Bombs Away

The latest series of French nuclear tests in the South Pacific, Australia's liberal daily the Australian declared last week, was "committed by a national leadership which displays the moral sense of a gang of street bashers." The words were blunter than most, but the sentiment was echoed around much of the world. After the French detonated their first bomb of the series two weeks ago at the lonely atoll of Mururoa, about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti, Peru broke off diplomatic relations with France. Last week 13 other nations, including Australia, Japan and Canada, sent protests to Paris.

The U.S. has ordinarily sent its "regrets" about French tests, but this time it has not joined the protesters. State Department officials said they could hardly protest to Paris when they had not criticized China, which detonated an even larger bomb in the atmosphere late in June. The U.S., the Soviet Union and Britain have not held such tests since 1963, when they signed the nuclear test-ban treaty banning tests in the atmosphere to avoid nuclear contamination of the air. France and China have not signed that treaty.

The tide of opposition to France's atmospheric testing has been growing for months. In May the Australian Council of Trade Unions ordered all French goods coming into the country embargoed at the country's ports (it lifted the ban only occasionally to allow distribution of cargoes like Camembert cheese that threatened to befoul Melbourne's port). Mail service with France has been cut off, and at least one restaurant put a sign in its window announcing that it would not serve French customers. The International Court of Justice at The Hague had handed down a temporary injunction against the tests in June, but France ignored the order.

New Zealand has sent a frigate, with Minister of Mines and Immigration Fraser Colman on board, into the testing area, where it has observed the tests from an upwind position. French warships have not disturbed it. A private schooner, the Fri, also sailed into the area to protest, but French sailors boarded it and hauled its skipper, David Moodie, 27, of Sausalito, Calif., and his 15 passengers off to the island of Hao. In Hiroshima, 130 victims of the first atomic blast marched in silent protest.

The protests have not deterred the French government. The series is expected to run through August and include five or six tests. The tests have evoked surprisingly little controversy in France itself. When the Bishop of Orleans publicly castigated the government's nuclear armament policy last week, Admiral Marc de Joybert, naval chief of staff, haughtily told the bishop in an open letter to Le Figaro: "Take care of your own onions. Your job, Monsignor, is to teach the faith and spread charity. Our role is to defend France." For the time being at least, the French public seemed more concerned with the battle between the bishop and the admiral than with the contaminated winds sweeping the Pacific.

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