THE STRATEGY OF PEACE

This is a collection of speeches by Senator John F. Kennedy, which will give the reader an idea of what Kennedy's thoughts are on various important world questions and policies. It is a good book to have at this time, for it pins down the Senator in his own words and offers the intelligent voter a basis on which to make his decision in November, should the Senator run for President. Kennedy's speeches have neither eloquence nor profundity. Their style is approximately that of the classroom valedictorian, with all of the familiar references to such commencement virtues as patience, imagination, determination, effort, courage, resourcefulness, originality, vision, flexibility, sacrifice and magnanimity. However, the Senator doesn't always label his own judgments. For example, when he urges the United States to surrender Quemoy and Matsu because they aren't worth fighting for, he doesn't say whether this action would be an example of imagination, originality, or magnanimity. He does stress however that what he advocates is not appeasement! This kind of dangerous high-school thinking is the basic substance of Kennedy's ideology. His world view seems to be that the United States and Russia are natural allies and that we should both join the Afro-Asian nations in their war against France, England and the other colonial powers. The Senator doesn't say this in as many words, but by simply adding up everything he does say, this is the conclusion one necessarily comes to.