IS THERE NO ENEMY TO THE LEFT?
Pratt, Lawrence
-A S h o r t N o t e f r o m the P r o v i n c e s by Jerry Gerde Bay County, Florida Throughout our years of tumult and travail, it has become increasingly common to assert that these are...
...As a member of America's sophisticated minority, Matthews sees little serious effort given by Fidel Castro to subvert the governments of the rest of the hemisphere...
...and they conclude with an ultimatum warning us to leave the Hellenes independent...
...Make your decision therefore at once either to submit before you are harmed, or if w e are to go to war, as I for one think we ought, to do so without caring whether the ostensible cause be great or small, resolved against making concessions or consenting to a precarious tenure of our possessions...
...Communism is simply another and different political, economic and social system...
...while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals...
...Yet the only documentation that Matthews offers in claiming that Cuban Communism is merely a marriage of convenience is private conversations with Fidel and his lieutenants...
...N o w it was clear before, that the Pelopormesians Is T h e r e N o E n e m y T o t h e L e f t ? by Lawrence D. Pratt The Losers, by Paul D. Bethel, Arlington House, $10.00...
...They order us to raise the siege of Potidaea, to let AEgina be independent, to revoke the Megara decree...
...Why, this trifle contains the whole seal and trial of your resolution...
...There is no enemy to the left...
...A S h o r t N o t e f r o m the P r o v i n c e s by Jerry Gerde Bay County, Florida Throughout our years of tumult and travail, it has become increasingly common to assert that these are "modem" and "complex" times, that M a n has never before been faced with such inter-humanitarian problems and such need to review old values and to create new standards...
...The date of the speech quoted below is 431 B. C. "There is one principle, Athenians, which I hold to through everything, and that is the principle of no concession to the Pelopormesians...
...The author's above reflections crystallized during a review of Pericles' speech to the Athenians, after they had received demands from the Spartans for three minor concessions as an alternative to the impending Peloponnesian War...
...n radical social revolution...
...Particularly vis-a-vis the Viet N a m conflict and our violence-prone social dissenters, it seems now generally accepted that the "old truths" are unworkable, that these modem situations are unique and therefore new principles of accommodation and concession must be developed and applied...
...At least Herbert Matthews, an erstwhile editor of the N e w York Times does not believe scJ when he writes that "For the sophisticated minority in the United States and for just about everyone in other Western nations...
...Bethel, press attache under the last three U. S. ambassadors to Cuba, meticulously examines not only the Liberal sourc6s considered by Matthews, but...
...Matthews argues that in Cuba — and potentially in most of Latin America — the emergence of Communism was the pragmatically determined course once it was decided to bring about a 10 entertained designs against us...
...I hope that you will none of you think that we shall be going to war for a trifle if we refuse to revoke the Megara decree, which appears in front of their complaints, and the revocation of which is to save us from war, or let any feeling of self-reproach linger in your minds, as if you went to war for slight cause...
...For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbour as commands, before any attempt at legal settlement, be they great or be they small, have only one meaning, and that is slavery...
...As viewed, then, from the relative tranquility of the author's pastoral retreat, the shallowness and actually dated bases of the above arguments appear doubly fallacious, for human nature remains constant and therefore the rules for its government — whether accepted or not by a contemporary Zeitgeist polity — are immutable...
...On the other hand Paul Bethel's The Losers is much less naive...
...For him to continue trustng Fidel & Co...
...If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance...
...after they so thoroughly bamboozled him in the Sierra Maestra — they completely misled him about the relative strengths of their and Batista's forces — is remarkable...
...it is still more clear now...
...Fidel Castro, by Herbert L. Matthews, Simon & Schuster, $6.95...
Vol. 3 • November 1969 • No. 3
