Restoration and Withdrawal 251velt had retreated even further from the Speck von Sternbeng
plan. In a letter to Elihu Root, he set forth the United
States demands on Cuba, "... that finances be kept straight,
that order be maintained; and that fair elections be guar
anteed." The United States would interfere only if Cuba's
independence was endangered, the President wrote in an
effort to restore the Platt Amendment to its original (Root's)
interpretation. A significant point of Roosevelt's letter, how
ever, was that advisers would be left behind only if the Cuban
government requested them, but that it must carry on the
Provisional Government's programs. As for the Provisional
Governor, Roosevelt had cooled on his ability to promote
order in Cuba: "Magoon gets on beautifully with the Cuban;
he has done his work well, but he is not a man of masterful
type or, indeed, of great force, and he shrinks from following
any course to which he thinks any considerable number of
Cubans would object, whether rightly or wrongly."^24
In late August, Magoon again went to Washington to settle
the details of the national election and the withdrawal. Upon
his return to Havana, he wrote Roosevelt on Cuba's economic
condition.
25
His major concern was to secure funds to continue
the public works projects by floating another loan. He felt
that only another bond issue was a sure source of money to
attack the seasonal unemployment problem. The larger ques
tions of Cuba's economic instability he left unstated, and it
was just as well, for Roosevelt had accepted his earlier advice
not to exercise more control over the Cuban government.
Without the security of American-imposed stability, there
would have been little inclination in Congress to lower
the tariff.
Roosevelt was no longer optimistic about the United States
ability to influence other nations' development without exploi
tation and antagonism. As he told editor-diplomat Whitelaw
Reid, he could see many difficulties in "the control of thickly
peopled tropical regions by self-governing northern democ
racies... "—not the least of which was that legislatures
seldom understood the conditions in such lands and the