The Second Intervention 111the Estrada Palma government and the conservative values
under which it governed. Why then did they, in effect, allow
it to collapse? To a large degree they realized that sanctioning
rebellion would be an unhealthy thing for Cuba internally
and that the destruction of foreign property would be the
island's economic (and perhaps political) ruin. Yet the single
most important factor in the matrix of social, economic, and
geopolitical considerations that they weighed was their fear
of the American public reaction to a military pacification of
Cuba. In this fear, the President and Secretary of War were
reinforced by the advice of their military advisers and
diplomatic representatives in Cuba.
Roosevelt and Taft, however, rode the historical analogy
of the Philippine Insurrection much harder than did Generals
Funston and Bell. Doubtless for reasons of institutional self-
protection and their concept of national security, these senior
officers and the General Staff were not anxious to intervene
in support of Estrada Palma. Their plans and correspondence
indicate, though, that they believed they could suppress the
rebellion (if not save the sugar mills) with eighteen thousand
troops if they could be relatively free in conducting the pacifi
cation on their own terms. It was the particulars of these
terms that concerned the President.
Faced with the possibility of active military intervention in
Cuba, Roosevelt armed himself with a large supply of justifi
cations. Which ones were for his conscience and which for
public consumption is hard to say. Clearly, the constitutional-
legal sanctions that encouraged him to act served both. His
concern for Cuba's peace and well-being was real enough,
but so was his desire to escape the interventionist-imperialist
label. Incongruously the two justifications he used to start
the naval intervention of September 8 (that he was acting
"to protect American lives and property" and to pre-empt
European intervention) were designed to satisfy American
public opinion and yet the act of naval intervention served
to prolong the Cuban rebellion and end the possibility of
compromise. The arrival of "Denver" and "Marietta" were
the key events which directly influenced the style and timing