Soviet President Yuri V. Andropov’s uncompromising statements to visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl offered little hope to a world waiting for softening attitudes in the nuclear arms control stalemate. Kohl remained hopeful an agreement on limiting nuclear weapons in Europe might be reached by the year’s end, although Andropov refused to budge from the USSR bargaining position. The German leader indicated Andropov was “sympathetic” to possibilities of a United States-Soviet summit. In fact Kohl’s delegation got the impression that only summit meetings could provide an impetus at the Geneva talks on limiting mediumrange nuclear arsenals. This may be a correct assessment. In pointed words, Andropov implied a threat to West Germany, should that country allow deployment of new American missiles by NATO. He warned that the Kremlin might retaliate with missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Granted the Soviet Union traditionally is tough and hard-headed in negotiations, Andropov’s remarks still were disappointing. This is especially so in the light of Kohl’s “conciliatory mission” and President Reagan’s recently announced flexible arms control proposals designed to induce the Russians to respond with similar flexibility. Indeed, the absence of any suggestion of compromise in the quoted remarks of the Soviet leader bolsters President Reagan’s claim that Russian intransigence is the main barrier to understanding and arms control agreement. As the stalemate drags on, concerns over the increasing potential for nuclear holocaust mount. Just recently in Congress, Sen. William Proxmire, Wisconsin, Democrat, presented reports from the World Health Organization spelling out the disastrous consequences that can be expected in nuclear warfare. Even a single one-me gaton bomb, if dropped over a major city, say London, could kill 1.8 million people and injure 1.7 million. The details of how death would come are stark and sickening. WHO projected two other scenarios. Proxmire said the last one assumes all-out nuclear war with 10,000 megatons ‘of bombs exploded across the world – 90 percent of them in Europe, Asia, and North America. Such a war would result in 1,l50,000,000 dead and l,100,000,000 injured, WH0 estimated. Thus about half of the world’s population would be immediate victims of the war. One of the terrible realities would be the devastation of hospital and medical facilities and personnel. The WH0 report summed it up this way: “In this kind of nuclear disaster, the capacity of the surviving medical personnel to provide adequate care or even merely to provide first aid and keep the victims alive, would be next to niI.” Surely in this civilized world, leaders of nations can do better than issue warnings and threats such as were embodied in the Andropov statement, while dragging their feet at the conference table as a grave nuclear threat hangs over the globe. With a spirit of compromise and brotherhood it should be possible to steer a course away from crisis. And the time to do it is now, before the impending showdown over the NATO deployment to counterbalance the Russian missiles targeted on Europe. Let the leaders who control the destinies of warand peace not stand by, idly strumming their lyres like Nero while the fires of nuclear destruction get closer and closer.