"Garage Diplomacy"?

With the calm of a great surgeon, which he is, President Dr. Ramon Grau con tinued last week to sign breath-taking decrees in the small hours of the night. Scratch--the Presidential pen dismissed famed Manhattan Lawyer Thomas L. Chadbourne, author of the Chadbourne Plan of world sugar crop restriction from his post as President of the Cuban Na tional Sugar Exporting Corp. (see p. 48). Official reason: "Mr. Chadbourne is a foreigner." Scratch--Surgeon Grau signed an agra rian decree bestowing on every "indigent farmer" in Cuba 33 acres of land, a yoke of oxen, a cow, a plow, some seed and tax exemption for two years. Scratch, scratch, scratch--the President's pen flew over other decrees of a "Cuba for the Cubans" tone. Already approved was an estoppment by the Cuban Treasury of interest on some $60,000,000 lent by U. S. banks to the ousted regime of Tyrant Gerardo Machado. Last month President Grau signed a decree ordering the Cuban Electric Co., subsidiary of Electric Bond & Share, to cut its rates 30%, a decree of nation-wide importance since Cuban Electric supplies power and light to 207 Cuban cities and towns. Up to last week the companies' U. S. officials had defied President Grau, defied their Cuban employes who threatened to strike in support of "Cuba for the Cubans!" One morning last week the strike was suddenly on. SCRATCH!--with a potent squiggle President Grau seized all Cuban Electric Co.'s properties, sent Government troops to occupy them. Before nightfall the dynamos were humming again. Cuba had light and the 30% rate reduction was an immediate prospect. Any operating loss, the President announced, would be borne by the Treasury. It was about time, thought U. S. investors, that President Roosevelt's personal representative in Havana, hard, able Mr. Jefferson Caffery, put through a little "garage diplomacy."* Mr. Caffery had not been idle. Shifting from President Grau, on whom he first used suasion, he conferred repeatedly last week with Cuba's bantam generalissimo, ex-Sergeant Fulgencio Batista who commands the entire army with the modest rank of Colonel. According to correspondents, "Caffery read the riot act to Batista." Out to the army post at Camp Columbia hurried Batista and most of Cuba's politicos, excepting Surgeon Grau who shut himself up in the Presidential Palace. After hours of wrangling in the ballroom of Camp Columbia word was passed out to correspondents at 1 :30 a. m. that the resignation of President Grau had been obtained. Who should succeed him the wranglers could not decide, wrangled on the whole night and morning until President Grau began to hope that his resignation might not have to stand. Said he, "I shall accept any frankly revolutionary government capable of continuing and improving my work." Few hours later the ballroom squabblers picked as Cuba's new President a graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, smart, trim Carlos He via who had been Secretary of Agriculture under President Grau. Whether or not Cubans will accept an "Annapolis President," Senor Hevia's choice caused eyebrows to lift throughout Latin America, created an unfortunate im pression that Mr. Caffery is Cuba's puppeteer. He was said to be displeased with the Annapolis graduate, considering him too radical despite the U. S. discipline he absorbed at a formative age. Also dis pleased were Cuba's numerous opposition factions. While Secretary of the Interior, War & Navy Antonio Guiteras, who boasts control of the police and navy, threatened resignation, others talked excitedly of renewed civil war.

*Slang for U. S. diplomatic intrigue to set up a Cuban government without resort to force. Explanation: President Roosevelt's first Ambassador to Cuba, blue-blooded Regime-Maker Sumner Welles, held one or more secret conferences with local politicos, so Cubans believe, in a garage.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.