Children in Power

When Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, the Caribbean's No. 1 nihilist, recently invited France's No. 1 existentialist, Playwright Jean-Paul Sartre, down for a look-see, Sartre was only too happy to go. The beretful of observations he brought back made strange reading in Paris's big (circ. 1,400,000), dead-center daily, France-Soir.

Observed Sartre, trying hard to be friendly: "The revolution is irreversible. The truth is that there can be no Left or Right today; the revolution, through the unity of its practical action, is perforce its own Right and its own Left." If a few mistakes have been made, blame it on youth. "The greatest scandal of the Cuban revolution is not the expropriation of the planters, but the accession to power of children. Since a revolution was necessary, circumstances bade the children accomplish it. Touring the islands, I have met, dare I say it, my sons. No one is totally qualified in Cuba to do what he does. But nobody worries, because qualification comes with success, disqualification with failure."

Sartre also discovered that one of Cuba's primary passions was shame: shame at the way the Yankee tourists, spending all those dollars, had treated Cuba like a dance-hall girl -- "and shame, as Marx pointed out, is a revolutionary sentiment." The beards must win, concluded Sartre, and their shrewdest strategy is in making the U.S. the villain: "If the United States did not exist, perhaps the Cuban revolution would invent it; for it is the United States which conserves the freshness and originality of the revolution." Not to be outdone, Paris' weekly L'Express commissioned one of France's ranking Left Bankniks for similar duty. It sent 25-year-old Franc,oise Sagan, confector of adult bedtime stories (Bonjour Tristesse, A Certain Smile), off to Cuba in low-heeled shoes. Her considered opinion: Cuba--shmooba. In her first installment, published last week, she took weary note of the countryside from the train bearing her to a camp rally in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Castro perked her interest a bit. He was "strong, smiling." But after the briefest of stays, Author Sagan left Havana, confided to a friend: "Cuba was dull. I couldn't wait to get out."

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