THE innumerable flags flying at half-mast all over Britain and throughout the world this week have been eloquent of something far deeper than any merely conventional and official mourning at the sudden death, last Friday, by the assassin's bullet, of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States. The news of the murder of the occupant of the greatest political and military office in the world brought genuine grief to millions, who have mourned his untimely death in a way reminiscent of a personal bereavement. . .

It is hard to recall any assassination in human history which in itself threatened more incalculable results. There has been the deepest possible sympathy for the murdered President's family in their agony, and an almost overwhelming sense that not only a great people but the whole world had lost, in John Kennedy, a great and good man who will, above all, be remembered for the sincerity and courage with which he strove to bring his deeply felt Christian convictions to bear on the problems and perils of his times. . .

The federal authorities may be relied upon to conduct the most searching investigation into the failure of the security arrangements during President Kennedy's visit to the State of Texas, long known for its liking for violence and only recently in the news for physical assault on a distinguished national figure, Mr Adlai Stevenson. On top of the elementary failure to put guards in high buildings on the President's route on the fatal day, there has come the inability of the police to keep alive the man accused of the assassination. His murder at police headquarters in Dallas has invited the sinister assumption that there were those who thought it more convenient that he should not surive to stand trial and tell the truth, perhaps, of what lay behind the crime of which he stood accused.