258 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION
and bumboats flying the Cuban colors, and from the city's
rooftops handkerchiefs waved and whistles shrieked. As the
United States warships, including the battleship "Mississippi,"
left the harbor, a Cuban military band (at Magoon's request)
began to play "Bayamo," the national anthem. As one reporter
described the scene:
It was a brilliant picture, made more perfect by a God given January
day, by the tropic sun and the dark smoothness of the sea. At Morro, the
khaki clad Artillery band struck up the strains of the Cuban hymn.
Every head was uncovered. The governor could be seen to uncover...
and the din of the whistles redoubled. In a saturnalia of noise, which
drowned the efforts of the band, the Maine turned her nose north, as
sedately as an old maid in a lavendar dress walking primly to church
on an Easter morning....
From Morro, whose signal tower was a galaxy of the flags of many
nations... the lookout with his telescope followed the gray warships
far out to sea. It was he who saw the last of the provisional governor
that was.^51
By mutual agreement, the United States Army stayed on in
Cuba to insure a peaceful transition. The Army of Cuban
Pacification headquarters, the Twenty-seventh Infantry, and
the Engineers occupied Camp Columbia until March 31. On
that day they turned over the post to the Cuban Army. With
bands playing the two national anthems, the Republic's
banner went up the staff. That night the American officers
were honored by a banquet at the Hotel Miramor with much
toasting and good cheer. At ten o'clock the next morning,
the last troops left Havana aboard the transports "Sumner"
and "McClellan."^52 The second American military occupation
of Cuba was over.
Although the military occupation of Cuba was little more
than an annoying necessity to the Roosevelt administration,
it had a lasting impact on Cuba's political history and a
negative but important influence on American foreign policy
in the Caribbean.
The act of intervention, Manuel Marquez Sterling wrote in
1906, demonstrated once more that despite the United States