Wrong Horse No. 2

Central American revolutions have caused many a jape from the pens of Richard Harding Davis and O. Henry. Guatemala lived up to the requirements of fiction last week by having three presidents in seven days. It was a serious matter to the Guatemalans; it became an embarrassing matter to the U. S. State Department. Fortnight ago General Lazaro Chacon, President of Guatemala since 1927, was suddenly stricken with what physicians described as a cerebral hemorrhage, forced to resign the presidency because of illness, He was succeeded by one Baudilio Palma, Second Designate under the Constitution,* and President Palma was found highly acceptable to the Guatemalan Congress. Apparently he was highly acceptable to the U. S. State Department as well. Within three days President Hoover sent a telegram to Senor Palma "wishing the Acting President success in his office," thus giving him diplomatic recognition. The only trouble was that Acting President Palma was not at all acceptable to the Guatemalan Army and a considerable section of the populace. Day after his recognition by the U. S., a General Manuel Orellana rushed with troops out of Fort Matamoras where he was commandant, booted out Acting President Palma, took the office himself. A half-hour's gun play left 57 persons killed or wounded. During the ruction somebody killed Gen eral Mauro de Leon, who as No. 1 Designate, should have succeeded ailing President Chacon but for the fact that he had recently accepted a cabinet post as Minister of War, was therefore ineligible under the Guatemalan Constitution. The U. S. State Department was in a tight place. After the revolution in Brazil (TIME, Nov. 3), and now for the second time in three months, it had picked the wrong horse. Worst of all, having recognized Acting President Palma, it was duty-bound not to recognize Acting President Orellana. In 1923 Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes endorsed a Central American agreement which mutually barred recognition of any Central American government which came into existence through a coup d'etat. Only obvious way out of the difficulty was for President Chacon to recover from his hemorrhage, but Acting President Orellana intimated last week that even in this unlikely case he was not at all sure that he felt like resigning.

Had the U. S. Minister been in his Legation in Guatemala City last fortnight, it is possible that President Hoover and Statesman Stimson might have been spared this new dilemma. The U. S. Minister might have reported the existence of violent opposition to Senor Palma, might have advised Washington to back no horses at all for at least a day or so.

U. S. Minister to Guatemala is Sheldon Whitehouse, an urbane gentleman with naturally wavy hair and a cultivated voice (he is one of the extremely few U. S. diplomatists who have been schooled at Eton). Onetime private secretary of the late great Whitelaw Reid, he married the daughter of Mrs. Charles Beatty Alexander. He served with some eclat as Counselor of the U. S. Embassy in Paris and Madrid. In 1927, as Charge d'Affaires in Paris, he made news by setting detectives to watch over New York's playful Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker. No one supposed that Diplomatist Whitehouse was overjoyed by his transfer year ago from Madrid to Guatemala (TIME, Nov. 18, 1929). And last week, even as Ambassador Edwin Vernon Morgan was off in Paris when the Brazilian revolution broke, Minister Whitehouse was not in Guatemala but vacationing in Florida. Chagrined by the presidential triple play at Guatemala City, he made hasty arrangements to fly back to duty.

* In Guatemala the Vice President, the Secretary of State and Cabinet members in order of departmental seniority do not succeed the President in case of illness or death SK in the U. S., but First and Second ''Designates" are chosen by Congress.

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