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COpy COpy -3- COpy thing in the long-run would be better for the people and, of course, better for him as well. As I ~ave already in- dicatedre was incredibly naive with regar~ to the Communist threat end cppeared to have no fear whatever tfuat the Commu- nists might eventually come to power in cnoa_ He said that during the course of the revolution there had been occasions when the Communists overplayed their hand. ancll. -my people put them in their place." He implied that this WOJlilld be the situation in the future in the event that the Comm.t:e:lls1t.s tried to come to power. As a matter of fact, in his attitmde toward Com- munism, both internally and from an interm.atimmal standpoint, he sounded almost exactly like Sukarno haC.- S<!l>lmded to me when I visited Indonesia in 1953. In our discussions of Communism I again tried to cast the arguments in terms of his own self-interest and to point out tczt ~e revolution which 4e had led might be turneq against hi.Im and the Cuban people unless he kept control of- the sii:m.::.-tiDn and made sure that the Communists did not get into the: pos:ii.tions of poWer and influence. On this score I feel I I1I2.Ce very little im- pression, if any. Speaking to him from a personal s~anropo~nt I urged hi.m at the· earliest possible moment to b~.-n.g- good strong men into his government and to delegate :r:responsibilities to them in the economic and other areas WD.e:a:e lIfe presently was making many decisions. I tried to point out that unless he did this rewould have a workload which WlDp.CE be so great that he could not provide the leadership and ~e ~sion-that the Cuban people needed for the great issues • I:: put as much em- phasis as possible on the need for him be delegate responsi- bility', but again whether I got across w-=s diDubtful. It was apparent that while he pai~ Lip service to such. institutions as freedom of speec~, ~=css and religion his primary- concern was with developing ?=osrams for economic progress. He said over and over that a "J:L21l -w'"'ho worked in the sugar cane fields for three months a yeer and starved the rest of the year wanted a job, some~s .to eat, a house and some clothing and didn I t care a whit :bont whether he had freedom alongwith it. I of course tried ~o emphasize that here again a£ a leader of his people, he should try to de- velop support for policies which could ~5u=e economic pro- gress with freedom rather than without. i.-=_ . COpy COpy COpy