Ernest Gruening on Haiti and DR from The Nation

Jan. 4,19221
The”Nation
The Senators Visit Haiti and Santo Domingo
‘By ERNEST
The ~ritsr of this artide, who is Managing Editor of
The Nation, has just returned from the Caribbean, where he
went in order to present a first-hand accoud of the official
hear&m
Another article, entitled Haiti and Santa Domingo Today, till be published in a fo&hcoming
issue.
HE Senatorial Commission investigating the American
Occupation and Administratton “of Haiti and Santo Doi
mingo, Senators McCormick (chairman), Oddie, Pomerene,
and Jones, passed two and a half weeks on the Caribbean
island which houses both republics, leaving ,a trail of hope,
anticipation, doubt, and disappointment.
To the majority ‘of Haittans the Commission’s coming
meant deliverance. A simple people, it has been said, these
Haitians.
For weeks the event had been virtually their sole
and universal topic. A couple of naval whitewash inquiries
had made them skeptical about the United States’s good
faith, but they felt that a Senate Commission was bound to
be different, and they regarded the six long and oppressive
years of military occupation as nearing an end. A presentiment that all their hopes might not be realized came with
the refusal of the Commission to order even the temporary
abrogation of martial law for the period of its stay and its
failure to issue, as the Haitians had repeatedly requested,
an emphatic proclamation assuring safety to all witnesses.
True, an announcement was made two days before the Sen:
ators’ arrival, but it was issued from brigade headquarters,
specifically denied the need “further to assure the s8ecurity
of witnesses,” and went so far as to repeat the language of
the proclamation which had preceded the meaningless Mayo
court that the Commission would “not condone perjury.”
In
the prevailing Haitian state of mind-a dash of ice water!
Cheering news, however, was that the Commission would
stay at a hotel, and not as rumor had established for weeks,
at the homes of the chief officers of the Occupation. This
with the radio request from the chairman asking what entertainment, if any, the Cercle Bellevue had planned, again
placed the Commission in the light of friendly and impartial
Th’e CercIe Bellevue, which is Port au
investigators.
Prince’s exclusive club, famed for the quality of its entertainments, had up to that moment firmly abandoned its traditionally hospitable habit-it
would not risk the possibility
of a slight, of a single Senator’s wife declining its invitation
to the elaborate ball and supper which it now proceeded+to
arrange. And rooted in this question of social, or rather
normal, human intercourse lies the essence of many past
misunderstandings
and the gravest menace to friendIy relations in the future.
The hearings too started off poorly. The news that the
Commission would spend but four days in Port au Prince,
when four weeks were considered scarcely adequate, produced
general consternation, the public grasping with difficulty that
the Commission had already spent seven weeks in session,
and that the trip to the Caribbean represented to some of the
Senators a distinct political sacrifice. For weeks rumors had
been circulating through Haiti that this Commission was
but another whitewash affair and as evidence thereof, it
would stay only a week! So the Haitian morale was somewhat impaired.
The first afternoon was consumed by three witnesses tes-
T
H. GRUENING
tifying to abuses by the military and persistent cross-examination, which failed to break down the last of these, Marc
Ducheine, a respected citizen of Hinche. He had been arrested, subjected to daily manhandling by a high officer
(name given) in order to get him to confess to a cache of
arms of another individual of which he had no knowledge. I
After several weeks’ detention he was given a convict’s garb
and thus learned for the first time from a Gendarmerie officer that he had been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
He actually served three years and five months, the greater
part at the hardest kind‘of labor. He did not know, to this
day, he said, the crime with which he had been charged and
for which he had never been tried. There followed what was
intended to be a brief appeal by Georges Sylvain, managing
director of the Union Patriotique, to the Commiss,ion-but
circumstances kept him on the stand all the following day.
He hoped, in view of the shortness of the Commission’s stay,
the difficulty of communication, the prevailing financial distress, and the terrorization
of potential witnesses that the
Senators would go into the interior, into the sections where
most violence had occurred, and hear witnesses there. His
assertions that a state of fear existed and that witnesses
were consequently intimidated were sharply challenged. These
were grave charges, atrocious charges, and of a wholly general nature, he was told. He was asked to name twentyfive witnesses who had been ihtimidated.
He tried to explain that he was not offering testimony, but simply describing a general state of mind, which, due to the failure of
the Commission to give adequate guaranties, existed. Upon
thunderous demands for proof he offered to read some letters
received from potential witnesses in outlying districts telling of their fears, but again was cut short when the Commission grasped that none of these letters were sworn declarations.
It was all a misunderstanding, which-illustrated
but one thing-the
fundamental dissimilarity
in the temperament and methods of the two cultures. With the utmost
sincerity on both sides the incompatibility
remains,
Then followed a long questionnaire by Senator Pomerene
which widened the breach. He wanted to know all about
this Union “Patrique” ; what was it, by what right did it
claim to represent the sentiment of the country, was it not
hostile to the United States ond hostile to the Haitian .Government, did it not contain among its members several aspirants to the Haitian Presidency?. How was it financed;
had it received any financial assistance from the United
States? All of which was satisfactorily
explained; the
Union Patriotique did represent the prevailing sentiment;
it was, of course, not hostile to the United States; on the
contrary, it desired American friendly offices, but it was
naturally irrevocably opposed to the illegal overthrow of
Haitian sovereignty and the occupation of the country by
alien military forces ; as for its harboring in its midst presidential candidates, its by-laws specifically forbade its espousing any presidential candidacy or interesting itseJ.f in
any way in individuals.
As for the finances, they were derived from dues and special constributions by membersnot a cent had ever come from outside of Haiti. The Senatorial heckling then took a new turn. Who, Senator Pornerene wanted to know with some show of grimness (Senator
Pomerene’s bark is worse than his bite but the Haitians did
not know that), was responsible f o r the inscriptions in the
welcoming demonstration of the preceding morning : “Shall
Haiti be your Belgium?”, “Shall Haiti be your Ireland?”;
“Shall Haitibeyour Congo?” The Union Patriotique, of
course. Did the Union Patriotique think that it could influence or control the opinions of the C‘oirimission by such
devices? Did it seek t o arouse the populace by these inscriptions? If not, what purpose could it have in proclaiming Such sentiments? The answer, of course, was that they
represented the sentiments of the Haitians. And then the
entire day was spentinquestionsaboutHaitianhistory,
Haitian education, designedto bring out the
backwardness of
the Haitians and other national
defects. All this produced
an unfortunate impression that kh,e Senators were hostile,
an effect that was in part .overcome by the geniality and
ffiendliness of theentireSenatorialparty
at the Cercle
Belleme affair that night, which upheld all the klub’s traditions of brilliance. To this function neither a single ORcer ,in the Occupation nor the President were invited.
The next morning there were kio sessions, the afternoon
was given to privateconferences, which left but one day for
testimony. This day was, how&er, filled t o overfladink;
A French priest, Father Le Sidanet, told of 250 houses of
peaceable Haitians burned.OnePolydor
St. Pierre exliibited a back and legs seared with the scars of a red hot iron
deliberately applied in the prison at St. Mac-and
at the
recollection of his poignant sufferings brokedown and wept,
while the Senators; appeared deeply moved. He testified
Chat theburninghad
been performed by Captain Fitzgerald Brown of the Marine Corps. A witness put onby
the Occupation immediately after testified that he had been
in the prisonai bhe time and that the burning
had be& done
by a Haitian gendarme. Lanoue, one of the editors, of the
Cowriel‘ Haitien, who had been in prison a t the same time,
swore in tunithai; he had often heard the
preceding witness
describe theburningatthe
hands of Captain Brown.
It seemed established, however, beyond contradiction that
the burning had takenplace iri the! prison, where the victi?
was subsequently treated far
months, for his burns, and
that
prisonwas incharge of Captain Brown. Volney
Paultre testified to witnessing three men tortured with an
electric current derived from a field radio t o extract confessions. After prolonged agonies they confessed andwere
later, he said-Although t o bhis
WVaS not an eye-witneskilled.
Jdlibois, co-ditor with Lanoue of the
his six months’ term ended, appeared to t e t i f y t o t h e rea.
sons
his imprisonment. When the order reestablishing
Martial law
issued his paper w a already on the press.
filaitiaii journdism is primitive. It boasts no linotypes and
only flai-bfd presses. Composition is by hand.An a+ticle
criticizing the Occupation was already in type. In order not
t o scrap the entireissue, Joiibois extracted from the type
dentehces that he considered could possibly be objectionable,
leaving the spaccs blank. Butthecourtmartial
decided
that the readers could readinflammatorysentiment3
into
the blanks! Jolibois had been leading the opposition to tKe
Occupation, and the latter wasdetermined t o “get” him.
?bus would the British have regarded Tom Paine. Courtsmartialverdicts are generallydetermined in advance. I n
&is connection Judge William H. Jackson, the distinguished
jurist who for eight yearswas United States District Judge
a t Panama and later presiding Judge of the Land Court, es-
tablished by the Occupation in Santo Domingo, related to me
a significant experience of his own. When Fabio Fiallo, the
Dominican poet and journalist whose imprisonment caused
such stir throughout Latin-America that Washington was
forced to reverse the verdict of the military, was placed on
trial, the JudgeAdvocate in charge of the prosecution asked
Judge Jackson to appear before the court and as an expert
in Spanidh t o give his judgmentas to theincendiary character of the newspaper article in Fiallo’s paper, La Bandera
which Fialllo had written and forwhich he was being
tried. Upon readingthearticleJudge
Jacksoninformed
the Judge Advocate that basing his opinion on his knowledge of the Spanish language and the Hispanic temperament and customs, he would be obliged t o give his judgment
that the article was notincendiary in character and not actionable. “In that case,” said the Judge Advocate, “we shall
not call you.” Judge Jackson was not called; the court martial.found Fiallo guilty and
sentenced him to three years’
imprisonmentand $5,000 fine. It was fittingly retributive
that the Fiallo case did more t o bring the Dominican cause
before the world than any othersingleincident.
Fiallo’s
crime and Jolibois’s crime was that each protested against
the alien invas,ion and conquest of his country.
The disappointment of the Haitians at the shortness of
the Senatorial stay and theconsequent impossibility of hearing a great number of witnesses-there had literally been
just one day and a half of testimony in Port au P r i n c e
was lessened somewhat by Senator Pomerene’s announcement that the case was by no means closed, that the Cornm’ission would continue t o sit in Washington and would be
glad t o hear further witnesses and to receive any and all
depositions.
The Commission passed overland accompanied by s,oven
officers of the Occupati,on in addition to the auto drivers,
stopped briefly at several interior towns, where demonstrations demanding the return of national independence, the
abolition 05 martial law, and the release of the imprisoned
Haitian journalists were staged. Senator Oddie and the official stenbgrapher remained a day
Hinche and Maissade
t o take the testimony of some twenty-four witnessesmostly .of the killing of various of their relatives.These
witnesses tame in a steady stream, trudging in miles from
the surrounding country. The press was not represented at
these hearings as a t the last moment the previous arrangements to take its representatives overland fell through, the
reasongivenbeing
lack of available transportation facilities. At that lata hour it was virtually impossible t o arrange for private transpwtation and those
of the party who
were not included in the overland arrangements went di-.
rectly to Santo Domingo on the transport Argonne.
The atmosphere in the Hispanic Republic was vastly better than in Haiti.
I am convinced that none of the Senatorswas conscious of the slightest difference in hisattitude, but to those who had been spectators at the hearings
in both cases the change was startling. For one thing it
wasSdnto Domingo’s first testimonybefore the Commission. A t anyrate,there was a friendliness, ali elaborate
courtesy, an overflowing of the milk of human kindness in
Santo Domingo which had been lizissirig inHaiti.From
the Senators to the first witness, Seiior Francisco Peynado,
flowed a steadystream of compliments. He was, he asserted a t one time, speaking only aB an individual-he was
not a leader. Senator Pomerene begged leave t o inisist that
he was.
Peynadd’s son,
organizer of the demon-
The :N-ation
stration of protestagainst the :Occupation, x a s caUed by
Senator McCormick t o .sit rby his .side du,ring one of the SXS.sions. There wereinnumerableothertouches
of .like na:tuce which the Dominicans appreciated .and which produced
La fayorable itmpression. Seaor -Peynado, who is president of the .Collegeof Layyeas, summed .up the Dominican
desirewith “Give us our indep.endence with the aecwity
-of your friendsbip.” Questioned
in detail about Dominican
revolutions, he asserted they were .essentially harmless -to
-life and pxoperty-entirely .so to the -life and property ,of
foreigners. I n all Dominican history.but one American
-had beenkilled-by
a shot aimed at an .ex-President-and
for this carelessness the Dominican Government had
promptly paid ko the .relatives i h e sum of $33,000. I(nde.ed
it was brought out that ;the “‘vocation of being a foreigner”
=had often I n ,the past k e n “considered safe and lucrative.
As for the great body of Dominicansthey &wereneither
perturbed by nor .interested in the revolutions:; their life
-continued unchanged. And even the revolutionists suffered
3ew .casualties. There was marching ,and countermarchimg,
real ,fighting. Revolution, in
playing f o r position,little
.short, was a %port.”
I n -1912,with the-country in revolukioneleven months out of twelve, the Dominican \Republic
‘had exported and imported more goods than the sum total
,of -six other -Hispanic-American countrries.
The second witness, P-edro P.erez, a former governor &of
Seibo province, after testifying a t some ,length and answer‘ing numerous questions, startled the unexentful pqpcedure
by refusing flatly to answer ,a question by Senato-r Pom-erene as -to how -the revolutionists of former days -secured
”their arms, .homes, and !supplies. There lwas mild surprise
-and man inquiry
the reason .of this refusal. Because,
asserted the witness in substance, all .these questions being
internal Dominican matters weren o .one :else’sibusiness, and
-that h e ,wanted there .and .then t o ‘know b y what r i g h t .the
.United States was i n Santo pomingo, , i n violation of .all
international .law a n d .treaties .and by .what right -it had
treated Dominicans dike .“NegrQes .of .the Congo?’
The Domirlicans’ -case.proceeded like .a .well-oiled-machine.
h ,the live days rat “their .disposal they,concentrated on
two main poi7nts-first,
.that :the seasons -alleged f o r the
-original landing .and cOccupation -.were rinvalid; .seco.nd, t h e
-introduction of .a certain number of :atrocities, designed, -as
-Horace ,G. Knowles, counsej -for t h e -Dominicans, took
-.pains :to .emphasize, not t o indict -theoffenaers -individually
o r even tthe military -Occupation to -such .extent that ?it
might -beheld respongjble $€or -thedeeds of its .subordinates,
;but :to$ndicate what the Dominican people had suffered and
-why in consequence bitterness <against%he :Occupat_ion
.existed.
‘SVGness:after dwikness, qualified by -first-hand -knowledge
-or a special ;intimacy with the events .oft h e time, testified
-that four facts in sthe following paragraph from the statement .prepared tby-%heM a w Department for the SenatoriGl
-Commission .and incorporated in &he3ecord ,were false.
Fortunately 1the.election of Jimenez yho .took ,office o n Decem-ber .5, 1914, -was :foll.o.wed b y a period Aof .c.omgar-ative
,calm in
,theDominican ,Repql$ic. The dements .of disorgxanizationprere
present, howeve:, awaiting f,avorable .opportunity for .eTpsession. In April, 1916, General Desiderio Arias,.Secretary of W-ar,
executed a coup d’etat, deposed Jimenez, and seized the executive power. At this point the United ’States -Government intervened end, with the consent of therightful though deposed
-President ;Timenez,la-nded -navalforces on may 5,
and
pacified Santo DomingoCity,
the capital. Jimenez -then re-
9
;signed, and the -Council of ,Ministers .ass,umed contrqlof affairs.
The four facts which each successive witness strenuously
combatedwere: .(1) That General Arias executed a .coup
d‘etat and deposed Jimenez; (2) that Arias seized t h e ex~ecutive power; 4 3 ) that President Jimenez ever consknted
t o the landing of the American troops, and (4) that United
States naval forces pacified Santo Domingo City. Instead,
-it was vigor-ously contended khat while -thepe had been a
difference of opinion between -the Secretary of War and the
President, there-had been no coup d‘etat, and Arias had not
seized the executive power. President Jimenez’s son, his
secretary, Arturp Logroiio, a n d others swore that the late
P-resident had never consented t o >theIanding of troops ;
.that when he first s a v them disembarking he .believed them
merely for the protection of the AmericanLegationand
that the AmericanMinister, Mr. W.W. aussell, had specifically assured him of that fact; and that when-he
the
number of troops exceeded that which could possibjy be
“neededas -a .legation guard he .realized .phat wa_s -happening
-and resigned.%inally the Dominicans denied -the i-mplica$ion that the naval forces had :pacified -the city., saying
.the city was quiet. The testimony -was impressivqly g i p n
,and consincing. Zn ,trying t o checlc it -up I -asked Mr. Russell ,whether the above allusion to him ,wag correot. -Ee
replied that he hadgiven theassuraece that :the tropps
were ,landing merely t o protect the Legation and that
&hat time h e had so -believed. .On .the other hand .hg astsert,ed that a shrapnel shell had burst :in the Sront
4he Legatipn, fragments
,which -were stir1 in his possesgion, :and that during :+ lull in the !fight;ing $e -had rushed
his -wife and his three children _agd other America-n women
_down
the beach -to ,cornparatiye safety. The Dominiean
-testimony indicated that -the
,casualties were two killed
;and (eightwounded.
‘The ,other pgqt of ,the-Dominikans’ defense-to.ok jss-ue w,ith
the ,c_h+rge %h-atthey ;had xiolated Article I11
ithe trea!ty
of 1907 which forbids their increasing their
.public .d-&t
the
-without -$he ;consent ,of :&he United .States.
reason :given .i-n =.aProclamation .by Admiral
has
been the official $ustifigation $@r
Oc-cupation. Zhe Doi-min-icqnp. cpntended khat -their public ,debt
not been ,increased, -that $he &ntge&Land am-ofiization on ;the ou$&pd-ing -1pan-s had been -paid xeguja-rly :in ;accLordanc-e ?with -the
national
&r-eaty,-and that -thedeficit
abo_u$$,L4,000in
treasury
_.
rm.ostlyowi.n_g :on :the
pay .of :soldi.ers
other i o v ”ern-ment-offi.ciaJs,a ,defici$-brogshtabout by
world,c-risis,
-aaurely :internal af3a-i-r -and i-n =no:sense
the
at most a difagreement Rith ; t h e United -States. :Here
,ference lin :i&erp_re_tation
$0 - y h t !was included pin:+he
diffe-w-nce
..opiniion
-p.or-ds (‘pgblic debt.” That such
-gave $he .United States ithe
,right-witb.ou$ :referring to.a~bi-$ratifin, with-o-ut ,even -p.reliminary discussion - ~ t the
h :Dominiaan .Government,$0 intewene vi et armis:and ,to,abo!ish
.all .Dominican .goyernm-en$
,tenabl’e.
DominiImpressive :throughout --%as!the iexcc?llepce
,cans’ “orale. :I-n taking:%heir stand usop $he high xmund
illegal, they have -as-that ithe Amexicap ;Occupatio-n
sumed :a position which i s .and
,con$in-ueko h e tim-pregnable. Allusions
to
,gertain
-internal ,difficulties, to
failumes of .goyernment, to dack .of this
that form of Iprogxess =leave!them unrufiled. That, .they assert, is .their
0-m
!business. And _every-Dominican _witness ended with definite skatement of this -position; .entered -his ‘accusation .of
wrongdoing against the .United States ,and his demand for
”
I
10
The Nation
a n unqualified return ‘of Dominican independence subject
only to thepreexistingtreaty of 1907. And the case was
admirably summed up when- the eloquent Arturo Logroiio
concluded with :
By disembarking troops and committingan act of war without
previous declaration against a friendly nation, anddespoiling
its government, the United States has‘ violated (a) the Constitution of the United States, (b) the Constitution of the
DominicanRepublic,
(e) existing treaties betweenboth,
(d)
especially the convention of 1907, in turning over t o marines
and not t o the Dominican Republic the balance of the customs
receipts after taking out amortization and collection charges,
(e) the resolution not t o intervene proposed by the United States
andadopted
atthe
Third International Conference of the
Hague, (f) international law, (g) the objectandpurpose
of
Monroe Doctrine as interpreted by the United States, (h)
the Fourteenth Point of Woodrow Wilson.
There is th,e charge, clear, categorical, complete. It cannot,
unfortunately, be successfully refuted.
Turning from principles t o details, the Dominicans staged
a performance that might well make Caius Caligula, Torquemada, and the Marquis de Sade turn in their graves with
envy. Specifically they put on the stand witnesses who testified t o the manners and customs in thefield of one Charles
Frederick Merkel, late captain U. S.
C. To this gentle
soul bhe water cure was but the merest reprimand. I shall
not go into the harrowing detailethey will all be printed
in the officialrecord-which
deserveswider reading than
it will probably receive. Suffice to say that they
included
nearly every form of torture imaginable. Nor need: one accept merely the testimony of Dominican witnesses in this
case, convincing as they were. Word of this officer’seccentricities filtered through to headquarters and an investigation was begun. The report of Majomr R. S. Kingsbury confirms many of the gravest charges made by bhe Dominicans
and formed the basisof Captain Merkel’s arrest for trialby
courtmartial.
He committed suicide four days later, October 2, 1918.
The Occupation naturally disclaimsresponsibility
for
Merkel. He was an exception, a brute, a disgrace to the
service-and the fact that he was to be court-martialed indicates the official attitude. Unfortunately
he was allowed
to carry on his abominable cruelties for at least six months,
two months after definite complaints had been made and an
inquiry ordered. The fact remains too that whether or not
these officers’ performances are unrepresentative-which
nobody will
an instant deny-they are an inevitable accompaniment of the sortof campaign of “pacification” which
we carried on in Santo Domingo and Haiti; and beIatedly
repudiating o r even court-martialingan occasional ultraconspicuous offender neither restores the lives of their in-nocentvictims, nor indemnifies their relatives
the tortured survivors. And the effect on the public sentiment in
the subjugatedcountry
is irremediable. Inthe case of
Merkel, no less than three officers of superior rank assured
*me in all seriousness that the explanation of this phenomenon was that he was a German and that he had been placed
where he was by the Imperial German Government for the
purpose of stirring the Dominicans to revolt by his cruelties.
Merkel was in the Marine Corps for eighteen years, working up from the ranks.
It was nottheImperial German
Government which commissioned him andthen promoted
him through successive grades, or which planted him in the
Marine Corps intheyear
1900-although a telegraphic
response just received from the Marine Corps states that
[Vol. 114,No. 2948
his
birthplace
is
“recorded as Mannheim, Germany.’’
Merkel, however, was by 110 means the only officer accused.
Charges only slightly less grave were made against others,
one senior to Merkel, and a number of theirscarredand
mutilated victims were present to testify had the hearings
continued. But as those officers have not yet had their day
in court I will not cite their names.
At the impressivedemonstration on the last day when
thousandsmarched through the city and assembled finally
in the historic Plaza Colon the determination of the Dominicans to regain their unqualified independence was again
evident. The placardsbore but four inscriptions,allvariants of the same idea: “We want our liberty,” “Give us our
independence,” “We protest
against
the Occupation,”
“Death is preferable to slavery.” Senator McCormick, after
preliminaryverbalcourtesies,said
thathe desiredhimself to “join in the common aspiration for the establishmentin the future of the foundation of civil ordersure
and undisturbed, of economic prosperity continued and sure
and upheld by these, the independent Government of the
Dominican people.” He was
rapturously
applauded. If
any Dominican sensed the qualifyingphraseshe
was too
polite to withhold his plaudits.
Senator Pomerene followed
and delivered a ringing speech, one of those stentorian
affairs with well-rounded sentences which go so well with
the Ohio electorate. Hehadnever
seen a Commission, he
said, so determined to get the truth, the whole truth, and
nothingbutthetruth;thatthe
American people wanted
nothing more and nothing
less than the prosperity
of all
Dominicans ; and that the Senatorial
Commission was actuated with the single purpose of discovering what was f o r
the Dominicans’ good. Buthedidnot
mention independence. Strange howdifficult that one word is for many
who represent the country that made it famous! It was
the word and the onesentiment that the Dominicans desiredto hear. But havingheardjusticeand
truthferventlyuttered,theywentawayhopefulandoptimistic.
A simple people, too, these Dominicans.
At the time of going to press the views of the Commission are disclosed in preliminary report on Haiti and in
statement by Senator McCormick on Santo Domingo,
made public with numerous Haitianand Dominican witnesses still to be heard and before the summingup of counsel f o r either side. These pronouncements will be discussed
later. That both can disregard not only the deep-seated and
unanimousdesire
for independence by Dominicans and
Haitians and the illegality of our original overthrow of the
sovereignties of these two weak and hitherto independent,
republics may come as a profound shock to those who, perhaps somewhat naively, still cling t o the principles that
havelong been cherished as fundamental in our republic.
Yet to those who have followed the recent and steady development of our
the verdict will n o t be surprising. In any event the voluminous recordincidental to
the work of the Commission will at least serve t o place before the world officially and in incontrovertible form what
has hitherto remained in the realm of rumor,conjecture,
and unsupported assertion. As such
the inquiry is merely
anincident in the dramatic and tragic relations
between
our countryandthesetwolittleCaribbeannations.The
struggle t o achieve their freedomand
t o perpetuate, or
shall we say, to reestablish, some pristine ideals of our own
hasjust begun. And inthe end there can bebut one
outcome.
Feb. 8,19221
The Nation
through whichtheyhave
just passed.We
a r m ourselves
for that age of iron which our eyes shall not see, but beyond which, I have faith, some small part at least of our
spirit shall survive.
We seek, for those who shall come after us, to save and t o
concentrate the forces of reason, of love, of faith, which will
aid them in weathering the tempest
when, having accomplished its work of a day, your credo-pardon me for foreseeing its end-your communistcredo will belost in the
shadows, compromised in the injusticesof the combat, or led
astray by the indifferencewhich follows fatally upon the
heels of all victories too exclusively political.
Do not misjudge me. I admire, my dear Barbusse, your
147
courage, your ardor, and your chivalrous
loyalty. Our two
courses of action are not i n opposition.They
complement
each one the other. We are both borne along by the same
tide of the revolution, o r better, the tide of human renovation, of perpetual renewal.Both
of us look toward the
rising dawn, and both of us seek to break the mortal bonde
of the past, the checks which hinder the march of mankind.
But I do not wish to substitute for them newerbonds which
are harsher yet.
With you and the revolutionists against the tyrannies of
the past, with the oppressed of tomorrow against the tyrannies of tomorrow, the words of Schiller are my watchword
forever : “In Tyrannos.”
ROMAIN
Haiti and Santo Domingo Today-I
By ERNEST H. GRUENING
N ten days’ diligent inquiry in the Dominican Republlc
could not find a slngle nativewho did not want theAmerican Occupation t o get out, bag and baggage, at the earliest
possible moment. In twice that period in Haiti I could not
discover a single Haitian who was not profoundly unhappy,
disillusioned about all things American, and did not desire
the return of Haitian sovereignty and independence.
Among thinking Haitians I found that beneath the universal discontent were varying shades
of sentiment. First,
there is the group,by far the largest, representedby the
Union Patriotique, which sees the Amei-lcan Occupation exactly forwhatit
is-an
illegaland unwarrantedassault
conceived in wholly selfish motives on the rights and liberty
of anindependent, small, andalwaysfriendlystate-and
stands in consequence f o r unconditional return of unqualified Haitian sovereignty at the earliest moment.A second
group, which includes a f a i r proportion of the small business men, while longingfor the withdrawalof the Americans
still hopes that some kind of an advantageous situation in
the nature of a compromise may be worked out-it wants
Haiti’s liberty but still hopes for unselfish American assistance. A third group, insignificant numerically but holding
by virtue of the American Occupation
the privileges and
perquisites which the latter can bestow, is willing t o connive with the Occupation as the best course for its members personally in a situation which they feel rather hopeless. In this group are the President, his
council of state
of twenty-one members, and a few of the other more important state-appointed functionaries. Their views are in part
undoubtedly colored bytheirpositions,bythestrenuous
efforts of the Occupation to cause a split in Haitian ranks,
and in part by the inevitable personalities of such men who
after the six and a half years of oppression are the docile
and pliant residue from whom have been gradually filtered
those who preferred principle to expediency and would pot
longer assist in riveting the chains on their country. The
Occupation propaganda which was visibly absorbed by Senator Pomerene-I cannot account for his discourteous heckling of M. Georges Sylvain in any otherway-that the Union
Patriotique merely represents the political “outs” is amply
disproved by the history of those of its members that have
hadpublic careers.Virtuallyeveryone
of thesehas been
tempted with high office, many in vain, while others having
tried it for a time in the hope of rendering some service to
their country have found themselves inevitably forced into
a position which they believed to be wholly against Haiti’s
interests.
For the government so-called, in short, the P r e s i d e n t
for his council merely executes his orders and the slightest
resistance on the part of any of them causes his dismissalis a phantom government, a marionette of which the Occupationpulls
thestrings.EversinceSecretary
Daniels’s
radio1 ordering Admiral Caperton, one week after the election of Dartiguenave, to seize Haitian custom-houses with
the prescription : “Have President Dartiguenave solicit it,
but whether President so requests or not, proceed,” the Occupationhasattempted
to follow this ingenious policy.
Every act of autocratic tyranny for which President Dartiguenave could be induced to take verbal responsibility has
been made to appear t o have the sanction of the Haitian
Government.And
unfortunatelyfortheHaitians,Dartiquenave, the man whose election “the United States prefers,”
according to Admiral Benson’s radio to Admiral Caperton,2
has been more than pliant. The testimony
of Generals Butler, Waller, Cole, and other high marine officers before the
Senatorial Commission would indicatethatin
manyinstanceshe exceeded the wishes of the Occupation i n demandingrepressivemeasures.
Of course thesituation. is
admirably adapted to the game
known as “passing thebuck,’’
but a psychoanalytical study would go far to explain PresidentDartiguenave’s course. The Eumenides are haunting
his waking hours. In not one of the three interviews I had
with him privately, nor in the meeting with President Henriquez y Carvajal, a t which I was present, could he keep from
talking of his enemies and how they were attacking him. As
he is amply protected by American bayonets, these fears are
but the reflection of his own conscience. I believe not many
Haitians would hold up against him his responsibility for
the treaty which they now fear has destroyed their birthright-they all hope, not irretrievably. They realized at the
time-and the whole world now knows since the Navy Department‘s dispatches have been read into the record-that
he was under every kind of pressure, and that in that grave
crisis his course may have seemed the wisest. At least no
one could expect that the UnitedStates would itself fail
-as i t has-to
carry out a singleone of its
obligations in the treaty which i t had written and imposed. No,
not for that would the name of Dartiguenave be anathema
l
19, 1915.
10, 1916
in Haiti today, but rather
because having turned over the
country to the alien invader he used his every effort to
defeat the attempt of other Haitians to regam the lost
independence. His posltion of unique securityandvantagehe
used to oppress his own fellow-countrymen, t o demand himself the imprisonment of patrioticjournallsts
who were
criticizing hls actions, and, most ignominious of all, to decorate, to adorn with his
own hands, the breasts of marine
officers for the exploits against the Haitianswho were revoltingagainsttheinvader.Surely,theysayinHaiti,that
was a depth to which he need not have sunk.
Only once did he resist the encroachments of the Americans: in the summer of 1920 when he opposed the efforts
of Mr.McIlhenny, the financialadviser, to put through a
loan andwaspunishedbyhaving
hissalary held upfor
weeks-one of scores of gross illegalities practiced by American officlals inHaiti.Thlsresistancemayhave
been inspired wholly by patriotic motives. On the other hand the
military Occupation has no love for Mr. McIlhenny. President Dartlguenave showed me the carbon of a letter written
November 10 last to PresidentHardingin
whichhe demanded McIlhenny’s removal and protested against the loan
which the latter was negotiating, but he took occasion to
devote the second part of this letter dealing supposedly with
financial matters to an enthusiastic eulogy of Colonel John
H. Russell, the chief of the Occupation, expressing the hope
that he would be retained in Haiti whatever else happened.
The working alliance between these two has long been obvious.
It is just to record here that I also heard Colonel Russell
highly praised by Archbishop Conan of Port au Prince and
byBishopPichon
of Aux Cayes, who spoke to me of the
chief of the Occupation as a fine, upstanding man, beloved
of all the Haitians. Truth compels me to report that I did
not find this view shared by anyHaitians(the
clergy 1s
French) although in my personal relations with him I found
Colonel Russellthoroughlycourteousandkind.
I tried to
ascertain whether his general unpopularity was
merely the
natural opposition of an oppressed people t o the chief agent
of the Occupation, but I found the Haitians distinguishing
sharply between individuals.Everywhere
I heardnothing
but the highest praise for certain marine
officers who had i n
thepast held responsiblepostsin
Haiti-General
Catlin,
Colonel Little, and Lieutenant Colonel Wise-of whom without exception all who discussed the marine personnel spoke
in terms of admiration and even affection. Here were three
officers, I
told, who had understood the tragic difficulty
of the Haitian position and
had been friendly and sympathetic.
The question of personnel is of course tremendously important as long as the Occupation continues, though nobody,
beheever
so kindly andhuman, can wholly transmute a
military Occupation into a lawn party; and it should not be
forgotten for an instant that the great atrocity in Haiti is
that we a r e t h e r e a t all-and the manner of our going in.
And this is fundamentally why the present situation is and
will continue impossible, even should we substitute a more
sympathetic type of marine personnel and replace the civilian “deserving Democrats,’’ the most important of whom
Senator McCormick described as “bothsocially attractive
and personally charming, but how otherwise qualified I am
not informed.” As Haiti has not been permitted under the
rigid color linethe Occupation hasdrawn to enjoy their
social attractiveness and personal charm, the actual benefit
derived is not difficult to calculate. The situation is fundamentallyimpossiblebecause
theHaitians now firaly believe, following thepreliminaryreport
of theSenatorlal
Commission, thatfaithandhonorarenotintheUnited
States. Theyhad been hopefulandconfidentin
the belief
that the invasion of 1915 was the act of an irresponsible
autocracy in Washington,undertakenwithouttheconsent
of Congressor the knowledge of the American people,
Indeed it was. They hoped that when the American people
was finally informed, all this would be swept away and that
thew century-old liberty would be
regained.
President
Harding’scampaigndeclarations
on thesubject of Haiti
naturally fortified their hope.
What is behind the seizure of Haiti and Santo Domingo?
How much is commercial and financial, how much military,
and how much just plain blundering?
One of the earliest
impressions I received, even enroutetoHaiti,wasthe
way in which marine officers took the Caribbean for granted
a s a field of activity; being detailed to Costa Rica to keep
the Panamanians in their place, or getting “action” in Nicaragua appeared to be all in the day’s work; and Haiti and
Santo Domingo, while apparently viewed as United States
domains, furnishedsplendidmilitaryopportunities.The
Caribbean,indeed, is already a great Marine Corps “proving”ground,andthe
subconscious effect on theattitude
of the average marine officer is evident. Thecorpsisnot
a large body, and its proportion of officers to men is larger
than in army or navy. Marines now hold Haiti and Santo
Domingo; they have been in Nicaragua since 1912 ; detachments are inCuba,3 Porto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Canal
Zone, Panama,andforallanyordinarycitizen
of our
democracy is permitted to know, in other Central American
republics. It would perhaps need but one more “Occupation” to necessitate an increase in the size
of the Marine
Corps-and that meansmore officers and more rapid promotion. Moreover the opportunities for the individual officer are obviously far greater under conditions of military
rule than they would be at somedullpost
in the United
States,as indeed theyalways are in the field. InSanto
Domingo a formerlyobscurepaymaster,Lieutenant
Commander Mayo, the man who floated the notorious 14 per cent
loan, became the financial mogul of that republic. In Haiti
American officers liveinfinitely better than they could at
home. Alieutenant can afford a largehouseandseveral
servants, and as an officer in the Gendarmeried’Halti (or
Guardia Nacional in Santo Domingo) he gets an automobile
a t t h e expense of the Haitians orDominicans, andother
perquisites.
As for the chiefs of the respective Occupations, they are
not only civil and military dictators but the supreme social
arbiters of the foreign colony a s well. In every sense they
are monarchs of alltheysurvey.Noonewhoincurs
the
royal displeasure in Haiti is received at the American Club
or at other socialAmericanfunctions.Thebusiness
man,
American and foreign, soon finds that it is not merely to his
advantage but essential to his well-being to keep on good
termswith them.OneAmericanbusiness
man who complained to me bitterly that the methods employed by the
AmericansinHaitihaddestroyedtheprestigeand
good
name of the UnitedStatesandthat
such a policy was
bound t o work to our commercial disadvantage, shuddered
at the suggestion of relating these facts to the Senatorial
Three
Cuba,
26
to
Feb. 8,19221
The Nation
Commission. Inanswer to my inquiry,hesaid,“Frankly,
because I have a wife and -chlldren, and I want to stay
in Haiti.” I asked him whether he really felt that giving
suchlnformationtothe
Commission would endangerhis
safety. “I would certainly be put out of busmess,” he said.
“As f a r a s my life is concerned, all I can say is that most
everyone here knows whathappenedtoLifschutz.”Lifschutz was the one American civillan
who dared openly to
criticize the Occupation and he happens also to have been
the only American clvl!lnn ever killed in Haiti.
Senator McCormlck, who long before t‘ne Commission was
created recorded himself publicly
in favor of our retention
f o r twenty years of the Clv~lOccupation of Haiti, but now
accepts the military view completely, told me in conversation
thathisinterpretation
of the MGnroe Doctrinegaveus
“militant rights down to the Orinoco Basin.”This, I take
it, means that we can according to our needs more o r less
gobble upeverythinginandaroundtheCaribbean.South
of the Orinoco, Senator McCormick is “wllling thatthe
United States should pursue a noli
policy.” Mr.
McCormlck’s successormay substitute the Amazon f o r the
Orinoco, and Senator Some-one-else may feel t‘nat our sphere
of militancy should not stop short of the Stralts of Magellan. But the fruits of this policy are already visible in our
actual, partial, potential, and rapidly increasing domination
of the weaker states of the Cambbeac.
Of courseall this proceeds underthegulse
of benevolence-a pretention solemnly maintained with evldent sincerity by a great number of persons and with a tongue in
cheek byothers.
Colonel Russell told me that I t wasthe
two million Haitian country people that he wanted to help,
and that he was very fond of them but against the “three
hundred agitators in Port
au Prince,”andthis
viewwas
echoed by other officers. The Occupation’s affection for the
Haitianproletariatistrulytouching.
Obviously if the intellectual crowd, which for better or worse has made Haiti
f o r a century o r more, is eliminated, the most docile and the
cheapest labor supply t h a t a concessionnaire ever dreamed
of will beeasilyavailable.Twentycentsaday
is the current Haitian wage. But if this was Colonel Russell’s view, i t
was not that of his friend H. P. Davis, vice-president and
generalmanager of theUnitedWestIndiesCorporation,
the Americancivilian who is generally referred to as the
spokesman of the Occupation. To me, a t least, he was engagingly frank. “There has
been a lot of bunk about helping the Haitians,” he said in answer to
my inquiry. “I am
not here to help the Haitians. I am here t o make money out
of Halti for myself and my friends. I am an expert in developing anddiscoveringnewterritories
for development
banks. It is true that in helping myself I have helped
some Haitians, but I have helped them incidentally and for
purely selfish reasons.” It is generallyrumoredinHaiti
that Mr. Davis has ambitions to
succeed Mr. McIlhenny as
financialadvisershouldweremaininHaiti.
I fail to see
why he is not eminently eligible. But nowhere is the situation more lucidly pictured than in the verses which begrn:
you
an island shore
Which has not been grabbed before
Lyrng in the track of trade as Islands should,
With the simple native quite
Unprepared t o make a fight,
Oh, you j u s t drop in and take it
his good.
And y e t d e s p i t e all this there are Americans in Haiti
who have broken through the iron pressure of their environ-
149
mental opinion-and
know better.Theremust
be others
”like one clear-eyed officer of no mean rank who said t o me:
“We’ve no business here. The fact is that the fellows who
stoodup
agalnstusandwereshot
down werepatriots.
These people have as much right to their independence as
we have.” And another told me simply t‘nat the “Job is impossible. We don’t understand them and they
don’t understand us. We can’t change their natures, and that is what
we’d have to do to make them do things our way. It‘s not
the Marine Corps’ work anyway.”
And they are rrght-but it is not the prevailing
o r the 0%
cia1 opinion, nor one that these officers could express openly
withimpunity. We havenobusiness
thereandourbeing
there benefits no oneunless it be a few investors. It will
not help the Haitians-although
we may build them a few
roads; you do not need an Occupation f o r that. It’s no job
return
foryoung
rosy-cheeked boys of yesteryear-who
to the States, burned out by the tropical sun, soaked with
rum,oftenirremediablydiseasedas
well. Andabove
all
I t never wlll help the United States-unless
we consider the
l m n g of the pockets of a handful help to our country, to
beweighed against the dislike and bitter resentment
of
formerlyfriendly people andthedlstrust
and fear of
dozen others mho dread the day when thelr turn will come.
And even for the capitallsts-Haiti
so far has been a graveyard of high hopes. Eight mlllionshave beer, sunk in the
Haitian-AmericanSugar
Company and
recelverisin
charge;theNatlonalCity
Bank’s venturehas
not been
profitable desplte its special advantages; the largest Americancotton-growingventurewasaflatfallure;theWest
Indies Trading Company literallywent up in smokewhen
I wasin Port au Prince-all
thisdespitethe
Occupation
andtheFranklin
Roosevelt constltutlon. Maybethere’s a
fatality about it; Roger L. Farnham of the National City
Bank told the Commission of acres of American cotton t h a t
withered while Haltian cotton planted adjacently flourished
Mamaloi’s curse, it might be called in fiction.
The really important thing to salvage from Haiti isAmericanhonor.
It canstill be retrieved.Admiral
Caperton’s
revealing we-are-getting-this-treaty-through-thanks-to-military-pressure cable4 and Josephus Daniels’s infamous message5orderingtheadmiral
on-your-own-authority-to-tellthe-Haitians-that-unless-they - sign - the-Occupation-will-bepermanent can hardly be formally voted into the American
archives of famous documents. Will theSenate
of the
United States care to enshrine them with the Declaration
of Independence, Patrick Henry’sinvocation, the EmancipationProclamation,and
theGettysburgaddress?
For i t
is doubtful whether a single Senator knew when he voted t o
ratify the Haitian treaty in
1916 by what methods it had
been imposed. -If there be one, let hlm stand up !
Yet is it more moral to condone an offense because it has
occurred?Senator
McCormick hadnohesitancy
in condemningtomeinunsparingtermsthecrimecommitted
againstHaiti by Woodrow Wilson andJosephus Daniels.
Yet his preliminary report, which gives no inkling that the
UnitedStateshad
illegallyseized tworepublicsand
held
them since against the will of their inhabitants, condones
this crime. Senator McCormick knows better; he is intelligent enough t o know that what we did in Haiti in 1915 and
in Santo Doming0 in 1916 was dishonest, indecent, and rotten.Senator
King’sbillcalling
forwithdrawal and abrogation of the treaty fortunately shows the way out.
‘
8, 1916.
10, 1916.
The Nation
188
Haiti and Santo Domingo Today-I1
By ERNEST
I
N the Dominican Republic the situation is simpler than
in Haiti. Where the Haitians suffered from the betrayal
a t th’e hands of Sudre Dartiguenave, the Dominicans were
fortunate inhavingastheirPresident
Dr. Henriquez y
Carvajal, a man of rare integrity, statesmanship, and patriotism. Moreover, the Dominicanshad hadin May, 1916,
when the Americansinvaded their country, the advantage
of six months’observation of the execution of America’s
promise to Haiti of “no aim except to insure, establish, and
help maintain
Haitian
independence.”l In consequence,
though America triedprecisely as in Haitito force a humiliating andenslaving treaty upon the Dominicans, they refused to sign.2 Where in Haiti today
a dummy government
carriesoutthe
Occupation’s wishes, a constantpotential
wedge tosplittheHaitians,inSanto
Domingoabsolute
unity exists.
In the Hispanic Republic, where there is no vestige of
nationalgovernmentandtheOccupationderives
its only
sanctionfrombruteforce,
where, further, the archbishop
andall the priests are Dominicans, the church is strongly
patriotic. In Haiti, on the other hand, a Concordat with the
Vatican established in 1860 provides that the church must
sustain the Haitian Government (as indeed it is the church’s
policy to sustain constituted authority everywhere) and that
the government must support in turn the church. A special
clause provides f o r the blessing of the Haitian president by
name after every high mass. Whatever, therefore, may
be
the original force and fraudupon which the present Haitian
Government rests, it is for the time being the legally constituted authority. Moreover, the Haitian clergy is not national.Archbishops,bishops,and
a great majority of the
priests are French and their interest in Haiti’s nationalism
is quite naturally less keen than if they were natives. Nevertheless, the Occupation was
first not viewed with favor
by the clergy, as indeed it is nottoday by many of the
priests.Lieutenant
Colonel Alexander
Williams
testified
before the Senatorial Commission that he believed some of
theHaitiancountrymenwereinspired
by thepriests to
make complaints of brutal treatment, and that the relations
between the American officers and the priests were officially
unsatisfactory. This feeling he
believed was largely due to
the influence of the bishop of North Haiti, Monseigneur Kersuzan.BishopKersuzana
fewmonthsagocelebratedhis
fiftiethanniversaryas a priestinHaiti.The
Occupation
has, however, made valiant efforts, especially since attention
was first called to Haitian conditions a year and a half ago,
to capture the clergy. Whereas, previously,
the church had
suffered directly from the Occupati~n,~ every attempt was
now made to conciliate it.Priests’salarieswereraised.
The sacristan of the cathedralat Port au Prince told me personally that the Occupation had promised to put a new roof
on that edifice, thepresent roof leaking badly afterthe
severe tropical storms. This
he said would be done without
expense to the church“by the Occupation,” which means, of
course, at the expense of theHaitian people. Andtoday,
August 7, 1916,
1
of
11.
to
A
18.
GRUENING
while the church does not and will not officially and openly
run counter to the prevailing national sentiment by indorsing the Occupation, i t cannot and will not, as the church in
Santo Domingo, oppose it.
The Dominicans also profit by their membership in the
great Hispanic-American
family
of nations.
Protests
againstthetreatment
of Santo Domingo andIts citizens
have come from Spain and from virtually all South American countries which are bound to Santo Domingo by ties of
race, culture, and language. Hispanic America sees in both
HaitiandSanto
Domingo anaugury of apossible fate.
But its encouragement and sympathy have naturally
gone
tothecountry which speaksthesamelanguage.The
Dominicanmorale has thus received constant sustenance and
is also better,no doubt,because of thegestures of withdrawalthatWashingtonhas
made. Intheirlastdays
in
office the Democrats had made overtures looking toward retiring the Occupation. Last May the “Harding plan,” as it
is called by the Dominicans, was presented with a flourish.
As it turned out to be merely a device to legalize the situation and under the guise
of withdrawal t o make Santo Domingo virtually a subject state, the Dominicans refused to
touch it.Their
cooperation to the extent of holding elections was essential.Today the attitude of the Dominicans
is unchanged. “We will sign nothing,” is their watchword.
“If necessary we will remain in slavery a hundred years, but
never will we sign away our birthright.”
At present, however, largely because withdrawal has been
in the wind, conditions are better than in Haiti. The sense
of oppression so evidentin P o r t auPrinceislackingin
Santo Domingo. I cannotspeak fortheinterior,
which I
did not visit and where, I was told, the rigors of martial law
still fall heavily upon some of the inhabitants. But in the
capital witnessed an easy banter between the provost
shal, Captain Fay, who is highly esteemed by the Dominicans, and the editors of the Listin Dimio, which has valiantly upheld the national cause. In an affair at the private
house of a Dominican which I attended the orchestra was
composed of marines.Boththesesituations
would be unthinkable in Haiti. Moreover, I foundamongDominicans
a friendly attitude toward the military governor, Admiral
S. S. Robison, of whom I heard only kind words-a
good
impression which I looked forward with pleasure to reporting,but which unfortunately was marred by an eleventhhour incident I witnessed.
It was the day of the Senatorial Commission’s departure.
The sub-chaser carrying the Senators and their
wives had
just slipped away from the dock bound for the transport
Argonne lying under steam in the harbor.
A second boatload containing newspaper correspondents and other personnel of the Commission was about to follow. Mr. Horace G.
Knowles, counsel for the Dominicans, came hurrying to the
wharf. He was formerly
American minister to Bolivia, to
Serbia,and
t o the DominicanRepublic,a
Roosevelt appointee.Hehad
come with the Commission but was staying behind a few days
to collect additional evidence. How
the Occupation hated Knowles ! He had committed the unpardonable crime of criticizing it and of taking the part of
the Dominicans. (Howlittlethey
understood that he had
Feb. 15,19221
The
really been taking the part of America!) As he leaned over
the boat to hand the official stenographer a letter for Senator
McCormick he was, according to his account, pushed aside
by the Commisslon’s liaison officer, Captain Day, U.S.N., and
told he could not send it. A lieutenant commander who was
present told me later that Knowles’s conversationhad delayed the boatand that he hadbeen politely requested to
removehimself.
But when heattemptedtoremonstrate
Admiral Robison stepped up from behlnd and in thundering
tones overheard by not less than fifty people shouted: “Get
out of this; get the hell off this wharf!” Knowles withdrew
and the Admiral proceeded t o tell his entourage:“We’ve seen
enough of that man around here; I’ve got no use for him.
Any man that will make the charges he has, has no right
here.” Later in the day, Mr. Knowles told me subsequently,
he was summoned by the governor to headquarters. On telling the provost marshal who conveyed the order that in the
circumstances hedidnotcareto
call on the Admiral but
would be at his hotel should the Admiral desire to call upon
him, he was informed that he had better come; that otherwise the provost marshal’s orders were t o take him to the
palace by force. Mr. Knowles went. It is regrettable that he
did so. I t would have been interesting to find out just what
rights an American citizen has in a country where our alleged justification for conquest is “to protect American interests,”andhow
farourmilitarism
can stage its own
Zabern withimpunity.
Moreover, a couple of dayspreviously the Admiralhad
told Captain Angell, who accompanied the Commission, thatbutforthefactthat
Mr.
Knowles was there by Senatorialcourtesy he would have
deported him.
This episode was more illuminating
than pages of testimony. Occurring to a man of Mr. Knowles’s position in the
presence of Americans,particularly
of newspaper
men
bound for home, with the Senators barely out
of earshot,
it furnishes a clue to the fate of those who incur the displeasure of the military Occupation. What happens to the
poor devils of natives who are voiceless, helpless, and without means of redress can well be imagined. As a matter of
fact,Admiral Robison’s proposed treatment of an American citizen is inlinewith
Occupation policy. Americans
have been deported unceremoniously. Needless t o say if
questions are asked they are generally slandered and labeled
undesirablecitizens;butthereason
for their deportation
is almostinvariablyantagonismtothe
Occupation. An
American woman resident in Santo Domingo told me that,
burning with shame over the acts of certain individuals in
the Occupation, andprofoundlyunhappy
over the oppression practiced in the name of the American people, she had
repeatedly resolved to write to variouspersons and to newspapers in the UnitedStates,buthadinvariably
been d e
terred by thefear of deportation. Her husbandwasin
business in the country and shedid not feel justified in jeopardizing his safety and future as well. While was in Port
au Prince an American marine, a former gendarmerie officer,wasordered
deported. Hehad been detailed t o the
prison a t Port au Prince and announced that he had intended to testify about
some of the crueltiespracticedthere.
Just before the Commission’s arrival his deportation order,
which had been published in
the official organ,
was held up. When I sawhimagainhesaidhe
knew
neitherwhyhehad
been ordereddeported
norwhy the
order had been suspended, that he did not intend to testify,
and that had misunderstood him when
he said he would.
189
Of course what goes on behind the scenes the four Senators neither learned nor cared to learn. Their minds were
obviously closed.
do not want to imply the slightest doubt
of the sincerity of any of them: but the absurd anomaly of
havingone of theparties to a controversyact asjury,
judge, yes, and executioner, must be self-evident. The only
proper o r possible way to have the case of Haiti or of Santo
Domingo ws. the United States justly settled is to havesome
disinterested third party-Denmark, Belgium, Uruguay, the
A.B.C. Powers, or the Irish Free State-act as arbitrator.
The same fallacy on a smaller scale was subscribed toby the
Senators themselves when they solemnly urged allthose
whom they had not time to hear to report their grievances
to the respective heads of the Occupations. As for the Senatorial astigmatism it isalso true that the investigation has
been foreshadowed for a year and a half and that conditions
had been pretty well cleaned up inboth republics, where
relative quiet exists today. Testimony was general that
campaign of exposure had brought about a decided
lessening of manyabuseswhichhadexisted.
I have in my possession
copy ‘of a confidential order
issued from “Headquarters” at Santo Domingo City on September 10, 1920, which reads in part as follows:
Officers of discretion m l l beinstructed to spread a bit of
propagandahereandtherein
a very carefulanddiscreet
manner so that it may not appear that it is beingdone officially.
Presentandpastconditionsmay
be comparedalong
many
lines, the aims and ambitions
of the government explained. A
few specially chosen officers might sound some of the people on
the question of annexation, merely by conversation telling the
people that in 1876 the majority of Dominicans desired annexation and asked for it, but that our Congress refused it because
Dominicans as well at
we did not know the country and the
that tme. Certain people who seem tobereceptlve
could be
induced to spread the idea
by showing them howmuch better
situated they would be today had they been part of the United
States for the past forty years. Conditions in Porto
Rico, the
Philippines,and evenCuba could be cited asexamples.
The order is signedby Colonel George C. Reid, U. S. M. C.,
commanding officer of theGuardia Nacional. I showed it
to Senator Pomerene just after he had
finished addressing
with much sound and wind a great patriotic gathering of
Dominicans. He had told them that he had learned of a few
misguided persons who believed that the United States had
annexationist designs on their country but that there was
no basiswhatever
such belief and that he had never
heardthesubjectmentioned
in Washington.I
supposed
that since he was there to investigate he
would be interested
inlearningaboutthisorder
issued by thethirdhighest
officer in the island, the highest American military
official
indirectcontactwith
the Dominicans. But hemerely
replied that it was the act of an individual and had nothing
whatever to do with American policy. Senator Pomerene is
back from his flying trip and is probably thinking more of
his campaign in Ohio next fall than of t h e Dominicans. But
the Occupationwhichissued
the order “in a very careful
and discreet manner, so that it may not appear it is being
done officially,’’ stays on. It stays to perpetuate the six years
of martial law upon an always friendly and inoffensive people, and i t will stay on according to the verdict of the MeCormick-Pomerene Commission until Santo Domingo comes
to terms and signs on the dotted line. For less than a week
after its return the chairman of the Commission gave out
an interview that the status quo would continue in Santo
Domingo until the proposals of last spring were acceded to.
The Nation
190
Meanwhile three great American banking houses are “negotiating” for a loan with the Haitian “government.” Each
of these loans is based on the convention of 1915 and further
hog-ties the Haitian Republic for a period of thirty years.
Negotiations were already under
way before the
Commission
went
tothe
Caribbean. Senator McCormick was
in favor of that loan from the beginning and insists upon i t
now. TheHaitiansneitherwantnor
need the loan. But
[Vol. 114, No. 2954
the Occupation wants it, and American highfinance needs it.
Once it is consummated and only the thin resistance of Dartiguenave the Docile stands in the way, needless to say we
shall have to stay in furtherto protect “American interests,”
the interests of the National City Bank of New York, of the
Sugar Trust, of King Cotton, of the horde of carpet-bagging
concessionnaires that are the camp-followers of American
militaristic imperialism.
Waste in Business
By EDWARD EYRE HUNT*
The curse of mankind is not labor, but waste; mlsdirectlon
of time, of material, of opportunity, of humanity.-Dr. M. 0.
Forster, British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Report on Elimination of Waste in Industry may
markan epoch. Already it has givenorganizedlabor
confidence in industrial studies in the United States,
made
underimpartial
auspices, and it provides a basisfor
genuinecooperation in future betweenlabor and management,instead of the pseudo-cooperationwhichconsists
in
labor’s lying down and playing dead a t t h e will of the employer. One of the Committee on Waste,George D. Babcock of Peoria, Illinois, says the report is the most
important engineering document dealing with industry since
the
management papers of Frederick W. Taylor.
Now what is this report?
It is the work of a committee
of seventeeen engineers named by Herbert Hoover,who
unanimously state that the relative weight of responsibillty
for waste in certain typlcal industries is as
follows:
Outside
ManagementLabor Contacts
%
%
YO
Men’s clothing manufacturing. ....... 75
16
9
Building ............................
65
21
14
Printmg ............................
63
28
9
Boot
and
shoe manufacturing.. ....... 73
11
16
Metal trades ........................
81
9
10
Textile manufacturing ............... 50
10
40
One of the greatest wastes is from low production. This
is due to faulty management of materials, plant, equipment,
andmen;
not tofaults
of labor. Whatengineers
call
“faulty control” of materia:, design,production,cost,and
labor, lack of research and defective sales policies lie in the
domain of management and probably rank next to general
industrialdepressionsintheirwaste
of materials,time,
and human effort.
Defective control of design results in a major waste, since
itpreventsstandardization
of product. Inthe
building
trades, f o r example, while the standardization of buildings
isnotgenerallypracticable
or desirable,certaindetalls
readily lend themselves to standardization. If certain
walls
were made of a uniform thickness i t would mean a saving
of some $600 in the cost of the average house, Standardized
mill-work, such as window frames, doors, and other similar
items, would also mean considerable saving.
Among currentAmericanmagazinesthereareeighteen
varieties in width and seventy-six in length
of page or column. Among trade publications there are thirty-three differentwidthsandsixty-fourlengths.
Evenamong newspapers there are sixteen widths and fifty-five lengths. The
on
of
standardization of newspaper columns t o onesize would
make possible an annual saving of from three to five million
dollars on composition and plates alone.
The Committeedid notattempttowritean
academic
definition of industrial waste. Furthermore,
it felt no call
to put the blame on any individual, group, or class. It believes thatthewastes
in industrytoday
are inevitable
results of methods, tactics, and relationships of long standing. Industrialwaste
understood by the Committee is
that part of the materlal, time, and human effort expended
in production represented by the difference between average
attainments, on the one hand, and performance actually attained on theother, as reveaIed bydetailed field reports.
How much will have to be done to lift average plants to the
level of exceptional plants in each industry is suggested in
the following table, giving a comparison of plants in various
industries :
Ratio of Best to
Average Plants
Men’s clothing manufacturing. ................... 1
Building ......................................
l:l%
Printing .......................................
1:2
Boot and shoe rnanufactunng.. .................. 1:3
Metal trades ...................................
1:4%
Textile manufacturing .........................
1
In reporting that more than 50 per cent of the responsibility for waste in industry can be
placed at the door of
management and less than 25 per cent at the door of labor,
the Committee had no intention of minimizing labor’s share
in what is obviously a common task. It reveals much for
labor to do.
In the building trades, for instance, some painters’ unions
do not permit the use of a brush wider than four and onehalf inches for oil paint,although
forcertain classes of
workawider
brush is more economical. Lathers have attempted to impose a rule that twelve bundles of laths shall
constituteaneight-hour
day’s work. Formerlytheoutput
wassixteen bundles. Plumbers’andsteam-fitters’unions
prohibit the use of bicycles and vehicles of all sorts during
workinghours.
Members of theseunionsin somesections
of the country demand that all pipe up t o two-inch shall be
cut and threaded on the job. Brick masons insist on washing down and pointing brick work
when laborers could do
i t more economically. Structuralsteelworkersunder
certain rules must bring the steel from the unloading point to
thebuildingsite,thusdoinglaborers’work
a t high cost.
They also place reinforcing steel for concrete, whereas experience has proved that properly trained laborers
can do
the same work to good advantage and a t greatly reduced
cost.
A union rule in newspaper printing
offices requires that