CHAPTER XIII

After the Constitution, the Government. On October 14, 1901, General Wood as Military Governor of Cuba issued an order for the holding of a general election throughout the island on December 31, that day to be a legal holiday. At that election there were to be chosen Presidential and Senatorial Electors, Members of the House of Representatives, Governors of Provinces or Departments, and members of Provincial Assemblies or Councils. At the same time it was announced that the election of President, Vice-President and Senators, by the electoral colleges, would take place on February 24, 1902. A provisional election law was also promulgated at that time.

This order brought acutely to the fore the question of Presidential candidates. There were several of them, but none of them could be regarded as a party candidate for the reason that there were then practically no parties. The three which had existed had gradually dissolved, merged into each other, and left the Cuban people free to follow purely individual leaders again.

Maximo Gomez was naturally looked to as the foremost candidate for the Presidency, and despite the bitterness of some politicians against him there is little doubt that if he had consented to be a candidate he would have stood alone and been elected practically without opposition. No man deserved the honor more than he. But it was more than an honor. It was a tremendously serious responsibility. Now Gomez was not the man to shirk responsibility. But he was not a man, either, to accept it rashly. He knew his own limitations. He knew, too, the requirements of the place. There was needed a scholar and statesman, rather than a "rough and ready" bushwhacking soldier. So he would not even consider the offer of the nomination. "I was never intended," he said, "to become the President of any country. I think too much of Cuba to become her President."

Calixto Garcia, who after the death of Antonio Maceo stood second to Gomez as a commander, and who was General-in-Chief of the eastern half of the island, had won a splendid reputation for efficient work in Oriente and Camaguey, and was a man of great force and ability, and of much popularity among the Cuban people. But he died at Washington of pneumonia soon after the close of the war.

With these two great chieftains of Cuba's wars thus out of the running, the choice by common consent fell upon Tomas Estrada Palma; and a better choice could not have been made. We have already seen something of his work as the head of the Cuban Junta in New York. He was now past the prime of life, having been born at Bayamo in 1837, but he was in full mastery of his ripe intellectual and physical powers. The son of a rich and distinguished family, he was sent in his youth to Seville to study law, and for a time practised it with much success in Cuba. But he was a patriot, and when the Ten Years' War began he entered the Cuban ranks and had a distinguished career in the field, as also in the councils of the Republic in the field. Unfortunately he was captured by the enemy and was sent to Spain, where he was a prisoner until the end of the war. Then he went to Honduras, became Postmaster-General of that country, and married the accomplished daughter of President Guardiola. Thence he went to the United States and for some years was the head of an admirable private school for boys at Central Valley, New York; most of his pupils being from Cuba and other Latin-American countries.

At the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1895 the veteran patriot promptly offered himself for any service that he could perform. Though nearing the age of three score, he would gladly have taken up his rifle again and gone into the field. But there was more important and more profitable work for Cuba to be done than that would have been, and he entered upon it with zeal, as the head of the Cuban Junta in New York. Especially after the death of Marti, he was the guiding spirit of that organization, and as such, at least in the eyes of America and of the world at large, he was the actual head of the Cuban revolution, even more than the President of the Provisional Government in the patriot stronghold in the mountains of Cubitas. He was not merely the very active head of the working organization of the Junta, which supplied the Cuban army with the sinews of war, but he was the diplomatic representative of Cuba, though only informally recognized, at Washington. He was at this time still in the United States, and was making no effort whatever to secure the Presidential nomination. Doubtless he would have been quite content not to receive it, and would have given his heartiest and most efficient support to any other man who might have been chosen. But there was a spontaneous turning of all Cuban eyes and minds and hearts toward him as the man of all best fitted to inaugurate the independent republican sovereignty of the insular state as its first President. He was the choice of no party--parties were yet inchoate--but of the Cuban people.

In similar fashion General Bartolome Maso was put forward for Vice-President. Of him we have already heard much in these pages; a stern old warrior patriot of Oriente, who had done inestimable service in the field in the two wars, and who had been President of the Revolutionary Government--its last President, in the mountains of Cubitas, at the time of the American intervention. A man of fine education, of unblemished integrity, of sterling patriotism, he commanded the respect and affection of all who knew him; though it must be confessed that he was personally little known at the capital or in the western half of the island.

For a time there seemed every prospect that these two men, so admirably chosen, would be elected without contest. But at the end of October there was a schism. Estrada Palma was favorably inclined toward the Platt Amendment, while Bartolome Maso remained outspoken against it. The sequel was that all the politicians of whatever factions who were opposed to that instrument joined in putting Maso forward as a candidate not for the Vice-Presidency but for the Presidency, in opposition to Palma. On October 31 Maso issued an address announcing his candidacy, which, he said, he had been induced to accept "in order to preserve the nationalism and patriotism of the country"; and he added that the American intervention had been "perverted into a military occupation approaching a conquest." This was exaggeration, though entirely sincere; Maso lacking the broad international vision necessary to appreciate the relationships with the United States and the rest of the world upon which Cuba was about to enter. But it made a strong appeal to a number of diverse and incongruous elements, including some of the former Autonomists, many of the Spaniards, and a number of Negroes who were inclined to form a race party of their own.

There followed an animated but orderly and amicable campaign of mass meetings and stump speeches, quite after the American style. At one time the followers of Maso appeared to be numerous, and claimed that they were sixty per cent. of the citizens of Cuba. But such claims were illusory. Nearly all important leaders, from Maximo Gomez down, were on the side of Estrada Palma, and before the actual trial of strength at the polls Maso withdrew from the campaign, leaving Palma alone in the field. The supporters of Maso explained that his candidacy was withdrawn because there was no prospect of a fair election. They objected to some provisions of the election law, and complained that they were not fairly represented on the boards of registration and election. They even alleged that frauds were being committed in the registration, and they asked that the election be postponed in order that there might be another registration over which they should have a larger measure of supervision. This request was refused, whereupon they withdrew from all participation in the election. A manifesto was issued, denouncing the Central Board of Elections as "a coalition of partisans" and declaring that "neither in official circles in the United States nor in Cuba does the intention exist to see that the elections are carried out with sufficient legality to reflect the real wishes of the Cubans." These imputations were unwarranted, and most regrettable; and were rightly regarded by the great majority of Cubans as a practical confession of the weakness of the Maso faction.

The elections were duly held on the day appointed, and were conducted with admirable quiet, order and dignity. The unfortunate feature of them was that only a very light vote was polled. Not only did the supporters of Maso pretty generally abstain from voting, but many of Palma's followers, knowing that there was no real contest, did not take the trouble to go to the polls. Commenting upon the circumstances, General Wood reported: "I regret to state that a large portion of the conservative element, composed of property owners, and business and professional men, did not take such an interest in the elections as proper regard for the welfare of their country required, and consequently the representation of this element among the officials elected has not been proportionately as large as the best interests of the island demand." Despite the abstention of Maso's followers from voting, eight members of that faction were elected in the sixty-three members of the Electoral College. On February 24 the Electoral College met and elected Tomas Estrada Palma to be President and Luis Estevez to be Vice-President of the Republic of Cuba.

President Roosevelt, in a message to the Congress of the United States on March 27, reported the progress of Cuba toward self-government, and recommended that provision be made for sending diplomatic and consular representatives thither, and the Secretary of War began preparations for withdrawing the Military Governor and all American officials and forces, and permitting the installation of the native government. It was arranged that the last-named event should occur on May 20, 1902, four years and a month after the American act of intervention.

The closing weeks of the American occupation were made busy with the closing up of affairs preparatory to departure. Two new laws relating to railroads were promulgated on February 7 and March 3; laws which the Cubans on assuming the government of the island found so beneficent that they retained them unchanged. Another law on January 24 rearranged the municipalities of the island and abolished a considerable number of them, and still another on March 5 was intended to facilitate the determination of boundaries of estates. Still another, on April 12, was so vigorously opposed by Cubans that it was presently revoked, to the great loss of the island. This was practically an application of the merit system to a part of the civil service, declaring that officials in the judicial and public prosecution services should not be removed from their places without proof of adequate cause. Its revocation left those and all branches of the civil service to be the prey of the spoils system.

In April and May there were promulgated orders for systematizing municipal finances, a manual for military tribunals, quarantine regulations, rules for the revenue cutter service, immigration laws, sanitary regulations, and some modifications of the Code of Civil Procedure. These were all practical measures, of undoubted benefit to the island, and all dealt with matters in which American experience was reasonably supposed to be of advantage to Cuba.

General Wood on May 5 called the elected members of the Cuban Congress together at the Palace, in the name of the President of the United States, to welcome them and to wish them success in their coming work, and to have them examine and pass upon their own credentials and count and rectify the vote of the Electoral College for President and Vice-President. He also announced to them that the formal transfer of government, from the United States military authorities to the Cuban President and Congress, would take place at noon of May 20. Mendez Capote made a graceful and appreciative reply on behalf of himself and his colleagues, and the two Houses took possession of their respective halls and busied themselves with their credentials and with preparations for the serious work which lay just a little distance before them.

Meantime Tomas Estrada Palma was closing up his affairs in the land of which he had been a guest for many years and was preparing to return to the land of his birth to be its chief magistrate. He did not leave the United States until late in April. Instead of going directly to Havana he landed at Gibara, on the northern coast of Oriente, whence he went to Holguin, to Santiago, and then to his old home, which also was destined to be his last, at Bayamo. After a few days' visit there he proceeded to Havana, and arrived in that city on May 11. All the way through the island he was greeted with unbounded enthusiasm, and at every stopping place he was received and entertained with all possible social attention.

Havana itself for a week preceding the installation of the government gave itself up to one incessant fiesta. Arches spanned the principal streets, flowers and bunting made the day brilliant with color, and fireworks illumined the night. The night of May 19 was such as the ancient city had never before known. From evening to morning it was one glare of rockets and illuminations, one roar of anticipatory and jubilant cheers and music. If one single inhabitant of the city slept, his name is not recorded. The riot of joy continued unabated until just before noon, when it slackened for a time, only as a mark of respect for the epochal ceremony which was being performed in the great State Hall of the Palace.

There, in the very place where less than four years before General Castellanos had abdicated the power of Spain over the last of her American colonies, were gathered the members of the American Government of Intervention, about to retire; the members of the Cuban Government, about to assume authority; the representatives of various foreign powers; and a few private guests of distinction. The central figures were Leonard Wood and Tomas Estrada Palma. The former read a brief note from President Roosevelt, announcing the transfer which was about to be made, and expressing to the Cuban government the sincere friendship and good wishes of the United States, the most earnest hopes for the stability and success of the Cuban government, for the blessings of peace, justice and prosperity and ordered freedom among the people of Cuba and for enduring friendship between the United States and that Republic.

General Wood then addressed the Cuban President and Congress, declaring that he transferred to them the government and control of the island, and that the American military occupation was ended. He reported the amount of public funds which he turned over to the new officials, and called attention to various plans for sewering, paving and other sanitary works which were in course of execution. President Palma responded, accepting the transfer of sovereignty, and expressing his and his countrymen's appreciation of the course which the American government had pursued.

Thus the transcendent consummation was achieved, for which during so many weary and tragic years so many Cuban patriots had longed and for which so much treasure had been spent, so much blood had been shed, and so many lives had been sacrificed. "Cuba Libre" was an accomplished fact among the nations of the world.

Leaving that memorable scene, General Wood telegraphed to the President of the United States:

"I have the honor to report that, in compliance with instructions received, I have this day, at 12 o'clock sharp, transferred to the President and Congress of the Republic of Cuba the government and control of the island, to be held and exercised by them under the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba."

One other incident remained. As soon as the brief ceremony with the palace was completed, the American flag was hauled down from that and all other public buildings and the Cuban flag was raised in its place. It is not known whether the American Senator who had predicted that "That Flag will never be hauled down!" was there to see the sight. Certain it is that the people of Cuba were almost--and most pardonably--wild with joy to see their own beautiful emblem at last float in token of sovereignty over their island's capital. The Cuban flag flying over the Palace and over the Morro Castle was the supreme consummation of their patriotic dreams and visions.

The red, white and blue flag of Cuba, though then first raised in unchallenged sovereignty, was then by no means a new thing. It was already more than half a century old, and had been the guidon of brave men in three bloody wars. It was designed by the first great Cuban revolutionist, Narciso Lopez, and by his comrade, Miguel Teurbe Tolon, of Matanzas, a gifted poet and ardent patriot, and it was first displayed by Lopez in his raid upon and capture of the city of Cardenas, on May 19, 1850. The five bars, alternately blue and white, represented the five provinces into which the island was at that time divided; the red triangle represented the blood of patriots which was being shed in the cause of liberty; and the white star was the star of Cuba's hope. After the death of Lopez the flag disappeared. But when the Ten Years' War began many flags of that same design were made, the workroom being in a house on Warren Street in the City of New York, and thereafter it remained familiar to every Cuban patriot.

The coat of arms of the Republic of Cuba displays the colors of the flag, and by their side the Royal Palm, perhaps the most notable of the trees in Cuba. The tree springs from a grassy plain, at the back of which is a mountain range; agriculture and mining being thus typified. Across the top of the shield extends a landscape-seascape, representing the ocean, with Florida at one side and Yucatan at the other, while between them lies the Key, Cuba. From the far horizon rises the sun. Above all is the Cap of Liberty, while around the shield are twined branches of oak and laurel.

No more just and fitting estimate of the great work of intervention which thus, on May 20, 1902, was consummated, has ever been made than that which was uttered only a few weeks later by President Roosevelt, in speaking before a distinguished audience at Harvard University. He said:

"Four years ago Leonard Wood went down to Cuba, has served there ever since, has rendered her literally invaluable service; a man who through these four years thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up the standard of political and social life in that island, to clean it physically and morally, to make justice even and fair in it, to found a school system which should be akin to our own, to teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as government righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men."

That was the work which Leonard Wood did in Cuba; that was the work which the United States government did by and through him; the consummation of which was denoted in that unique act of withdrawing the American flag and raising the Cuban flag in its place. Fortunate was it, however, that the results of that work, the teachings of the American occupation, the meaning of the American flag, were not and could not be withdrawn when the Stars and Stripes came down. Just as the colors and indeed the essential pattern of the flag remained, in different arrangement, so the essential spirit of American republicanism remained, to be manifested not any longer by American interveners but by the Cuban people themselves.

It was a marvellous achievement, that of those four years. It was such as the world had not seen equalled, at any other time or in any other place. It was creditable in the highest degree to the Cuban people themselves. It was creditable to the United States, for its intervention at its own great cost and for its scrupulous keeping of its faith. It was creditable to many individual actors in the great drama, both insular and continental, who displayed unsurpassed fidelity, self-sacrifice and heroism in the cause of Cuban liberation. But the simple truth and justice of history would be impaired if the chief credit were not given, _primus inter pares_, to the great American administrator, conquering soldier and constructive statesman, who from first to last was the guiding genius of Cuban rehabilitation.

The works of Durham in Canada, and of Cromer in Egypt, form splendid passages in the history of benevolent colonial administration. But there was a more difficult work performed not for a dependent colony which would return compensation to the Mother Country or to the suzerain power but for an alien land and people, presently to become entirely independent of their benefactor. He found the Pearl of the Antilles war-ravaged and faction-rent; her fields desolated, her industries destroyed; her women widowed and her children orphaned; her treasury empty and her debts heavy and pressing; her government abolished and her laws inadequate; with famine, pestilence and hopelessness stalking throughout the land. It was his work to heal the wounds of war and to unite the people of all classes and parties for the common good; to assist the revival of agriculture and the rebuilding of industry; to care for the widowed and the orphaned; to replenish the public treasury and to discharge the debt of honor to the veterans of the War of Independence; to organize efficient government and out of his own constructive genius to conceive and to promulgate needed and beneficent laws; to feed the hungry until they could feed themselves, to banish pestilence until a lazar-house became a health resort, and to inspire with hope and faith triumphant a people who for a generation had striven with the demons of despair.

With such a labor successfully achieved, through the exercise of a tact, a perseverance, a resourcefulness and an administrative genius not surpassed in his day and generation, we may not wonder that he was universally beloved by all the Cuban people regardless of class, of previous condition or of political predilections; that the only cloud resting upon the brilliance of the consummation of Cuban independence proceeded from the fact of his departure from the island and the people he had so greatly served; and that, not waiting for the slow tributes of remote posterity, the Cuban people of his own day hold in their supremest confidence, gratitude, respect and enduring affection the name, the memory and the vital personality of Leonard Wood.

President Palma had already selected the members of his Cabinet on May 17, three days before the transfer. It contained six members, chosen without regard to party, for the President was not a partisan. As a matter of fact, however, it contained representatives of all three of the old parties, which were at this time in course of dissolution and reorganization into the two which have since divided the Cuban people between them. Diego Tamayo was the Secretary of Government, having charge of the postal service, the signal service, sanitation, and the Rural Guard. Carlos Zaldo was Secretary of State and of Justice. Emilio Terry was Secretary of Agriculture. Manual Luciano Diaz was Secretary of Public Works; Eduardo Yero was Secretary of Public Instruction; and Garcia Montes was Secretary of Finance.

The President presented his first message to Congress on May 28. He spoke with gratitude of the disinterested intervention and services of the United States, and with confidence of Cuba's ability to fulfil her duties as a sovereign State. He recommended care in the preparation of the budget, and the formulation of measures for the encouragement of cattle-raising and the growing of sugar and tobacco. Just then, owing to the great increase of European beet sugar growing the Cuban sugar trade was in an unsatisfactory state, but he hoped to improve it by securing a reciprocity treaty with the United States which would admit Cuban sugar to the markets of that country free of tariff duty. He also promised to promote the building of much-needed railroads. He urged the cultivation of cordial relations and commercial intercourse with all nations, but especially with the United States. As a special act of grace, a number of Americans who had justly been sentenced to terms in Cuban prisons under the Government of Intervention received pardons. These included three men, Rathbone, Neely and Reeves, who had been sentenced for ten years for frauds in the Cuban postoffice, the only serious scandal of the American administration.

Two of the items in the Platt Amendment were soon taken up by the United States government, and were settled in a way eminently satisfactory to Cuba. One was the disposition of the Isle of Pines. It was decided by the State Department at Washington that when the American government was withdrawn from Cuba, control of the Isle of Pines was transferred to the Cuban government, to be held and exercised by it unless and until some other disposition should subsequently be effected. In time Cuban ownership of the isle was definitively confirmed by the government of the United States.

The other point was that of American naval stations. A report was made by Rear-Admiral Bradford of the United States Navy, recommending the establishment of naval stations at Triscornia, in Havana Harbor; and at Guantanamo, east of Santiago; and the establishment of coaling stations at Nipe Bay and Cienfuegos. The Cubans were not inclined to object to any of these excepting the first-named, to which their objection was reasonable and convincing. It would not be agreeable, they thought, to have the flag of a foreign power flying right in front of their own capital and at the very gate of the harbor of that capital, so that foreign vessels would pass by it and salute it equally with the Cuban flag. This objection was recognized and respected by the United States government, which waived all claim to Triscornia, and on July 2, 1903, contented itself with land for naval stations at Guantanamo, one of the finest harbors in the world, on the south coast of Oriente, and Bahia Honda, another superb harbor, on the north coast of Pinar del Rio. Of these only Guantanamo has actually been utilized.

The matter of reciprocity between the United States and Cuba was taken up, but it was long before anything was effected. General Wood had urged that a reduction of at least 33-1/3 per cent. should be made in the sugar duty in favor of Cuba, as absolutely essential to the prosperity of the island, and President Roosevelt urged upon Congress in the strongest possible manner the desirability of some such action, partly for the sake of Cuban prosperity, and partly for the fulfilment of America's moral duty toward that island. Indeed, such commercial relations had been promised to Cuba, and it was bad faith to withhold them. Of course the commercial interests of Europe, both in sugar and all other wares, were earnestly opposed to any such arrangement, and they had their governments exert all possible influence to prevent its being made. There were also large beet sugar interests in the United States which strenuously opposed any reduction of the tariff on Cuban sugar. President Roosevelt had a long and desperate battle with Congress over the matter, before he finally prevailed upon it grudgingly and imperfectly to make a reciprocity agreement, from which the United States would profit much more than Cuba. This was on March 29, 1903. Meantime, because of the American refusal to grant reciprocity, Cuba suffered acute economic depression approximating disaster. The insular treasury had scarcely enough money with which to pay current expenses, and the government was driven to the imposition of burden-some taxes upon many articles to save itself from bankruptcy.

The reciprocity treaty was finally ratified by the American Senate on March 29, 1903. But it did not at once go into effect. There was needed Congressional legislation to make it effective, and this was not supplied. After discreditable delay on the part of the lawmakers, President Roosevelt called Congress together in special session on November 10, 1903, for the express purpose of having it take the needed action for putting the treaty into operation. "I deem," he said, "such legislation demanded not only by our interest but by our honor.... When the acceptance of the Platt Amendment was required from Cuba by the action of the Congress of the United States, this government thereby definitely committed itself to the policy of treating Cuba as occupying a unique position as regards this country. It was provided that when the island became a free and independent republic she should stand in such close relations with us as in certain respects to come within our system of international policy; and it necessarily followed that she must also to a certain degree become included within the lines of our economic policy.... We gave her liberty. We are knit to her by the memories of the blood and courage of our soldiers who fought for her in war; by the memory of the wisdom and integrity of our administrators who served her in peace and who started so well on the difficult path of self-government. We must help her onward and upward; and in helping her we shall help ourselves.... A failure to enact such legislation would come perilously near a repudiation of the pledged faith of the nation."

Thus at last through such gallant urging a measure of justice was secured for Cuba. The unwillingness and delay of Congress formed the most discreditable chapter of the history of America's dealings with Cuba. But the real attitude, the real purpose, the real spirit of the United States toward Cuba, were unmistakably set forth not in the paltering and tergiversation of a sordid Congress, but in the lofty and inspiring words of the great American President.