Back to 1901

When a U. S. bootlegger's airplane skidded to a halt in Nassau Harbor last week, a pale, pockmarked, frightened Cuban, Gerardo Machado y Morales, instantly demanded police protection. Nassau's big, black, pith-helmeted police ordinarily carry no firearms, but now rifles were issued to some of them and a guard posted at the Royal Victoria Hotel.

Few victims of the Machado reign of terror knew what was in store for them. They were shot down peacefully in their own homes, like the Freyre de Andrade brothers, or murdered on their doorsteps like Editor Andre of El Dia, or shot from passing automobiles, or rushed without warning to Principe Fortress and tortured to death, or kidnapped by the Porra and lynched. But Gerardo Machado knows what is in store for him. Always hoping to escape, somewhere, somehow, he last week begged and obtained permission to seek refuge in Canada. To confuse those Cuban avengers who will not rest, two means of escape were arranged. A seaplane was chartered, and also accommodations were engaged on the S. S. Lady Rodney for Bermuda and Halifax. On the latter he slipped away in the evening with only a few policemen and hotel porters to see him go. In New York, Paris, Miami, former Machado exiles were still being approached with subscription blanks to underwrite his assassination.

Havana settled down. Lurid stories of massacre, revolution and Negro uprisings continued to filter in to the capital from down the island. Investigating these New York Herald Tribune's Correspondent Tom Pettey took a three-day motor trip into the interior, found little evidence. Day after his return revolvers and rifles were cracking in Havana, but the shots were fired in the air. By a single blanket decree the Government of small Provisional President Carlos Manuel de Cespedes declared the Machado administration and all its acts since May 1929 unconstitutional, wiped out the constitutional reforms of 1928 by which Boss Machado was able to pack Congress and the judiciary with his own henchmen, announced new general elections for Feb. 24, 1934. and restored intact the Cuban Constitution of 1901 which was inaugurated under Cuba's first and best President, the late Estrada Palma.

With the old Machado regime dead as carrion, sharp-eyed old politicos began floating home out of exile. First three to arrive and line up their former supporters were Colonel Carlos Mendieta, bearded ex-President Mario Garcia Menocal, leader of the Conservative party, and former Mayor Miguel Mariano Gomez of Havana. Colonel Mendieta is elderly. General Menocal and Dr. Gomez have many a stench to live down from their previous political careers, are regarded with small enthusiasm by young Cubans. But President de Cespedes' ability to handle his fractious island is still an unknown quantity.

A figure growing daily larger on the Cuban scene is young Dr. Joaquin Martinez Saenz, leader of the Secret ABC and present Secretary of the Treasury. In his office last week he received U. S. reporters, wasted no time on the sins of the previous administration, but talked as frankly and directly as a Roosevelt New Dealer.

"We are greatly pleased by the way customs and taxes are coming in," said he. "My first day on the job was August 15. On that day the Government took in $4,000, by August 17 it had grown to $59,267, and by August 23 the books showed that we had taken in $120,199. . . . However I am not like the man who saw an elephant double in size every year and decided that the animal would be as big as the entire world by the time he was 100 years old. . . .

"There has been no moratorium on Cuba's debts, either at home or abroad. We are just proceeding with care, and if there are delays the people will have to be patient. . . . My salary, like that of all other Cabinet members, is $250 a month. Under Machado the Cabinet Members were paid more than $1,000 a month as well as receiving a share in the lottery profits. . . ."

Last week it was announced that a special attache from the U. S. Treasury Department would be sent to the U. S. Embassy in Havana to study the condition and workings of the Cuban Treasury. His findings will be at the disposal of Minister Saenz, if desired.

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