THE NONPROLIFERATION TREATY AND THE NUCLEAR BALANCE

''We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead...Science has torn from nature a secret so vast in its potentialities that our minds cower from the terror it creates. Yet terror is not enough to inhibit the use of the atomic bomb...We must provide the mechanism to...preclude its use in war.'' Thus the sentiments from which nuclear arms control was born nearly 50 years ago. What are the prospects for arms control as the fate of one of its most important elements, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is decided this month?