The Politics of Intervention

154 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

help but measure the new policy against the acts of the
Military Government. Steinhart, called the "Prime Minister"
by the officers, described his part in Magoon's government
in a revealing letter to his former general. Steinhart told
Wood that he was "the Cabinet and considering the balance
of the Cuban Generals, I think I am well fitted for the posi­
tion—at least they could not have selected a worse Mikado."
He was running a "general employment agency," Steinhart
wrote. The Liberals were fighting each other for offices while
the conservatives and Americans harassed Magoon from the
sidelines. The former insurgents had noticed the Provisional
Governor's capacity for leniency and would probably soon
"go to the woods," not for revolution, "but to make an
honest dollar stealing without committing murder." The com­
mercial interests were advocating tariff revision, on the
principle of "to hell with the public," to increase their own
profits. Assessing Cuban affairs after a year of American occu­
pation, Steinhart could see no constructive outcome to
Magoon's policy:

Were I competent to put it [Cuban politics] clearly before you I

could make a fortune as a riddle solver. The man who can see the

end ought to be the head of a star gazing brigade and should be able

to tell the color of the hair on the lady in the moon.... "Doctor

Time" is the one who can help this country... the Presidential elec­

tion is as far off now as it was then [January, 1907] ... if held now

[October, 1907] it is nothing less than an international crime.^27

The Army officers in the Provisional Government were not
in sympathy with Roosevelt's permissive treatment of the
Liberals or with Magoon's attempt to strengthen the Cuban
political system by encouraging cohesive parties. Instead,
they saw their task in pragmatic and humanitarian terms,
but restricted by politics. They were there "trying to recon­
struct the Republic of Cuba with the back ground [sic] of a
strong military intervention, made necessary by the existence
of disturbing elements."^28 To accomplish the betterment of
the Cuban people, the United States, instead of banking on
the politicos, should establish, as Major Slocum put it, "a