U.S. Policy Towards Cuba "One Of Appeasement”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29520, 23 May 1961, Page 17

U.S. Policy Towards Cuba "One Of Appeasement”

United States policy towards Communist activities in Latin American countries, which he described as one of appeasement, was criticised yesterday by Mr E. W. Scott, who forecast that the United States would lose the Panama Canal and its base in Cuba. Mr Scott, who spent nine years in Havana and narrowly escaped execution by Dr. Fidel Castro's militia, was addressing the Canterbury branch of the Wellington College Old Boys’ Association. He is an old boy of the college. “What is happening in Cuoa today can happen anywhere, in contradiction of the phrase often used in Australia and New Zealand: It can't happen here.' ” Mr Scott said. “It can happen anywhere where there is a state of chaos, whether that chaos is the result of armed action or industrial interruption by strikes and sabotage instigated by international communism. “The Communists are active everywhere. They use the attitude of 'it is only a red herring' or the attitude of •you see Communist saboteurs behind every bush. There are Communist saboteurs behind every bush. They are waiting in every country. They use our democratic institutions to wreak chaos.' The United States had inspired. financed, and armed the counter-revolution in Cuba, but unfortunately it was a disastrous failure. Mr Scott said. “Now the United States appears to be supporting its former policy of appeasement. Cubans want to buy back with bulldozers people captured by Castro in the counter-revolution. That is just blackmail. This policy of appeasement is a vicious thing. The United States will lose the Panama Canal and it will lose its naval base on Cuba.

“Castro will let the Americans 1 eep their base on Cuba because Cubans earn dollars there and he uses it for intelligence purposes. Then he will five it to the Russians, saving They are my allies, and I must treat them as well as the Americans.’ ” Mr Scott said. Mr Scott said that the President of Guatemala (General Ydigoras Fuentes) had told him that an uprising in that country had been engineered by Dr Castro and that Cuban aircraft had dropped supplies to the rebels. He had been criticised in New York for comparing the attitude of American policymakers with that of Neville Chamberlain in 1938, said Mr Scott. “But I answ’ered that, c npared with some Americans. Chamberlain was a sabre-rattling warmonger.

Castro was created by the Americans.” Mr Scott said he was not the kind of person who returned to New Zealand with a message or plan of ideals for the future. “But when 1 see the state of full employment here, the comparative well-being, and contrast it • ith the poverty, children dying in the streets and young girls forced into prostitution because it is the only thing they have to sell, the utter chaos in Cuba, then I consider New Zealand has something to be proud of.

"When men in Havana are taken out to be shot like dogs after a trial and appeal hearing between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.. then I consider New Zealand has something worth looking after,” M r Scott said.