SIR. — Mr. Robert Conquest says, 'if the signatories [of the Tynan
letter to the Times] really favour the professed aims of the Castro Government • . . then they should support the rebels. For that is precisely their programme—the original revolution without totalitarian terror.'
On what basis, other than hope and trust, do these words rest? Neither the rebels nor the Kennedy Administration have ever defined, with any precise- ness, what they regard the 'original revolution' as including, nor how mudi of the land redistribution and the nationalisation measures, which have already been adopted, would be retained. When one sees therefore, in such an anti-Castro magazine as Time (April 28), that one of the three leaders of the re- bellion, Manuel de Varona, is quoted as saying, 'the need for agrarian reform in Cuba is a myth,' then surely any liberal is entitled to regard the CIA- backed invasion forces with scepticism.
A genuine social and economic revolution is, historically, an extremely rare event. On historical form, is it so surprising that many non-Socialist members of the moderate Left feel that if the Cuban rebels had been in power from January, 1959, the Cuban economic and social revolution would not have occurred?—Yours faithfully,
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