(1870-1965) American businessman and statesman and a close personal adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt. 'MANKIND CANNOT LIE IDLE WAITING FOR THE HUMAN PYRE...' Superb political content and association T.L.S. on his personal letterhead, 2pp. 4to., New York, Aug. 9, 1963 to Gen. LESLIE GROVES (1896-1970), the American general who, with Robert Oppenheimer, headed the Manhattan Project in the development of the first atomic bomb. Baruch discusses the Russians, Chinese, and the spread of atomic weapons. In part: '...I think the last paragraph of your very remarkable letter of August 8th carries the reasons for the action by Khrushchev. Russia occupies a great deal of Chinese territory which the Chinese will always try to regain. Furthermore, Russia has the largest border in history, without a friend on it. It also has attempted to absorb, and not successfully, large territories with an enormous alien population. For many years now I have been drawing the attention of the Russians to the fact that sooner or later the Chinese will move in on them. This particularly to the people you and I have met on so many occasions. Herewith is a copy of a conversation [not present] I had with Jack McCloy and which I sent to him at his request when Eisenhower appointed him in 1960 as our Disarmament representative. I still believe that the only possible solution is the one we advocated. The Chinese now say that nobody shall have the bomb. The great difficulty is that even our friends say it is impossible to enforce but mankind cannot lie idle waiting for the human pyre. It can be done but every day it is getting more difficult...' Fine condition. Baruch's letter was undoubtedly written in response to the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, a milestone arms control agreement signed four days earlier which banned nuclear weapon detonations in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. Baruch's letter seems to indicate that he (and Groves) sought a total ban on nuclear weapons, as the Chinese advocated, in order to avoid the 'human pyre' he feared. This debate would soon become moot: China successfully detonated its first domestically produced atomic bomb on October 16, 1964, at the Lop Nur testing site in Xinjiang province.