Chippewa Herald-Telegram Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin Monday, August 09, 1965 - Page 2
Chess Playing Will Kill Cuba
At times our great country gets so tangled in our own causes that we lose sight of the real importance of things.
It seems that Bobby Fischer, chess champion of the U.S.A., wanted to play in an international chess match. Now, The Herald-Telegram reader would ask, what on earth could he wrong, political or any other way with an innocent chess match?
Well, the stumbling block comes when the U.S. State Department learned that the match that Fischer wanted to attend was to be held in Cuba—A Communist country to which we allow no travel except by legitimate journalists.
Fischer, who has a publicized and dramatic temper, held his temper for once. “I am a journalist,” he said “I write for the Saturday Review of Literature and Chess Life.” Yet, to the strict line, red tape riddled, State Department, this was not a bona fide journalist's position. Fischer, they said, could not go.
How bad can the thinking of the country be? Fischer, and any American, should be allowed to go any-where if they want to. Certainly, they should be told that in certain countries our State Department cannot protect them, but if they want to go anyway, they should not be stopped—especially to play the great political anti-American war game of chess.
We allow our citizens to travel to Russia, to East Berlin, to Red China if they can get in. It is part of their freedom to be able to go. Saying they cannot, as we are doing with Cuba will not make Castro's island dry up and blow into the Atlantic, the foggy feelings of State not withstanding.
If freedom is going to be abridged, let not our freedom loving country do it. Let's leave that to Russia, Red China, and Cuba.
