The Politics of Intervention

146 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

ever, would not support a policy of acquisition under the
circumstances of 1906-7:

There can be no talk of a protectorate by us. Our business is to estab­
lish peace and order on a satisfactory basis, start the new government
and then leave the island. ... I will not even consider the plan of a
protectorate.... The good faith of the United States is a mighty
valuable asset and must not be impaired.^4

Both Root and Taft shared Roosevelt's view that the Cuban
government should be restored. Root, unhappy with the inter­
vention's effect on the new American image he had cultivated
in Latin America, opposed any acts by the Provisional Gov­
ernment that would antagonize the Cubans or prolong the
occupation. Taft, more doubtful about the next Cuban gov­
ernment's chances for survival, nonetheless agreed with Roose­
velt and Root that the primary objective of the occupation
should be to reshape the Cuban electoral process. The com­
ponent parts of this mild electoral reform were to give the
Cuban municipalities more legal autonomy, establish laws
which would insure honest elections run by non-partisan of­
ficials, create a civil service system which would protect gov­
ernment employees from dismissal on political grounds, and
make the Cuban judiciary independent.^5 Taft was, never­
theless, skeptical about whether such American grafts on the
Cuban body politic would flourish long; the Provisional Gov­
ernment faced "a very heavy task," he wrote his brother
Charles. The situation in Cuba was appalling:

... the bitterness of political rancor, the absence of patriotism and

moral courage, the aloofness of the conservative and property holding

classes, the peeping out of racial and class differences... the venality

and corruption that permeates the municipal and central government

so far as the legislature is concerned are calculated to make a man who

seeks to set up self government feel as he is making bricks without

straw.^6

In Taft's opinion election frauds had caused the Cuban

revolt. Elihu Root shared this assessment. The Secretary of

State was in favor of doing no more during the occupation