Petition Condemns Aid To Anti-Castro Forces

A petition urging President Kennedy to cease giving military and economic aid to Cuban revolutionary groups is being circulated among members of the Faculty.

Conceived and worded by Linda Greenberg '62, the document condemns aid to "political and military groups operating against the government of Cuba" on both moral and tactical grounds. It stresses the non-interventionist clauses of the Charter of the Organization of American states and the United Nations Charter, both of which the United States government has signed.

Faculty members who have already endorsed the petition include H. Stuart Hughes, professor of History, Reginald R. Isaacs, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning, Nadav Safran, instructor in Government, Laurence Wylie, Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France, and Robert P. Wolff, instructor in Philosophy.

New York Times articles by Tad Szulc and James Reston heightened Miss Greenberg's concern over the Administration's current policy toward the revolutionary groups.

Reston's article cited divergent views in the Administration. Although we are frightened of Castro spreading a pro-Communist revolution throughout South America, Reston explained, our treaties commit us to a position of neutrality. Any violation of those treaties would endanger the United States' reputation of moral integrity in a world in which U.S. policy is based on a series of alliances.

Expressing sympathy with the petition, Samuel H. Beer, professor of Government, warned that although Latin American leaders would be "overjoyed" if the coup were executed with the rapidity of another Guatemala, the most success the counter revolutionists could hope for would be "a bitter prolonged civil war."

He noted that a long war would greatly impair our position in Latin America.

Luigi R. Einaudi, Teaching Fellow in Government, said he agrees with the petition's contention that we ought not to support what he termed "a rather motley crew of exiles in an open revolution on Castro."

But Einaudi has declined to sign the petition, maintaining that it ought to stress "political, not legal and psuedo moralistic problems."

For example, Einaudi expressed concern that Castro would be murdered and thereby become a martyr for the procommunist cause.