LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From: Philip M. Williams, Sir Joshua Hassan, C. Montegrifjo, Patrick Spain, Judy Williams. W. H. N.- Hotopf, Lord Kinross, Professor Sir Denis Brogan, Lewis Nkosi, Ian Hunter, John L. Rouse. P. J. Honey, Freda Cook, K. Moutrie. S. M. Hazelton.
Dominican Intervention
SIR,—Mr. Br.ian Crozier may well be alarmed that so many people mistrust President Johnson and condemn his intervention in the Dominican Repub- lic. For his leading critics in Latin America are pre- cisely those leaders and governments who were the staunchest friends of the United State; under Presi- dent Kennedy: the genuine reformers and demo- crats who hoped they could trust their northern neighbour to oppose the militarist as well as the Communist enemies of democracy. They would mis- trust Mr. Johnson less today if he had acted to defend freedom in 1963, when the Dominican generals overthrew a democratic President with a recent and overwhelming mandate. At that time the Communist and Castroite parties were negligible; since then, Mr. Crozier tells us. they have so flourished that they could seize control of a popular non-Communist uprising to restore democracy. If so, the suppression of freedom by the right has con- jured into existence a threat from the left. If the United States applied her professed principles less one-sidedly, her interests might be better served and her reputation would stand higher.
Nuffield College, Oxford
PHILIP M. WILLIAMS
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