Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words. U.S. CUBAN POLICY In Daniel M. Friedenberg's review of Daniel James'...
...This I am certain of from talks with State Department people both in Cuba and in Washington...
...Certainly, this is the consistent line in all his references to the U.S...
...Therefore there was nothing to invite interference with civil liberty...
...For that opposition, as late as the summer of 1937, I was soundly lectured by Ernest Bevin...
...He added that a loan was not negotiated at that time because Fidel was afraid of having appeared to have "sold out" to the U.S...
...That is, that ours is a federation of states, Presidential rather than Parliamentary, and so organized that the election of one or two men for President by the indirect process of the Electoral College is the overriding political interest...
...Labor, at first friendly, began walking out even before the election...
...New York City Henry A. Zeiger Daniel M. Friedenberg replies: The exact story of what happened when Fidel Castro first came to Washington almost immediately after the Cuban Revolution has never been clearly defined...
...It would have been possible, had Castro wanted it, for agrarian reform to have been financed through U.S...
...refused to help him to justify the close relationship he wanted to have with Russia...
...Committed as he was to the betrayal of the Cuban people to world Communism, he refused even to see Bonsai...
...One of the strongest our British friends—and some Americans—ignore...
...Our opposition came only after it became plain Castro had, in a real sense, declared war against us...
...yes, and even to Hitler...
...He was, I am convinced, committed from the beginning to the plan he has now carried out...
...started out trying to help the Castro's regime and was rebuffed...
...Troy, Ohio Dale Francis While I agree with many of the points made by Daniel M. Friedenberg in his review of Daniel James' Cuba: The First Soviet Satellite in the Americas, there is one factual matter which I would like to question...
...AMERICAN SOCIALISTS No man should set himself up to judge his own biography or its reviewers...
...In part we owed that to the Japanese...
...He then says he believes we pushed Castro toward Russia by our efforts to destroy the Cuban Revolution and our refusal to help it...
...New York City Norman Thomas...
...Friedenberg and others have drawn certain implications from this supposed fact...
...Later, more substantial obstacles arose, but Pazos claims that these could have been resolved with a minimum of cooperation on Fidel's part...
...But I think it still lives...
...I imagine he may understand by now our opposition not only to President Roosevelt's policy but to the British Labor party's prolonged support of British neutrality in Franco's attack on the Loyalist Government in Spain...
...Prior to the fall of Batista, State Department people met often with leaders of the 26th of July Movement...
...Ambassador...
...Yet Tito continues to receive aid from the United States...
...It became absolutely evident after Philip Bonsai's appointment as U.S...
...At Batista's fall, we were prepared to give real aid to the new Government...
...But Friedenberg should realize the U.S...
...He had to create the impression the U.S...
...Friedenberg writes: "Undoubtedly, Castro ran as much as he was pushed toward Russia...
...But he was also pushed...
...Some of them Lord Morrison advances...
...Incidentally, I'm still proud of our Socialist approach to peace in our platform of 1944...
...I have often expressed my deep satisfaction that World War II did no such hurt to our own American civil liberties as I had feared...
...and Castro, No...
...It might not have done any good, it is true, but the American government certainly did not explore the possibility as it should have...
...I believe Friedenberg writes from a misunderstanding of our Government's attitude towards the Revolution...
...We know that President Eisenhower was out playing golf and did not find time to see the man who at that time was considered the greatest hero of the 20th century in Latin America...
...The Republican party was no exception...
...Pazos said that the American officials he talked with were extremely eager to aid the Cuban Revolution...
...Yet we had the inexcusable evacuation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans from the West Coast without trial or hearing...
...As for a labor or farmerlabor party, in 1924, under Morris Hillquit's leadership, we made a very hard try...
...In the face of this kind of hard fact, I would like to know what hard facts Friedenberg can offer to substantiate his assertion...
...This accusation has been repeated time and time again, until it has assumed the status of an undisputed fact...
...I quite understand comrade Morrison's feeling about American Socialist opposition to entering World War II...
...The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war...
...What was plain from the beginning was that Castro did not want this...
...Why Gomulka and Tito, avowed Communists, and Nasser and Nkrumah, avowed state Socialists, Si...
...And the American Socialist party as an educational force and as a crusade for a meaningful political realignment is by no means dead...
...acceptance of Cuban bonds that would have permitted payment for appropriated land and properties...
...Therefore, he could not permit any help from the United States...
...And that which we Socialists attacked was legally upheld in a decision written by none other than Hugo Black (the Koramatsu case...
...embassy people inside of Cuba...
...Ever since Socialists failed to strike against mobilization in World War I, our Socialist internationalism has been sorely strained by recurrent wars, hot and cold...
...I am, therefore, writing simply to supplement Herbert Morrison's friendly review of Murray Seidler's biography of me ("America's Socialist Philosopher," NL, March 19) with some observations that the review suggested...
...When it became apparent what Castro was doing, we should have made our offers openly as well as publicized the difficulty we had approaching Castro...
...I sensed this from talks with Castro and other leaders from the beginning...
...Hence, no "third" party has ever grown like an oak from an acorn in our history...
...If this is not a fact, these conclusions collapse...
...only convinced pacifists, mostly religious, opposed it...
...In a period when Washington was aiding Poland, Yugoslavia, Egypt and Ghana, every effort was made to destroy the Cuban Revolution...
...To take a more recent example, at Belgrade Tito tried to force down the throats of the other "neutralists" a straight Russian line to the extent that even these antiAmerican figures could not go along...
...The result was the first foreign war to which there was, in the U.S., no political opposition...
...Nasser was fulminating against America at the same time that monies were being given to him...
...Bonsai's reputation was one that would have encouraged Castro had he been trying to build a new Cuba with social justice...
...We also can assume, given the nature of the Cuban leader, that he reacted violently to the President's absence...
...Yet when I interviewed Felipe Pazos, who made the first trip to the United States with Fidel and who was then head of the National Bank, he made precisely the opposite point...
...While I cannot agree with James that Castro was always a secret Communist (incidentally, this is not what Fidel said in his December 2 speech), I think Fidel's foreign policy can be explained in part by the need of a totalitarian state to have a diabolic, omnipotent enemy...
...All this, however, is secondary in my opinion...
...This is an important matter...
...What I am trying to say is that the subjective question of whether one asked for aid formally or approached the matter informally has little historical significance...
...The real point is that a decision was made to destroy Castro because once Washington saw his extreme Leftist tendencies it realized that American interests were in danger...
...No actual proposals were made but our people let Castro's people know such aid was possible...
...It was a second party at its first election...
...CUBAN POLICY In Daniel M. Friedenberg's review of Daniel James' study of Cuba ("Communism Via the Candillo," NL, March 19), he says that James failed to discuss "the stupid mistakes made by American policy...
...Sometimes the rebel leaders virtually demanded—and got—meetings with U.S...
...The United States made a mistake—and is still making the same mistake—not to publicize the efforts that were made to help the new Cuban Government...
...There are a good many reasons for the failure of the American Socialist party to be as strong as, let us say, the British Labor party...
Vol. 45 • April 1962 • No. 8
