The Week

Fidel Castro’s May Day speech was a while ago but, like the Gettysburg Address, it should live on. Unlike the Gettysburg, Castro’s speech dealt with ways to save electricity. Kerosene stoves were preferable to electric. Wash-and-wear clothes don’t need ironing, therefore… Elevators often are stuck because of power failures. Castro wants to “build the first five floors [of all apartment buildings] without elevators.” That way, Castro reasons, a smaller percentage of the population will be stranded in elevators. Athletes will live above the twentieth floor and when “electricity goes off and the elevators don’t work, this provides a magnificent opportunity to have an Olympic race straight up,” Castro says. Finishing, he spoke of the Cuban way of getting along: “We have rationing here. Capitalism doesn’t have rationing. It has money.”

Although Hubert Humphrey had been making increasingly doveish noises all spring, he has responded firmly to Ted Kennedy’s assertion that President Nixon is deliberately extending the war for political motives. Kennedy had said, in a speech to the National Convocation of Lawyers To End the War which was entered into the Congressional Record by Senator Philip Hart: “The President invokes his Quaker heritage—and today, we indiscriminately bomb innocent Asian people…. At last, the ultimate cynical reality of our policy is beginning to dawn on the American people. The only possible excuse for continuing the discredited policy of Vietnamizing the war, now and in the months ahead, seems to be the President’s intention to play his last great card for peace at a time closer to November 1972, when the chances will be greater that the action will benefit the coming Presidential election campaign. How many more American soldiers must die, how many innocent Vietnamese civilians must be killed, so that the final end to the war may be announced in 1972 instead of 1971?” When Robert Dole brought the matter up on the Senate floor the next day, Humphrey said: “Some of us think there ought to be a time [deadline] expressed. The President disagrees. That is his point of view. I do not think that makes him bad or cynical. It is a matter of judgment…. I believe the President does want peace. We got into this war with all of us sharing responsibility for getting into it. I believe we have to share the responsibility for getting out of it…. I think the President of the United States wants this war over. I do not think he wants the blood of Americans to be lost. I do not think he wants the lives of Americans to be lost. I think he wants peace. I will try to help him get it.”

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Fidel Castro’s May Day speech was a while ago but, like the Gettysburg Address, it should live on. Unlike the Gettysburg, Castro’s speech dealt with ways to save electricity. Kerosene stoves were preferable to electric. Wash-and-wear clothes don’t need ironing, therefore… Elevators often are stuck because of power failures. Castro wants to “build the first five floors [of all apartment buildings] without elevators.” That way, Castro reasons, a smaller percentage of the population will be stranded in elevators. Athletes will live above the twentieth floor and when “electricity goes off and the elevators don’t work, this provides a magnificent opportunity to have an Olympic race straight up,” Castro says. Finishing, he spoke of the Cuban way of getting along: “We have rationing here. Capitalism doesn’t have rationing. It has money.”

Although Hubert Humphrey had been making increasingly doveish noises all spring, he has responded firmly to Ted Kennedy’s assertion that President Nixon is deliberately extending the war for political motives. Kennedy had said, in a speech to the National Convocation of Lawyers To End the War which was entered into the Congressional Record by Senator Philip Hart: “The President invokes his Quaker heritage—and today, we indiscriminately bomb innocent Asian people…. At last, the ultimate cynical reality of our policy is beginning to dawn on the American people. The only possible excuse for continuing the discredited policy of Vietnamizing the war, now and in the months ahead, seems to be the President’s intention to play his last great card for peace at a time closer to November 1972, when the chances will be greater that the action will benefit the coming Presidential election campaign. How many more American soldiers must die, how many innocent Vietnamese civilians must be killed, so that the final end to the war may be announced in 1972 instead of 1971?” When Robert Dole brought the matter up on the Senate floor the next day, Humphrey said: “Some of us think there ought to be a time [deadline] expressed. The President disagrees. That is his point of view. I do not think that makes him bad or cynical. It is a matter of judgment…. I believe the President does want peace. We got into this war with all of us sharing responsibility for getting into it. I believe we have to share the responsibility for getting out of it…. I think the President of the United States wants this war over. I do not think he wants the blood of Americans to be lost. I do not think he wants the lives of Americans to be lost. I think he wants peace. I will try to help him get it.”