As time passed, relations between Welles and the Batista group worsened. Welles' continued failure to appraise accurately the strength of Batista and his tenacious refusal to give up hope of re-establishing the Céspedes regime undoubtedly irked Batista. Apparently Welles felt that the best thing for Cuba, as well as the United States, was the removal of the government which had grown out of the Revolt of the Sergeants. But his persistence contributed nothing to the solution of the crisis or to the improvement of relations between Cuba and the United States, which were very bad at the time.

This continual swimming against the current must have caused Welles a great deal of anguish. Many times his spirits were lifted by baseless reports that Batista was on his way out. But each time these hopes that the defunct Céspedes government could be put back in power were destroyed by the realities of the situation. At eight o'clock on the evening of September 7, someone passed Welles a report--a false one--that Batista was going to step down. Welles rushed the following message off to Secretary Hull: "At a meeting called for ten o'clock tonight at the palace, which will be attended by the leaders of all political groups, I am reliably informed that the revolutionary group in control (the Batista junta) will then turn over the government and I am further advised that President Céspedes will be restored as bead of the government." The following morning he was forced to report that "the meeting at the palace appears to have degenerated into a fruitless, prolonged argument."

It was during these days and nights of diplomatic maneuvering that Batista received a visitor who said he had an important message for the young Colonel. The visitor claimed he represented "American authorities" and he told Batista that he had a proposition to offer. The ex-Sergeant listened. it was quite possible, the caller said, that Batista's situation might become so untenable that he might want to resign from the important position he held in the nation at that time. If it were to come to pass that Batista wanted to step down, the visitor said, Batista need have no worry. A very fine job was waiting for him with the United Fruit Company in Central America. He suggested that it might be a good thing for Batista to get out of Cuba immediately.

Batista asked the stranger which "American authorities" he represented and the visitor replied: "American authorities, that's all. You can guess which ones." "Thanks very much," said Batista as he led the caller to the door, "but I have an idea that if I leave this job in the near future it will be to take a horizontal position at the bottom of a newly dug grave in the cemetery."

Some years later I spoke to a representative of the United Fruit Company about the incident. The fruit company version of what happened with regard to Batista in 1933 was different from the version General Batista gave me. The fruit company representative said that about the time Batista received the strange visitor, the fruit company was approached by Frederick Dumont, Consul General of the United States in Havana, who asked if United Fruit Company had a steamer in the Gulf of Mexico bound for Central America. Dumont was told that a company ship was, in fact, in the Gulf at that time, headed for Central America. Dumont then asked if the company could divert the ship to the coast of Cuba to pick tip Batista, if such a move became necessary. The fruit company said it would do so if the United States 0fficial so desired. Dumont thanked the company official but the fruit company heard no more from the Consul General, The fruit company version would indicate that United States officials were planning an escape for Batista. But if such a plan was actually considered by United States officials, the one person who knew nothing about it was the man who should have been most interested--Fulgencio Batista. As a matter of fact, Batista had no idea of running away from Cuba and Consul General Dumont must have known that fact.

Batista was not easily discouraged. In spite of the open opposition of a number of Cuban political factions, in spite of the opposition of Welles, he refused to surrender the power. He paid absolutely no attention to the American warships in Havana harbor. The animosity between Batista and Welles grew to the point where Batista, late in 1933, refused to treat with Welles in matters of state. Batista, although holding the rank of Colonel in the Army, was running Cuba at the time, and he was the only authority with which the United States could treat. The impasse was broken when Batista agreed to deal with Consul General Dumont. This situation may have had something to do with Welles' desire to return to the United States in December, 1933.

In checking some of the Welles reports with authorities and records in Cuba, I found a number of discrepancies. The Welles version of some of the important events differed materially from the records on file in Cuba. Nor did they agree with at least one newspaperman's version of the same events. For example, Welles reported on October 4, 1933, that be had held a conversation with Batista which lasted an hour and a half. He did. But the report, as recorded in Washington, quoted Welles as saying: "Batista came to the Embassy this morning to see me and I bad a conversation with him alone for about an hour and a half." The Cuban records show that Batista did not call on Welles at the Embassy on the morning. On the contrary, Welles went to Batista's headquarters at Camp Columbia for the conference. I asked Batista about the discrepancy and he confirmed the Cuban version. The question of who called on whom may not seem important now, twenty years later. But such things are extremely important in the lives of diplomats and statesmen, and it might be well to correct the record here, once and for all.

At the time Batista and his associates were being catalogued by Welles as Communists and extreme radicals, Josephus Daniels, then serving as United States Ambassador to Mexico, made an eloquent plea for moderation in the name-calling campaign in Cuba. Daniels sent a message to Cordell Hull in Washington in which he stated that his information indicated that "the report of communist influence in Cuba is very much exaggerated."

Daniels, a newspaperman of great prestige and experience, seemed to have a clear picture of the Cuban situation, perhaps clearer than some of the American officials in Cuba, even though he was stationed in Mexico, several thousand miles away.

In his message to Hull, Mr. Daniels reminded the Secretary that "practically all the civil officials who had part in helping Machado in his reign of ruin have fled the country or been killed. Up to a few days ago most of the army officers, military men who had more to do with the reign of terror in Cuba than the civilians, were still holding high rank in the Army. The Cubans who drove out the civilians whose rule was evil, feel their cause will not be safe as long as their Army is officered by men who were largely responsible for the downfall of the President, who was then Commander-in-Chief and carried out the bloody policy."

There was none of the terse language of the usual diplomatic report in the Daniels letter to Hull. He was first of all, a reporter, a writer, and he was not employing the cold language of governmental communications.

"Can you blame the men who risked all for a change to wish to be rid of reactionary military leaders as they ousted civilian leaders? You put your hand on the sore spot when you said in your telephone talk 'The whole thing revolves around the Army,"' Daniels told Hull. "Does it not-or may it not-revolve around army officers, who were in sympathy with Machado, but who still hold positions which make them dangerous? Of course, we are alarmed when armies get out of control of their officers, but there may be times, as in Russia, when the high-up officers are so utterly out of sympathy with the good objects of a revolution that their continuance endangers reforms." He ended his report with an appeal for tolerance, a plea which might have called for an appearance before an investigating committee to prove that he was not a Communist, or even an extreme radical, had there been such committees in those days.

"I do not know enough about Cuba," wrote Daniels, "to assert that such is the case there, but I do know that Machado and his associates, civil and military, were very close to high financiers in Cuba and the United States, and had no sympathy for reforms that would give bread to hungry Cubans, whose needs were not cared for by those in power. Army officers under a Machado are often the agents of repression and have no heartbeat for the oppressed and distressed. May not the rich and powerful in Cuba, and their allies in the United States, and imperialistic army officers, be behind the attempt to hide behind exaggerating the lawlessness of Communists? I do not know," wrote this journalist-diplomat, "but I submit the question for your consideration."

No one knows, save Cordell Hull perhaps, just how much consideration Daniels' appeal received in Washington. But he was as close to the truth as anyone ever came in an attempt to appraise the situation in Cuba the day Batista broke out of the ranks of the Army of Cuba and into the headlines of the newspapers of the world.

And if Fulgencio Batista ever, at this late date, needs to justify his coup d'eat against the Machado officers and the Céspedes government, he need only lift this Daniels-to-Hull document from the files of the United States Department of State. Batista himself couldn't have stated his case better than did Josephus Daniels.

Another diplomatic maneuver of the United States which never was understood by Cubans was the effort of the Washington government to convince the world that it was following a "hands-off" policy in Cuba in 1933 and 1934. To Batista, and to almost every other Cuban, this sounded like a lot of diplomatic double talk. Certainly the mediation activities of Welles during the last days of the regime of President Machado had involved the United States rather deeply in Cuban political affairs. It is entirely possible that the policy of the United States in Cuba was based on a desire to help without interfering, but it seemed a bit absurd to everyone who knew the Cuban situation to say that the Washington government was following a "hands-off" policy.

Perhaps the representatives of the United States government in Cuba were justified in trying to help Cuba through the turbulent days of 1933 and 1934. But to insist that the United States was not mixed up in Cuban political affairs seemed as ridiculous then as it does now nearly two decades later.

An interesting development on this Washington claim of strict neutrality was the fact that at the time the policy was being expounded, the Foreign Policy Association, a respected research and educational organization in the United States, was preparing a report, based on the findings of its Commission on Cuban Affairs, which indicated that the United States definitely was not adhering to neutrality in its relations with Cuba. The commission, headed by Raymond Leslie Buell, expert on international affairs, in the report published in January, 1935, said that "the fundamental obstacle to good relations between Cuba and the United States was the widespread belief in Cuba that the American State Department attempted to make and unmake governments!" After pointing out that although the United States mediation between President Machado and his opposition failed in its original purpose-to secure the withdrawal of Machado by peaceful means-it did contribute to the overthrow of Machado. The report went on to say, in part: "Washington played an important part in the subsequent establishment of a coalition government under Dr. Céspedes. This government, however, lasted only twenty-one days. It was then supplanted by the Grau government, many of whose members had opposed American mediation. The United States not only declined to recognize the Grau government (which was set up by the Batista junta) but the American Ambassador in Cuba aggressively opposed it. Whatever the defects of that government, they did not, in the opinion of the Commission, justify the course followed by the United States. Had Washington followed a policy of neutrality toward the Grau regime, this regime would either have succeeded in gaining the support of the more stable elements in the country or left office without involving in any manner the responsibility of the United States. As a result of the course actually followed, however, the American government is regarded in many circles as being responsible for its overthrow--a belief which has caused considerable bitterness."

When Welles was assigned to Cuba in April, 1933, Secretary of State Hull was worried about political developments on the island. In his instructions to Welles, Hull said that the United States was "forced to view with gravest concern the situation now existing in Cuba." Such concern seemed well founded at the time. President Machado had kept himself in power for eight years and the last few years of his reign had been the bloodiest in Cuban history. Enemies of the regime were hunted down and shot, protesting students were tortured and imprisoned, and the ley de fuga was a favored means of eliminating Machado foes. The rights of free men had disappeared and many of the country's outstanding leaders had been forced to take asylum in the United States. Hull, in his instructions to Welles, mentioned the fact that the United States could, under the Platt Amendment, intervene in Cuba.

Batista has always believed that the activities of Sumner Welles in working for the deposition of the Machado regime were influenced by the fact that the newly installed Roosevelt administration had committed itself so completely to the Good Neighbor Policy in Latin America. Batista believes the downfall of Machado was due, to a great extent, to the desire of President Roosevelt, who felt that a tyranny in the Caribbean, so close to the United States, would jeopardize the highly publicized policy of inter-American friendship. Batista believes also that Cuba, in 1933 and 1934, was a kind of proving ground for the Good Neighbor Policy and that Roosevelt understood and sympathized with the Cuban people in their fight to rid themselves of the Machado government. Furthermore, Batista points out, Roosevelt knew that his government could not succeed in its plans for solidifying the Western Hemisphere nations into a democratic bloc unless he could bring an end to the family quarrel raging in an important country like Cuba. That is why, Batista believes, Welles was given extraordinary powers when he was sent to Cuba. He came not simply as an Ambassador but as the personal representative of President Roosevelt, charged with the task of ending strife among the various factions in Cuba.

Oddly enough, Welles' mediation efforts of 1933 paralleled almost precisely a similar mediation effort by American diplomats in Cuba in the year of 1906, prior to the intervention. In that year, Cuba was disturbed by a revolution against the second administration of President Tomás Estrada Palma. The fight was between the Liberal Party, headed by José Miguel Gómez, and the Estrada Palma government and came as the aftermath of a manipulated election the year before, in which Gómez and his party were finagled out of even the slightest chance of winning. When the situation looked hopeless, and when American intervention seemed the only solution, President Theodore Roosevelt sent mediators to the island to try to save Cuba from her own politicians. The negotiators were William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War, and Robert Bacon, Assistant Secretary of State. The problems they encountered as negotiators were similar in nature to those encountered twenty-seven years later by another negotiator, serving another President Roosevelt.

The Taft-Bacon effort, like the Welles effort, was a failure. But in the case of Taft and Bacon, their inability to work out a peace solution among the Cuban political factions led to intervention-American intervention under the rights granted in the Platt Amendment. The first President Roosevelt, an expert on Cuban affairs because of his service in the Spanish-American War, tried in many ways to avoid intervention, but be was compelled to act when the two leading factions in Cuban politics precipitated the American action. In fact, President Estrada Palma asked for intervention twice and when the United States hesitated, he forced it by resigning the office of the Presidency, taking with him all the members of his cabinet. There was no authority to appoint a provisional government, and the United States had to take over. The intervention extended from 1906 to 1909.

Although the United States did not actually intervene in Cuba in 1933 and 1934, there were times when intervention seemed very near. When the United States moved warships into Havana and other Cuba ports during those critical times, Washington said the action was taken as a precautionary measure, to protect American lives and property.

But many Cubans considered this display of power a threat of intervention, an attempt to frighten Cubans into doing the will of her big neighbor to the north. The appearance of American warships in Cuba actually contributed nothing to the solution of the island's problems in 1933.

The fact that the United States was so thoroughly committed to the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933 gave Batista the opportunity to fight for the abrogation of the despised Platt Amendment. An able observer of trends in international relations, Batista reasoned that it was inconsistent for the United States to preach good neighborliness while holding a gun at the head of one of its closest neighbors. The gun, of course, was the Platt Amendment. Batista guessed the United States could not possibly make a public defense of such an unneighborly document in the early days of Roosevelt's first administration, and his guess was a good one. He pursued his campaign to have the amendment abrogated and the United States could do nothing but submit to the will of the free Cuban people. Batista had no grudge against the United States. As a matter of fact, he knew that Cuba needed the friendship of the United States just as much as the United States needed the friendship of Cuba. He stated his position very clearly when the amendment was finally abrogated, in May, 1934. "We are not enemies, we are friends of the United States," he said, "but we want the friendship on the basis of genuine amity, not on the basis of guardianship."