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.