The Inquest

The early editorial cheers that accompanied the anti-Castro rebels had subsided, along with the chorus of dismay that followed the news of disaster. Last week it was time for the inquest, and the U.S. press turned to the gloomy business of explaining what went wrong.

We Americans, wrote C. L. Sulzberger in the New York Times, "look like fools to our friends, rascals to our enemies and incompetents to the rest." The Times's Washington Bureau Chief James Reston was equally embarrassed: "For the first time in his life, John F. Kennedy has taken a public licking. Cuba was a clumsy and humiliating one, which makes it worse." The New York Post's Max Lerner wallowed in despair: "Love is never enough when pitted against death in an unequal struggle." In the New York Daily News, Ted Lewis sounded almost grateful that "a little of the self-assurance of the Kennedy Administration has rubbed off as a result of the Cuban invasion fiasco." Concluded Columnist Russell Reeves in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Cuban events last week demonstrated that life is unlike the television westerns. The good guys do not always win."

In the rush to select a scapegoat, most newsmen nominated the Central Intelligence Agency. "America would be safer," said the Raleigh News and Observer, if CIA Chief Allen Dulles "were allowed to depart, taking his frayed cloak and blunt dagger with him into private life." Chicago's American indicted the CIA for "a gigantic goof," and even Columnist Eleanor Roosevelt suggested mildly that the CIA "was not very well informed."

Readily Available. But the Charleston News and Courier sighted in on far bigger game: "Not much time remains for the education of John F. Kennedy. In his first great crisis, he bungled horribly." The Chicago Tribune, while joining the general applause for Kennedy's forceful statement on Cuba before a meeting of newspaper editors in Washington, suggested that the time had come for presidential action to speak louder than presidential words. Kennedy's speech, said the Tribune, "did not answer the questions which arise from his statement that the climax in the struggle against Communism would come in the early 1960s and that the hour is late. Where and when is the stand to be made?"

Some newsmen suggested that answers were readily available. From the Memphis Commercial Appeal came a call for national heroism: "We are going to have to face up to austerity and sacrifice with a willingness not lately manifested in our conduct as a people. Each American must decide how ready he is and how far he will follow President Kennedy's determined leadership on a rough and rugged road. The American who holds back is already doomed. The well-armed Red gravediggers are knocking on our door."

Columnist David Lawrence, the Newark Star-Ledger and the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle raised the possibility of a Cuban blockade, and there was wide agreement with the opinion of Ralph McGill, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, that "Castro will, soon or late, have to go." Hearst Columnist George Sokolsky recommended a prompt armed invasion of Cuba by the U.S.: "Certainly, time is wasting. Do we have to stand still until Soviet Russia has established a missile and a submarine base in Cuba?"

No Threat. Amid the criticisms and complaints, a few papers and columnists strained to see signs of hope. "The landings in Cuba cannot be called a successful military operation," said the Los Angeles Times, "but if they were responsible for putting new strength and determination into American policy, they served a most valuable function." From his Olympian vantage point, Columnist Walter Lippmann dispensed balm to a perturbed nation. Little countries such as Cuba, he assured his readers, "cannot pose a vital threat to the security of the United States, and we must not exaggerate their importance." The New York Times delivered a solemn editorial lecture: "History is not like a boxing match or a baseball game. It flows like a river. It is hard to be patient under such provocation and defeat as we have experienced. Yet it is the mark of true strength to take both defeat and victory in one's stride."

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