The Morning Call Paterson, New Jersey Friday, September 10, 1965 - Page 4
Voice Of The People: Bobby's Gambit
Editor, The Call:
The recent confrontation between United States chess champion Bobby Fischer and the State Department surely deserved more attention than it got in your newspaper. It is only a small incident that will probably receive little notice from future historians, but it contains some important lessons for those who advocate a blind policy, down the line in every single anti-Communist detail. Consider the facts.
Mr. Fischer announced some time ago that he intended to compete in the international chess tournament in memory of Capablanca, to be held in Havana where leading luminaries from both sides of the Iron Curtain were slated to participate. “Well, so what?” you may reply. “He should know better; he knows what's going on with Castro.”
True … but it is equally true that Bobby Fischer is a chess prodigy who has been on his way up for some time, makes his living playing chess, has developed into one of the strongest players in the world (he is 22), and is making louder and louder noises at the world title.
Bear in mind this additional fact: only one person born in the United States was able to claim the world chess championship, and that person was Paul Morphy, more than 100 years ago. Morphy's claim was limited by the circumstance that Staunton, the English champion of that day, and awful snob, refused to play him.
Mr. Fischer's adherents are loud in their assertion that he can take that title, which the Soviet government has been left free to exploit ever since 1948, when Botvinnik officially assumed it after winning the tourney arranged by the International Chess Federation. It goes without saying that the Russian propagandists have made the most of this right up to the present day.
Not withstanding these important facts the anti-Communist heroes of our State Department promptly denied Mr. Fischer the visa he needed to go to Havana, and, once that particular political door was shut, all the others began to hurriedly slam as well. If you are a conformist politically, then you will be a conformist everywhere else too. Mr. Fischer's next move was to engage the telephone company, but here apparently he was quoted a price far beyond his means to wire the moves from Havana to New York City; so things continued to develop a la George Orwell, with Big Brother's baleful eye right smack on Bobby Fischer, the snotty kid who wanted to play chess.
It was at this point that the Cuban government, which had obviously been following and studying the whole comedy of errors right from the very beginning, came up with an offer to foot the bill and pay expenses of teletyping the chess moves to New York.
Final item: Mr. Fischer accepted.
What a great victory for our side! Surely every G. I. in Vietnam will be comforted by this news! Now we know our tax dollars are not being spent for nothing!
By means of its brilliant theoretical maneuvering, its profound grasp of all of the factors involved in this extremely complex situation, the geniuses of the State Department have forced Mr. Fischer right into the tender embrace of Mr. Castro. Truly a magnificent achievement!
What is the real point about all this hoopla? The real point is not that Bobby Fischer is a chess genius or even that he may win the title later on. Chess champions come and go; on the huge panorama of world politics today chess, as every one knows, is a relatively minor matter anyway.
The real point is that in order to pursue his livelihood Fischer has been compelled to resort to all sorts of dodges, subterfuges, schemes, etc., to achieve something which should have rightfully been his without any nonsense at all. The real American (this is the only phrase I can use) is now placed in a politically suspect position. The smear brush is sure to come. He will be condemned as Pro-Castro, Red, subversive, guilty of plotting to undermine the very foundation of our nation. All this, just to compete in a chess tournament!
Despite his troubles, however, Bobby Fischer must he a happy man. In the second round, under the kindly auspices of the Cuban teletypist, he rejected curtly the offer of a draw (only one half point in the tournament score) by the tough former-world champion Russian Vassily Smyslov, and went on to win by exploiting his positional advantage over Smyslov's doubled pawn on the king's file, a full point. He now leads the pack, and if he continues in his present form he should finish without a loss. If that happens his claim for the world crown now held by the wily Russian Tigran Petrosian would have to be given serious consideration by the International Chess Federation.
Congratulations, I would say, are due Bobby Fischer.
PETER DUNCAN
