f wound 41 JS ftightening: Ca White A letter from Cuba > Merica, I write to you from Cuba, "A Where, through the night, in threatening beams. heasy light falls on cliffs and faces, mM cheekbones of tense guards, frozen hard as stone. Ulliver-like, their shadows tower, Ministers and medicos, wasting no word, change i their coats Or uniforms redolent of old campfires. he cigarerro with his pistol comes to the port: he bootboy is cleaning an old machine-gun: © showgirl, in soldier’s laced-up boots, arches to her post with a lathe-hand. faving their brushes and debates. Urrying on down to the waterfront through the rain, tern-faced painters, the realists and abstractionists. eck up their machine-guns, Merica, I ask you in plain Russian: Feel you no shame, that in your holy hypocrisy °u have forced them to take up arms, Md then you condemn them for ‘that?’ €Sisting all your four curses, your blockade, nd fatigued in the fight, : ll they are higher and more noble, America, And So they behave to you. heard Fidel speak— ‘ *Xamination as searching as a doctor’s or accuser’s. his words there was no shadow of shrill hatred. Ut with sadness he outlined the evil done. ce, in his youth, with sprightly gait, del ran up the steps, where birdsong was heard Md stopped at the statue of Lincoln. And looked at him straight in the eye. nd, today, speaking of crooked deeds, lenching his fist with mighty force, del still looks with honest gaze at Lincoln's eyes. Ang Lincoln, what would Lincoln say? h, Amerjca, how could you allow them; ‘©m the nation’s highest tribunal, ith ignoble words to put to shame _- Symbol of freedom above your land? ®u have insulted not Cubans alone, Sinting with vain boast at your fleet: Shy, many nations smart at your insults. Among them you can count the people of America. Ow the American people: good at heart they are, @ I cannot say: ‘To the devil with them and their fate.” .“°el shame for those that hold their peace, “tgetting the essence of their sacred rights, Nit be that you would become a dwarf? erica, put your might to rights. : Tegain your erstwhile greatness, @ blind gamble once lost, in be hard, © One little island, standing firm, "as indeed become a mighty land. © YEVGENI YEVTUSHENKO “VER AGAIN WAR” — a drawing for an gasteea ane the 1920's by the German woman artist, Kaethe tz, tn. S me to see a mighty nation: stoop to vile deeds. ‘U.S. hypocrisy bared by searching author Studies of War, by P. M. S. Blackett. Available at Peo- ple’s Co-op Book Store. It is useful, at a; time like this, to be reminded in an article by Prof. Blackett, first published 14 years ago, that the American Chiefs-of-Staff “prepared in some detail plang ‘for the waging of an rtomic wat against Russia” That was before Russia it- self had the atom bomb, and Prof. Blackett quotes Gen- eral George C. Kenney, Com- mander of the U.S. Strategic Air Force, who _ described these plans.in Newsweek of May 17, 1948: “American strategists aire thinking in terms of closing the circle of air bases around Russia, making it smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter, until the Russians are throt- tled. “This means getting bases through combined air, sea and ground operations ever closer. to Russia’s heartland, then using the bases for sus- tained bombing and guided- missile attacks.” * * * This, of course, helps to show up the hypocrisy of the current American pretext for its attack on Cuba. It is only one of very many examples of exceedingly use- ful facts and arguments re- published in this book. _Possibly the most import- ant is the article ‘“‘The Real Road to Disarmament”, first published in March. Prof. Blackett shows Soviet mili- tary planning to be defensive and American planning offen- sive. On this basis he explains the U.S. demand for on-site inspection as part of its need to pin-point targets for its offensive strategy. BOOKS The pro'essor dismisses the idea of a European, as op- posed to a NATO, deterrent. “T have failed,” he says, “to envisage any possible way in which a dozen independent pations could make arrange- ments for the joint control of nuclear forces, which avoided on the one hand the danger of divided and ponderous control as to remove its mili- tary value, and on the other the much greater danger of careless or irresponsible ac- tion by one nation involving the others. “In fact, I can see no plaus- ible way in which the Euro- pean defence community can survive, either with its own jointly owned nuclear forces, or with individual national nuclear forces.” He believes, ‘for instance, that the present situation in Britain “with an American Safety-catch on. all its own nuclear weapons’, to be more stable. but that to keep it stable Britain should re- nounce its own nucleair forces, for ‘otherwise their spread to other countries will never be checked.” Whether Prof. Blackett will revise his opinion of the Am- erican finger on the nuclear trigger as qa stabilizing force, in view of the reckless action taken over Cuba, remains to ‘be seen. —-WILLTAM WAINWRIGHT for medici Research into the use of snake venom for medicinal purposes has been going on in the Soviet re- public of Uzbekistan for a long time now. By applying prepara- tions made by a cobra venom Professor Artavazd Melik-Kara- myan, of the Tashkent first aid clinic, has cured many patients suffering from asthma and grave nervous diseases. His ‘‘cobro- toxin” (as the professor calls his preparation) is generally recog- nized in medicine. Other drugs, with a _ snake’s head on their label, are also widely known, and the future will undoubtedly show that mir- aculous properties are contained in the limpid drop of venom that has so far been only a source of fear to man. * * * But that poison is not easy to obtain; firstly, because snakes do not reproduce easily in captivity; secondly, they do not voluntarily abandon their mortal weapon. Therefore, the Uzbek Institute of Zoology and Parasitology has or- ganized the snake nursery near Tashkent with the idea of pro- viding natural conditions for the snakes. a * * The venom is extracted once a month. Herpetologist Oleg Suda- rey is the only person entrusted with this dangerous job. No snake can escape his hands. He extracts venom from cob- ras, rattelsnakes and vipers alike. By a slight pressure at the. base of the head he forces the reptile to open its jaw wide. The snake sinks its venomous teeth into a transparent saucer, but the cunning reptile does not give up all the accumulated poison at once. The herpetologist then lightly messages the venomors gland and a tiny drop of poison falls into the saucer. Massage has lately been replaced by electric ; current. There is tremendous force in this tiny drop! The venom of different snake species acts dif. ferently. The bite of a cobra leaves no visible trace, its venom affects the central nervous Sys- tem only. The bite of an echis cr rattle- snake, causes a rapid reaction in the organism and disintegrates the blood circulating system. HEALTH Scientsts have developed dif- ferent antitoxic serums from the Same venom against which they protect. Hundreds and thousands of ampules of protective serum are sent daily by the Tashkent Institute of Vaccines and Serums to Asian and African countries. Their timely use after snake bite saves human lives. a * air oe “Twenty to twenty five grams of dry venom are obtained monthly in our nursery,’ the her- petologist says. “This is a con- siderable quantity. “For instance, one gram is enough for 10,000 bottles of vipro- cutane, a drug highly popular in the medical world. We hope that the natural habitation conditions provided here for our ‘livestock’ Snake venom being used nal purposes will have a good influence on their vitality and longevity, there- by increasing the quantity of the ~ venom obtained. : “We have not yet been able to make snakes reproduce in captivity, but we hope to solve the problem under the new con- ditions.”’ “Would it not be simpler to obtain synthetic venom?” he was asked. : “Oh, no,” came the smiling reply, ‘‘the chemical composition of venom is so complicated that man will have to use the services of snakes for a long time to ‘come.”’ WORTH READING American Foreign Policy and the Cold War, by Herbert Aptheker. Price $5.25. This is a Marxist analysis of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II — from the Korean war to the Berlin crisis — the Hungarian uprising to the Cuban revolu- tion. As a leading Marxist writer and educator, Dr. Aptheker’s study of U.S. foreign policy is a “must” for everyone. : TR