Actually there can be no constructive thinking respecting history apart from culture, Since history is always the history of a people, it is reasonable that the historical event-a political movement, a style of art, a technological innovation, a scientific discovery -should be prepared by the ambience of culture. It is only possible to speak, therefore, with generality of the contours of culture, but not to fix them with finality, for culture is the latency of history, the actuality given and the possibilities implicit but unrealized.

Whatever the final outcome of the Cuban confrontation, it cannot be doubted that the decisive action taken by the United States has scuttled, for the present at least, the Soviet Union's offensive military base in the Western hemisphere. That it has not settled the “Cuban problem” is, in terms of the intent of the recent action, true but irrelevant. It was not designed to settle the problem of Cuba but to eliminate the menacing military presence of the Soviet Union in Cuba.

The decision to check this dramatic extension of Soviet military capability met with substantial popular approval, however varied and incompatible the reasons, however strange the bedfellows.