"Beyond Suspicion"

President Machado's private gunboat, the S. S. Juan Brunozay, was in Havana Harbor last week with steam up. Sailors were very busy about the deck. The rumor flashed through Havana that Gerardo Machado was about to skip the country. President Machado thereupon broke a silence of many months by inviting U. S. correspondents to the Presidential Palace to hear a statement. His sallow, pocked face broke into a friendly grin as he insisted that he had not the slightest intention of either resigning or running away.

''During the last eight years," said he, "I have demonstrated that my position is strong and that I have the authority to rule.

"If a plebiscite were held now it would show that I have the popular support to hold my position. For me to yield to the first individual who demands mv withdrawal would establish a sad precedent and threaten the sovereignty of Cuba. In spite of opinion to the contrary, I am governing with the laws and the Constitution, and my only lament is that several times the appearance has been that I was governing outside the Constitution."

Meanwhile the soothing influence which many Cubans attribute to U. S. Ambassador Sumner Welles continued. Notorious Major Arsenio Ortiz, President Machado's favorite strong-arm man, recalled from his bloody job of stringing up provincial rebels fortnight ago (TIME, June 5), was still under technical arrest, charged with three murders. The Machado government dared not bring him to trial, not knowing how much truth lay in his oft-repeated boast that friends in the U. S. hold the original orders for every one of his political assassinations. Finally came the decision: Major Ortiz would be sent to Germany June 14, "on official business." Should he live to reach there, he can live with his married daughter, a German resident.

Havana's Chief of Police is Antonio B. Ainciart. Last week he issued a general order. No mention was made of the police habit of shooting anti-Machadoans on sight under the informal ley de juga, but, ordered Chief Ainciart, "The members of the force must abstain from harsh or insulting language in all cases."

It was announced that Dr. Howard Lee McBain, dean of the faculty of Political Science at Columbia University (whence have come so many Roosevelt experts), had been invited to Cuba to redraft Cuba's election laws, because "the 1934 Presidential election must be entirely beyond suspicion."

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