The Day JFK was buried
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- The Day JFK was buried
- Creator
- Cooke, Alistair
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1963
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- From The Guardian, November 25, 1963.
- And the great came to commit themselves to the memory a great President.
- Fulltext
- ■ And the great came to commit themselves to the memory a great President. THE DAY JFK WAS BURED Alistair Cooke NEW YORK On this most beautiful morning, when the weekend rains have washed all the grey out of the skies, this city was more stilled than it has been since the great Christmas snow of 1947. There was the sun falling like a sword down Fifth Avenue, a slow swish of cars, a few children in the park, and the bells tolling everywhere. It was the same in hun dreds of other cities between Puget Sound and the Florida Keys, not least in stupefied Dallas: and it began to dawn on the people at home, fin gering the heavy papers and watching the funeral march in Washington, that a special surprising calm had fallen on more than a hundred lands that sent in here yes terday an Emperor, a King, a Queen, a Prince, their Pres idents, Premiers, Generals and Ministers of State. The schools and stores and banks and offices were shut down not only in New York and Chicago but also in New Delhi and Athens, through out Israel and Liberia. The flags flew at half mast in Iceland and France, in Japan and Indonesia. The registers of the United States embas sies were signed by queue ing thousands in London and Madrid and Belgrade. The anonymous mourners gathered in St. Pete r’s Square in Rome, in the cap itals of Jordan and Kenya and West Germany, in the University Square in Beirut, and in a rude chapel in the Antarctic base at McMurdo Sound. The little bells tin kled also on the spires of the 140 temples of Bangkok. Forlorn pride In less than 24 hours, the emissaries of all these allies, wards, neutrals, cold enemies, warm friends, and uncommit 26 Panorama ted nations passed through the international airport here on their way to commit themselves to the memory of the late President Kennedy. It now appears that no comparable gathering in one place of the great of so ma ny nations has been since the royal trek to London for the funeral of King Edward VII. The realization brought with it a forlorn pride in what the late President Ken nedy had meant to so many of the new and old nations, and also a barely spoken concern for the peaceful com ings and goings of so pre cious a congregation of na tional leaders. The concern was explicit among the New York police, the officials of the New York Port Authority and later the 250 plainclothes men from various Federal agencies in Washington. Although there is no evidence that the as sassination of the late Pres ident Kennedy could possibly have been balked by even the most elaborate security pro cedures, the Secret Service had not lost a President since its powers were greatly ex panded after the assassina tion of the late President Mc Kinley in 1961, and the ser vice is accordingly under a cloud. This anxiety has spread to police forces of all kinds, and yesterday the New York police department doubled its extra ordinary shift at Idlewild, and in the early afternoon the observation decks at the International Arrivals ’build ing were shut down for the first time in the history of the airport. All Customs regulations were waived for the distin guished visitors and all bag gage was automatically trans ferred to the Washington re lay planes. Most of the dig nitaries, President de Gaulle, President de Valera, Crown Princess Beatrix of the Ne therlands, Mayor Willy Brandt, Emperor Haile Selas sie for example, were taken under protection directly from the ramps to private lounges and never saw the public or the light of day. Today, the FBI, the State Department, and the Secret Service joined the Washing ton police in a round-theclock surveillance of all pub 27 lie. buildings, trees, sewer lids, and every other point of vantage along the route from the Capitol to the Ca thedral and from there to Arlington National Ceme tery. The funeral service, the processions, the naval parade, done as they were with great dignity and style in a beau tiful capital, could not purge the people, the onlookers, or the Government of the quak ing sense of outrage over the violence in Dallas. President Johnson ordered the Justice Department to make its own study of the monstrous case which the Dallas police have declared closed. The Federal Gov ernment has no power to in tervene in a State crime, not even the assassination of a President, but it can unearth and demand the examination of evidence. In this sorry instance, it is determined to convince it self that the legal recourse which was denied the wretch ed Oswald shall be explored to the limit. No proof There is as yet no tittle of proof that Oswald was tied to any political group or plot, and there is so far none of the European frenzy to wring the crime dry of poli tical significance. There is a tortured universal regret that Oswald was not a be liever in some religious sect that lies far from the fringe of even the lunatic fringes of any political party. There is no question, either, that Oswald was re mote from the so called Far Right, or any of its maniacal wings. But what the new Administration senses as keenly as the next man is that violence lies just below the surface of extremists of all stripes, and never more so than when the first trigger has been pulled. These fears twitched spora dically today in the con science of the people as they watched and mourned and felt too little of the healing purge which the intoning of holy scripture and the wis dom of all the best philo sophers so clearly recom mends. — The Guardian, November 25, 1963. 28 Panorama