CUBAN CRISIS

After two days of severe fighting marked by heavy loss of life, President Grau San Martin of Cuba has managed to maintain his quavering regime and crush the revolution engineered by the ABC and the supporters of de Cespedes. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the anarchic conditions prevailing in Cuba are at an end, for the San Martin government is still highly unstable, and many of the causes of the present situation are directly traceable to the attitude of the United States.

Washington can give its Cuban policy two different forms. It can reverse the traditional American Carribean diplomacy by treating the Platt Amendment as a dead letter, eschewing intervention, and extending immediate recognition and moral support to the present regime; or it can land troops in Cuba, restore order, and see that a stable representative government is established. The adoption of either of these courses would calm the chaotic situation now existing and make some sort of recovery possible for the unhappy island. Instead of doing this Secretary Hull has resurrected the thoroughly discredited Stimson Doctrine, which gained for its originator the soubriquet of "Wrong horse Harry," and applied it to Cuba. The effect of this has been to make any real stability in that country impossible, for nonrecognition according to the Doctrine carries a tacit implication of disapproval. Any government that attempts to maintain itself in the shadow of American condemnation leads a precarious existence indeed, for our political influence is enormous, and the size and importance of our economic stake was revealed in the ingenuous confessions of Mr. Wiggin, Mr. Lamont, Mr. Morgan and company.

In addition to being extremely deleterious to Cuba, this temporizing policy is of no benefit to this country; its only virtue is that it does not commit the State Department to anything and lets it straddle the real issue of whether C'ba is to be allowed to govern itself or is to be an American dependency. Inasmuch as its only effect is to prolong the misery of the Cuban people, it should be abandoned immediately and for it substituted a clear and forceful policy.