"A Few Children"

As Terror hung in a red haze over Cuba last week, the advertised Terrorist week against the Government of Dictator Gerardo Machado detonated to an end. Dead were 20, all youths under 25. Cubans had so often seen the fantastic in murder that last week they believed every atrocious rumor whispered in an alleyway. But many a missing student had merely burrowed into hiding. Police walked the streets of Havana in pairs, carbines crooked under their arms. Newspapers were firmly gagged,* except the Administration's Heraldo de Cuba which growled: "The arm of popular will cannot be the bomb or the cowardly employed shotgun. With such weapons a few children and women and even men may be killed, but the Fatherland cannot be killed with them."

Police found an autobomba, rigged by three students, one the son of a National University engineering professor. Supposedly based on an invention of U. S. gangsters, it was an automobile with an iron crib slung underneath. In the crib were 350 lb. of dynamite and TNT, wired to the handbrake and the magneto. Its makers planned to abandon it in front of Havana's police headquarters. When police released the handbrake to drive it away, the huge charge would blow police and headquarters to scraps. The three riggers were whisked off to jail.

Last week President Roosevelt appointed Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles to be Ambassador to Cuba (see p. 12). "Persona grata" to the Government, he was at once marked by anti-Machado Cubans as the catalytic that may somehow purge Cuba of Terror. They believed that Dictator Machado did not know last week where he stands with the U. S. Many wanted to believe the rumor that Machado is all packed, ready to flee Cuba and the thousand vendettas that have been sworn against him.

* Last week's issue of TIME, like many a recent issue frankly reporting Cuban events, was ordered confiscated.

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