily continuation of such atrocities. Why if the rape and murder of four nuns had happened in Russia, there could nearly have been a nuclear war as a result. Instead of that, there is barely a word of condemnation from Washington; El Salvador is still receiving weapons from the U.S. and the only protests come from ordinary American citizens and clergy, outside the government. As I said, this international terrorism has not only harmed the reputation of the United States, but damaged the whole cause of democracy in the world. I love the American people, and I don't think any other people has such a sense of justice when they understand an issue, but I think it is dastardly and terrible for Mr. Reagan to claim his international terrorism is being done in the name of the American people.

It has been documented, not only by European journalists but by the American press also, that the Reagan government not only finances these crimes against humanity but frequently uses the C.I.A. to implement some of them. Let me make clear again that these policies are stupid, because they are alienating Europe and destroying the credibility of the West. As a jurist, I think the U.S. did more in a few years after World War II to establish international rules of law than any country in history, and this gave America a real moral leadership in the world. Reagan has destroyed all that in the last six to eight months, and his administration has done more to destroy the rule of law than any other government. Reagan has repeatedly violated the UN charter and international law by constant reliance on force and the threat of force. Now he is sabotaging the International Court of Justice by preventing it from hearing complaints by the victims of his terrorism, and he has even withdrawn the United States from UNESCO.

That's not just my opinion; there are at least five books written by Americans warning against the dangers posed by the Trilateral Commission.

It is documented that the Trilateralists are funded by certain large U.S. banks and are serving the financial interests of those banks.

I believe they are. Ireland is still a nuclear-free zone and I suspect that they want to get us into NATO so they can deploy some of their nuclear missiles here.

I joined the Irish Republican Army as part of our struggle for national independence. There was a liberation war here, between 1918 and 1921, just like your American Revolution. We had to resist the British army of occupation in our cities, just as you did, in order to achieve national independence.

Many of us could not accept the terms of the London Treaty of 1921, particularly in regard to the partition of Ireland. We also objected to the fact that the Free State was made part of the British Commonwealth and members of the Dail hEirann had to sign an oath of allegiance to British monarch. In our opinion, that oath made it legally impossible for the Free State to continue the struggle for Irish independence and unity.

The whole situation had changed by then. DeValera had accomplished so much in his first five years as Taoiseach (Chief Executive) that armed struggle was neither necessary nor desirable; it was counter-productive. The abolition of the oath of allegiance, which he had accomplished by then, made it possible for complete independence to be achieved by legal means, as in fact happened in 1947. I also believe the re-unification of Ireland can be accomplished without further armed struggle.

I was never sentenced. I was imprisoned without trial by the British in 1918 and 1919 and by the Free State in 1922 and 1930.

I believe that is true, yes.

I'm not a Quaker and I'm not an absolute pacifist. I believe that in certain circumstances you have the right to use violence to defend yourself. This applies to peoples as well as individuals. If a government pursues a policy that threatens to reduce a whole people to servitude or to exterminate them, they have the right to resist violence with violence. But even there, you see, I would say that they may only resort to violence when no other means remains open to them, when there is literally no legal recourse. For instance, I think this presently applies to the Black population of South Africa, who are victimized by violence continually and have no means of defense against this except armed struggle. But even in wars of liberation, where there is no other recourse, I think moral rules still apply. I am totally opposed to some of the activities of some liberation movements, in which civilians are indiscriminately slaughtered. For instance, I totally condemn the Provisional I.R.A. of the present for tactics like the bombing of Harrod's, a leading department store in London, when it was full of families with children during the Christmas shopping season.

The partition of Ireland.

That is the British propaganda line and I simply do not believe it. I am quite confident that getting the British troops out of Ireland is the first step toward a peaceful solution. The original cause of the violence is the partition of Ireland and the continuing cause is the presence of British troops on Irish soil. Much of the violence by paramilitary Protestant groups is actually guided and inspired by British intelligence agents.

As a lawyer, I have defended British intelligence agents sent over here to the Republic of Ireland to incite the I.R.A. to carry out bank robberies. I have also defended British agents who have been given lists of people to assassinate and have it blamed on the I.R.A.

Well, I just said that British intelligence have done that sort of thing down here. Why wouldn't they do it up there?

I cannot begin to guess. Once you get into the machinations of secret services, anything is possible.

There is a rumor around Dublin that some of the Trilateralists, such as Kissinger and Vice President Bush, who have been over here meeting with Irish government officials, are feeling out how the Irish would react to a deal whereby the U.S. will exert pressure on Britain to allow Irish re-unification if the Irish will in return join NATO and accept nuclear missiles on their soil. Do you think there is anything in that rumor?

I'm sure it has been considered at some stage, but no Irish government I can imagine would accept it.

No, not at all. I think the British should pay reparations, for the 63 years of civil war that partition has inflicted on us.

I think they will have to pay some compensation, yes.

That sort of thing is annoying, but you get used to it after 80 years. You must remember that we are Britain's oldest colony; they have been here for 800 years. Every imperialist power creates a caricature of the conquered nations, to justify themselves: "We're only there to civilize the barbarians," you know. The ordinary Englishman and Englishwoman are very decent really, but they have 800 years of anti-Irish attitudes to unlearn. They have always been told that we are charming, quite irrational and never, never to be taken seriously for a moment. They also think we have unfortunately long memories. On the other hand, this ordinary Englishman and Englishwoman is getting a bit cynical about that myth by now. The war has gone on too long, and it is costing too much. There is a real groundswell of opinion there now that it is time to pull the troops out and have done with it. The attitude is much like the American attitude toward Vietnam around 1970, when everybody was ready to pull out except a few diehards at the top.

I think that is still an open question. Some of the recent evidence, however, especially disclosures in the last three or four years, does tend to support the theory that he was killed by British secret agents. The civil war was still going on then, between the Free State and the I.R.A. Collins was trying to end that, trying to negotiate a truce. He was on his way to meet I.R.A. leaders about such a truce when he was shot, you know. The British may have thought that if the civil war went on long enough, it would destroy the Free State.

The I.R.A. had made it impossible for them to remain here. By 1921, we had succeeded militarily in making their position untenable without a mass military occupation and repressive measures on a scale that would have been very unpopular in the United States and with a large segment of British public opinion. As it was, in the United States, support for the Irish liberation movement was very extensive and could not be ignored.

It is not my solution exactly; it was first proposed as early as 1922, when the first Irish Constitution was being drafted, and it was the suggestion of Professor Edward O'Rahilly. Unfortunately, it was not adequately discussed and debated at the time. I think we accepted the British centralized system of government, wrongly, because we had been dominated by the British for 800 years and were still thinking in British categories. The Swiss system is much better for small countries like Switzerland or Ireland, I think, and it is especially appropriate where you have two strongly opposed religious/cultural traditions. Adopting the Swiss system, we would have 32 independent counties, like the independent Swiss cantons, and each would have its own parliament and make its own laws on all matters except international relations. A small central government would have representatives from the independent cantons and they would be concerned only with external affairs. Such devolution and decentralization is the only viable path for a nation with two religious traditions; it has worked very well for Switzerland. That is why I revived this proposal and presented it to the New Ireland Forum last year.

The computer revolution is changing all our traditional economic assumptions. There will be more unemployment from now on, not less. No government has a solution to this; mostly they are afraid to even think about it. What I keep proposing is that they should create jobs by investing in projects that do not present an immediate economic return. Reforestation is my favorite example. That's why I'm involved with the "Trees for Ireland" campaign. Creating whole new forests would provide work for many of the unemployed, and even if it takes 50 years for the economic return, it will be worth it when we do have all those new trees full-grown. I also think the government could create many, many jobs by giving Dublin a subway system.

I believe you just answered your own question. Those women have done a marvelous job of work in forcing world attention on the threat of nuclear missiles.

What I really meant to ask is, I meet a lot of cynical and depressed people these days. They don't like the missiles any more than you do, but they feel hopeless. If you talk about Greenham Common at all, they 'll just say, "Yes, those women gave it the old school try—but the missiles are still there, aren't they?" At the age of 80, you haven't gotten discouraged yet. What gives you the faith and energy to struggle on?

I have one big hope. I think public opinion has become much more powerful than at any earlier period in history. We have all been rather stupid in the past when we tried to predict the pace of oncoming events. Everything is happening much faster these days. Public education and literacy have increased incredibly in my lifetime and especially in the past 30 years and the peoples of the world are better informed than they ever have been. As I said, people are mostly very decent and just, once they know the facts of a case, and they are learning the facts faster and faster. Television is bringing everything right into the living room, and people know what is going on. I think people will soon force governments to give up this insane arms race. They just have to join together, like the women at Greenham Common, and make their voices heard.