The Politics of Intervention

134 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

ness spawning the disorder they were supposed to prevent.
Describing a fight between American soldiers and some Rural
Guards in front of a house of prostitution, one regimental
commander drew a sharp picture of Cuban life:

The occurrences in themselves between Rural Guards and soldiers

have been of little importance and were it not for the attitude of the

hoodlum and vagrant element who congregate in and around houses

of ill-fame, cantinas and cafes, always armed with knives and generally

with revolvers and who are against constituted government in any

form and who urged on the recruit rural guards by taunts of cowardice

and vile epithets to engage in combat with American soldiers, the slight

ill feeling engendered would have promptly died out. ... In any

communities [sic] of the Island if a man stubs his toe or a dog fight

occurs the majority of the population, men, women and children, espe­

cially the vagrant class, flock to the scene, blocking the way, talking,

gesticulating and producing veritable pandemonium.^32

More discouraging to the officers than the irresponsibility
of the poor Cubans and their demagogic leaders was the
attitude of the well-to-do. Although the Cuban people were
unfit to manage a stable government, Major Francis J. Kernan
wrote, "this does not mean that there are not honest and able
men in Cuba." It did, however, mean that propertied Cubans
as a class held themselves absolutely aloof from governmental
service and political parties. They were "as unavailable to
lend character to the Cuban government as if they dwelt in
China." Cuba had two alternatives, armed autocracy or Amer­
ican tutelage, Major Kernan concluded, and "we might
as well count on Cuba as a field for tropical service
indefinitely."^33
The administration's policy of playing down the Army's
role in the occupation apparently worried the officers, for such
a decision deprived them of the authority they had enjoyed
under General Wood's government, and they believed it hurt
their status in Cuban eyes. The Army and Navy Journal re­
ported that the officers feared that the Cubans did not believe
the soldiers would fight to keep order.^34 Another observer,
however, believed that the common people "desired no fur­
ther trouble with the Americans whom they consider 'merci­