Nine Guns and Out

Holding most of Cuba's guns, little Generalissimo Fulgencio Batista last week went President-making. So unimpressed was this quarter white, quarter black, quarter Chinese, quarter Indian by the politicos' choice early last week of Carlos Hevia y Reyes Gavilan that he cut off Cabana Fortress' 21-gun salute to the New President at the count of nine. Gently he began to move his troops into Havana, to police stations, doorways, roofs. His chief opponent, ex-President Grau's ubiquitous Secretary of War, Navy and Interior Antonio Guiteras, a onetime pharmacist who had somehow got Cuba's 1,000 sailors in his pocket, fled to a Cuban gunboat in the harbor. A few amiable soldiers and civilians stood guard around President Hevia's palace. Getting the heavy scent of trouble, the ABC revolutionary society boys handed around a fresh shipment of guns. Two days after he had been sworn in, President Hevia suddenly sent his resignation, not to his father-in-law Supreme Court Justice Edelman who had administered the oath, but to Colonel Batista. Then he dropped two dirty shirts into his bags and led his wife, little daughter and brother-in-law out of the Presidential Palace.

Again the politicos, young and old, put their heads together. Threatened with a general strike, they gave scant heed to the "revolutionary program" of last September. The big thing now was U. S. recognition. They were still bickering over Batista's candidate when they were jolted out of their chairs by the sound of Cabana Fortress guns. Boom--Boom--Boom --21 times.

Cuba had a fresh President, that grand old man of the old line politicos, Carlos Mendieta y Montefur. Exhausted by his all-night job, Batista was still sound asleep that noon when President Mendieta pushed through a cheering, laughing mob with 20 potent politico friends to take the oath of office from his predecessor's well-trained father-in-law.

All that day and night Havanans danced in the streets, confident that President Roosevelt would soon recognize Mendieta's government. Unembarrassed by the general belief that he was responsible for Batista's making of President Mendieta, U. S. Observer Jefferson Caffery rushed off in a destroyer to meet his boss, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, homing from the Pan-American Conference aboard the cruiser Richmond. He then rushed back on the destroyer to tell President Mendieta "informally" that President Roosevelt plans to recognize his government.

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