The sensational cases of kidnapping by Cuban rebels in Oriente Province will undoubtedly do the anti-Batista cause more harm than good.  They demonstrated (what must have surprised Americans) that Fidel Castro and his 26th of July Movement, and not the Havana dictatorship of President Batista, still have the upper hand in the eastern third of Cuban.  This was lost sight of after the fiasco of the April 9 "general strike," for the Government has the most rigid censorship of the news ever seen in Cuba.

Because there was little or no information from Cuba it was concluded that the rebellion had been virtually crushed.  Killings and torturings by police in Havana and elsewhere continued but were kept quiet.  The Government, for at least the tenth time, announced in April that it was launching a "final" campaign to mop up "the remnants" of Castro's forces.  Like all previous offensives in the last year and a half, this one came to nought.

The rebels obviously sought two objectives with these dangerous and rather juvenile escapes.  One was to call attention to the fat that they still operate almost at will in the eastern side of the island.  The other was to register a protest against American policy toward the Batista dictatorship.  On this score they have undoubtedly miscalculated American opinion and done something which in the Spanish term will be "counter-productive."

Cubans as a whole do feel bitter toward the American Government and the American Embassy in Havana, but there are two things to be said about that.  One is that American engineers working a mine in Moa Bay and American soldiers assigned to our naval base at Guantanamo Bay are entirely innocent of American policies.

The other thing to be said is even more important, and the sooner the Cuban opposition learns it is the better.  It may be true that General Batista has the overwhelming mass of the Cuban people against him, but he stays in power because of a failure of this opposition over the past eighteen months to get together and act together.  It is not the United States that keeps General Batista in office, nor is it the business of the United States to overthrow Latin-American dictatorships.  There is a legitimate grievance in Cuba and Latin America as a while (as Vice President Nixon acknowledged after his experiences in South America) over American policies toward dictators, but such policies did not prevent Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela from winning their liberty.

Cubans should fight their own battles and not make innocent Americans victims of what is essentially their own failure.