Again, Revolution

Hurricane and revolt again struck Cuba last week. Provisional President Carlos Manuel de Cespedes had left Havana for Sagua la Grande in north central Cuba to survey the storm damage and relief measures (see p. 18). Locum tenens at Havana was Col. Horacio' Ferrer, onetime Army surgeon and oculist who last month refused the Army's nomination as Provi- sional President. Early in the week, to deal with the restless Army, President de Cespedes made Col. Ferrer Secretary of War. Secretary Ferrer promptly barked : "The natural orgy that followed Machado's overthrow is over. The troops henceforth will observe discipline. . . . The forces of the Army will be used to protect all interests against any attempts."

At 10 o'clock last Monday evening Sergeant Fulgencio Batista and other enlisted men of Camp Columbia, Army post where the revolution against the Machado regime originated, called upon their officers, politely asked some to submit to arrest, others to go to their homes. The officers complied. Sergeant Batista became "chief of staff" of a revolt which swiftly spread to Army outposts, to the Navy, to the rural guards. Under the full moon enlisted men rushed machine guns to significant Havana corners. Civilian Havana slept. No one was known to have been killed as immediate result of the new, non-commissioned officers' revolt.

Secretary of War Ferrer hastened to Army general staff headquarters at Castillo de la Fuerza. The enlisted men in command there listened to his pleas to "observe discipline," sent him home downcast.

A special train rushed to fetch President de Cespedes from his hurricane inspection. At the Presidential Palace waited his flustered cabinet. He arrived. In one room sat the cabinet, in another the men who proposed to form a new government. The cabinet resigned. Provisional President de Cespedes left the Presidential Palace for his private home, declaring: "Now is the time for others to assume the government."

U. S. Ambassador Welles twice telephoned U. S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Secretary Hull wirelessed President Roosevelt who, asleep, was gliding up the Potomac on the yacht Nourmahal, his vacation at end. Upshot: a U. S. cruiser and two destroyers hurried to Havana Harbor, one destroyer to Santiago.

Clipped Ambassador Welles in Havana to the revolting non-commissioned officers: "If the military leaders of the movement will guarantee lives and property and maintain peace and order, the sovereignty of Cuba can be saved."

Professed aim of last week's revolt was a new provisional government, which would call a constituent assembly to meet before the general election which Provisional President de Cespedes had promised to hold next February. Until February the old-fashioned Cuban Constitution of 1901 was to be reinstated. Immediate cause of the enlisted men's dissatisfaction was President de Cespedes' proposal to reduce their numbers and pay. Fundamental to everything, however, is the national, sugar-coated impoverishment with which President de Cespedes had hoped to tussle this week.

Throughout Cuba the labor unions, released after eight years' suppression, were agitating among the unorganized sugar-mill and cane field workers of the interior, who get an average wage of 20-c- a day. Demanding an increase to 50-c- a day, the labor leaders called strikes all through the interior, began to recruit by force and intimidation. Violence flared up in other Cuban industries.

To Cuba's aid last week President Roosevelt sent the best man he could find. his own Braintruster Adolf Augustus Berle Jr., the R. F. C.'s soft-spoken little rail-road credit manager, an expert on Caribbean law and economics. Last week in Washington U. S. sugar refiners broke out at a hearing of the commission on U. S. sugar marketing and accused vibrant Mr. Berle, acting as the Farm Adjustment Administration's counsel, of being "prejudiced in favor of refining interests in Cuba." Two days later President Roosevelt appointed Mr. Berle financial adviser to the U. S. Embassy in Cuba. He expected to spend a fortnight sizing up the Cuban Treasury and Cuban sugar. His findings will be "made available to the Cuban Government." With Mr. Berle last week went another financial adviser, John Laylin, special assistant to Under-Secretary of the Treasury Dean Acheson. The two were expected to be back in Washington before Ambassador-designate Jefferson Caffery goes to Havana to take the place of temporary Ambassador Sumner Welles. To show Cuba's good faith President de Cespedes last week earmarked $194,000 for payment of interest and amortization charges on the $50,000,000 loan from the House of Morgan, another $1,200,000 to pay off two of the five coupons in arrears on Cuba's $20,000,000 public works bond issue.

Meanwhile last week Gerardo Machado y Morales was traveling from Nassau. Bahama Islands, to Montreal. With guns in belts, he and his friends ate in their cabins. When the ship docked at Hamilton, Bermuda, he waited until the dock was clear, then appeared at the head of the gangway. Bermuda's Chief of Police hastened up, spoke in his ear. Machado & friends went back to their cabins. Asked by newshawks what would be his last wish if he knew he were about to die, he replied : "That Cuba might always be a free and sovereign State." He added: "If I had my Presidency to live again, I would do the same thing."

At Montreal, two Cuban bodyguards rushed him down the gangplank into a waiting automobile. Canadian police formed around him, escorted him at breakneck speed to the Mount Royal Hotel. Safe in the suite which General Italo Balbo occupied two months ago, he told newshawks : "We have with us barely sufficient pocket money to meet our traveling expenses. All my property, real and otherwise, is in Cuba and I have no money in any bank outside of Cuba."

Asked whether he thought U. S. influence had exploded the first revolution, he replied, "That is a question I would not care to answer." He went on:". . . I will stay here for about three months. Here I feel I am safe. ... I am. not afraid, I am ready to go back to Cuba to face either civil or military trial if Cuba gives me a guarantee of my personal safety."

In Havana the day before soldiers had laid hands on Machado's thick-witted brother Carlos near the Cabana Fortress. As a retired Colonel, Carlos was jailed in the Cabana Fortress to answer military charges of misappropriating public funds.

Havana dock workers announced that they would not unload cargoes from "certain places, those countries giving hospitality to Machado. ... In this way they will make it impossible for him to take shelter in any place, making life for him as impossible as he made it for so many thousands. . . ." Alarmed were the Associated Potato Shippers of New Brunswick who had expected a fine export business this season with Cuba whose 1933 potato crop is nearly nil.

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