The twentieth of May, 1902, was a great day for the Cubans. It was the day they became citizens of a sovereign nation a free people-free after four hundred years of colonialism under the iron rule of Spain. And Spain had been a hard, frequently cruel ruler throughout those four centuries. But the people of Cuba, the Cubans, had at last broken the chains, had won their independence in the long and brutal war against the mother country. It was great to be a Cuban on the twentieth of May, 1902, and the Cubans were prepared to celebrate.

In the capital city of Havana there were flag-raisings and speeches about the destiny of the infant republic All over the island there were fiestas and fireworks, from morning until night-and into the following dawn. In far-off Oriente Province, six hundred miles from the seat of the new Havana government, the cane field workers were in a jubilant mood. The harvest was about over and there was free time to contemplate the better life ahead as ee citizens of an independent nation.

Belisario Batista, toughened by years of back-breaking work in the cane fields of Oriente, was as excited about the birth of his republic as were the high-ranking statesmen in Havana upon whose shoulders the responsibility of self-government would fall. Throughout the day, Belisario, like every other Cuban, felt the satisfying sensation of being a free citizen of a free nation. The days of subjugation were over. No more long days and nights of fighting and fleeing It the hated Spaniard. Belisario had fought with the army of liberation as a sergeant in the line and his record was good. He had served under General José Maceo, one of the two famous brothers who held the rank of general in the War of Independence, and he had been thrice wounded in action. just at dusk that afternoon Belisario and his wife Carmela were ready to take off on foot for the little town of Banes, three miles down the mountainside, where a big celebration had been going on since daybreak. Their neighbors had already assembled in the little clearing adjacent to the small workers' settlement and the grown folks as well as the small children were in a gay mood. Perhaps the youngsters of the neighborhood were a bit too small to understand the significance of the celebration. But little Cuban children, like little children everywhere else in the world, ask no questions when there are dulces to be devoured and fireworks to be seen.

Belisario and Carmela had a minor problem in the form of a fifteen-month-o1d baby son, their first-born. Wasn't he too small to take along to the boisterous celebration? Maybe. But there were no baby-sitters those days, and Mama and Papa Batista had to contribute something to the jubilation in the little village below. How could they ever explain the failure to display their appreciation of their freedom if they didn't? The neighbors had no great difficulty convincing Belisario and Carmela that they just had to go to the fiesta, especially since the neighbors had volunteered to take turn minding the baby. So off they went, trailing down the dusty little road, taking turns carrying the little fellow in their arms, singing songs of the war of yesterday.

When Belisario and Carmela joined in the street dancing they passed little Fulgencio to the friendly arms of a neighbor. And a good little citizen he was, this little "Beno" Batista. Not a single whimper out of the little Cuban throughout the long night of revelry. In fact, as Carmela remarked as they trudged back up the hillside long after midnight, young Beno seemed quite pleased with the whole tilirig, as though he knew something important was happening. At least he seemed interested-up to the minute he fell sound asleep in his mothers arms.

Maybe it was at this point in his infancy that the spark of revolution came into the life of Fulgencio Batista. Or maybe ¡t came later when as a boy of eight he was put to work in the cane fields to do a man's work. Or perhaps this latter-life determination to change the status quo came into his life the night he watched his young brother die of tuberculosis, for lack of adequate medical care and hospital facilities. Nobody knows.

The extreme eastern end of Cuba-la región oriental-is the richest and most beautiful part of that spectacularly beautiful Caribbean island. The mountains are rugged and high, the Sierra Maestras reaching an altitude of nearly eight thousand feet, their slopes wrapped in a blanket of colorful foliage-wild orchids and hundreds of varieties of the lush wild flowers of the tropics. In the northeast the slight foothills run down into the Atlantic Ocean and the blue Bay of Nipe, a favorite spot of Christopher Columbus, who wrote pages in his diary about the splendor of this area. Here the great Indian tribes of the Carib nation lived and prospered long before Columbus-the Ornofays, the Camagüeys, the Guayamaros, the Banys, the Macacas, the Boyucas and other equally important tribes. It was here that the Spaniards, led by Diego Velázquez, built the first city, the first capital of Cuba, Baracoa, today a busy little city in the center of the great cane-growing area, the heart of the four-centuries-old sugar industry,

The Bay of Nipe has a deep religious significance for Cubans because it figures so prominently in the legend of the Virgin of Cobre, the patron saint of the island. It was in the waters of this bay that the Virgin first appeared, in the early part of the eighteenth century, and every year thousands of faithful travel to Oriente Province to pay homage to the Virgin of Cobre.

In the far northeast the little village of Banes was founded in 1887, just after the abolition of slavery in Cuba. Fifty-seven years before, in 1830, the wealthy landowners of Oriente had tried unsuccessfully to establish a village at Banes. The rich soil along the slopes of the Pan de Samá foothills seemed ideal for sugar cultivation and the natives were peaceful people. Hard workers, many of them descendants of the Bany Indians, they asked no more than the opportunity to earn a meager living. In 1887, the effort was successful, and soon little settlements of workers sprang up around the village of Banes.

Belisario Batista and Carmela Zaldivar were natives of the Banes area and were youngsters when the village was established. They were married young, as is the custom among the guajiros-the backwoodsmen-of Cuba, and were soon the parents of a son with eyes and hair as black as coal. In due time be was carried to the village church and christened. He was given the name of Ruben Fulgencio, and Belisario and Carmela were proud and happy. The Batista family grew fast. After Ruben Fulgencio, whose name was shortened to Beno by his mother, came little Juan, then Hermelindo, then Francisco-four boys in all-and fine little guajiros they were. The family lived in one of the small bohíos, typical of the thatch-roofed, earthen-floored little cabins of rural Cuba. Belisario, with the help of Carmela, had built the little bohío with his own hands.

The Cuban guajiros are expert at building these little huts out of the crudest of materials. They are fortunate when they can lay their hands on enough boards to build plank side walls. The huts are anchored to the ground on a few posts, usually the sawed-off trunks of royal palms, and a few uprights and cross-members are then installed. Invariably the roofs are made of palm leaves, laid one on another and tied by hand to the roof frame by fibers, to form a sunproof, rainproof thatch. The floors are usually of dirt of clay texture and are soon beaten into a semi-bard surface by the feet of the occupants. They are pretty solid structures, in spite of the flimsy materials used, and they have been known to ride out hurricane after hurricane.

Times were hard in Cuba at the turn of the century and 13elisario had difficulty keeping his small family fed and clothed. The achievement of independence was satisfying to the soul, but it did nothing immediately to alleviate the burden of providing for the body. He was a poor man, at times almost destitute, and so were the neighbors around him. Beno learned about poverty early in life. He was born to it, in fact, and he and his childhood companions were brought up in the same miserable surroundings. There were few sanitary facilities in the settlements of the cane field workers, and even candles were somewhat of a luxury. The roads in and out of the settlement were all footpaths, worn through the undergrowth by the bare feet of the neighborhood youngsters-going nowhere at all. When it rained, it poured along the slopes of the Samá foothills. And when it poured, rivers of mud swept down the hillsides, making a quagmire of the shabby little villages of the workers.

A cane field worker was an economic slave in Cuba in those days, and be remained a slave until 1933, when a minimum wage law was enacted. Prior to that the field laborers worked for as little as fifteen cents a day-long sweaty hours in the tropical sun, swinging machetes. The work-year was five months, the cane harvesting and grinding season, and the workers spent the other seven months fighting off starvation on a diet of raw sugar cane. The labor relations record of the sugar mill operators was not a very laudable one in those days.

Batista showed signs of rebellion against the slave system early in life. He didn't like what was happening to himself and he didn't like what was happening to his friends and neighbors. The misery of these impoverished youngsters became more bitter every time they saw the well-fed, neatly dressed children of the sugar mill owners, who rode into the settlements now and then on plump little ponies.

In 1909, when Batista was eight years old, the dockworkers in Havana went on strike. Havana, to the kids in the villages of Oriente, was just something you dreamt about-a place where the rich people lived-a land of milk and honey. But the dockworkers' strike spread. It precipitated strikes of sympathy among other groups of workers and Cuba found herself plagued by her first general strike. Belisario Batista was worried. What was the world coming to? Where would all this lead? At night the little group of caneworkers met and discussed the strike hour upon hour. Although it had not affected them immediately, it gave them something new and interesting to talk and worry about, to break the monotony of the dull gossip of the village. Young Fulgencio listened as the grownups talked. His flashing black eyes switched from one speaker to another as the problem of the day was discussed. Finally, after two days of listening, Beno made a decision, an important decision for an eight-year-old. He told his dad he was going to strike, in sympathy with the workers on the Havana docks six hundred miles away. He would not, he vowed, go into the cane fields the next day to cut cane. He was hanging up his machete until the workers of Cuba got what they wanted-a little more pay, a few more of the necessities of life.

Young Beno had always been a precocious child, asking questions, expressing opinions, worrying about the problems of his own little world. But this decision to put aside his machete, to go on strike, was the first outward act of rebellion in his eight years of life. And from that day on, throughout his colorful career, he displayed a spirit of rebellion, a determination to help the underdog, a willingness to take chances to bring about changes-just the sort of things that inspired this one-boy strike in the cane fields of Oriente Province many years ago.

When Batista was six years old he was put in a public school in Banes. But he wanted to go to the school run by Los Amigos. It was a better school, where students could get a little more personal attention, and it was operated by American Quakers. The business of cutting sugar cane to contribute to the family budget was constantly getting in the way of Beno's plans for an education. He finally resolved his problem by enrolling in the night classes at the Quaker school. He cut his cane during the day. At Los Amigos young Batista made a friendship which was to have a great effect upon his whole life. He met and came under the influence of Don Ramón Fernández, a fine, kindly old gentleman who bad a great talent for winning the friendship and confidence of little boys. Don Ramon was the director of the Quaker school, and the obvious desire of little Beno to get an education won the sympathy of the maestro.

When Batista tried to indulge his passion for reading at home, he encountered a lot of interruptions-little chores to be performed, like cutting the firewood or running errands for his mother and dad-so he made a deal with Don Ramón, an arrangement which gave him ample time for his reading. By conspiring with Don Ramón, young Batista was "compelled" to stay in school late every evening, usually for an hour, and this hour was devoted to reading. Those were among the most pleasant moments in the early life of Batista and be has never forgotten them. Some years ago, when he was occupying the Presidency of the Republic, he told me of Don Ramón and of those delightful hours he spent reading and chatting with his all-wise teacher. He has always said that the lessons he learned at the feet of Don Ramón were the most important of his life. Don Ramón encouraged him to continue his studies, to strive for more and more knowledge, at a time when no one else seemed interested in him.

Batista became an avid reader of almost anything he could get his hands on long before he reached his teens. From the moment he learned to follow the printed lines of a book he was consumed by the desire to read and read and read. Books meant more than anything else in the world to him, and even today they still occupy many hours of his time. It must have been a little difficult for the humble, poorly educated parents to understand a youngster who spent all his spare time, and some stolen time, reading books. But books were his passion and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Many youngsters in Cuba learn very early in life to read the numbers on a lottery ticket. They have even been known to take a flyer and bet a few pennies on the national lottery. At least that was true when Batista was a boy. For ten cents, a small fraction of a peso, a fellow could buy the hundredth part of a full ticket. If he won even one of the minor prizes, he'd have a few extra cents for dulces or toys-or just to jangle in his pockets around the other little boys. Young Señor Batista was no exception. His father frowned on such things as lotteries. But little boys don't always tell their fathers everything. One lucky day, young Beno found himself in the chips. His number came out and be was as excited as a man who'd just struck oil. His small investment in the national lottery had brought him a return of all of two pesos, and that was a lot of money for a little fellow of ten years. He was overjoyed by his good fortune and he rushed right down to the local branch of the lottery office and cashed in. Then he ran just as fast to the town magazine and book store and bought books-two pesos' worth of books. There is nothing to indicate he ever showed up at home with these treasures. It would have been a bit hard to explain this quick prosperity to his parents. But ever since that lucky day there's been a persistent rumor going the rounds in the village of Banes. Beno, the gossips say, hid the books in the home of his old friend Don Ramón, and with the full knowledge and consent of this wise old teacher of little boys.

Young Batista seldom read for pleasure. What he found between the covers of those marvelous volumes was knowledge, information, education, and, perhaps, some escape from the misery of his childhood surroundings. A small boy with a book, a bit of imagination, and a passion for reading ought to be able to dream up marvelous dreams-about castles and princes, about sailors and pirates-even though he does his reading by candlelight in a dingy little shack in the backwoods of Cuba.

Batista's favorite subjects were history and geography, and as he grew up and his ability to comprehend increased, he became fascinated by the biographies of the great men of the world. One of his favorite childhood heroes was Abraham Lincoln, and he read every word he could find about this humble man whose life began in a little log cabin in Kentucky. This interest in Lincoln stayed with Batista, and on his several trips to the United States he visited every Lincoln shrine he could find. A huge bust of Lincoln occupies a prominent place in his library and he still reads Lincoln for inspiration.

Cuba has no organized system of public libraries such as are found in the cities of the United States, and when Batista was growing up there were no libraries of any kind in his neighborhood. Whatever books he read were bought with the few pennies he could get his hands on or borrowed from his sympathetic friend Don Ram6n. This paucity of books for children worried Batista long after he had grown to manhood. He felt that books were as important to youngsters as toys. So shortly after he came into power as Chief of the Army in 1933, Batista established a library for children in the village of Banes. He bought the little hut in which he was born, had it renovated, and stocked it with good books. It became the first children's library in Cuba. It is still in operation, and Batista intends to endow it so that future generations of Banes youngsters will never be denied the opportunity to read to their hearts' content. Today, in his farm outside Havana, he has one of the finest private libraries in the Americas, and even after long days with affairs of the state he manages to read an hour or two before retiring. He has more than five thousand volumes in his library' and they represent the works of more than two thousand authors.

At the age of fourteen, in 1915, Batista lost his mother. Poor Carmela had dedicated her life to the drudgery of raising a family in the poverty of the canefields. Her death was a severe blow to this youngster who had been so close to her during his childhood. After her death he wanted to leave the Banes area, to forget all the poverty, the sadness, of this miserable little village. The time had come, he felt, to find an escape from his cane field world. He wanted more time to read, more time to study, more time to learn things. So be packed his meager belongings and left. He set out without funds and with no particular destination in mind, without the consent of his father. But he was determined to make the break.

Young Beno walked and hitched rides on cane carts to the village of Holguin, some forty miles to the west of Banes, and took a job on the farm of an uncle. It was just a way station on his road to faraway places and he had no intention of settling down in Holguin. He stayed only a few weeks. He didn't like the way the farm workers were treated. The relations between patron and worker were not to his liking. The youngster could not shake off the grief over the death of his mother. He could not forget her kindness, her patience, and her complete devotion to her family. Her name came up frequently at his uncle's home and each time be beard her name, Batista was reminded of his loss. He decided then that Do one should ever again call him Beno. That had been his mother's pet name for him and he didn't want to hear it from the lips of any other person.

When Batista moved on, he went to the town of San Germán, where he took a job as water boy with a gang of workmen. The work crew was clearing land for a new cane plantation and Batista was soon promoted. He became timekeeper. A short time later, after absorbing all the knowledge he could about the culture of sugar cane, he returned to Banes. He had learned to clear the virgin land, to plant the young cane sprouts, to cultivate them and harvest the crop. lie thought of establishing himself as a cane farmer, on his own. But his old restlessness, that desire to move on, stayed with him, and after a few days he was anxious to be on the road again.

He had matured a great deal since he first left home and lie bad begun to realize that he had to set an objective for himself-and achieve it. He spoke to his padre. There was no future for an ambitious boy in Banes, he told his father, and be wanted to do things which were more important than cutting cane. Father Batista had worried a great deal over the restlessness of his son and he wondered where it would lead him. But he knew, too, that his son's desire to see and learn, to travel to distant places, to acquire more and more knowledge, was a very profound one. "All right, my boy, go away, if that is your plan," his father told him. "If things get rough, come back home again. You have my blessing." With these words the bargain was sealed and the brightened, ambitious young lad was on his way to a life of adventure, of bold deeds, along a road which was eventually to lead him to the highest position any Cuban can achieve the Presidency of the Republic.

This time when young Batista left the family bohío he stayed away. He spent the rest of his childhood and most of his youth chasing his rainbow's end. He went from Banes to the village of Dumois, on the main line of the railroad. Dumois was the junction point for the spur line which served Banes, sixty miles to the north, and young Beno liked the hustle of the place. He knew no one in the town and he had only a few pesos in his pocket. He took up residence on a wooden bench in the small r1ilroad station and went on emergency rations. His sleeping quarters on the bench were not the most comfortable in the world. He was awakened several times every night by the sound of passing trains and he had to clear out of the station at daylight each morning. But he liked the village and he liked the trains. He made friends with the trainmen who hung around the yards and he developed a great admiration for these carefree fellows. The big powerful locomotives were the most interesting things he had ever seen and once in a while the railroad men would let him climb aboard the big steel monsters. Beno dreamed as only fourteen-year-old boys can dream during those days and nights around the railroad village of Dumois. "Just imagine," be thought, "if I could just get one of those little cardboard tickets, I could get on the train and move out into the great world to the west-to Camagüey, to Havana, the capital city, all the places I've dreamt about." This constant dreaming, this nervousness, this desire to improve his position, must, of course, have been the thing that had upset him when be labored in the cane fields around Banes, a boy doing a man's work, for starvation wages, a few pennies a day. Certainly this desire to succeed had to be satisfied some day, else he'd die of heartbreak-or of frustration.

Railroad men are fascinating people as far as boys are concerned, and in the town of Dumois young Batista spent most of his time with these heroic characters. He would sit by the hour listening to the yarns being spun, many of them contrived especially for his ears. One of the favorite loafing places for the railroad men of Dumois was the local bodega, and it just so happened that young Batista found it necessary to spend a great many hours of his time in the same place. A bodega is a marvelous invention, a sort of institution in Cuba. in a bodega you can eat your lunch, have a few drinks, play dominoes, take a whirl at the dice box, buy your groceries and liquors, listen to the radio, and pick up all the local gossip-all for a very reasonable sum of money. A bodega is a sort of community center, where every subject from the birth of a neighbor's baby to national politics is discussed and debated without the slightest trace of an inhibition.

Young Fulgencio was a simpático youngster and the men around the railroad yards liked him. He met them as they came in off their runs and talked to them about their experiences in the distant places along the line. They found in him an eager listener who accepted every yam they told as gospel truth, and yam spinners always like a good listener. Soon Batista bad picked up some of the railroader's vernacular and he was determined that some day he would be one of them. Batista had beard his railroad friends speak a great deal about Antilla, the busy little sugar port on the north shore of the Bay of Nipe. This, to the railroad men, was an exciting metropolis through which passed most of the raw sugar of Oriente, en route to the markets of the world. Batista decided he'd try his luck in Antilla. It didn't require much effort to arrange passage from Dumois to Antilla, and young Fulgencio headed north toward the seaport, reveling in the splendor and luxury of a caboose hooked to a freight train. Antilla was the division headquarters for the railroad and Batista had been told be might get a job there.

The business of keeping himself fed and clothed had been causing Batista a great deal of concern. He moved into Antilla with a boy's desire to become a railroader, but he also had a man's financial problem to solve. He had to find a job of some kind and he had to find it quickly. He was totally insolvent. As the freight train rolled into Antilla yards, Batista got a shock. Soldiers were on guard everywhere and there were indications of trouble ahead. What had happened? Why were all the armed soldiers around the railroad yards? He soon had the answers. Workers on the railroad around Antilla were mostly all Spaniards. That was why the railroad men at Dumois bad always called Antilla "Little Spain." About the time young Señor Batista was moving north from Dumois, the railroad workers at Antilla bad, it seems, fallen out with the bosses and had gone on strike. The Army had stepped in to keep order after there bad been a number of disturbances.

Batista had no trouble getting offers. He was hardly in the yards when he was offered a job with the railroad, precisely what he had been wanting all these months. Here was his chance to achieve the greatest ambition of his boyhood and, incidentally, to earn a few pesos for food and books. It must have taken a great deal of courage to turn down these offers, but Batista's rebellious nature would not allow him to accept the job and become a strikebreaker. It was a setback to his plans, but he rejected the offers. He spent the next few days around Antilla, some of the time along the waterfront. Perhaps he could find his way in the world as a seaman aboard one of the little freighters moving in and out of Antilla. Perhaps the sea was his destiny. But he decided against it. He wanted to be a railroader.

After a few days he moved along, as all young wanderers must, and showed up in the village of Alto Cedro, far to the south of Antilla. He went back to the soil and worked for a few weeks as a cane cutter, long enough to get a few pesos for future travels. After Alto Cedro he went back to Holguín, where he again went to work in the fields. His passion for books bad increased and he wanted enough money to buy a few books and enough time to read them.

Batista's only passport in his wanderings was his willingness to work and work hard. He would take any kind of job that kept him in food and clothing, and at odd times during his pre-adolescent years he was employed as a tailor's helper, a carpenter's apprentice, and a handy boy around a barber shop. But he never gave up the idea of becoming a railroader. Finally, after many months around Holguín, his dream came true. He got a job while still a boy as a brakeman on the Consolidated Railways. He was delighted with his new job, as happy as he always knew he'd be.

If Batista were asked today to name the most exciting moment in his boyhood wanderings, he probably would say that it was the day he put on his leather cap-the mark of a railroader-tied a blue bandana handkerchief around his neck, and went to work on the railroad. It is significant that today, after overthrowing two governments, after twice occupying the Presidency of Cuba, the items which occupy the most prominent place in his great library near Havana are the brakeman's lantern and switch key which he used when he climbed in his first boxcar for Consolidated, back in Holguín, and the sergeant's stripes be wore when he staged his first coup d'etat against the government.

Batista's days and nights as a railroader were happy ones. He traveled up and down the Consolidated Railways system, making friends at every way station, passing his nights in small-town inns and in the railroad crew quarters in the hotels of the larger towns. He had time to read between runs and be had enough money to feed and clothe himself and to buy more books. This was the good life. Batista met and made friends with many people during his years on the railroad. A good talker himself, he has always had extraordinary talent as a listener. Another useful faculty which Batista possesses is the ability to retain most of what he hears or reads. This apparently natural gift served him well during his youthful years because it contributed substantially to his self-education. In later years it became a useful asset in matters of government. He has developed this talent to the point where he is expert at remembering indefinitely names and faces of persons be meets and incidents in his life.

Some months after Batista became a railroader he was almost killed. He fell between two boxcars on a moving freight train and landed upon the coupling pins, unconscious. Fortunately, his clothing was caught in the coupling pin and his body was held above the wheels of the train until he was rescued. He spent weeks in a Camagüey hospital before going back to his job as a brakeman-conductor.

When Batista wasn't aboard a freight train, he was alone in his room reading books, making marginal notes, checking his dictionary. His friends in the crew teased him because he did not join in the fiestas the railroad men staged now and then during their off-duty hours. But Batista's desire for learning was profound. He enjoyed visits with his friends, particularly if there was likely to be conversation about books and authors. He had frequent dates with some of the young girls of the villages along the railroad, but they were not serious affairs of the heart. Batista was not thinking of marriage. He was an ambitious young fellow and his greatest ambition was to improve himself and his position. In his youth, Batista never drank. Today he sometimes takes a cocktail before dinner or a glass of wine at state functions. His smoking is limited to an occasional cigar.

Batista continued on the railroad until he was twenty. He liked his job because it gave him a chance to travel and to improve his education. But his ambition made him restless. Years before, when he left the thatch-roofed bohío of his family near Banes, he knew he wanted to achieve something worth while in life and be finally decided he couldn't achieve it atop a boxcar on the Consolidated Railways.

In April, 1921, he joined the Cuban Army, became a buck private, and was assigned to the First Battalion of the Fourth Company of Infantry at Camp Columbia, near Havana. Little did he or anyone else realize that Camp Columbia would figure so importantly in his future. It was in Camp Columbia, a little more than ten years from the day he entered it as a recruit, that Batista, in 1933, planned and executed his first coup d'etat against the government, and he returned to Camp Columbia in 1952 to stage the second coup. Batista is sentimental about Camp Columbia and he spends a night or two there every week, even when his official residence is in the Presidential Palace.

When Batista entered Columbia in 1921, the camp was a run-down relic of the Spanish-American war days. Its wooden barracks were shabby and weather-beaten and it had been neglected since the American troops, who had built it in 1898 and last occupied it in 1909, moved out. Today it is one of the most attractive, most modern military establishments in the Western Hemisphere. It was rebuilt of cement and steel and completely modernized by ex-Private Batista in the early 1930s, after he had become Chief of the Army.

Batista liked army life. He completed the customary training routine at recruit school, and, in spite of a heavy schedule of duties and assignments, he arranged his work so that he had time to study. The Army took care of his food and clothing problems and he bad access to the camp library. The arrangement was ideal.

By this time Batista had decided to become a lawyer. It became as strong an ambition as was his desire, in his childhood, to become a railroad man. Army duties prevented him from attending law school, and besides, be had none of the high-school credits required to enter an accredited law school. So he did the next best thing. He bought and borrowed every law book in sight and read law, hour after hour, day after day, always making his marginal notes, always retaining almost all he read. At night, long after taps, he would read by a dim light, hoping his sergeant wouldn't catch him at it. More than once he was taken before First Sergeant Rogelio López for violating the "lights out" regulations.

When Batista told barracks companions that, in addition to the law studies, he was going to study shorthand and typing, they were skeptical. How could a fellow spend all his free time at such boring tasks? When Sergeant L6pez, who was sympathetic to Batista's program of self-improvement, heard about the new studies he nicknamed Batista "el literato." Batista subscribed to a correspondence course in stenography and went to work. He practiced his shorthand several hours a day and sent his lessons to his teachers in New York. Sergeant López bad never seen such a recruit-a fellow who worked hard all day at his army duties, then spent every free minute studying law and stenography. He admired Batista, though first sergeants are not especially noted for publicly expressing admiration for "intellectual" buck privates.

It is worth mentioning, parenthetically, that First Sergeant Lopez was subsequently rewarded for his tolerance of the studious habits of Private Batista. When Batista became Chief of the Army in 1933, López was still around, still a topkick. When he went to congratulate Batista on his promotion to the position of Supreme Commander, Batista had a surprise for him, a document which elevated First Sergeant López to the rank of colonel.

Early in his army career Batista came in contact with another sergeant, a tough one, who made a practice of browbeating the men of the line. Batista didn't like the fellow and he didn't like the way be treated the helpless buck privates. So be did something about it, as was his custom. Ile went to the sergeant, whose reputation bad won him t1le nickname "Red Devil," and with great respect told him that he, Private Batista, would take no such treatment from anyone. To the surprise and, perhaps, relief of Batista, the tough sergeant replied, "Quit worrying, Batista, fellows like you have my respect and consideration." The sergeant stayed away from Batista from that time on.

Batista, meanwhile, was making fine progress in his studies. He had learned a lot about law and he had learned to take shorthand and to touch-type. But he wasn't satisfied. So just before the beginning of the year of 1923, Batista made arrangements to take special instruction in Havana to improve his technique in both shorthand and typing. He wanted to become a speed-typist, and he did.

At this point it was obvious to Batista that stenography had to take precedence over his law studies. With his shorthand and typing he could improve his position in the Army, and he wanted to get ahead. On January 1, 1923, he enrolled in San Mario College in Havana to take night classes in stenography. On the first night in school Batista talked to the director of the college and told him his plan. The director advised the young soldier to continue studying the Gregg system of shorthand. The San Mario College taught Pitman, hut the director thought Batista's progress would be retarded if he changed to an unfamiliar system. The director saw that young Batista was a serious-minded student and he gave the young soldier special attention.

At San Mario Batista met a medical student named Alfredo Sánchez Arango who was taking shorthand courses on the side. They became friends. And soon Batista, Sánchez Arango, and other students frequently went to a neighborhood café after night classes. The conversation at these meetings usually included politics, and the subject of these political discussions was frequently President Alfredo Zayas, whose administration was not a very popular one. On one of these occasions Sánchez Arango, the medical student, denounced the Zayas regime and became quite vehement "bout it. Batista was impressed but he saw no immediate solution to the problems created by the Zayas government. After listening to Sánchez Arango for an hour, Batista offered a suggestion. "Alfredo," he began, "you may be able to something about it. You are a medical student. If you go in, politics you might be very successful. I am a soldier an can do nothing about politics. But you might some day elected to the senate, even to the Presidency. Who knows?" Sánchez Arango did not, of course, reach the high political position Batista had suggested he might some day achieve. But Batista himself did-twice. Sánchez Arango completed his medical studies and became a physician in the little to of Quivicán. Batista went on to the Presidency of the Republic.

It was while be was studying at San Mario that Batista wrote his first article for publication. At the time be considered a career as a journalist. He still has a keen interest in that profession and be once told me that if be could live his life over again he probably would go into the newspaper business. Even now, he writes all his speeches and public statements.

The college published a small magazine called The Mercantile Educator and the director asked Batista to write a series of articles on any subject which interested him. He used the pen name of Rubén, which, by the way, was the first name given him at baptism. The Rubén part of the Rubén Fulgencio had long since been dropped. Batista's first article appeared in the July 15, 1923, edition of The Mercantile Educator. In it, he expounded the case of Major Javier Molina y Montoro, a hero of the war against Spain, whose pension pay bad been reduced to that of a captain. Batista closed the article with a plea that the wrong be corrected and the hero be given better treatment. It was a protest against injustice, a typical Batista protest. Batista continued writing in the college publication and the director was impressed by the versatility of the young soldier-stenographer. In the summer of 1923, the director published a photograph of Batista, under which appeared these prophetic lines: "In presenting this photograph we offer proof, graphic and living, that here is a man of abundant good will and of great enthusiasm and we have no doubt that our good friend, in the not too distant future, will be ensconced in the Headquarters of the Cuban Army."

Ten years later Batista was at Army Headquarters-as Chief of the Armed Forces of Cuba.

Batista completed his first enlistment in the Army in 1923, and prepared to enter the commercial field. He had a promise of a job after he finished his course at San Mario, but the nation was passing through an economic depression and the position never materialized. When he left the Army Batista made the college his headquarters. He was there from early in the morning until late at night, sitting in on all the courses offered by the school. His old friend Luis García Díaz, director of San Mario, was pleased with Batista's interest in broadening his education and he gave him a position as an assistant professor. Batista was delighted and he spent several hours a day reading the works of great masters. His desire for knowledge never diminished. So efficient was the young man in his duties as assistant professor that Garcia Diaz promoted him to the rank of full professor to teach commercial grammar. García Díaz and Batista had a great deal in common. The director, years before, had been a sergeant in the Cuban Army-a sergeant-stenographer in fact-and he had been involved in a couple of revolutions. Batista stayed on at college for several months but the urge to reenter the Army was irrepressible. Upon re-enlistment he entered the Rural Guard, a branch of the Army dedicated to police and patrol duty in the small towns and villages of the island.

He was assigned to a post as guard at Finca María, the farm of President Zayas, near the town of Wajay. Batista learned that the President maintained a huge library on the place and he asked and obtained permission to use it. Finca María was a nice assignment. For the first time in his 'life Batista met important statesmen and politicians and he had a number of opportunities to talk to the President of the Republic. Living conditions were good at the farm, the duties were light, and lie had time to read. After a while, the President, who had noticed Batista's interest in reading, gave him a nickname. He called the young soldier "Private Bookworm." Batista stayed at Finca María until President Zayas completed his term in office. When Batista was transferred to the regular Army he was stationed briefly at Atarés Fortress near Havana and later at Castillo de la Fuerza, on the bay shore, in the center of Havana. As a private he was assigned to serve as secretary to Colonel Federico Rasco y Ruiz, Inspector General of the Army, and the experience he gained in that post was invaluable. He was a good soldier, adhering always to army regulations, and was shortly made a corporal. In June, 1926, he stood an examination, along with forty-two other contestants, and finished first in the class.

Not long after Batista took over his duties as secretary to Colonel Rasco, a group of soldiers and civilians got into a brawl in a night club in the neighborhood of Camp Columbia. It was a favorite spot for the enlisted men, but on this occasion a number of socialites were visiting the place on a lark. As they absorbed more and more of the rum and the atmosphere, the civilians decided that the soldiers should be tossed out of the place. Persons under the influence of alcoholic beverages frequently do odd things, but the civilian playboys who decided they ought to throw the soldiers out of their own hangout must have been awfully drunk. No one in a normal state of sobriety or even half-drunk would pick a fight with a group of soldiers out to make the most of a twenty-four-hour pass. There were a number of casualties, mostly among the civilian group, of course, and an investigation was ordered.

Major Ovidio Ortega was assigned to investigate for the Army and he had instructions to pick up all the enlisted men who participated in the fight and bring them to headquarters for questioning. Somehow the major acquired the erroneous information that a certain Corporal Batista was in the café that night. So he decided to call on the Corporal at the office of Colonel Rasco, and the visit was not going to be a social one. When the Major entered the office of Colonel Rasco he found Corporal Batista with his chief. Before the Major could give Batista the bad news, Colonel Rasco intervened. "This is Corporal Batista," the Colonel said. "He is married, has one daughter, lives at 24 Josefina Street, and he never, but never, frequents such places as the Café Paris." The major retired and the investigation was over as far as Corporal Batista was concerned.

While stationed at the Zayas farm at Wajay, Batista had found time between his army duties and his reading to court a pretty young lady of the neighborhood named Elisa Godinez. The courtship led to their marriage in Havana on July 10, 1926, and in April of the following year their first child was born. But the marriage was not a happy one and. they were divorced several years later. His second marriage, to Marta Fernández, was an ideal one and Batista is deeply devoted to Marta.

The romance of Marta Fernández and Fulgencio Batista began in a traffic accident. When Colonel Batista's automobile collided with a bicycle ridden by the pretty green-eyed Cuban girl, no one suffered any grave injuries, but the accident certainly changed the lives of at least two persons. After the Colonel and his aides had lifted. the young lady to her feet, they drove her to a first aid station. For days he inquired at her home as to the condition of her health and this interest in her physical welfare soon developed into a courtship. They were married a few years later and Batista found the happiness he had not enjoyed in his first marriage.

Two daughters, Mirta and Elisa, and a son, Rubén, were born of Batista's marriage to Elisa Godinez and Marta has borne four sons: Jorge, Carlos Manuel, Roberto Francisco, and Fulgencio José. The youngest son, Fulgencio José, was born on February 1, 1953. He is the first boy born in the Presidential Palace. All the boys are images of their father. Ruben is now a student at Princeton University. He obtained his primary education at a military school in the United States and was graduated from high school in Havana before matriculating at Princeton. Roberto Francisco was born in the United States and his brothers call him "el Americano." Marta Fernández de Batista is one of the President's most capable helpers. In addition to her duties as First Lady, she heads a number of semi-official charitable organizations and has specialized in the field of underprivileged children. A devout Catholic, she gives a great deal of her time to charitable work through the church. She is an exceptionally modest young lady who performs her charitable work quietly, without publicity, and she is idolized by the poor people of Cuba.