In November 1999, fourteen people tried to flee Communist Cuba in a small boat. Eleven of these people were drowned at sea. Six- year old Elian was one of three who survived and made it to America. After being guarded by a ring of dolphins for three days, the child was found clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic Ocean in waters off the Florida Coast on Thanksgiving Day, the one day America sets aside to express Gratitude to God. reader's comments available The Journal's Elian Gonzalez Resource Center

     I have been to Cuba, that part of Cuba that is secured under the flag of freedom, for the time being, on the southern tip of the Island. I am of course speaking of the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay where a thriving community of American citizens keep the vigil for liberty in the Caribbean. Having had my feet on the land itself, I have had the opportunity to feel the current of Mother Earth flow through my body, and to feel her rejoicing in the freedom associated with the American presence there. On the other hand, having had the opportunity to stand in those trenches, and to peer out into a land held in bondage, I know equally well of her profound sadness, when it comes to the enslavement of her children under the boot of that one named Fidel Castro who stands as the imposter of God before the Cuban people. Therefore, from this more than ordinary perspective, I have the following things to say about the child Elian who has made a clean escape to America.

     I am glad that the mother of Elian Gonzalez loved freedom. I am glad that she tried to make it to America, not alone, but with Elian her six-year- old son. But of course I am sorry the boat they were riding in capsized in heavy seas, and I am sorry she and many others lost their lives, in fact nearly all of them, eleven of fourteen drowned in the ocean, leaving only Elian and two others alive.

     And so, what else can be said of his mother now, other than this, that she paid a high price for the freedom of her son. In this world, that is the highest price a person can pay. And who can deny that her Last Will and Testament, as to the future of her son, was writ large, on that day, in her last desperate effort to deliver Elian into the arms of freedom?

     I am glad that Elian hung on to that inner tube for so many days. In my heart I thank the leaping dolphins for surrounding him, keeping his hopes up, and for keeping the sharks away. It was a blessed and sacred sight for all of us to see that those who found the small child adrift on the wide open ocean were simple fisherman. I am grateful to God that those fisherman had their eyes open, especially that they had their eyes open in the right direction. If this were not the case, Elian would not have now, the precious opportunity that he was given on that day, to complete the remainder of his journey to the shores of America, and to taste the fruits of liberty during the wholeness of a long and productive life.

     On a more basic level, it would be well for us to make an effort throughout the day, as we go about our business dealing with the various responsibilities of life, to take some time here, and to take some time there, to breathe upon the dying embers of memory, and thus to revive upon the screen of our minds in such as manner as to bring forth in full vibrant and living color, this important fact, that those who plucked little Elian from the ocean were simple fishermen, and to consider the implications of this in light of the testimony and promise of Christ, the very Son of God who declared, "I will make you fishers of men."

     Who among us, having resurrected the Light of Truth once again within the darkened cavern of the intellect, would then be so bold as to throw back into the clutch of totalitarianism that which the very hand of Christ plucked from the jaws of slavery and death?

     Unfortunately, one need not look far to find, not one, but many examples of such inversions of courage.

     From across the waters, belly down in the dust of Marxist Ideology, both ankles chained to the post of Communist subservience, Elian's father cries out for his son's return, but who is it, other than Fidel Castro himself, who is using the throat, the tongue, and the lips of that totally subservient and broken man to lure yet another shining heart back into that dark and grimy dungeon of total control?

     And even if some Americans cannot see nor hear the bellicose roar of the beast of Communist control speaking through the mouth of Elian's father, consider this. Isn't it true that there is something intrinsically disingenuous about a person demanding that American laws be followed in terms of safeguarding his "rights" to have his son returned, when the fact of the matter is, that this person, this Juan Miguel Gonzalez, lives every day of his life as a willing servant and advocate of a dictatorship that denies to him and his son and all Cubans the right to make the laws that would safeguard those very same rights in his own country? Think about that. He demands that American laws be enforced to safeguard his "right" to have his son. Yet he does not lift a finger to bring about the adoption of those democratic processes in his own country that would allow for the establishment of those laws that would safeguard those rights, in regards to his very own son, i.e. when and if Elian were to return. If Elian were to return today, Castro could grab him for his own purposes, as he has many, as the population of the prisons testify, and that would be the end of that.

     The fact of the matter is that Elian Gonzales has already been recruited into the apparatus of Castro's Communist revolution, and will be used by Castro as a lever to further hold the Cuban people in bondage. The handwriting is clearly on the wall, and the paint is fresh. Consider the following.

     At this very moment, as it has been widely reported in the international press, Fidel's Communist Party is creating a perpetual demonstration site under the windows of the office of the U.S. Interest section in downtown Havana dedicated to the revolution's new hero, Elian Gonzalez.

     In the Miami Herald, on January 28, 2000 the Associated Press reported the following:

     In the New York Times, on January 28, 2000 the Associated Press reported the following:

     Reporting on the same event under the headline, "Cuba Turns Elian Into 'Anti-Imperialist' Icon", Reuters news service reported in the New York Times, on January 28, 2000, the following:

     On January 29, 2000, the Associated Press continued, again in a report published in the New York Times:

     Imagine now if Elian were to return to Cuba and his taste for freedom survived, motivating him to resist the efforts of the Communist Party to use him as an icon for spineless subservience to Castro's dictatorial rule, what greater enemy he would then become in the eyes of Castro's Communist Party, and thus deserving of the more serious punishment, so as to set the most lasting example of the cost of rebellion, before the eyes of the Cuban people.

     Such an eventuality would never come to pass if we could grasp a simple fact about American law, which is this: Juan Miguel Gonzalez, due to his own life-long opposition to the rules of democracy in his own land, has no standing to demand that the laws of American Democracy be applied to him.

     But what is the more interesting about all of this is that all sides in this great controversy seem to agree that the only consideration that really matters is what is in the best interests of Elian himself. I have heard the Communists say this. I have heard Bill Clinton and his supporters say this. And I have heard many freedom loving Americans say this.

Communist Education Code In a recent statement (Feb. 1, 2000) on the floor of the U.S. House, Congresswoman Ms. Ros-Lehtinen illustrated how Communist Party Doctrine is woven into the laws that govern the educational system in Cuba. This is a real eye opener. Read her statement here.

     Now, consider how is it possible that a free people, the citizens of America, could ever come to a conclusion that the best thing for this child, or any child, would be to return him to the totalitarian dungeon from whence he barely escaped with his life? How is it, that some Americans, who pledge allegiance to one nation Under God, with liberty and Justice for all, could give any credence at all to the demands of a dictator whose response to any expressed aspiration for freedom is a firing squad, or a jail cell? What are Americans thinking that it could be better to send Elian back to Cuba simply so he can be with his father, when the fact of that matter is that Castro's educational system will twist that mind and soul into a dark and fearful totalitarian subservience (see box at upper right), and present Elian with the dilemma in later life, that if his love for freedom happens to survive, and if he wants to live that love, he must again face the sharks of the Florida straights, or face a jail cell, or a firing squad or both?

     There is ample evidence in the annals of human history, especially when it comes to observing the general characteristics of adolescence, and the teenage years as a whole, that rebellion is a very commonly observed phenomena. The phrase "rebel without a cause" was coined to describe this phase of human development. Therefore, looking at the phases of life in a realistic manner, imagine what will happen when Elian comes of age, when he can comprehend what his mother gave her life for, and the length that Fidel Castro, Elian's father, and his other Island residing relatives went to, to make that sacrifice count for nothing. What conclusion could a teenager possibly reach about his two grandmothers for example, when he learns that they took a trip to Washington D.C. to persuade the freely elected representatives of the American people to oppose any attempt to make him a citizen of the United States of America, the greatest nation the earth has ever seen?

     What is the value anyway, of a two grandmothers who willingly serve as the right and left arm of the dictator Castro to draw Elian back into the lap of totalitarian control?

     Driven by the propensity to minimize the value of the parents actions, in this case the parent that he has before him at the moment, how much hatred will this generate in his heart towards those who pulled him back into a prison camp when he actually had his feet planted on the very ground of America, the land of liberty? Any child psychologist will testify that the likelihood of this coming about is nearly 100%. And thus, because Castro has made of him a hero of the revolution, greater will be the threats the Communists will make against him and his family in order to encourage him to toe the party line.

     Now, clearly, some Americans have been mightily impressed by the ranting and ravings of Fidel Castro in regards to Elian Gonzalez. And I know, because I can see it, that there are many Americans who are mightily impressed by the mass demonstrations held in Havana by the "Friends of Fidel" at the behest and under the direction of Fidel's Cuban Communist Party.

     Perhaps we have finally struck the mother load in terms of this treasure chest of empirical evidence that is now before us that seems to set aside all debate concerning the proposition that misery loves company. Today I think it was reported that Fidel brought forth a crowd of 150,000 to march through the streets of Havana in support of the return of Elian Gonzalez. Very impressive to be sure. And perhaps Castro has found the issue that will finally convince millions more, Americans now, to join his revolution. Time will tell.

     But on the other hand, one must understand that these demonstrations were organized to send a particular message to the American people, and one must be clear headed enough to comprehend the fact that any message composed by Fidel Castro, cannot contain any more truth than the amount of truth that is contained in the "revolution" and the Communist Lie that undergirds it. How much Truth is there in Fidel Castro's claim to power? How much Truth is there to any aspect of the Communist ideology drummed into the minds of the Cuban people at the point of a gun? How much Truth is there in Fidel Castro's promise of a socialist utopia? Where on the planet have Communist ideals succeeded? Having seen Communism fail on a massive scale in the old Soviet Union where nearly 200 million people have been yoked to the Communist treadmill for over 70 years, and these people having had all the benefits associated with an abundance of natural resources, land, agriculture, oil, gas, gold, you name it, and they still couldn't make it work, and having seen what economic abundance there was associated with that alliance dry up faster than spit on a hot rock, how many Cubans could reasonably be expected to get enthusiastic about supporting any aspect of Fidel Castro's stubborn march into a future without hope? That tells you how much real substance there is in those demonstrations we see in Havana on behalf of Elian. Those demonstrations are a fraud.

     The analysis that will, in the end, tell us whether or not these demonstrations ought to be taken seriously, must be based on the truth, and these three points of truth are essential to take into consideration: 1) Every vital commodity in Cuba is rationed. 2) People cannot eat without their ration cards. 3) The Communist Party apparatus in every neighborhood controls the administration of this system of ration cards. I hope you are getting this.

     Of course, the people on the front lines of those demonstrations, i.e. the ones the t.v. cameras catch so clearly, are undoubtedly the fanatical vanguard of Castro's Communist Party, and they are well compensated for their extraordinary and totally irrational level of enthusiasm, in terms of power and perks. But the rank and file masses that follow, well, they follow out of fear. They have been programmed to think no farther than the boundary of fear established by the Communist Party. These are naive and ignorant people who know only one thing for sure, and that is that their ration cards will be taken away if they did not participate in those demonstrations. This is not an abstraction. The Party apparatus makes sure that the people have an adequate number of examples on a weekly and monthly basis to ensure that they will remember how far the power of the Party extends, not the least being the constant and unrelenting effort made by the Communist authorities to shut down every attempt to start a private restaurant where people might be able to gain access to food outside of the ration card system. The "enthusiasm" exhibited by the simple folk goes only as deep as is necessary to safeguard their meager food supply for their families from the wrath of the party bureaucracy. This is a fact of life in a totalitarian state, and those Americans who have forgotten that fact, ought to be simply ashamed of themselves. I mean why did God give you a brain anyway?

     And of course it is the more outrageous that the champions of Castro's Communist revolution talk about "family values" out of one side of their mouth, but they would not hesitate for an instant to deny a family the means to feed their children if the parents did not cooperate in these demonstrations.

     Of course, in America food is abundant. When we go to the grocery store we don't have to hand the clerk a ration card having the official stamp of the local Communist Party authority. And even when people fall on hard times, and can't afford to buy enough food to feed their family, they can access state and federally sponsored food stamp programs without regard to their political affiliation.

     Why do so many Americans sit in the corner with a dunce cap on their heads when it comes to understanding what it means to be a friend of freedom, and what it means to be an enemy of freedom? I'll tell you.

     Materialism has so atrophied the breadth and depth of their souls perceptions, that they are easily swayed by any amount of surface posturing that seems sincere. In other words, the full intensity of their emotions are set into motion by the most insignificant and meaningless attributes of the appearance world.

     And on the other hand, in each of these areas and more, a small number is always bad and to be detested. Ok, sure, there are a few exceptions to this rule, actually any number of areas in which small numbers are better than big numbers. For example, the issue of pimples comes to mind. And the fact that the day of any number of individuals can be made or broken by the number that peers up at them from the little window in their bathroom scale. But this only goes to show that when the backside of your thesis is as cogent as the front side, the whole of it is that much more valid and accurate.

     In all cases, the dumb little fish is content to nip at the swarm of mosquitos that dance on the surface of the meandering river regardless of the fact that Niagra Falls is just around the corner. Is his little stomach getting fuller? That is all that matters. Any sense, as to where, in the greater context of good and evil, they have positioned themselves, is completely lost to them. I mean, they don't have any idea. This crust of surface sympathies has hermetically sealed the sensibilities of the soul from registering the fact that the sun center of divine purpose, and thus the light of divine survival is growing dimmer, not brighter. And thus society has no counter force operating within the consciousness of many individuals to inhibit the slide of the culture into even more base levels of corruption and disintegration.

     And then of course their stubborn pride kicks in to tell them that what has enticed them to curl up in the lap of Fidel Castro, on this one occasion at any rate, is the purest form of wisdom, and not the purest form of folly.

     God help us when the President of the United States and his own Attorney General fit into this category like a round peg into a round hole. And thus, what would have once been taken as an Orwellian fantasy, has now come to pass. A full fledged communist dictator has taken the world stage to be recognized as the planet's foremost advocate of "family values."

     It is not a very large stretch, especially in the land of freedom, to take as the very epitome of child abuse, the act of a father intentionally taking his son into the dark cave of totalitarian slavery. There is no question about it. If an American father locked his son up in the closet for a week, he would be charged with child abuse and sent off to jail. How much more so this applies to a father who would lock up his son in the dungeon of a totalitarian state for a lifetime. And what kind of a father would better fit the definition of a "deadbeat dad" who isn't smart enough to safeguard the precious jewel of freedom that is now in the hands of his own son.

     The principles that comprise the structure of the Family of God, take precedence to the principles that comprise the structure of the ashes-to-ashes, and dust-to-dust, family of material man.

     The teachings of Jesus Christ are explicit in this regard. Consider the following passage from the Book of Matthew, chapter 12:

     The meaning of the passage could not be any more clear. The criteria that exacts the greatest loyalty of the heart and of the mind of the Son of God is allegiance to the will of God the Father, you remember, that omnipotent friend of the soul, yes that one who created the soul in the first place, who attached wings in all the right places so that freedom and buoyancy would be each blessed child's constant reality. The will of God mandates freedom first and foremost for all of God's children. To comport with the will of God, systems of government must allow freedom for God's children. And therefore, family ties are always secondary, especially those family ties used by a dictator to lure a soul back into the stockade of Communist slavery.

     Now, during the years of slavery in America some of you may have forgotten this the southern slave masters pushed an insidious law through the U.S. Congress which required the citizens of the free states to participate in the ignominious activity of returning runaway slaves to their masters. At the time, that was a real sore point for the American people. But now, more than 150 years later, the U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appears to believe that this law has not been changed, and that its domain of application has been extended to helping Fidel Castro retrieve those who were smart enough, and fortunate enough to escape the walls of his own revolutionary plantation, and his own power hungry aspirations for those who toil therein.

     According to General Reno, Elian Gonzalez's "father should be able to speak for him, and I think he should be with his father." Now, in terms of the historians who will serve the needs of populations yet unborn, those who will inhabit this earth for the next 1000 years at least, it can truly be said, that Attorney General Janet Reno has provided them with the most stirring example of the truth of a statement that is even now 3000 years old. In the Book of Proverbs (c.1000 B.C.), chapter 16, verse 25, we find this statement: "There is way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."

     And how the more repulsive in the sight of God could it be, and thus the less to be respected by those of us who deem ourselves the Children of God, than to use the argument of family ties to draw a child back into a system of education that programs the mind of the child to reject the Fatherhood of God, and to accept as a substitute for this divine reality, the Lie of the all powerful Communist State?

     Let's not make the mistake of forgetting that Atheism is the official religion of Communist Cuba. When considering the destiny of Elian, it is extremely important that this reality be factored into our decision making process, because it is clear, that if Elian were sent back to Cuba, he would be sent back into an educational system that will tell him every day of his life that God does not exist, and that his only hope for health and prosperity is the wisdom of Fidel Castro and his Communist Party Bureaucrats. This process of corrupting and ultimately destroying the divine nature of the soul is not at all pleasing in the sight of God, and must be avoided at all costs.

     This priority used to be on the front burner of the American agenda. Consider these statements made by the late President John F. Kennedy during his first inaugural speech on January 20, 1961:

     In the Book of Proverbs (22:6) we read the following admonishment: "train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." This is an immutable truth, but it can work both ways. And you can be sure that Fidel Castro has taken a hold of it, and employs the golden core of truth contained in it, to work against the purposes of God, and not in service to those purposes. In this regard, we must ask ourselves, why cooperate, in even the smallest manner, in Castro's conscious and willful effort to shatter and destroy the lines of allegiance between the members of God's own family?

     In other words, Castro's system of totalitarianism works to break the spirit of the soul through the use of fear and terror, and then through a wide panoply of promises related to material survival, tries to draw the natural allegiance of the soul away from God and unto himself. He has succeeded in this with Elian's father, creating a dividing line within Elian's family between those who have remained loyal to God the Father, and to the divine agenda of liberty itself, and those who have been seduced to transfer their allegiance from God the Father to the imposter Castro and to the godless socialist utopia he promises to create for them and their children.

     God holds out the prospect of heavenly abundance to all of those who will seek out an understanding of his purposes. To be competitive could Castro be seen as having an empty quiver in that regard? Of course not. And so he fills his quiver with even more promises than God has in his. But there is a important difference. God's quiver is full of real promises that will be kept. Golden arrows that fly to the mark. Castro's quiver is filled with false and empty promises, none of which can be kept, all of which, allowed to gestate in the womb of expectation poison the soul.

     Therefore it behooves every thinking American to consider why we would have any obligation at all to help Castro succeed in accomplishing this insidious seduction of Elian's soul. Those who value the strong bonds of allegiance they have developed between themselves and God in pursuit of that relationship in an atmosphere of freedom, and who understand the importance of providing every soul with the opportunity to strengthen those bonds of allegiance to God the Father, must make every effort to give Elian the opportunity to escape the grasp of Castro and his totalitarian state.

     Well, consider the fact that Castro's Cuba is really the last remnant of the Soviet Block, the last of the true Soviet Satellites, the only one in fact that has brushed aside the cool cup of freedom (a bitter pill indeed for the Cuban people) made more bitter still, by the fact that the guns that Castro's security forces hold at the heads of the Cuban people today were all shipped from weapons factories behind the Iron Curtain.

     There can't be any doubt about it, that Elian and his mother scaled the western hemisphere's equivalent of the Berlin Wall, that body of water that separates totalitarian Cuba from the free ground of the United States of America. And therefore, it is equally inconceivable that her son, set free by the propitious intervention of providence, would be sent back into what is left of the Soviet Block, i.e. the island nation of Cuba which is now like a shriveled grape on a vine that has long since died. Perhaps it is true that Elian's mother did not take a bullet through the back as she climbed to the top of this wall, but she nevertheless perished in her attempt to flee to the free side of the water, and in that process left her child in the arms of the champions of freedom on the American side.

     Now we hear Americans are talking about sending her son back over the wall, and into the hands of a totalitarian regime? What was once inconceivable, is now almost a foregone conclusion in the mind of President Bill Clinton, his Attorney General, and millions of Americans who follow his lead.

     It is very interesting to consider where Senator John McCain formulated his clear and uncompromising conception of what was then and is at least to him in the present day inconceivable. For five years, as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese Communists, he was daily pummeled by the Marxist falsehoods and perversions of principle that undergirded the quest to steal freedom from the American allied South. To him, American Truth, and the Communist Lie were two parts of an ideological battleground that he was forced to fight on every day.

     But I suppose that in the same manner that homosexuality has become just another lifestyle choice, it can be understood how the lines between freedom and slavery in political terms can become just as blurred. And so they have.

     This shift in American sentiment when it comes to the question of whether or not it is wise to send a child back into the grips of a totalitarian regime is a harbinger of a deep sickness that has gripped the American soul. And in as much as it was the appearance of Elian Gonzalez and his mother on the world stage which brought an awareness of this sickness to the surface of our collective consciousness, their appearance will be seen in hindsight, from the perspective of many centuries hence, as a gift from God to our nation, a nation that God stills loves, notwithstanding the general fog of neglect and ignorance, in terms of divine principle, that grips the minds of so many of his children here.

     The gift of God to us, through Elian and his mother, is a gift of insight, much like that of a master physician who will come with the good news of cancer in time for the eradication of that cancer. That's what makes it good news, and not bad news, i.e. that the news comes in time for the sickness to be recognized, acted upon, and ultimately defeated.

     The message that this drama brings to America is that on the cusp of the 21st Century, and the very cusp of the new millennium, when the attention of the soothsayers is upon the grand utopia that technology will bring to America in the near future, that the reverse is actually the case, that in fact, a huge segment of the American population have developed a mindset ripe for totalitarian control, and, as every Communist experiment has shown, that any population which is ripe for totalitarian control, far from being able to produce any kind of utopia, will in all cases reap tyranny, and all the pain and suffering that goes with it, and that we are getting closer to the edge of that abyss than anyone has yet imagined.

     The evidence is now rolling in, verifying the fact, that there is a large segment of the American population who could care less what form of government they have, who could care less who is sitting in the oval office pulling the levers, as long as that person, and that government, promises to hold them and to cuddle them from the cradle to the grave. And moreover, that these people would not lift a finger in defense of liberty should it ever come to that, but would be far more likely to fill the streets in a minute to fawn at the feet of that dictator who has taken the burden of personal responsibility from their shoulders.

     Ah! what freedom they think they have found in having their lives planned out for them, in having all of their choices made for them, in having all of their food provided for them by the State. And especially having their health care guaranteed, which of course is the banner waved by both Castro's Communist Revolution, and by the Democrat Party of the U.S.A.

     Now, thanks to Elian, I am finally able to grasp the fact, that there are millions of Americans who haven't the slightest idea concerning the value of liberty. What a grotesque revelation. It makes me very sad, but I will grant you that it is true. But that does not mean that liberty doesn't have any value. Do roses vanish from the face of the earth just because the vast majority of human beings ignore their existence? No. For those who can be persuaded to bend the knee and partake of the fragrance, that particular outpost of divine beauty remains, and its power to infuse the mind with the geometry of divine purpose is not diluted in the least. And so it is with Liberty.

     America, as a nation, was founded on the sole proposition that the only thing that has real value in the arena of culture, politics, and religion, is liberty. And of course this has a solid foundation in the religious faith of our nation. As the chief apostle of Jesus, Saint Paul, said, "Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And thus this belief was not abstract among the men and women who founded this Republic. They were all, to a man, trained up in the Christian faith, and their souls occupied this nexus of common ground that exists both in the region of the Will of God, and the region of the affairs of men.

     This was made abundantly clear when several hundred years later, one of those founding fathers, Patrick Henry to be precise, who, from the floor of the Continental Congress, in the course of advocating a bold move towards Independence and freedom declared, "Give me Liberty, or give me Death." That was not said by a man who valued anything above the jewel of liberty itself, except it be the Spirit of the Lord from whence the capacity to grasp the value of freedom flows. And that statement stands as a badge of honor worn by all Americans who gave their lives on various battlefields so that we, and others, could enjoy freedom, particulary the populations of Europe, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, in terms of our most recent history.

     Therefore, there is very little that is more noble than the sacrifice made by the mother of Elian Gonzalez. Where is there a better example of a person who has actually assimilated and lived out that grand maxim, Give me Liberty, or give me Death? She is one, in relative terms, of the very few sparkling jewels in the crown of human kind.

     And so, which would be the better example for Elian? A mother who cherished liberty so much to risk and ultimately to give her life in pursuit of it? Or a father, who remains chained to the Communist Lie, who fawns in such a spineless manner before the heavy boot of the dictator Castro? Which example best epitomizes the traditions of America? And therefore, in whose shadow, under whose wing, does the fledgling best grow into a creature of freedom? The answer is clear.

     Give Elian the chance to build upon the noble example of his mother, who, before she perished beneath the tempestuous ocean, placed the hand of her son in the hand of his new mother, who is liberty.