Part 2

It is chiefly out of these methods that arose the need for "pacification." Many men of the rural districts became panic-stricken and fled to the hills and mountains. Others rebelled and did likewise, preferring death to slavery. These refugees largely make up the "caco" forces, to hunt down which has become the duty and the sport of American Marines, who were privileged to shoot a "caco" on sight. If anyone doubts that "caco" hunting is the sport of American Marines in Haiti, let him learn the facts about the death of Charlemagne. Charlemagne Peralte was a Haitian of education and culture and of great influence in his district. He was tried by an American courtmartial on the charge of aiding "cacos." He was sentenced, not to prison, however, but to five years of hard labor on the roads, and was forced to work in convict garb on the streets of Cape Haitien. He made his escape and put himself at the head of several hundred followers in a valiant though hopeless attempt to free Haiti. The America of the Revolution, indeed the America of the Civil War, would have regarded Charlemagne not as a criminal but a patriot. He met his death not in open fight, not in an attempt at his capture, but through a dastard deed. While standing over his camp fire, he was shot in cold blood by an American Marine officer who stood concealed by the darkness, and who had reached the camp through bribery and trickery. This deed, which was nothing short of assassination, has been heralded as an example of American heroism. Of this deed, Harry Franck, writing in the June Century of "The Death of Charlemagne," says: "Indeed it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior tales with which history is seasoned from the days of the Greeks down to the recent world war." America should read "The Death of Charlemagne" which attempts to glorify a black smirch on American arms and tradition.

There is a reason why the methods employed in road building affected the Haitian country folk in a way in which it might not have affected the people of any other Latin-American country. Not since the independence of the country has there been any such thing as a peon in Haiti. The revolution by which Haiti gained her independence was not merely a political revolution, it was also a social revolution. Among the many radical changes wrought was that of cutting up the large slave estates into small parcels and allotting them among former slaves. And so it was that every Haitian in the rural districts lived on his own plot of land, a plot on which his family has lived for perhaps more than a hundred years. No matter how small or how large that plot is, and whether he raises much or little on it, it is his and he is an independent farmer.

The completed highway, moreover, continued to be a barb in the Haitian wound. Automobiles on this road, running without any speed limit, are a constant inconvenience or danger to the natives carrying their market produce to town on their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. I have seen these people scramble in terror often up the side or down the declivity of the mountain for places of safety for themselves and their animals as the machines snorted by. I have seen a market woman's horse take flight and scatter the produce loaded on his back all over the road for several hundred yards. I have heard an American commercial traveler laughingly tell how on the trip from Cape Haitien to Port-au-Prince the automobile he was in killed a donkey and two pigs. It had not occurred to him that the donkey might be the chief capital of the small Haitian farmer and that the loss of it might entirely bankrupt him. It is all very humorous, of course, unless you happen to be the Haitian pedestrian.

The majority of visitors on arriving at Port-au-Prince and noticing the well-paved, well-kept streets, will at once jump to the conclusion that this work was done by the American Occupation. The Occupation goes to no trouble to refute this conclusion, and in fact it will by implication corroborate it. If one should exclaim, "Why, I am surprised to see what a well-paved city Port-au-Prince is!" he would be almost certain to receive the answer, "Yes, but you should have seen it before the Occupation." The implication here is that Port-au-Prince was a mudhole and that the Occupation is responsible for its clean and well-paved streets. It is true that at the time of the intervention, five years ago, there were only one or two paved streets in the Haitian capital, but the contracts for paving the entire city had been let by the Haitian Government, and the work had already been begun. This work was completed during the Occupation, _but the Occupation did not pave, and had nothing to do with the paving of a single street in Port-au-Prince_.

One accomplishment I did expect to find--that the American Occupation, in its five years of absolute rule, had developed and improved the Haitian system of public education. The United States has made some efforts in this direction in other countries where it has taken control. In Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, the attempt, at least, was made to establish modern school systems. Selected youths from these countries were taken and sent to the United States for training in order that they might return and be better teachers, and American teachers were sent to those islands in exchange. The American Occupation in Haiti has not advanced public education a single step. No new buildings have been erected. Not a single Haitian youth has been sent to the United States for training as a teacher, nor has a single American teacher, white or colored, been sent to Haiti. According to the general budget of Haiti, 1919-1920, there are teachers in the rural schools receiving as little as six dollars a month. Some of these teachers may not be worth more than six dollars a month. But after five years of American rule, there ought not to be a single teacher in the country who is not worth more than that paltry sum.

Another source of discontent is the Gendarmerie. When the Occupation took possession of the island, it disarmed all Haitians, including the various local police forces. To remedy this situation the Convention (Article X), provided that there should be created,--

without delay, an efficient constabulary, urban and rural, composed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be organized and officered by Americans, appointed by the President of Haiti upon nomination by the President of the United States.... These officers shall be replaced by Haitians as they, by examination conducted under direction of a board to be selected by the Senior American Officer of this constabulary in the presence of a representative of the Haitian Government, are found to be qualified to assume such duties.

During the first months of the Occupation officers of the Haitian Gendarmerie were commissioned officers of the marines, but the war took all these officers to Europe. Five years have passed and the constabulary is still officered entirely by marines, but almost without exception they are ex-privates or non-commissioned officers of the United States Marine Corps commissioned in the gendarmerie. Many of these men are rough, uncouth, and uneducated, and a great number from the South, are violently steeped in color prejudice. They direct all policing of city and town. It falls to them, ignorant of Haitian ways and language, to enforce every minor police regulation. Needless to say, this is a grave source of continued irritation. Where the genial American "cop" could, with a wave of his hand or club, convey the full majesty of the law to the small boy transgressor or to some equally innocuous offender, the strong-arm tactics for which the marines are famous, are apt to be promptly evoked. The pledge in the Convention that "these officers be replaced by Haitians" who could qualify, has, like other pledges, become a mere scrap of paper. Graduates of the famous French military academy of St. Cyr, men who have actually qualified for commissions in the French army, are denied the opportunity to fill even a lesser commission in the Haitian Gendarmerie, although such men, in addition to their pre-eminent qualifications of training, would, because of their understanding of local conditions and their complete familiarity with the ways of their own country, make ideal guardians of the peace.

The American Occupation of Haiti is not only guilty of sins of omission, it is guilty of sins of commission in addition to those committed in the building of the great road across the island. Brutalities and atrocities on the part of American marines have occurred with sufficient frequency to be the cause of deep resentment and terror. Marines talk freely of what they "did" to some Haitians in the outlying districts. Familiar methods of torture to make captives reveal what they often do not know are nonchalantly discussed. Just before I left Port-au-Prince an American Marine had caught a Haitian boy stealing sugar off the wharf and instead of arresting him he battered his brains out with the butt of his rifle. I learned from the lips of American Marines themselves of a number of cases of rape of Haitian women by marines. I often sat at tables in the hotels and cafes in company with marine officers and they talked before me without restraint. I remember the description of a "caco" hunt by one of them; he told how they finally came upon a crowd of natives engaged in the popular pastime of cock-fighting and how they "let them have it" with machine guns and rifle fire. I heard another, a captain of marines, relate how he at a fire in Port-au-Prince ordered a "rather dressed up Haitian," standing on the sidewalk, to "get in there" and take a hand at the pumps. It appeared that the Haitian merely shrugged his shoulders. The captain of marines then laughingly said: "I had on a pretty heavy pair of boots and I let him have a kick that landed him in the middle of the street. Someone ran up and told me that the man was an ex-member of the Haitian Assembly." The fact that the man had been a member of the Haitian Assembly made the whole incident more laughable to the captain of marines.

Perhaps the most serious aspect of American brutality in Haiti is not to be found in individual cases of cruelty, numerous and inexcusable though they are, but rather in the American attitude, well illustrated by the diagnosis of an American officer discussing the situation and its difficulty: "The trouble with this whole business is that some of these people with a little money and education think they are as good as we are," and this is the keynote of the attitude of every American to every Haitian. Americans have carried American hatred to Haiti. They have planted the feeling of caste and color prejudice where it never before existed.

And such are the "accomplishments" of the United States in Haiti. The Occupation has not only failed to achieve anything worth while, but has made it impossible to do so because of the distrust and bitterness that it has engendered in the Haitian people. Through the present instrumentalities no matter how earnestly the United States may desire to be fair to Haiti and make intervention a success, it will not succeed. An entirely new deal is necessary. This Government forced the Haitian leaders to accept the promise of American aid and American supervision. With that American aid the Haitian Government defaulted its external and internal debt, an obligation, which under self-government the Haitians had scrupulously observed. And American supervision turned out to be a military tyranny supporting a program of economic exploitation. The United States had an opportunity to gain the confidence of the Haitian people. That opportunity has been destroyed. When American troops first landed, although the Haitian people were outraged, there was a feeling nevertheless which might well have developed into cooperation. There were those who had hopes that the United States, guided by its traditional policy of nearly a century and a half, pursuing its fine stand in Cuba, under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, would extend aid that would be mutually beneficial to both countries. Those Haitians who indulged this hope are disappointed and bitter. Those members of the Haitian Assembly who, while acting under coercion were nevertheless hopeful of American promises, incurred unpopularity by voting for the Convention, are today bitterly disappointed and utterly disillusioned.

If the United States should leave Haiti today, it would leave more than a thousand widows and orphans of its own making, more banditry than has existed for a century, resentment, hatred and despair in the heart of a whole people, to say nothing of the irreparable injury to its own tradition as the defender of the rights of man.

_From The Nation of September 4, 1920._

III. GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR THE NATIONAL CITY BANK

Former articles of this series described the Military Occupation of Haiti and the crowd of civilian place holders as among the forces at work in Haiti to maintain the present status in that country. But more powerful though less obvious, and more sinister, because of its deep and varied radications, is the force exercised by the National City Bank of New York. It seeks more than the mere maintenance of the present status in Haiti; it is constantly working to bring about a condition more suitable and profitable to itself. Behind the Occupation, working conjointly with the Department of State, stands this great banking institution of New York and elsewhere. The financial potentates allied with it are the ones who will profit by the control of Haiti. The United States Marine Corps and the various office-holding "deserving Democrats," who help maintain the status quo there, are in reality working for great financial interests in this country, although Uncle Sam and Haiti pay their salaries.

Mr. Roger L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, was effectively instrumental in bringing about American intervention in Haiti. With the administration at Washington, the word of Mr. Farnham supersedes that of anybody else on the island. While Mr. Bailly-Blanchard, with the title of minister, is its representative in name, Mr. Farnham is its representative in fact. His goings and comings are aboard vessels of the United States Navy. His bank, the National City, has been in charge of the Banque Nationale d'Haiti throughout the Occupation.[1] Only a few weeks ago he was appointed receiver of the National Railroad of Haiti, controlling practically the entire railway system in the island with valuable territorial concessions in all parts.[2] The $5,000,000 sugar plant at Port-au-Prince, it is commonly reported, is about to fall into his hands.

[Footnote 1: The National City Bank originally (about 1911) purchased 2,000 shares of the stock of the Banque Nationale d'Haiti. After the Occupation it purchased 6,000 additional shares in the hands of three New York banking firms. Since then it has been negotiating for the complete control of the stock, the balance of which is held in France. The contract for this transfer of the Bank and the granting of a new charter under the laws of Haiti were agreed upon and signed at Washington last February. But the delay in completing these arrangements is caused by the impasse between the State Department and the National City Bank, on the one hand, and the Haitian Government on the other, due to the fact that the State Department and the National City Bank insisted upon including in the contract a clause prohibiting the importation and exportation of foreign money into Haiti subject only to the control of the financial adviser. To this new power the Haitian Government refuses to consent.]

[Footnote 2: Originally, Mr. James P. McDonald secured from the Haitian Government the concession to build the railroads under the charter of the National Railways of Haiti. He arranged with W. R. Grace & Company to finance the concession. Grace and Company formed a syndicate under the aegis of the National City Bank which issued $2,500,000 bonds, sold in France. These bonds were guaranteed by the Haitian Government at an interest of 6 per cent on $32,500 for each mile. A short while after the floating of these bonds, Mr. Farnham became President of the company. The syndicate advanced another $2,000,000 for the completion of the railroad in accordance with the concession granted by the Haitian Government. This money was used, but the work was not completed in accordance with the contract made by the Haitian Government in the concession. The Haitian Government then refused any longer to pay the interest on the mileage. These happenings were prior to 1915.]

Now, of all the various responsibilities, expressed, implied, or assumed by the United States in Haiti, it would naturally be supposed that the financial obligation would be foremost. Indeed, the sister republic of Santo Domingo was taken over by the United States Navy for no other reason than failure to pay its internal debt. But Haiti for over one hundred years scrupulously paid its external and internal debt--a fact worth remembering when one hears of "anarchy and disorder" in that land--until five years ago when under the financial guardianship of the United States interest on both the internal and, with one exception, external debt was defaulted; and this in spite of the fact that specified revenues were pledged for the payment of this interest. Apart from the distinct injury to the honor and reputation of the country, the hardship on individuals has been great. For while the foreign debt is held particularly in France which, being under great financial obligations to the United States since the beginning of the war, has not been able to protest effectively, the interior debt is held almost entirely by Haitian citizens. Haitian Government bonds have long been the recognized substantial investment for the well-to-do and middle class people, considered as are in this country, United States, state, and municipal bonds. Non-payment on these securities has placed many families in absolute want.

What has happened to these bonds? They are being sold for a song, for the little cash they will bring. Individuals closely connected with the National Bank of Haiti are ready purchasers. When the new Haitian loan is floated it will, of course, contain ample provisions for redeeming these old bonds at par. The profits will be more than handsome. Not that the National Bank has not already made hay in the sunshine of American Occupation. From the beginning it has been sole depositary of all revenues collected in the name of the Haitian Government by the American Occupation, receiving in addition to the interest rate a commission on all funds deposited. The bank is the sole agent in the transmission of these funds. It has also the exclusive note-issuing privilege in the republic. At the same time complaint is widespread among the Haitian business men that the Bank no longer as of old accommodates them with credit and that its interests are now entirely in developments of its own.

Now, one of the promises that was made to the Haitian Government, partly to allay its doubts and fears as to the purpose and character of the American intervention, was that the United States would put the country's finances on a solid and substantial basis. A loan for $30,000,000 or more was one of the features of this promised assistance. Pursuant, supposedly, to this plan, a Financial Adviser for Haiti was appointed in the person of Mr. John Avery McIlhenny. Who is Mr. McIlhenny? That he has the cordial backing and direction of so able a financier as Mr. Farnham is comforting when one reviews the past record and experience in finance of Haiti's Financial Adviser as given by him in "Who's Who in America," for 1918-1919. He was born in Avery Island, Iberia Parish, La.; went to Tulane University for one year; was a private in the Louisiana State militia for five years; trooper in the U.S. Cavalry in 1898; promoted to second lieutenancy for gallantry in action at San Juan; has been member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Senate; was a member of the U. S. Civil Service Commission in 1906 and president of the same in 1913; Democrat. It is under his Financial Advisership that the Haitian interest has been continued in default with the one exception above noted, when several months ago $3,000,000 was converted into francs to meet the accumulated interest payments on the foreign debt. Dissatisfaction on the part of the Haitians developed over the lack of financial perspicacity in this transaction of Mr. McIlhenny because the sum was converted into francs at the rate of nine to a dollar while shortly after the rate of exchange on French francs dropped to fourteen to a dollar. Indeed, Mr. McIlhenny's unfitness by training and experience for the delicate and important position which he is filling was one of the most generally admitted facts which I gathered in Haiti.

At the present writing, however, Mr. McIlhenny has become a conspicuous figure in the history of the Occupation of Haiti as the instrument by which the National City Bank is striving to complete the riveting, double-locking and bolting of its financial control of the island. For although it would appear that the absolute military domination under which Haiti is held would enable the financial powers to accomplish almost anything they desire, they are wise enough to realize that a day of reckoning, such as, for instance, a change in the Administration in the United States, may be coming. So they are eager and anxious to have everything they want signed, sealed, and delivered. Anything, of course, that the Haitians have fully "consented to" no one else can reasonably object to.

A little recent history: in February of the present year, the ministers of the different departments, in order to conform to the letter of the law (Article 116 of the Constitution of Haiti, which was saddled upon her in 1918 by the Occupation[3] and Article 2 of the Haitian-American Convention[4]) began work on the preparation of the accounts for 1918-1919 and the budget for 1920-1921. On March 22 a draft of the budget was sent to Mr. A. J. Maumus, Acting Financial Adviser, in the absence of Mr. McIlhenny who had at that time been in the United States for seven months. Mr. Maumus replied on March 29, suggesting postponement of all discussion of the budget until Mr. McIlhenny's return. Nevertheless, the Legislative body, in pursuance of the law, opened on its constitutional date, Monday, April 5. Despite the great urgency of the matter in hand, the Haitian administration was obliged to mark time until June 1, when Mr. McIlhenny returned to Haiti. Several conferences with the various ministers were then undertaken. On June 12, at one of these conferences, there arrived in the place of the Financial Adviser a note stating that he would be obliged to stop all study of the budget "until the time when certain affairs of considerable importance to the well-being of the country shall be finally settled according to recommendations made by me to the Haitian Government." As he did not give in his note the slightest idea what these important affairs were, the Haitian Secretary wrote asking for information, at the same time calling attention to the already great and embarrassing delay, and reminding Mr. McIlhenny that the preparation of the accounts and budget was one of his legal duties as an official attached to the Haitian Government, of which he could not divest himself.

[Footnote 3: "The general accounts and the budgets prescribed by the preceding article must be submitted to the Legislative Body by the Secretary of Finance not later than eight days after the opening of the Legislative Session."]