The Soviet Challenge in Cuba

  Like a thunderbolt piercing a murky sky, the revelation that Premier Khrushchev in converting Cuba into a potentially offensive nuclear base against the United States and the whole Western Hemisphere casts a lurid light on the nature of the present crisis. This is no longer a bearded Cuban revolutionary fulminating against us. This is Soviet Russia stretching out its nuclear arm across the Atlantic to confront us and therewith the whole free world with a deadly challenge.

  That is why President Kennedy is right in placing the responsibility squarely on soviet Russia, of which Castro's Cuba is merely a pawn. That is why the imposition of a "quarantine" blockade against the shipment of further offensive arms to Cuba was necessary. That is why this action now meets with the approval of our allies, notably Britain, many of the neutrals and also the Latin Americans. All must realise that at last we really are in the same boat.

  The World will hope that President Kennedy's appeal to Premier Khrushchev to remove this reckless and provocative threat to world peace will not go unheard. But it must be recalled that Cuba's subjugation to Soviet control is merely the latest step in a long list of Russian aggressions stretching back over a quater-century. This record has made Soviet Russia the largest and most oppressive colonial empire in history and puts the present Communist challenge in its true light.

  It is this record which has forced that United States and other free nations to unite in mutual defence alliances, starting with the North Atlantic alliance following the fall of Czechoslovakia. It is this record which, following the Communist attack on South Korea, aligned the whole United Nations against Communist aggression and forced the free nations to reverse their unilateral disarmament and to rearm in self-defence. It is this record which prompted our allies to participate in building mutual defence bases on their own soil-bases which were created to forestall further Russian aggression, no to launch a free world offensive. It is this record which prompts and requires the arms blockade of Cuba.

  If nevertheless there has been some basis for hope these past nine years since Stalin's death, it has been because his successor, Premier Khrushchev has appeared to understand some of the imperatives of the terrible new age in which we live. Khrushchev makes no secret that he wants and expects world Communism. We cannot accuse him of deception on that score. But he has repeatedly shown that knows his objective cannot be achieved through thermonuclear war, and he has repeatedly stressed his faith in economic competition, in the alleged superiority of the Soviet economic system over that of the United States, as the chief means

 for convincing the world's people to adopt Communist ideology. At this tense moment in history, above all we must not forget that Premier Khrushchev's relative moderation (as compared with Stalin) has made him the target for repeated attack from Communist China and Albania, both of which have accused him of cowardice and betrayal.

  It is this feature of the Khrushchev record that makes the latest development in Cuba so puzzling. That Khrushchev can lie and be treacherous is not surprising-the fate of Hungary in 1956 long ago informed us of that. But until now the Soviet has given the impression of one who carefully calculated possible gains and possible losses before taking a step. He himself has long ago pointed out properly that he does not need missiles in Cuba to devastate the United States; his missiles in the Soviet Union can do that too. Why, then, has he taken the enormous risks incurred by the latest developments? The suspicion must arise that he and his policy are not necessarily absolutely dominant in the Kremlin, that on this point he may have been overridden by others less impressed by the dangers of the modern world. Alternatively he may be the victim of the kind of self-delusion evident in his jeering comment to Robert Frost that Americans will not fight, as idea much closer to Mao Tse-tung's talk of the United States as a paper tiger than the main line of Khrushchev policy. If this is Khrushchev's mistake, it is a colossal and a fatal one.

  President Kennedy and the American people are fully aware of the hazards of the course that has now been forced upon us. If a misstep were to be made, all humanity might founder. But we cannot and will not permit this direct provocation by the Soviet Union-more political than military-in upsetting the long-established status quo in this hemisphere by creating a potentially offensive nuclear base on our very borders. Premier Khrushchev could still draw back without loss of face by simply stopping his arms shipments to Cuba. When confronted by a great power and a firm determination, the Russians have been willing to draw back from aggressive actions in the past. They withdrew from Iran when to account by the United Nations Security Council. They ended their proxy war in Korea when faced with United Nations resistance.

  It is still incredible that Mr. Khrushchev would fire the first shot against us. And he will not if our military might and also the world's moral forces are mobilized against him. On this, its 17th anniversary, the United Nations must now rise to the challenge and the opportunity to assure both the peace and the security of the world of which it was long ago named the principle trustee.