I think they will go to pieces. Because I don't think they can control any more a country such as Brazil, with about 80 million people. It's too big to be controlled by a clique, by caste, or any way by a dominant group without any commitment towards democracy.

It seems to me--I must clarify this point, I think--it's not the fact that they are corrupt or sold out to "Standard Oil," or anything of that kind. That is not what I am trying to point out. It's that the military believe in something that is out-dated in your eyes, and in the eyes, I believe of the majority of all people.

For instance, they believe that a Third World War is absolutely inevitable. By so believing, they do believe that we shall take the side of the United States as the side of good as against the side of evil. It's a sort of a good and evil, a sort of a "robbers and cops" game--the cop being America and the robbers being 'Russia or China if you wish.

This type of thinking is basically military deformation; since they are in power, they think that war is always inevitable.

The military are out-dated by facts and the technology revolution which includes the army too. The new weapons made the war not only inevitable but impossible in terms of no winner, so no war. They did not understand that the big problem now is the possibility of a clash between wealthy nations and deprived nations.

The amount of resources of wealth that they are throwing in armaments should be urgently put into development. By development I don't mean only factories but also universities and know-how and all this sort of things. It is cheaper; it is less bloody; and it is more effective. Even to win an ideological war if there is any.

Disparity of Wealthy

Is the disparity of wealth between rich nations and poor nations a major factor in international relations?

I think that the technological revolution has been substituted for the class revolution--the old Marxist concept. I think that what petroleum did in America, and electricity--what coal did in England--can be done now by electronics and computers and other devices, provided we can use them properly and at the right time which is now and not tomorrow.

We need desperately to improve the skill of our workers. To let them have a better living--more wages and more jobs. We need to use the tremendous capital that we have--it's about the only capital we really have plenty of--which is youth.

More than half of our peple is composed of people under 21 years of age. About 75 per cent of the productive workers are below 25 years of age. So this is a capital--provided that you can use it properly by giving them the capacity, and the ability, to use themselves.

Education

I think education is the most urgent investment to make in Brazil, and the most productive. I think true education--taken as an urgent--taken as even as an emergency thing--is the most effective weapon to develop our economy and to grow up. And by education, of course, I don't mean only the skill of hands, but also the use of brains. We are wasting brains. We don't use them properly.

The military minority that took power are afraid of students speaking outside of their classrooms. Which I think is silly. Because in a country where they are in a majority--I mean the youth--and where students are in the minority of that majority, they have, so-to-speak, the power of attorney for their generation.

So students must be precocious and they must be premature. And I don't see any evil in it. Of course, I would not say that students always are right in their propositions and their criticisms, but I think it is important that they proclaim their nonconformism.