The movement of the fourth of September, 1933, needs no apologist. It was a spontaneous movement, led by a group of serious-minded young men, and it came at a moment when the nation was living in a state of near-anarchy. And, as Batista has frequently pointed out, it was not a selfish movement by a group of military men bent on implanting a military dictatorship. One of the first steps taken by Batista in the earliest stages of his planning was to invite the participation of outstanding civilians, and he got their adherence. The patriotism and the revolutionary record of the civilians who supported the Revolt of the Sergeants, men like Sergio Carbó and Porfirio Franca, were above question or criticism. It seems reasonable to believe that had Batista and his army comrades been selfish they would never have brought the civilians into the group. The sergeants themselves had the ability and the means to carry the revolution to a complete success and to hold the power in their own hands indefinitely.

If, in spite of Batista's unselfish efforts in the early stages of the revolution, there was still, at some later date, a doubt as to his basic motives, those doubts were eliminated by his conduct after the Revolt of the Sergeants had succeeded-specifically, on the seventh and eighth of September. On the night of September 7, 1933, Sergio Carbó, acting as Secretary of War and Interior, called a meeting in the Presidential Palace for the purpose of planning the reorganization of the Army. By that time the revolution was a fait accompli, a development which could not be ignored. The deposed President Céspedes had resigned and retired to his home and there was no cabinet-no government, in fact. The Army was without commissioned officers and there was violent disorder in the streets. The situation demanded quick and positive action, and Carbó felt the most urgent requirement was the reorganization of the Armed Forces so that public order could be restored. That was why he called the Palace meeting on the night of September 7. When the meeting at the Palace opened, Carbó, acting as chairman, brought together Batista, who represented the Revolt of the Sergeants, and Colonel Hector de Quesada and Lieutenant Colonel José Perdomo representing the deposed army officers. Carbó, seconded by Batista, made the opening offer in an effort to find a formula for the reorganization of the Army. It was as amazing as it was generous.

The sergeants, Carbó told the high-ranking officers, felt that selection of a new Chief of Staff should be left to the commissioned officers themselves. The sergeants, satisfied with the triumph of the revolutionary movement, had no personal interests to appease. Their only desire was to see the country returned to peace and normalcy as quickly as possible. In other words, the sergeants, although they held the supreme power in their hands at the time, were willing to allow the deposed officers the right to name the Chief of Staff-the most important figure in any military organization. The only conditions in the sergeants' offer were that a military commission of five be named to direct the work of reorganizing the Army and that the commission be composed of two commissioned officers, Batista, and two sergeants of the revolution to be selected by the three. All changes in command, all orders, all commissions, and all new regulations were to have the unanimous approval of the commission of five.

Discussing this incident some years later Batista said that when the offer was made he was mindful of the perfectly human desire on the part of the officers to regain all that they had lost in the revolution, but he also knew that the noncommissioned officers were entitled to certain considerations, since they had carried the revolution through to success. The sergeants felt that the revolution of September had contributed substantially to the development of the young Republic. It bad succeeded in eliminating the impotent government of Céspedes, which they and many others believed to be more to the liking of the United States than to the liking of the Cubans. The revolt had brought an end to the injustices in the Army and it had established a basis upon which to build for the future. The men who had risked their lives to bring about the changes would not, they insisted, accept any formula which called for the reinstatement of the corrupt practices of the past or submitting to a "mediation" government, which would be more susceptible to the pressure of a foreign power than sensitive to the needs of the Cuban people.

Colonels Perdomo and Quesada heard the proposal of the sergeants and indicated that they considered it a reasonable one. Carbó urged speed in the negotiations, pointing out that it was imperative that the Army move quickly to end the violent disorders which disturbed the island. The two officers promised to return with an acceptance, or at least a counter-proposal, as soon as possible. The first meeting had lasted until midnight. Several hours later the two officers returned accompanied by several other officers. Carbo and the sergeants were waiting. Colonel Quesada spoke. The High Command, he said, could not accept the proposal of the sergeants. He then offered a counter-proposal which embodied all the objectionable features of the old order of government. It was, very naturally, unacceptable to the men of the revolution. The officers' formula would have restored the defunct Céspedes government to power, reinstated all deposed officers except those actually charged with crimes. Condescendingly, the officers offered amnesty for the enlisted men who had staged the revolution. The officers' proposal appeared to be an attempt to re-establish and legalize the intolerable conditions which had inspired the revolution in the first place. The sergeants would have no such solution, and, as Batista remarked, neither the people nor the revolutionary government would accept such a proposal. Carbó, as impatient as the sergeants with the officers' offer, ordered the meeting adjourned.

The situation in the country became worse as the days passed. There was need for quick action and Carbó knew that no compromise could ever be reached with the old commissioned officers. Try as he might, he could not get the cooperation of these men who were supposed to possess the superior intelligence of the officers of the armed service. So Carbó had to act. On the morning of September 8, he wrote out an order. As Secretary of War and Interior, he named Fulgencio Batista Chief of the Army and elevated him from the rank of first sergeant to the rank of colonel. Then he told him to go to work reorganizing the Armed Forces. From that moment on there was no doubt as to the former Sergeant's position. Batista, as Chief of the Army, was the most powerful man in Cuba.

Writing of that memorable session many years later, Carbó, in his newspaper Prensa Libre, said: "The demand of the hour, after the overthrow of the tyranny (of Machado), was the establishment of a sound authority. To do that, it was necessary to reorganize the Army, in which there were still, despite the public scandals and vigorous opposition of the young officers, many of the despised figures who had served as assassins and executioners for the previous (Machado) government. That is why the Army did not have the moral force to clear the streets of shameful spectacles staged by marauders and the killers of porristas (Machado secret police) whose cheap exhibitionism contrasted so sharply with the heroic records of the true revolutionaries who had faced death so many times in the difficult days of the fight against the tyrant."

Carbó blamed the able officers of the Army for the stalemate reached in the Palace on the night of September 7. He said they repeatedly refused to accept a solution which would have allowed them to rebuild the Army and that he, as Secretary of War, had had to act in accordance with the circumstances. "Faced with the vacuum which strained national and international tensions to the limit," Carbó explained, "I did then what I would do today, if faced with such a grave circumstance. I gave the Army a chief, so that by some means, we could avoid outright anarchy in the country. I chose the leader of the sergeants and made him a colonel."

The promotion of Batista to the position of Supreme Chief of the Armed Forces completed another phase in the Revolt of the Sergeants and it marked another great step forward for this humble young soldier, who twelve years before was riding the tops of boxcars as a brakeman on the Consolidated Railways of Cuba, and who ten years before that was cutting sugar cane in the fields of Oriente Province for fifteen cents a day.

The days and nights around the Presidential Palace in early September were exciting ones, and Batista, who had slept little since the revolution of September 4, was a tired young man when they pinned the three stars of colonelcy on the shoulder straps of his faded blouse of the common soldier. He had lived on black coffee and sandwiches for nearly a week, but he never complained. In the few minutes he could take from the problems of the moment, he agreed to receive newspapermen. He talked with ease, answering any and all questions with the self-assurance of a young man who knew exactly where be was going. For days after his promotion he didn't even have time to get out of his enlisted man's uniform. He simply removed the stripes of a sergeant and pinned on the stars of a colonel.

A short while after the officers had rejected the offers of the sergeants, Batista discussed the incident with friends. He had hoped the officers would take the command but since they had not, he was prepared to face his new responsibilities and let the historians decide which group bad erred in the Palace meeting. "Posterity will analyze the event dispassionately," he said, "but it ought to be recorded here that the attitude of the sergeants was a generous one. It is the only case in history where the victors in a revolution have called in the vanquished in order to deliver the command into their bands."