The Politics of Intervention

Restoration and Withdrawal 247

Steinhart cabled Magoon that if the United States wanted
to influence Cuban domestic affairs in the future, the gov­
ernment should leave Magoon as minister, create an extra­
territorial enclave near Havana garrisoned by three thousand
American troops, and detail Army officers to both the Cuban
army and Rural Guard as "instructors."
19
The Washington conference, however, became involved in
settling public works problems and the administrative control
of Cuba's sanitation services. The participants did agree
that "some sort of potential supervision" should be estab­
lished over the Cuban government, but the talks on details
proved inconclusive.^20
Again, in April, Roosevelt asked Magoon's views on leaving
troops in Cuba and on a plan to police the Cuban government
suggested by the German ambassador and the President's
friend, Baron Herman Speck von Sternberg. It was time,
Roosevelt wrote, to plan the kind of Cuban government the
United States wanted to restore. The President was doubtful
that leaving troops would be wise. What then did the Gover­
nor think of Speck von Sternberg's proposal: to leave three
American officers as advisers to the Cuban government? One
would work to professionalize the Rural Guard, the second
would insure that the Department of Justice administered
the law without regard to wealth and influence, and the third
would protect the Treasury from corruption.^21

Magoon's reply on April 16 was an assessment of American

policy, an analysis of Cuban politics, and a forthright interpre­

tation of Cuba's national development.^22 The Provisional Gov­

ernor reaffirmed the American commitment to an independent

Cuba, and did not approve of any measure that compromised

Root's strict interpretation of the Platt Amendment. He be­

lieved that occupation policy since 1906 had been within

the framework of Cuba's constitution; the Provisional Gov­

ernment had, in fact, improved it with administrative reforms,

despite the uncertainty about the length of the occupation.

Magoon believed the legal reforms were fundamental changes,

for the "Cuban Government was unstable because it lacked

even the ordinary means and agencies by which stability is