Congress, for the legislation for which he fought. Mr. Speaker, with permission of the House, I include a number of splendid editorials pertaining to the death of President Kennedy and the ideals, principles, and objectives for which he gave his life: [From the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot] THE PRESIDENT-Let Us Pray for Ourselves, Too When the first news came, it hit all of us. Hard. Some of us wept. Most of us felt like crying. It is always this way when the lightning hits our Presidents. It hits us, too, in a special way. Our Presidents are so much a part of our lives. Above all Americans, our Presidents embody so much that all of us hold close and dear. Wherever our Presidents stand, we stand, too. Whatever the burden they carry, we carry it, too. And the power and the glory. Some of us found this out for the first time, perhaps, when the thunderbolt struck down John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Others of us of another generation, remembering an April day in 1945 when the thunderbolt struck down Franklin D. Roosevelt, recognized it once again. Some of us wept. Most of us felt like crying. For President Kennedy. For his wife. For his little children. And for ourselves and our country. When the lightning strikes, suddenly and unexpectedly, it hits all of us. The storm had swirled around John F. Kennedy in dissent and even anger. A very few among us excoriated his name. Especially in the Deep South where civil rights was becoming a flaming issue, too often consuming reason and simple human decency in its fire. In our Deep North, too, where a few among us have spewed out deprecations and accusations right up to the ugly charge of treason. They have done all of this in the name of patriotism and Americanism, as if John F. Kennedy did not really know or care or try to lead us in the cold war against communism. And so very many among us stayed silent while the lunatic fringe lashed out in passion and hatred. It is little wonder that so many of us wept and so many of us felt like crying. For President Kennedy and his family. And for ourselves and our country. We have prided ourselves so long and so much because, as a free people, we settle our arguments and conduct the institutions of our freedom in reason and in law. And we are reassuring ourselves that President Kennedy was struck down as Lincoln was before him, and Garfield, and McKinley, by a crazed man. Those of us who believed in John F. Kennedy are heartsick. Those of us who were only waiting for next year to try and vote him out of the White House are heartsick, too. He was every American's President. He was, in his very special office, every American. bullets fired by the fanatic hit us all. The Today many of us are praying for John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, and for Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President, who has picked up the terrible burden-and the power and the glory, too. Let us also pray for ourselves. Let us resolve to shed our silence when the extremists and the fanatics cut loose with their wild and reckless oratory, their completely baseless charges, their rumors and their ugly innuendo. Let us speak out for reason, and right, and simple human decency, and let us regard our fellow Americans and the man who leads our Nation in trust and compassion and respect-whatever the differences we may have among ourselves and whatever issues divide us. The finest monument any of us can erect to the memory of President Kennedy will be to do all we can to extinguish the passions and the hatreds which smoulder in this wonderful country he served so very well and loved so very much. [From the Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, INTELLIGENCE WAS HIS HALLMARK-KENNEDY'S MIND (By Eric Sevareid) What was John F. Kennedy? How will he stand in history? As this is written, hours after his death, it is hard even to assemble thoughts, easy to misjudge such a complicated human being. The first thing about him was his driving intelligence. His mind was always on fire; his reading was prodigious; his memory almost total recall of facts and quotations. A friend of mine once crossed the Atlantic on a liner with the Kennedy family, years ago. She remembered the day 12-year-old Jack was ill in his stateroom; there lay the thin, freckled little boy-12 years old, and reading Churchill's early life, other books scattered about his bed. His was a directed intelligence; he did not waste his energies; he always seemed to know where he was going and he put first things first. John Kennedy's intellectuality was perhaps the hallmark of his nature, even more than his youth; the thing that made him different from so many Presidents. But few thought of him as an intellectual in the sense of one seeking truth for its own sake; he sought it, in order to act upon it. He was that rare and precious combination, the man of contemplation as well as the man of action. He had a sharp sense of history from his immense reading, and was acutely conscious of what his own place in history might be. In a sense, he lived for that; much of his personal correspondence as President suggested his awareness that those letters would be part of the American archives and story for all time. He brought a new style into Government; he surrounded himself with intellectuals, as did Franklin Roosevelt in his first years; but in his personal style he was more like President Theodore Roosevelt. Like the first Roosevelt, President Kennedy believed in action; he had no patience with those who were tired or skeptical or cynical; no patience with those who could not keep up mentally or physically. He became, with his young and beautiful wife, the symbol of America as he and most of us like to think of America: itself young, itself always hopeful, believing, and believing that Government could change the face of our land and our lives and that America could do more than any country in the world to change the face and the nature of the world itself. He showed no signs, even after 3 years in office, of growing tired, either in body or spirit but the built-in obstacles to practical achievement were—and remain-prodigious and complex. He began some new practical courses of Government action-as with the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress; these, perhaps, were more imaginative than his domestic conceptions; in any case, it is in the domestic field that his difficulties were the greatest and progress the slowest. Early on, he showed that his way would be to try to conciliate and persuade the Congress, and to compromise with it where he had to, rather than to try bulldozer tactics. Of his bold actions, his nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union over Cuba was the boldest, one of the boldest and most successful acts of statesmanship the history books will ever tell the future about. But at bottom, Mr. Kennedy was a cautious, prudent man. He liked to have all his ducks in a row before he fired. However vibrant in his political behavior, he was, in his deepest emotional nature, a conservative human being. Rarely did the people become aware of his deep feelings about anything. When he spoke to the country by radio or television his head usually ruled his heart. Only in very special circumstances, as on the day of brutal events in Mississippi, did passion rise in his voice as he spoke. This is why some professional observers said that President Kennedy had opened his mind to us, but not his heart ⚫ that therefore, politically, he had not captured the heart of the people. If that was so, it is so no longer; the heart of the people is with the young President in death; with all of his family. The tears of the country are with them; its hopes are with the new President. [From Pottsville Republican] JOHN F. KENNEDY John Fitzgerald Kennedy came to the Presidency of the United States as the bearer of great change. He was the symbol of something new, but he died by something as old as time-the hand of the fanatic. He was the first man born in the 20th century to hold the office and the second youngest in history. He was the first Catholic in the White House. He came as a naval hero of World War II who narrowly had missed death in Pacific waters, and survived a second brush with death in a grave illness 9 years ago. To the Nation's high politics he thus brought a fresh stamp. The well-remarked "Kennedy style" was a blend of intellect, vigor, wit, charm, and a clear talent for growth. On the always shifting, often troubled world scene, he sometimes moved with more caution than expected in young leadership. Soon after entering the White House, he gamely took full blame for the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco as an enterprise sadly lacking in boldness. Yet only his worst enemies withheld from him the label "courageous" when he moved resolutely against Soviet Premier Khrushchev in the great Russian missile crisis in Cuba in late 1962. And he boldly pressed for an East-West test ban treaty this year in the face of heavy charges that this imperiled our security. In domestic affairs Kennedy won much of his program in beginning 1961, gained far less the following year, and encountered a major stalemate in 1963. The constant note against him was insufficient leadership. But again, when 1963 brought the greatest crisis of this century, Kennedy-at acknowledged heavy political cost-committed himself to sweeping civil rights proposals that opened a vast new battleground. Amid all his efforts to put the imprint of vigorous, imaginative youth upon the country's affairs in the 1960's, the late President found himself moving against a deepening background of protest, with an ugly underscoring of violence which he sought with only limited success to wipe away. Much of this protest went to the steady encroachments of the Federal Government and its rising cost. But the bitterest reaction was white and Negro response to the enlarging racial struggle. The far right gave the mood its most perilous texture. That is the greater tragedy. With the calamity in Dallas the lesson of the danger inherent in violent extremism now may be deeply implanted in America's conscience. In this way, Kennedy in death may achieve what the living President could not do to curb the almost ungovernable rancor that increasingly discolored the politics of his brief time in power. It was John Kennedy's good fortune to surmount many obstacles to rise to his country's highest office and bring with him the winds of a new era. It was his final tragedy that as he labored in difficult times to use these forces for the Nation's and the world's gain, they were swiftly challenged by countering winds of bitter reaction. In Dallas, one swift gust struck him down. The Nation thus loses a young leader whose great promise lived in the shadow of great controversy. The way he died must inescapably cost all Americans deeply in self-esteem as freemen of good will. [From The Reading (Pa.) New Era, AFL-CIO Paper] WHY? (By Bob Gerhart) As memories of emotion-packed scenes starting in Dallas and ending in Arlington continue to flash through my mind, I constantly ask myself the simple question, "Why?" And then when the finality of this tragic slaying of our beloved President, John F. Kennedy, sinks in and another man moves into the White House, the anger and bitterness that mingled with grief and sorrow give way to a feeling that we must get on with the job. Maybe it is the electronic journalism called television that is responsible for our feelings. Cameras were there when a bleeding young man was cradled in the arms of a loving wife and mother while an open car sped 100 miles an hour to a hospital. In our very living room all of us watched the sombre events unfold-a returning of the body to Washington that same day; the dramatic escort of President Kennedy's body from the White House to the Capitol rotunda; the all-night vigil which saw the face of America move silently past the bier in the heart of our democracy; the moving events in St. Matthew's Cathedral where Cardinal Cushing commended President Kennedy's soul unto God; the melancholy beat of muffled drums as the horse-drawn caisson left the Cathedral with the mortal remains of the leader of the free world; and finally, interment of President Kennedy's body in Arlington Cemetery, shrine of the Nation's honored dead. And then, almost stealthily it was all over and the inexorable movement of time was inaugurating a new period, a new administration in American life, leaving the period from last Friday to Monday evening with a nightmarish quality-also as if you had to shake yourself occasionally to eradicate the disbelief. It couldn't happen, it wouldn't happen, but it did. There now can be no doubt as to the love our people held for President Kennedy. Despite all the antagonism created in the press and by the hate cult that was being encouraged of high places reminiscent of the Roosevelthaters of two decades ago, despite the bitterness which responsible individuals held against him over the civil rights controversy, despite the assaults on the entire Kennedy family by the hate elements of the extremist right wing including at least one presidential aspirant-despite all of these things, President Kennedy was loved by the people. The outpouring of emotions over the weekend in front of the cameras which recorded the tragic event was a far more potent testimonial to this man's closeness to the common people than all the Gallup polls and political prognostications which, by and large, were controlled and manipulated by the very people who wanted to defeat him by what apparently has become standard format in American political life-namely, character assassination. The very least that should evolve from this bodily assassination of the President of the United States is a reappraisal of what has been happening to the democracy which we say we cherish. Can there be any doubt that the hatreds inflamed on our political scene by reckless assaults on public figures for partisan political advantage was not to a great measure responsible for the climate in which a man by the name of Oswald found justification for his horrible crime? Just review the guilt by association devices and the dirty tactics employed in the recent election right here in Reading and Berks County and you have a pretty good idea of what we mean. Discussing the issues is no longer the American way. All you do today is call the other guy a crook and then lumps everyone on his side together and you have a formula for winning elections. And is it merely a coincidence that this is the method employed by one of our major parties consistently to achieve power and control at local, State, and National levels? Even Vice President Nixon, in his brief eulogy for President Kennedy, lamented the atmosphere in which the assassination took place and called on the American people to "reduce hatred that has driven men to this terrible deed." It is no secret that Dallas is the hotbed of the radical right in the South. Not only is it a center of unlimited wealth but it is the cradle of numerous extremist movements which embark upon forays into the far reaches of America, preaching hatred and spewing vituperation in its wake. Hate movements take many forms. Its ugly head may appear in the religious arena where innocent clergymen may be duped into serving as its tool under the guise of advancing Christianity. What a mockery. It may appear in a Hitlerian mask seeking to divide Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. It may appear cloaked in the American flag preaching a doctrine of hatred for foreign lands and advocating a cruel isolationism by withdrawing from the United Nations. It may appear in the form of the billboard which I saw recently on the outskirts of Harrisburg boldly exhorting passersby to "Impeach Earl Warren," Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Adlai Stevenson, U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations, revealed in an interview with Martin Agronsky, NBC newscaster, that after the threat to his own life in Dallas, recently, he thought about the cloud of hate that hovered over the Texas city and then called the White House urging them to cancel out the President's trip. Stevenson said he was reacting to instinct. However, the President decided to go there anyhow to see whether he couldn't provide the moderating influence to bring warring parties to their sense. Maybe he has now done so in martyrdom. Yet, even though our Nation shudders at the thought of what has happened in this great land of the free"it can't happen here, only in South America, Europe, and Asia, we said"-can you imagine that there are people like the man in a local industry who called the assassination “my best Christmas present"? Hatreds may have temporarily been submerged in the sea of grief that engulfed the Nation. But make no mistake. The attitudes are still present because they are in the hearts of some people. And what meaning does the President's slaying have to us here in Reading and Berks County? Has it mellowed the hearts of those who espoused President Kennedy's legislative cause yet permitted petty rivalries and bitterness to split and divide us? Will there now be a reappraisal, a new approach? Will we be able to rise above the bickering and envy to mold a sensible spirit of cooperation for the future? President Kennedy's unexpected death is forcing the Nation to take a new look and make a new beginning under the leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Can we do less here at home? [From Time magazine] How SORROWFUL BAD In halting English, a Moslem telegraph operator in the Middle East tapped out on the telex: "Is it correct Kennedy killed pls?" When New York replied, “Yes, an hour ago," the Moslem signed off, "How sorrowful bad." As the shadow of the news spread across the world, it was received everywhere with stunned disbelief. The Empress of Iran broke into tears, as did the President of Tanganyika, and countless anonymous men and women. Along Rome's Via Veneto grief sounded operatic. "E morto." People called to one another, and at a cocktail party the guests put down their glasses and began to recite the Lord's Prayer. Wherever monarchs still ruled-in the United Kingdom, in Jordan-formal court mourning was proclaimed. Hardly a nation in the world failed to order the rites of tolling bells and lowered flags. Theaters and sports arenas closed down on individual impulse. With the news of Kennedy's death, a Viennese ice show halted in midperformance; in Belgium, a 6-day bicycle race was interrupted; in distant Nepal, the ceremonial opening of a leprosarium was postponed. Everywhere, bars, cafés and restaurants emptied long before closing time. Strangers spoke to each other in short, simple phrases-"Poor Jackie," or "How awful," or "It can't be true." The phones of Americans abroad never ceased ringing, as foreign friends and acquaintances―or even total strangers-called to offer sympathy. The streets in front of U.S. embassies were jammed with mourners who stood in line for hours to write their names in books of condolence. Some brought flowers, but many searched out an American diplomat merely to shake his hand. MONSTROUS ACT One by one the statesmen joined the chorus of commiseration. As Big Ben tolled every minute for 1 hour (a gesture normally reserved for deaths in the royal family), Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home said: "There are times when the mind and the heart stand still." From Sir Winston Churchill came a statement: "The monstrous act has taken from us a great statesman and a wise and valiant man." The words still seemed to carry the old, sibilant indignation of the ancient lion. Liberia's President William Tubman cabled: "The urn of grief has been opened and is being filled with tears of friends the world over.' Israel's David Ben-Gurion only asked: "Why, why?" " Almost by reflex, people rushed to disclaim even remote complicity in the murder. "Thank God it wasn't a Negro," said a Negro in Toronto. Many others insisted on reading into the event their own political passions. Statesmen in Africa, Asia and elsewhere insisted that the deed must have been done by a racist, and that Kennedy was a martyr like Lincoln or Gandhi. And Nehru could not resist remarking that the murder gave evidence of "dark corners in the United States, and this great tragedy is a slap for the concept of democracy." GOLDEN BOY The mourning voices first of all were for the President of the United States, regardless of his name or identity. For in a sense far beyond daily foreign policy squabbles, he is to much of the world the protector of the weak, the benefactor of the poor. Because of the changes in the cold war climate that occurred during his administration, millions, even on the enemy side, mourned John Kennedy as a man of peace. But above all they mourned him for his person. Perhaps even more than his own countrymen, other peoples saw in him the embodiment of American virtues-youth, strength, informality, good looks, the idealistic belief that all problems can eventually be solved. A Southern Rhodesian paper called him "the golden boy," and Common Market President Walter Hallstein said that Kennedy "personified the most beautiful qualities of his people." Possibly more than any other President in U.S. history, he had set out to charm the world, and he had succeeded in convincing many a nation that it was his special favorite. Alive, John Kennedy had been particularly idolized by the citizens of West Germany, who received him last June as they had no other foreign leader. When the President told a crowd of 150,000 West Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner," the German people were his. Dead, John Kennedy was instantly enshrined by Germans as a hero. On the night of his assassination, 25,000 West Berlin students assembled and marched on city hall, where Mayor Willy Brandt, exhausted from a trip to Africa, told them: "I know how many are weeping tonight. We Berliners are poorer tonight. We all have lost one of the best." West Germany's Chancellor Ludwig Erhard was on his special train returning from a Paris meeting with Charles de Gaulle. A scotch and soda at his elbow, he was briefing himself for a trip to Washington to see Kennedy, scheduled for this week. When Erhard's press chief came suddenly into the car and blurted out the news that Kennedy was dead, Erhard sat in stunned silence. Finally he murmured, "Unfassbar, kaum fassbar [Inconceivable, hardly conceivable]." UNDER FIRE In Paris, the news reached President de Gaulle in his private apartments at the Elysée Palace. He turned on his TV set. When Kennedy's death was confirmed, De Gaulle -himself twice the target of assassination attempts-called in his staff. His face drawn and pale, he dictated his statement of condolence: "President Kennedy has died like a soldier, under fire." Russia's Red Army Choir, performing at Paris' Palais des Sports, interrupted its program for the announcement of the death and then, after a moment of silence, sang a Schubert lied in Kennedy's memory. In Geneva, Swiss citizens jammed traffic by abandoning their cars in the middle of the streets to snatch up newspapers. An old woman, tears staining her cheeks, cried, "What an age we are living in." In Spain, no foreigner has ever won the public's heart as had Kennedy. Said a Madrid editor, "Nothing has jolted me so much since the start of our own civil war." Americans were sought out for a pat on the shoulder, a comforting phrase such as "Hombre, lo siento mucho [Man, I feel deeply]." 1 Nenni, with tears in his eyes, said: "These are little affairs of ours, in the face of this tragedy for the whole world." At the Vatican, Pope Paul went to his private chapel to pray for the wounded President and, after the news of his death, said mass. To Ireland, John Kennedy was the apotheosis of the country's hopes and history-the great-grandson of a poor emigrant who had stormed the ramparts of the New World and won its highest honor. He was looked upon, said the Irish Times, "as a younger brother and with great affection." REICHSTAG FIRE On the other side of the Iron Curtain, Chairman Nikita Khrushchev and two aides drove to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Dressed in black and looking noticeably depressed, Khrushchev spoke for 19 minutes with U.S. Ambassador Foy Kohler, reminiscing about the slain President. Khrushchev's wife Nina cabled Jacqueline Kennedy. The genuine dismay in Russia was soon modified by politics, when it turned out that the prime suspect was a self-declared Marxist who had lived in Russia. Said one Soviet journalist suspiciously: "Is this affair being whipped up in the press? Is the situation grim?" Said another Russian taking up what sounded like an emerging propaganda line: "Remember that they found a Communist who started the Reichstag fire." In the Middle East, one Iraqi was amazed: "We are used to this kind of thing in Arab countries. But in America?" In the Congo, East Katanga's President Edouard Bulundwe and his entire cabinet, together with their seldom seen wives, trooped into the home of the U.S. consul. "This is how we behave in Africa when a great chief dies," explained Bulundwe as they sat stiffly in the drawing room. "President Kennedy will be mourned in even the smallest village of our country as a man who cared for and worked for the blacks." It was the same in Asia. In Thailand, authorities sent sound trucks into the villages to spread the mournful news that Prathanathibodi [President] Kennedy was dead. In Saigon, people were more shocked by Kennedy's death than they had been by that of President Diem; and Buddhists held special memorial services and prayers. In Japan, technicians were up before dawn to receive the historic first transpacific TV broadcast from the United States, which was to have included a personal message from the President. Instead, the voice of a Japanese newsman in Manhattan reported the news of Kennedy's death. In all of Asia, Red China was almost alone in its determined lack of sympathy. Peiping radio carried the Kennedy story without comment. The Hong Kong Communist New Evening Post sneered that Kennedy had "used a two-faced policy to promote an imperialist war course." VANISHING BAITERS Even Cuba proved less surly than Red China. Fidel Castro deplored the murder, said he had no reason to wish for Kennedy's death, but conceded that "perhaps" Cuba might have had motives "to feel like it" and vaguely suggested that "reactionaries" were really to blame. Elsewhere in Latin America, all the Yankee baiting seemed to disappear for the moment. A sense of pessimism about the future gripped Brazil, and the downtown streets of Rio de Janeiro were filled with people whose tight faces, glazed eyes and unaccustomed silence revealed their feelings. In the favelas (shantytowns) on Rio's outskirts, samba bands called off their rehearsals for the carnival, and President João Goulart said about Kennedy: "I kneel before his memory." The most eloquent Latin American voices were those heard in the street. A janitor in Quito, who had been listening to the news on radio, refused to read his newspaper because "it's too painful to go over such a sad story again." Despite later revelations about the crime, most Latin Americans persisted in believing that Kennedy had been slain because of his support for Negro rights. In Buenos Aires, women cried, "Qué barbiridad," and old men made sad, futile gestures with their hands. Said one grieving Colombian: "It seems as though all the Presidents in all the Latin American countries have died." To the north, throughout Canada, theaters and arenas closed their doors, and large cities became hushed with a curious quiet. Prime Minister Lester Pearson was just about to open a session of Parliament when he was handed a note. He threw it on the top of his desk, slumped back in his seat and seemed at a loss for words. His voice broke as he said: "The world can ill afford at this time in our history to lose a man of his courage." History's more precise appraisals would come later, as would the resumption of all the world's usual enmities. But for a brief time at least, the U.N. General Assembly, standing in silence, was in a mood to agree with U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who said: "All of us who knew him will bear the grief of his death to the day of ours." [From the New Era] THE AMERICANS (By Jere L. Gabrielle) It's 2:30 in the morning of Monday, November 25. You're tired. You're emotionally drained by the events of the past 2 days. Your eyes are smarting under the strain of watching, watching, watching. Your ears somehow absorb the repetition of the macabre events that have transpired. You know you should hit the sack but you sit there transfixed, tired eyes glued to the television screen. Actually you don't really know why you sit there trying to stay awake at 2:30 in the morning. You tell yourself it must have become a habit that started on Friday afternoon. Just one of those crazy ideas that you might miss something if you stopped staring. Then through the haze of your clouded thoughts you suddenly realize what really holds you there. It isn't curiosity. It isn't a stubborn desire to sweat this out to the bitter end. It is people. You, sitting there in the comfort of your living room, are enjoying the privilege of a front-row-center look at America. The voice of the commentator interrupts your reverie to tell you that people are silently passing before your eyes at the rate of about 5,000 an hour and that the prospects of the thousands who wait, in a line that extends for some |