The Provisional Government and Cuban Stability 215One factor that cannot be overlooked is that the officers
saw internal reform in Cuba as a military imperative. They
believed that a real possibility of future, more violent inter
ventions existed and that the occupation offered them a
chance to win the respect (if not the friendship) of the
Cuban people. Their Philippine experiences and service under
Wood had taught them the potential military benefits of
winning popular support in an occupied country. If such a
political relationship with the people was authoritarian, it
was at least benignly so, and the officers could argue with
some justification that Army rule was for the general welfare,
not that of a privileged native class. The irony was that, con
fronted with orders to return home, the Army turned over
the government to just such a privileged elite. Because of the
American reforms, the governmental apparatus the officers
built for their successors was a far handier tool for waste
and oppression than it had been before the intervention.
- Taft-Bacon Report, p. 463.
- Magoon, Report, 1906-1907, pp. 52-53.
- Ibid., p. 249.
- Magoon, Report, 1907-1908, p. 41. The officers were Capt. G. W.
Read (Pinar del Rio), Maj. F. S. Foltz (Havana), Capt. E. Wittenmyer,
(Matanzas), Maj. W. D. Beach (Santa Clara), Maj. W. O. Clark
(Camaguey), and Capt. A. J. Dougherty (Oriente). They served until
October, 1908. - Gen. Leonard Wood to Manuel Landa, March 30, 1907, Wood
Papers. - Magoon, Report, 1906-1907, p. 45. Even the administration's
critics admitted that Magoon grasped Cuba's economic problems, even
if his measures were ineffective. A. G. Robinson to James H. Wilson,
January 26, 1908, and James H. Wilson to A. G. Robinson, January 27,
1908, Wilson Papers. - Magoon, Report, 1907-1908, p. 27.
- Col. E. H. Crowder to Maj. Gen. J. F. Bell, May 20, 1907, Crow
der Papers. - The most satisfactory summary of these American-defined prob
lems and the Cuban response is Lockmiller, Magoon in Cuba, pp.
138-43 (Church property settlement); pp. 117-21, 211 (McGivney