The Politics of Intervention

68 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

In Cuba the political and military initiative lay with the

insurgents, and they did not surrender it. Part of the rebels'

calculations was that the United States could be forced to

intervene to their advantage if there was clear danger to

foreign property and irrefutable proof of the government's

corruption and weakness. As General Eduardo Guzman put it:

We desire... peace because we desire the welfare of our country

and because we are all patriots ... if the Government do [sic] not

come around to concede what we ask, which is strictly just, I can

assure you that the forces of Santa Clara... will commence their

offensive work against the public forces and against the properties of

foreigners, with the sole end that the Americans shall come as quickly

as possible, as we prefer to live under the shelter of the justice of a

foreign power than submit ourselves to tyranny under the flag which

has cost us so much to acquire.^29

Already the pleas of American planters and British railway
managers were flooding the legation. Certainly the Constitu­
tional Army had the ability to destroy foreign property, but
its generals showed more interest in threats than arson. Still
they made their point; as one American plantation manager
wrote Jacob Sleeper:

The Cuban professor, who teaches school here, made a visit to the

headquarters of the rebels and the man in charge told him that if the

Cuban Government succeeded in whipping them that they would

destroy all the foreign property that they could find. Owing to the fact

that the element that has enlisted with the rebels is the worst element on

the Island, we do not feel safe in our present locality as there is not

a rural guard or policeman in thirty miles of us and all kinds of trouble

could be made as we have no protection whatever. There are about

forty Americans in this locality and we hope that you will take this

matter up with the Cuban Government at once and see that we have

some protection.^30

Win or lose, the insurgents threatened to begin burning
property on September 15, and kept up their cry for mass
resignations in the government, peace, amnesty, and new
elections, all under the United States supervision if need be.^31
From the viewpoint of the Estrada Palma government, the
situation was growing increasingly desperate. From the out­
set, Estrada Palma and his closest advisers had counted on