Los Ninos

The horns of Cuba's dilemma last week were the two terra cotta towers of Havana's elaborate Hotel National. There 400 army and navy officers who refused to accept the student-supported government of President Ramon Grau San Martin, some in undershirts, some in crumpled linen suits but all with thumping big pistols at their waists, were marooned, peeling their own potatoes, running the elevators, making the beds. The guests, including U. S. Ambassador Sumner Welles, had departed. So had the staff, with the exception of two managers who felt a mariner's duty to stick by the ship. The self-promoted sergeants in command of Cuba's army doubled the guards around the hotel, prevented anyone from entering or leaving. They trained two field guns on the entrances of the building, set up sentry posts and cots in the lee of the nearby Ford plant. Thus checkmated, matters rested. Cubans used to living on volcanos' edges made a 16-block detour and went on about their business.

The question everywhere was how long could matters last. President Grau San Martin and his bewildered professorial Cabinet remained in Gerardo Machado's ornate palace. The army was restive, wondering where its next month's pay would come from. The treasury remained almost without money. Tax collection which had revived under the short-lived de Cespedes government ceased abruptly. In the interior, sugar workers were on the rampage. Even in Havana labor was so disorderly that business paralysis impended.

Irritably amused by all this were the opposition politicians, themselves pretty disorganized. When Dr. Grau San Martin went stiffly to dicker with them for support, he first decreed the dissolution of all political parties, then refused to give them any hand in the Government. They gave as the first condition of their support that he resign. Scoring their "impertinence," President Grau San Martin nevertheless had good grounds for fearing last week that he was about to pass on into History. While a coalition of his opponents mulled over an ultimatum to serve on him, President Grau San Martin philosophically announced: "The person who occupies the government is unimportant; the fulfillment of the revolutionary program is the thing."

Directorio Estudiantil The real rulers of Cuba last week were not the sergeant-led army, nor the Cabinet of President Grau San Martin, but a group of 30 tousle-haired, secretly worried young people known as the Directorio Estudiantil All had been oppressed, not a few had been imprisoned and tortured, by Machado the Butcher. The youngest is 19, the oldest 30, and all were students of the University of Havana which was shut by Dictator Machado in 1930.

Since the fall of Machado there has been much talk about the part Cuban students played in his overthrow. The largest, most effective organization in the revolution was the ABC. It started among young graduates of Havana University, fought Machado terrorism with counter-terrorism by cells of ten men each. Its effectiveness brought older, stabler heads into the ABC who took over its direction, set up the moderate government of Carlos de Cespedes. Older than the ABC is the Students' Directorate which has no prudent grey-head members, wants a Cuban Utopia here and now. It backs and directs the government of President Grau San Martin. Hour after hour last week the Students' Directorate sat in conference arguing, gesticulating, issuing orders for the Grau San Martin Cabinet to put into effect. Nobody questioned their patriotism or their sincerity. They served without pay, swore to accept no government posts, but it was as though the Social Problems Club of Columbia University had taken over the U. S. Government and was telling a puppet cabinet what to do.

Even conservative Cubans could not grow angry with Los Ninos ("The Boys") but the great problem was what The Boys were going to do next. There was no leader; every member of the Directorio Estiidiantil had an equal voice. The nearest approach to leaders seemed to be a wild-eyed pair known as Santiago Alvarez and Ysmael Seijas who handed out Springfields and automatic rifles to other shirt-sleeved students, formed a most irregular militia.

One of Los Ninos is the son of Dr. Eduardo Chibas, a member of the de Cespedes Cabinet which they helped overthrow. In Dr. Chibas' house last week young Chibas and his 29 young friends of the Directorio sat down on 30 chairs drawn in a big circle. As to a seminar in Elementary Social Problems, Ambassador Welles and his financial adviser, Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. walked in, sat down in the centre of the circle. It was the first time The Boys had ever agreed to listen to Mr. Welles.

He started slowly and frankly, talking much like President Roosevelt in his radio messages to U. S. citizens. He told The Boys carefully about the problems his boss in Washington had and what he was doing about them. He showed that those problems (unemployment, debts, foreign trade, crime) were much the same as the problems The Boys were having such trouble with. He went back to the beginnings last spring of his own attempts to talk out a solution of Cuba's basic economy. He explained that President Roosevelt does not want to intervene in Cuba, wants only to give reasonable protection to U. S. lives and investments. He promised U. S. recognition as soon as a Cuban Government can "give proof of ability to maintain public order, obtain public support and meet obligations." Immensely flattered, The Boys next day sent half their members through the country making speeches to get public order and support.

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