The Conquest of Haiti

By Herbert J. Seligmann

The Nation 111 (July 10, 1920).

To Belgium's Congo, to Germany's Belgium, to England's India and Egypt, the United States has added a perfect miniature in Haiti. Five years of violence in that Negro republic of the Caribbean, without sanction of international law or any law other than force, is now succeeded by an era in which the military authorities are attempting to hush up what has been done. The history of the American invasion of Haiti is only additional evidence that the United States is among those Powers in whose international dealings democracy and freedom are mere words, and human lives negligible in face of racial snobbery, political chicane, and money. The five years of American occupation, from 1915 to 1920, have served as a commentary upon the white civilization which still burns black men and women at the stake. For Haitian men, women, and children, to a number estimated at 3,000, innocent for the most part of any offense, have been shot down by American machine gun and rifle bullets; black men and women have been put to torture to make them give information; theft, arson, and murder have been committed almost with impunity upon the persons and property of Haitians by white men wearing the uniform of the United States. Black men have been driven to retreat to the hills from actual slavery imposed upon them by white Americans, and to resist the armed invader with fantastic arsenals of ancient horse pistols, Spanish cutlasses, Napoleonic sabres, French carbines, and even flintlocks. In this five years' massacre of Haitians less than twenty Americans have been killed or wounded in action.

Of all this Americans at home have been kept in the profoundest ignorance. The correspondent of the Associated Press in Cape Haitien informed me in April, 1920, that he had found it impossible in the preceding three years, owing to military censorship, to send a single cable dispatch concerning military operations in Haiti, to the United States. Newspapers have been suppressed in Port au Prince and their editors placed in jail on purely political grounds. Even United States citizens in Haiti told me of their fear that if they too frankly criticised "the Occupation," existence in Haiti would be made unpleasant for them. During my stay of something over a month in Haiti several engagements occurred between Haitian revolutionists and United States Marines. Early in April, Lieutenant Muth, of the Haitian gendarmery, was killed, his body mutilated, and a marine wounded. In that engagement, as in others which occurred within a few weeks of it, Haitian revolutionists or cacos suffered casualties of from five to twenty killed and wounded. No report of these clashes and casualties, so far as I know, has been published in any newspaper of the United States. The United States Government and the American military Occupation which has placed Haiti under martial law do not want the people of the United States to know what has happened in Haiti.

For this desire for secrecy there are the best of reasons. Americans have conceived the application of the Monroe Doctrine to be protection extended by the United States to weaker States in the western hemisphere, against foreign aggression. Under cover of that doctrine the United States has practiced the very aggressions and tyrannies it was pretending to fight to safeguard weaker states against. In 1915, during a riot in the capital of Haiti, in which President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed, the mob removed a man from the sanctuary he had claimed in the French legation. It is said the French threatened to intervene, also that the German Government had, before the European war, demanded control of Haitian affairs. In justifying its invasion of Haiti in 1915, the United States makes use of the pretext with which the Imperial German Government justified its invasion of Belgium in 1914. The invasion was one of defense against any Power which, taking control of Haiti, a weaker state, might use its territory as a base for naval action against the Panama Canal or the United States.

Instead of maintaining a force of marines at Port au Prince sufficient to safeguard foreign legations and consulates against violence, the United States proceeded to assume control of the island. The American hold was fortified by a convention empowering the United States to administer Haitian customs and finance for twenty years, or as much longer as the United States sees fit; and by a revised constitution of Haiti removing the prohibition against alien ownership of land, thus enabling Americans to purchase the most fertile areas in the country. Thenceforward Haiti has been regarded and has been treated as conquered territory. Military camps have been built throughout the island. The property of natives has been taken for military use. Haitians carrying a gun were for a time shot at sight. Many Haitians not carrying guns were also shot at sight. Machine guns have been turned into crowds of unarmed natives, and United States marines have, by accounts which several of them gave me in casual conversation, not troubled to investigate how many were killed or wounded. In some cases Haitians peaceably inclined have been afraid to come to American camps to give up their weapons for fear they would be shot for carrying them.

The Haitians in whose service United States marines are presumably restoring peace and order in Haiti are nicknamed "Gooks" and have been treated with every variety of contempt, insult, and brutality. I have heard officers wearing the United States uniform in the interior of Haiti talk of "bumping off" (i.e., killing) "Gooks" as if it were a variety of sport like duck hunting. I heard one marine boast of having stolen money from a peaceable Haitian family in the hills whom he was presumably on patrol to protect against "bandits." I have heard officers and men in the United States Marine Corps say they thought the island should be "cleaned out"; that all the natives should be shot; that shooting was too good for them; that they intended taking no prisoners; that many of those who had been taken prisoners had been "allowed to escape," that is, shot on the pretext that they had attempted flight. I have seen prisoners' faces and heads disfigured by beatings administered to them and have heard officers discussing those beatings; also a form of torture -- "sept" -- in which the victim's leg is compressed between two rifles and the pressure against the shin increased until agony forced him to speak.

I know that men and women have been hung by the neck until strangulation impelled them to give information. I have in my possession a copy of a "bon habitant" (good citizen) pass which all Haitians in the interior have been required to carry and present to any marine who might ask to inspect it. Failure to carry the pass formerly involved being shot or arrested. Arrest for trivial offenses has involved detention in Cape Haitien and Port au Prince for as long as six months. In justice to the officers and men of the Marine Corps, it should he said that many of them detest what they have had to do in Haiti. One officer remarked to me that if he had to draw a cartoon of the occupation of Haiti he would represent a black man held down by a white soldier, while another white man went through the black man's pockets.

Other officers and men have criticised the entire Haitian adventure as a travesty upon humanity and civilization and as a lasting disgrace to the United States Marine Corps. But the prevailing attitude of mind among the men sent to assist Haiti has been such determined contempt for men of dark skins that decency has been almost out of the question. The American disease of color prejudice has raged virulently.

The occupation points with pride to military roads. These roads were in large part built by Haitian slaves -- I intend the word literally -- under American taskmasters. An old Haitian law of corvée, or enforced road labor, rarely if ever invoked, authorizing three days' work in each year on roads about the citizen's domicile, was made the excuse for kidnaping thousands of Haitians from their homes -- when they had homes -- forcing them to live for months in camps, insufficiently fed, guarded by United States marines, rifle in hand. When Haitians attempted to escape this dastardly compulsion, they were shot.

I heard ugly whispers in Haiti of the sudden accumulation of funds by American officers of the Haitian gendarmery who had the responsibility of providing food for these slave camps. Charlemagne Peralte, an important political leader under the Zamor Government, arrested for political activity, was forced to labor in prison garb on the streets of Cape Haitien, where he was well known. He escaped in September, 1918, flaming with hatred and became known throughout Haiti as Charlemagne, one of the most resourceful of revolutionary leaders in the Hinche district until he was killed in the autumn of 1919. It is no coincidence that his power was greatest and the revolt severest in the regions where the corvée slavery had been most in use.

Colonel John Russell, at present brigade commander in Haiti, who is struggling with an impossibly difficult situation, largely created by his predecessors, formally abolished the corvée late in 1919. That was not undoing the damage which had been done. Colonel Russell could not, even by issuing the most stringent orders against indiscriminate murder of Haitians by marines, wipe out what had occurred under a former commanding officer who had been sent to Haiti although it was in his record that he had been court-martialled for brutality to natives in the Philippines.

Another creation of the Americans in Haiti, although it is now improved in personnel and leadership, fanned the flames of hatred and violence which swept the island. I refer to the Gendarmerie d'Haiti. This is a military force of black men, officered with one or two exceptions by corporals and sergeants of the Marine Corps promoted to lieutenancies and captaincies over Haitians. Many of the white men were ignorant and brutal. Some of the Haitians enlisted in the gendarmerie were notorious bad men. Several of them have been shot for murder and extortion among their own people.

The armed peace which has resulted from the conquest of Haiti by the United States has opened a new field for American investors.

Already the Banque Nationale d'Haiti, the bank of issue of all Haitian paper currency, is owned by an American bank. The National Railways of Haiti are owned by Americans. Sugar mills and lighting plants are in American control. Groups of Americans are purchasing or are endeavoring to purchase the most fertile land in the country. The representative of one company told me they owned 58,000 acres. In this scheme of American "protection" of Haitian welfare, the Haitian's place is illuminated by a remark which I heard one American entrepreneur make. He advocated that Chinese coolies be imported to supplant uninstructed Haitian labor.

After an indefensible invasion of a helpless country, after the professions of solicitude and good-will which accompanied the crime, what has the United States to offer in extenuation? Military roads, which the Haitian people do not particularly want, a civil hospital in Port au Prince, and the Haitian Gendarmerie. The present Government of Haiti which dangles from wires pulled by American fingers, would not endure for twenty-four hours if United States armed forces were withdrawn; and the president, Sudre d'Artiguenave, would face death or exile.

No beginning has been made in combating with teachers the appalling illiteracy of the Haitian people. No attempt has been made to send civilian doctors or even military doctors to minister to the needs of diseased Haitians in the interior. These sins of commission and of omission are attributable less to the men confronted with the overwork and the difficulties, and often with the inferior food which their Government sends them, in Haiti, than to an Administration, and especially a State Department ready to countenance armed invasions without plan and to undertake, by a nation which has signally failed in administering its own color problem, the government of a black republic.

The jumble of jurisdictions imposed upon Americans in Haiti by the irresponsible gentlemen in Washington would paralyze even a genuine attempt at regeneration of Haitian government. The customs receipts and the disbursements of Haiti are administered by two Americans independent of the military command. Of the customs administration, suffice it to say that not one business man to whom I talked, and there were prominent Americans as well as Haitians among my informants, had a word to say in its favor.

There is no appeal from the scrupulously inept customs rulings except to Washington. The fiction of a Haitian republic is maintained, although the American military command can suppress newspapers and virtually controls Haitian politics and elections. The Haitian Government, such as it is, either yields perforce to American pressure or finds itself in feeble and ineffectual opposition. The gendarmerie, theoretically under the Haitian Government's command, is officered by American marines, paid by both Haiti and the United States.

This militarist, imperialist burlesque on the profession, with which the United States entered the war in behalf of weaker states leaves the Haitians little to do but to wonder what the United States intends. If they had power, they would drive the armed invader into the sea. They have not the power. They are disarmed and cynical, those who can think. If Haitian government was not conspicuously successful, lives of Americans and other foreigners were safe before the invasion. For the rest, in the absence of an plans for Haiti's regeneration except through "development" of the country by exploiters, the Haitian may derive what spiritual nourishment he can from the Wilsonian phrases with which United States thuggery disguises its deeds.

Herbert J. Seligmann was a member of the advisory committee of the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society.

The Conquest of Santo Domingo

By Lewis S. Gannett

The Nation 111 (July 17, 1920).

Santo Domingo is conquered territory. The Dominican has less independence and fewer rights than had a Belgian under German occupation. He has not even the consciousness that there are crusading nations to defend his rights. "The rights of small nations" do not include his country. American boys died to free Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, Jugo-Slavs, and Belgians; but in this hemisphere they suppress Dominicans.

Some Americans may salve their colored consciences by the thought that Haitians are black, and that what we do to Haitians must therefore be discounted. Dominicans are white: we have not even the invalid excuse of color. We, the United States of America, who prate of democracy and republicanism and small nations and rights, have driven out the lawful officials of the Dominican republic, dissolved the congress, forbidden elections, ruled by martial law and sanctioned atrocities -- and with an ironic honesty unequaled even in Prussian annals we solemnly declare that we will continue to rule "in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Santo Domingo in so far as these are not modified by the military government."

There is no President in Santo Domingo, no cabinet, no congress, and there has not been for four years; there is only the arbitrary rule of the United States Marine Corps. There is a censorship so dictatorial and so humorless that the word "Liberty" is stricken out from the program of the Teatro Libertad in the capitol city. By official order of the United States authorities it is now plain "Teatro." And this in the name of America, while we were fighting to make the world safe for democracy!

American intervention in Santo Domingo began in 1905 and culminated in 1916. It was precipitated by financial adventuring and chronic revolution. Bond issues had been issued freely at usurious rates of interest. An American financial expert in 1905 found the national debt to be $40,000,000. Much of this had been taken over by a New Jersey corporation entitled the San Domingo Improvement Company, which secured control of the Dominican customs, but effected only one improvement -- the completion of a railroad, and this with Dominican funds. The origin of the debts was unsavory, the interest payments irregular or in default, and dissatisfaction was general.

In 1904 the Improvement Company, which some years before had been ousted from the customs houses, re-secured control of the customs of the port of Puerto Plata, and this led to uneasiness and threats of similar control by French and Italian creditors. The Dominican government appealed to the American, and President Roosevelt, in the spring of 1905, named a General Receiver of Dominican customs, who succeeded in scaling down the foreign debt to $20,000,000 and getting a loan for that amount from an American bank. A treaty ratified in 1907 confirmed this procedure. It was part of this agreement that the Dominican government should not, until this debt was paid, increase its public debt unless with the consent of the American Government.

But a new series of revolutions beginning in 1911 led to an increase of the internal debt, which was in 1912 transferred to another New York bank. The American navy had repeatedly given moral support to one side or the other in various disturbances; in April, 1916, when a new revolution threatened further harm to American interests, the navy, with the consent of one faction, landed marines near Santo Domingo, took the capital on May 15, landed at the principal other ports in June, and finally "pacified" the entire country, with a loss of seven Americans killed and fifteen wounded, as against several hundred Dominicans.

For a few months a nominal Dominican Government persisted. The American military authorities insisted that the Dominicans agree to a treaty similar to that which had been forced upon Haiti, providing for collection of customs under American auspices, the appointment of an American financial adviser, and the establishment of a native constabulary force officered by Americans. This they refused to do, and the American authorities thereupon cut off their income. The Dominican Government was left penniless and impotent.

A proclamation of November 29, 1916, frankly put supreme power into the hands of the American military government. That proclamation recited that because of failure to carry out the treaty of 1907, and in a desire to obtain domestic tranquillity --

"the republic of Santo Domingo is hereby placed in a state of Military Occupation by the forces under my command, and is made subject to military government and to the exercise of military law applicable to such occupation ... with no immediate or ulterior object of destroying the sovereignty of the Republic of Santo Domingo but on the contrary to give aid to that country in returning to a condition of internal order...."

The original of this proclamation, signed by Captain H. S. Knapp of the U.S.S. Olympia, contains marginal annotations in the hand of Woodrow Wilson. A censorship decree followed, and, on December 4, Executive Order No. 1:

It being necessary to the purpose of the occupation that the offices of Secretary of State of the Departments of War and Marine, and of Interior and Police, be no longer administered by Dominican citizens but be administered by officers of the United States forces in occupation,

It is ordered that until further notice Dominican citizens are ineligible to hold, and cease to hold, such offices, which are hereby vested in Colonel J. H. Pendleton, U.S.M.C., Commanding the forces of the United States on shore in Santo Domingo.

H. S. Knapp,

Captain, U. S. Navy,

U.S.S. Olympia, December 4,1918.

Other orders followed in rapid succession, removing the ministers of Foreign Relations, Finance, Justice, Agriculture, etc., and naming officers of the American navy to fill these offices and administer them, in the choicest of phrases, "according to the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Santo Domingo, in so far as these are not modified by the military government." Executive Order No. 12 was brief: it declared that "for the present and until further notice no elections will be held in the Republic of Santo Domingo." No. 18 is longer. It should be noted that some Dominicans who still clung to independence, had held local elections and attempted to reassemble a congress:

As no quorum of the Dominican Congress exists, due to the expiration of the terms of office of certain members of the Senate and House of Deputies, and to the fact that such elections as may have been held to fill the vacancies so caused will not be recognized as valid by the military government, having been held under the direction of an administration not recognized by the United States, and to the further fact that all elections have been suspended for the present by Executive Order No. 12 of December 26, 1916,

It is ordered,

1. That the sessions of the Dominican Congress are suspended until after elections shall have been ordered and held to fill vacancies now existing;

2. That the Senators and deputies whose terms have not expired are likewise expelled from office until the full Congress shall have been called into session and that their emoluments shall cease.

H. S. Knapp.

U.S.S. Olympia, January 2, 1917.

There may have been need for financial interference; there never was and could never be, excuse for such ruthless suppression of every institution of popular government and for the substitution of a military despotism.

Incidents in the atrocious history of that despotism have been recited by Archbishop Adolfo Nouel, and are printed elsewhere in this issue. Other incidents, including the use of naval airplanes as an instrument of "pacification" were told in The Nation for February 21. If such things had happened in Armenia or Belgium, the American people and press would be at fever-heat in denunciation. They happened at our own doorstep, under our own flag, in the name of the American people, and we are silent.

Captain Knapp of the Olympia, who sponsored these orders, was promoted to Rear Admiral, and in 1919 was succeeded by Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden. There has been no substantial change in the methods of government. Perhaps in partial response to a memorandum presented to the American Government at Washington by the exiled president of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Francisco Henriquez y Carvajal, Admiral Snowden last October named a Consulting Board of four prominent Dominicans to meet with him on Wednesday afternoons "to discuss matters relevant to the welfare of the Republic."

The four Dominicans accepted, in the understanding that a new policy was to be inaugurated, that the censorship would be abolished, that the provost courts would give way to civil courts, and that at least local municipal elections would be held. They presented three memoranda to the Admiral, which are printed on another page in this issue of The Nation. These memoranda are careful, modest, almost humble, suggestions for first steps toward a restoration of self-government in Santo Domingo.

They followed Henriquez y Carvajal's memorandum. The Admiral replied, in conversation, that Santo Domingo would continue to be a republic and would have a congress, but that he, the Admiral, would be the Congress. The only official answer was a new censorship decree, also printed elsewhere in this issue of The Nation. The Consulting Commission, convinced that they were not to be consulted seriously, resigned; the Admiral, in reply, "regretted" their resignation, and assured them that their memoranda were being "studied."

That is the story to date. It is a story which, told with more color and detail, is going the rounds of Latin America. It does not engender love for the United States nor enhance our reputation for good faith. So long as we tolerate such business under our own flag, in the interests of banks which invest in risky republics, the speeches of our presidents and the pronouncements of our party platforms, will be a stench throughout Latin America.

Lewis Stiles Gannett (1891-1966) was assistant treasurer of the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society (1921), a director of the American Fund for Public Service and chair of the publications committee of its Committee on American Imperialism (1924), a member of the Hands Off China Committee (1927), and a member of the National Committee of the All-America Anti-Imperialist League (1928).

Self-Determining Haiti

I. The American Occupation

By James Weldon Johnson

The Nation 111 (Aug. 28, 1920).

To

know the reasons for the present political situation in Haiti, to understand why the United States landed and has for five years maintained military forces in that country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to know that the National City Bank of New York is very much interested in Haiti.

It is necessary to know that the National City Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti and is the depository for all of the Haitian national funds that are being collected by American officials, and that Mr. R. L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, is virtually the representative of the State Department in matters relating to the island republic. Most Americans have the opinion -- if they have any opinion at all on the subject -- that the United States was forced, on purely humane grounds, to intervene in the black republic because of the tragic coup d'etat which resulted in the overthrow and death of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and the execution of the political prisoners confined at Port-au-Prince, July 27-28, 1915; and that this government has been compelled to keep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify the country and maintain order.

The fact is that for nearly a year before forcible intervention on the part of the United States this government was seeking to compel Haiti to submit to "peaceable" intervention. Toward the close of 1914 the United States notified the government of Haiti that it was disposed to recognize the newly-elected president, Theodore Davilmar, as soon as a Haitian commission would sign at Washington "satisfactory protocols" relative to a convention with the United States on the model of the Dominican-American Convention. On December 15, 1914, the Haitian government, through its Secretary of Foreign Affairs, replied: "The Government of the Republic of Haiti would consider itself lax in its duty to the United States and to itself if it allowed the least doubt to exist of its irrevocable intention not to accept any control of the administration of Haitian affairs by a foreign Power."

On December 19, the United States, through its legation at Port-au-Prince, replied, that in expressing its willingness to do in Haiti what had been done in Santo Domingo it "was actuated entirely by a disinterested desire to give assistance."

Two months later, the Theodore government was overthrown by a revolution and Vilbrun Guillaume was elected president. Immediately afterwards there arrived at Port-au-Prince an American commission from Washington -- the Ford mission. The commissioners were received at the National Palace and attempted to take up the discussion of the convention that had been broken off in December, 1914.

However, they lacked full powers and no negotiations were entered into. After several days, the Ford mission sailed for the United States. But soon after, in May, the United States sent to Haiti Mr. Paul Fuller, Jr., with the title Envoy Extraordinary, on a special mission to apprise the Haitian government that the Guillaume administration would not be recognized by the American government unless Haiti accepted and signed the project of a convention which he was authorized to present. After examining the project the Haitian government submitted to the American commission a counter-project, formulating the conditions under which it would be possible to accept the assistance of the United States. To this counter-project Mr. Fuller proposed certain modifications, some of which were accepted by the Haitian government. On June 5, 1915, Mr. Fuller acknowledged the receipt of the Haitian communication regarding these modifications, and sailed from Port-au-Prince.

Before any further discussion of the Fuller project between the two governments, political incidents in Haiti led rapidly to the events of July 27 and 28. On July 27 President Guillaume fled to the French Legation, and on the same day took place a massacre of the political prisoners in the prison at Port-au-Prince. On the morning of July 28 President Guillaume was forcibly taken from French Legation and killed. On the afternoon of July 28 an American man-of-war dropped anchor in the harbor of Port-au-Prince and landed American forces. It should be borne in mind that through all of this the life of not a single American citizen had been taken or jeopardized.

The overthrow of Guillaume and its attending consequences did not constitute the cause of American intervention in Haiti, but merely furnished the awaited opportunity. Since July 28, 1915, American military forces have been in control of Haiti. These forces have been increased until there are now somewhere near three thousand Americans under arms in the republic. From the very first, the attitude of the Occupation has been that it was dealing with a conquered territory. Haitian forces were disarmed, military posts and barracks were occupied, and the National Palace was taken as headquarters for the Occupation.

After selecting a new and acceptable president for the country, steps were at once taken to compel the Haitian government to sign a convention in which it virtually foreswore its independence. This was accomplished by September 16, 1915; and although the terms of this convention provided for the administration of the Haitian customs by American civilian officials, all the principal custom houses of the country had been seized by military force and placed in charge of American Marine officers before the end of August.

The disposition of the funds collected in duties from the time of the military seizure of the custom houses to the time of their administration by civilian officials is still a question concerning which the established censorship in Haiti allows no discussion.

It is interesting to note the wide difference between the convention which Haiti was forced to sign and the convention which was in course of diplomatic negotiation the moment of intervention. The Fuller convention asked little of Haiti and gave something, the Occupation convention demands everything of Haiti and gives nothing.

The Occupation convention is really the same convention which the Haitian government peremptorily refused to discuss in December, 1914, except that in addition to American control of Haitian finances it also provides for American control of the Haitian military forces. The Fuller convention contained neither of these provisions. When the United States found itself in a position to take what it had not even dared to ask, it used brute force and took it. But even a convention which practically deprived Haiti of its independence was found not wholly adequate for the accomplishment of all that was contemplated. The Haitian constitution still offered some embarrassments, so it was decided that Haiti must have a new constitution.

It was drafted and presented to the Haitian assembly for adoption. The assembly balked -- chiefly at the article in the proposed document removing the constitutional disability which prevented aliens from owning land in Haiti. Haiti had long considered the denial of this right to aliens as her main bulwark against overwhelming economic exploitation; and it must be admitted that she had better reasons than the several states of the United States that have similar provisions.

The balking of the assembly resulted in its being dissolved by actual military force and the locking of doors of the Chamber. There has been no Haitian legislative body since. The desired constitution was submitted to a plebiscite by a decree of the President, although such a method of constitutional revision was clearly unconstitutional. Under the circumstances of the Occupation the plebiscite was, of course, almost unanimous for the desired change, and the new constitution was promulgated on June 18, 1918. Thus Haiti was given a new constitution by a flagrantly unconstitutional method. The new document contains several fundamental changes and includes a "Special Article" which declares:

All the acts of the Government of the United States during its military Occupation in Haiti are ratified and confirmed.

No Haitian shall be liable to civil or criminal prosecution for any act done by order of the Occupation or under its authority.

The acts of the courts martial of the Occupation, without, however, infringing on the right to pardon, shall not be subject to revision.

The acts of the Executive Power (the President) up to the promulgation of the present constitution are likewise ratified and confirmed.

The above is the chronological order of the principal steps by which the independence of a neighboring republic has been taken away, the people placed under foreign military domination from which they have no appeal and exposed to foreign economic exploitation against which they are defenseless. All of this has been done in the name of the Government of the United States; however, without any act by Congress and without any knowledge of the American people.

The law by which Haiti is ruled today is martial law dispensed by Americans. There is a form of Haitian civil government, but it is entirely dominated by the military Occupation. President Dartiguenave, bitterly rebellious at heart as is every good Haitian, confessed to me the powerlessness of himself and his cabinet. He told me that the American authorities give no heed to recommendations made by him or his officers; that they would not even discuss matters about which the Haitian officials have superior knowledge.

The provisions of both the old and the new constitutions are ignored in that there is no Haitian legislative body, and there has been none since the dissolution of the assembly in April, 1916. In its stead there is a Council of State composed of twenty-one members appointed by the president, which functions effectively only when carrying out the will of the Occupation. Indeed the Occupation often overrides the civil courts. A prisoner brought before the proper court, exonerated, and discharged, is, nevertheless, frequently held by the military. All government funds are collected by the Occupation and are dispensed at its will and pleasure.

The greater part of these funds is expended for the maintenance of the military forces. There is the strictest censorship of the press. No Haitian newspaper is allowed to publish anything in criticism of the Occupation or the Haitian government. Each newspaper in Haiti received an order to that effect from the Occupation, and the same order carried the injunction not to print the order. Nothing that might reflect upon the Occupation administration in Haiti is allowed to reach the newspapers of the United States.

The Haitian people justly complain that not only is the convention inimical to the best interests of their country, but that the convention, such as it is, is not being carried out in accordance with the letter, nor in accordance with the spirit in which they were led to believe it would be carried out. Except one, all of the obligations in the convention which the United States undertakes in favor of Haiti are contained in the first article of that document, the other fourteen articles being made up substantially of obligations to the United States assumed by Haiti.

But nowhere in those fourteen articles is there anything to indicate that Haiti would be subjected to military domination. In Article I the United States promises to "aid the Haitian government in the proper and efficient development of its agricultural, mineral, and commercial resources and in the establishment of the finances of Haiti on a firm and solid basis." And the whole convention and, especially, the protestations of the United States before the signing of the instrument can be construed only to mean that that aid would be extended through the supervision of civilian officials.

The one promise of the United States to Haiti not contained in the first article of the convention is that clause of Article XIV which says, "and, should the necessity occur, the United States will lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty." It is the extreme of irony that this clause which the Haitians had a right to interpret as a guarantee to them against foreign invasion should first of all be invoked against the Haitian people themselves, and offer the only peg on which any pretense to a right of military domination can be hung.

There are several distinct forces -- financial, military, bureaucratic -- at work in Haiti which, tending to aggravate the conditions they themselves have created, are largely self-perpetuating. The most sinister of these, the financial engulfment of Haiti by the National City Bank of New York, already alluded to, will be discussed in detail in a subsequent article. The military Occupation has made and continues to make military Occupation necessary. The justification given is that it is necessary for the pacification of the country. Pacification would never have been necessary had not American policies been filled with so many stupid and brutal blunders; and it will never be effective so long as "pacification" means merely the hunting of ragged Haitians in the hills with machine guns.

Then there is the force which the several hundred American civilian place-holders constitute. They have found in Haiti the veritable promised land of "jobs for deserving democrats" and naturally do not wish to see the present status discontinued. Most of these deserving democrats are Southerners. The head of the customs service of Haiti was a clerk of one of the parishes of Louisiana. Second in charge of the customs service of Haiti is a man who was Deputy Collector of Customs at Pascagoula, Mississippi [population, 3,379, 1910 Census]. The Superintendent of Public Instruction was a school teacher in Louisiana -- a State which has not good schools even for white children; the financial advisor, Mr. McIlhenny, is also from Louisiana.

Many of the Occupation officers are in the same category with the civilian place-holders. These men have taken their wives and families to Haiti. Those at Port-au-Prince live in beautiful villas. Families that could not keep a hired girl in the United States have a half-dozen servants. They ride in automobiles -- not their own. Every American head of a department in Haiti has an automobile furnished at the expense of the Haitian Government, whereas members of the Haitian cabinet, who are theoretically above them, have no such convenience or luxury.

While I was there, the President himself was obliged to borrow an automobile from the Occupation for a trip through the interior. The Louisiana school-teacher Superintendent of Instruction has an automobile furnished at government expense, whereas the Haitian Minister of Public Instruction, his supposed superior officer, has none. These automobiles seem to be chiefly employed in giving the women and children an airing each afternoon. It must be amusing, when it is not maddening to the Haitians, to see with what disdainful air these people look upon them as they ride by.

The platform adopted by the Democratic party at San Francisco said of the Wilson policy in Mexico:

The Administration, remembering always that Mexico is an independent nation and that permanent stability in her government and her institutions could come only from the consent of her own people to a government of her own making, has been unwilling either to profit by the misfortunes of the people of Mexico or to enfeeble their future by imposing, from the outside a rule upon their temporarily distracted councils.

Haiti has never been so distracted in its councils as Mexico. And even in its moments of greatest distraction it never slaughtered an American citizen, it never molested an American woman, it never injured a dollar's worth of American property. And yet, the Administration whose lofty purpose was proclaimed as above -- with less justification than Austria's invasion of Serbia, or Germany's rape of Belgium, without warrant other than the doctrine that "might makes right," has conquered Haiti. It has done this through the very period when, in the words of its chief spokesman, our sons were laying down their lives overseas "for democracy, for the rights of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations."

By command of the author of "pitiless publicity" and originator of "open covenants openly arrived at," it has enforced by the bayonet a covenant whose secret has been well guarded by a rigid censorship from the American nation, and kept a people enslaved by the military tyranny which it was his avowed purpose to destroy throughout the world.

Self-Determining Haiti

II. What the United States Has Accomplished

By James Weldon Johnson

The Nation 111 (Sept. 4, 1920).

W

hen the truth about the conquest of Haiti -- slaughter of three thousand and practically unarmed Haitians, with the incidentally needless death of a score of American boys -- begins to filter through the rigid Administration censorship to the American people, the apologists will become active. Their justification of what has been done will be grouped under two heads: one, the necessity, and two, the results.

Under the first, much stress will be laid upon the "anarchy" which existed in Haiti, upon the backwardness of the Haitians and their absolute unfitness to govern themselves. The pretext which caused the intervention was taken up in the first article of this series. The characteristics, alleged and real, of the Haitian people will be taken up in a subsequent article. Now as to results: The apologists will attempt to show that material improvements in Haiti justify American intervention. Let us see what they are.

Diligent inquiry reveals just three: The building of the road from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitien; the enforcement of certain sanitary regulations in the larger cities; and the improvement of the public hospital at Port-au-Prince. The enforcement of certain sanitary regulations is not so important as it may sound, for even under exclusive native rule, Haiti has been a remarkably healthy country and had never suffered from such epidemics as used to sweep Cuba and the Panama Canal region.

The regulations, moreover, were of a purely minor character -- the sort that might be issued by a board of health in any American city or town -- and were in no wise fundamental, because there was no need. The same applies to the improvement of the hospital, long before the American Occupation, an effectively conducted institution but which, it is only fair to say, benefitted considerably by the regulations and more up-to-date methods of American army surgeons -- the best in the world. Neither of these accomplishments, however, creditable as they are, can well be put forward as a justification for military domination.

The building of the great highway from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitien is a monumental piece of work, but it is doubtful whether the object in building it was to supply the Haitians with a great highway or to construct a military road which would facilitate the transportation of troops and supplies from one end of the island to the other. And this represents the sum total of the constructive accomplishment after five years of American Occupation.

Now, the highway, while doubtless the most important achievement of the three, involved the most brutal of all the blunders of the Occupation. The work was in charge of an officer of Marines who stands out even in that organization for his "treat 'em rough" methods. He discovered the obsolete Haitian corvée and decided to enforce it with the most modern Marine efficiency.

The corvée, or road law, in Haiti provided that each citizen should work a certain number of days on the public roads to keep them in condition, or pay a certain sum of money. In the days when this law was in force the Haitian government never required the men to work the roads except in their respective communities, and the number of days was usually limited to three a year. But the Occupation seized men wherever it could find them, and no able-bodied Haitian was safe from such raids, which most closely resembled the African slave raids of past centuries. And slavery it was -- though temporary.

By day or by night, from the bosom of their families, from their little farms or while trudging peacefully on the country roads, Haitians were seized and forcibly taken to toil for months in far sections of the country. Those who protested or resisted were beaten into submission. At night, after long hours of unremitting labor under armed taskmasters, who swiftly discouraged any slackening of effort with boot or rifle butt, the victims were herded in compounds. Those attempting to escape were shot. Their terror-stricken families meanwhile were often in total ignorance of the fate of their husbands, fathers, brothers.

It is chiefly out of these methods that arose the need for "pacification." Many men of the rural districts became panic-stricken and fled to the hills and mountains. Others rebelled and did likewise, preferring death to slavery. These refugees largely make up the "caco" forces, to hunt down which has become the duty and the sport of American Marine, who were privileged to shoot a "caco" on sight. If anyone doubts that "caco" hunting is the sport of American Marines in Haiti, let him learn the facts about the death of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne Peralte was a Haitian of education and culture and of great influence in his district. He was tried by an American court-martial on the charge of aiding "cacos." He was sentenced, not to prison, however, but to five years of hard labor on the roads, and was forced to work in convict garb on the streets of Cape Haitien. He made his escape and put himself at the head of several hundred followers in a valiant though hopeless attempt to free Haiti.

The America of the Revolution, indeed the America of the Civil War, would have regarded Charlemagne not as a criminal but a patriot. He met his death not in open fight, not in an attempt at his capture, but through a dastard deed. While standing over his camp fire, he was shot in cold blood by an American Marine officer who stood concealed by the darkness, and who had reached the camp through bribery and trickery. This deed, which was nothing short of assassination, has been heralded as an example of American heroism.

Of this deed, Harry Franck, writing in the June Century of "The Death of Charlemagne," says: "Indeed it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior tales with which history is seasoned from the days of the Greeks down to the recent world war." America should read "The Death of Charlemagne" which attempts to glorify a black smirch on American arms and tradition.

There is a reason why the methods employed in road building affected the Haitian country folk in a way in which it might not have affected the people of any other Latin American country. Not since the independence of the country has there been any such thing as a peon in Haiti. The revolution by which Haiti gained her independence was not merely a political revolution, it was also a social revolution.

Among the many radical changes wrought was that of cutting up the large slave estates into small parcels and allotting them among former slaves. And so it was that every Haitian in the rural districts lived on his own plot of land, a plot on which his family has lived for perhaps more than a hundred years. No matter how small or how large that plot is, and whether he raises much or little on it, it is his and he is an independent farmer.

The completed highway, moreover, continued to be a barb in the Haitian wound. Automobiles on this road, running without any speed limit, are a constant inconvenience or danger to the natives carrying their market produce to town on their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. I have seen these people scramble in terror often up the side or down the declivity of the mountain for places of safety for themselves and their animals as the machines snorted by.

I have seen a market woman's horse take flight and scatter the produce loaded on his back all over the road for several hundred yards. I have heard an American commercial traveler laughingly tell how on the trip from Cape Haitien to Port-au-Prince the automobile he was in killed a donkey and two pigs. It had not occurred to him that the donkey might be the chief capital of the small Haitian farmer and that the loss of it might entirely bankrupt him. It is all very humorous, of course, unless you happen to be the Haitian pedestrian.

The majority of visitors on arriving at Port-au-Prince and noticing the well-paved, well-kept streets, will at once jump to the conclusion that this work was done by the American Occupation. The Occupation goes to no trouble to refute this conclusion, and in fact it will by implication corroborate it. If one should exclaim, "Why, I am surprised to see what a well-paved city Port-au-Prince is!" he would be almost certain to receive the answer, "Yes, but you should have seen it before the Occupation." The implication here is that Port-au-Prince was a mudhole and that the Occupation is responsible for its clean and well-paved streets.

It is true that at the time of the intervention, five years ago, there were only one or two paved streets in the Haitian capital, but the contracts for paving the entire city had been let by the Haitian Government, and the work had already been begun. This work was completed during the Occupation, but the Occupation did not pave, and had nothing to do with the paving of a single street in Port-au-Prince.

One accomplishment I did expect to find -- that the American Occupation, in its five years of absolute rule, had developed and improved the Haitian system of public education. The United States has made some efforts in this direction in other countries where it has taken control. In Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, the attempt, at least, was made to establish modern school systems.

Selected youths from these countries were taken and sent to the United States for training in order that they might return and be better teachers, and American teachers were sent to those islands in exchange. The American Occupation in Haiti has not advanced public education a single step. No new buildings have been erected. Not a single Haitian youth has been sent to the United States for training as a teacher, nor has a single American teacher, white or colored, been sent to Haiti. According to the general budget of Haiti, 1919-1920, there are teachers in the rural schools receiving as little as six dollars a month. Some of these teachers may not be worth more than six dollars a month.

But after five years of American rule, there ought not to be a single teacher in the country who is not worth more than that paltry sum.

Another source of discontent is the Gendarmerie. When the Occupation took possession of the island, it disarmed all Haitians, including the various local police forces. To remedy this situation the Convention (Article X), provided that there should be created,--

without delay, an efficient constabulary, urban and rural, composed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be organized and officered by Americans, appointed by the President of Haiti upon nomination by the President of the United States.... These officers shall be replaced by Haitians as they, by examination conducted under direction of a board to be selected by the Senior American Officer of this constabulary in the presence of a representative of the Haitian Government, are found qualified to assume such duties.

During the first months of the Occupation officers of the Haitian Gendarmerie were commissioned officers of the marines, but the war took all these officers to Europe. Five years have passed and the constabulary is still officered entirely by marines, but almost without exception they are ex-privates or non-commissioned officers of the United States Marine Corps commissioned in the gendarmerie. Many of these men are rough, uncouth, and uneducated, and a great number from the South, are violently steeped in color prejudice.

They direct all policing of city and town. It falls to them, ignorant of Haitian ways and language, to enforce every minor police regulation. Needless to say, this is a grave source of continued irritation. Where the genial American "cop" could, with a wave of his hand or club, convey the full majesty of the law to the small boy transgressor or to some equally innocuous offender, the strong-arm tactics for which the marines are famous, are apt to be promptly evoked. The pledge in the Convention that "these officers be replaced by Haitians" who could qualify, has, like other pledges, become a mere scrap of paper. Graduates of the famous

French military academy of St. Cyr, men who have actually qualified for commissions in the French army, are denied the opportunity to fill even a lesser commission in the Haitian Gendarmerie, although such men, in addition to their pre-eminent qualifications of training, would, because of their understanding of local conditions and their complete familiarity with the ways of their own country, make ideal guardians of the peace.

The American Occupation of Haiti is not only guilty of sins of omission, it is guilty of sins of commission in addition to those committed in the building of the great road across the island. Brutalities and atrocities on the part of American marines have occurred with sufficient frequency to be the cause of deep resentment and terror. Marines talk freely of what they "did" to some Haitians in the outlying districts. Familiar methods of torture to make captives reveal what they often do not know are nonchalantly discussed. Just before I left Port-au-Prince an American Marine had caught a Haitian boy stealing sugar off the wharf and instead of arresting him he battered his brains out with the butt of his rifle.

I learned from the lips of American Marines themselves of a number of cases of rape of Haitian women by marines. I often sat at tables in the hotels and cafes in company with marine officers and they talked before me without restraint. I remember the description of a "caco" hunt by one of them; he told how they finally came upon a crowd of natives engaged in the popular pastime of cock-fighting and how they "let them have it" with machine guns and rifle fire. I heard another, a captain of marines, relate how he at a fire in Port-au-Prince ordered a "rather dressed up Haitian," standing on the sidewalk, to "get in there" and take a hand at the pumps. It appeared that the Haitian merely shrugged his shoulders.

The captain of marines then laughingly said: "I had on a pretty heavy pair of boots and I let him have a kick that landed him in the middle of the street. Someone ran up and told me that the man was an ex-member of the Haitian Assembly." The fact that the man had been a member of the Haitian Assembly made the whole incident more laughable to the captain of marines.

Perhaps the most serious aspect of American brutality in Haiti is not to be found in individual cases of cruelty, numerous and inexcusable though they are, but rather in the American attitude, well illustrated by the diagnosis of an American officer discussing the situation and its difficulty: "The trouble with this whole business is that some of these people with a little money and education think they are as good as we are," and this is the keynote of the attitude of every American to every Haitian. Americans have carried American hatred to Haiti. They have planted the feeling of caste and color prejudice where it never before existed.

And such are the "accomplishments" of the United States in Haiti. The Occupation has not only failed to achieve anything worth while, but has made it impossible to do so because of the distrust and bitterness that it has engendered in the Haitian people. Through the present instrumentalities no matter how earnestly the United States may desire to be fair to Haiti and make intervention a success, it will not succeed. An entirely new deal is necessary. This Government forced the Haitian leaders to accept the promise of American aid and American supervision.

With that American aid the Haitian Government defaulted its external and internal debt, an obligation, which under self-government the Haitians had scrupulously observed. And American supervision turned out to be a military tyranny supporting a program of economic exploitation. The United States had an opportunity to gain the confidence of the Haitian people. That opportunity has been destroyed. When American troops first landed, although the Haitian people were outraged, there was a feeling nevertheless which might well have developed into cooperation.

There were those who had hopes that the United States, guided by its traditional policy of nearly a century and a half, pursuing its fine stand in Cuba, under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, would extend aid that would be mutually beneficial to both countries. Those Haitians who indulged this hope are disappointed and bitter. Those members of the Haitian Assembly who, while acting under coercion were nevertheless hopeful of American promises, incurred unpopularity by voting for the Convention, are today bitterly disappointed and utterly disillusioned.

If the United States should leave Haiti today, it would leave more than a thousand widows and orphans of its own making, more banditry than has existed for a century, resentment, hatred and despair in the heart of a whole people, to say nothing of the irreparable injury to its own tradition as the defender of the rights of man.

Self-Determining Haiti

III. Government Of, By, and For the National City Bank

By James Weldon Johnson

The Nation 111 (Sept. 11, 1920).

F

ormer articles of this series described the Military Occupation of Haiti and the crowd of civilian place holders as among the forces at work in Haiti to maintain the present status in that country. But more powerful though less obvious, and more sinister, because of its deep and varied radications, is the force exercised by the National City Bank of New York. It seeks more than the mere maintenance of the present status in Haiti; it is constantly working to bring about a condition more suitable and profitable to itself. Behind the Occupation, working conjointly with the Department of State, stands this great banking institution of New York and elsewhere. The financial potentates allied with it are the ones who will profit by the control of Haiti. The United States Marine Corps and the various office-holding "deserving Democrats," who help maintain the status quo there, are in reality working for great financial interests in this country, although Uncle Sam and Haiti pay their salaries.

Mr. Roger L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, was effectively instrumental in bringing about American intervention in Haiti. With the administration at Washington, the word of Mr. Farnham supersedes that of anybody else on the island. While Mr. Bailly-Blanchard, with the title of minister, is its representative in name, Mr. Farnham is its representative in fact. His goings and comings are aboard vessels of the United States Navy. His bank, the National City, has been in charge of the Banque Nationale d'Haiti throughout the Occupation.⁽¹⁾ Only a few weeks ago he was appointed receiver of the National Railroad of Haiti, controlling practically the entire railway system in the island with valuable territorial concessions in all parts.⁽²⁾ The $5,000,000 sugar plant at Port-au-Prince, it is commonly reported, is about to fall into his hands.

Now, of all the various responsibilities, expressed, implied, or assumed by the United States in Haiti, it would naturally be supposed that the financial obligation would be foremost. Indeed, the sister republic of Santo Domingo was taken over by the United States Navy for no other reason than failure to pay its internal debt. But Haiti for over one hundred years scrupulously paid its external and internal debt -- a fact worth remembering when one hears of "anarchy and disorder" in that land -- until five years ago when under the financial guardianship of the United States interest on both the internal and, with one exception, external debt was defaulted; and this in spite of the fact that specified revenues were pledged for the payment of this interest.

Apart from the distinct injury to the honor and reputation of the country, the hardship on individuals has been great. For while the foreign debt is held particularly in France which, being under great financial obligations to the United States since the beginning of the war, has not been able to protest effectively, the interior debt is held almost entirely by Haitian citizens. Haitian Government bonds have long been the recognized substantial investment for the well-to-do and middle class people, considered as are in this country, United States, state, and municipal bonds. Non-payment on these securities has placed many families in absolute want.

What has happened to these bonds? They are being sold for a song, for the little cash they will bring. Individuals closely connected with the National Bank of Haiti are ready purchasers. When the new Haitian loan is floated it will, of course, contain ample provisions for redeeming these old bonds at par. The profits will be more than handsome. Not that the National Bank has not already made hay in the sunshine of American Occupation. From the beginning it has been sole depositary of all revenues collected in the name of the Haitian Government by the American Occupation, receiving in addition to the interest rate a commission on all funds deposited. The bank is the sole agent in the transmission of these funds. It has also the exclusive note-issuing privilege in the republic. At the same time complaint is widespread among the Haitian business men that the Bank no longer as of old accommodates them with credit and that its interests are now entirely in developments of its own.

Now, one of the promises that was made to the Haitian Government, partly to allay its doubts and fears as to the purpose and character of the American intervention, was that the United States would put the country's finances on a solid and substantial basis. A loan for $30,000,000 or more was one of the features of this promised assistance. Pursuant, supposedly, to this plan, a Financial Adviser for Haiti was appointed in the person of Mr. John Avery McIlhenny. Who is Mr. McIlhenny?

That he has the cordial backing and direction of so able a financier as Mr. Farnham is comforting when one reviews the past record and experience in finance of Haiti's Financial Adviser as given by him in "Who's Who in America," for 1918-1919. He was born in Avery Island, Iberia Parish, La.; went to Tulane University for one year; was a private in the Louisiana State militia for five years; trooper in the U.S. Cavalry in 1898; promoted to second lieutenancy for gallantry in action at San Juan; has been member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Senate; was a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1906 and president of the same in 1913; Democrat.

It is under his Financial Advisership that the Haitian interest has been continued in default with the one exception above noted, when several months ago $3,000,000 was converted into francs to meet the accumulated interest payments on the foreign debt. Dissatisfaction on the part of the Haitians developed over the lack of financial perspicacity in this transaction of Mr. McIlhenny because the sum was converted into francs at the rate of nine to a dollar while shortly after the rate of exchange on French francs dropped to fourteen to a dollar. Indeed, Mr. McIlhenny's unfitness by training and experience for the delicate and important position which he is filling was one of the most generally admitted facts which I gathered in Haiti.

At the present writing, however, Mr. McIlhenny has become a conspicuous figure in the history of the Occupation of Haiti as the instrument by which the National City Bank is striving to complete the riveting, double-locking and bolting of its financial control of the island. For although it would appear that the absolute military domination under which Haiti is held would enable the financial powers to accomplish almost anything they desire, they are wise enough to realize that a day of reckoning, such as, for instance, a change in the Administration in the United States, may be coming. So they are eager and anxious to have everything they want signed, sealed, and delivered. Anything, of course, that the Haitians have fully "consented to" no one else can reasonably object to.

A little recent history: in February of the present year, the ministers of the different departments, in order to conform to the letter of the law (Article 116 of the Constitution of Haiti, which was saddled upon her in 1918 by the Occupation⁽³⁾, and Article 2 of the Haitian-American Convention⁽⁴⁾) began work on the preparation of the accounts for 1918-1919 and the budget for 1920-1921. On March 22 a draft of the budget was sent to Mr. A. J. Maumus, Acting Financial Adviser, in the absence of Mr. McIlhenny who had at that time been in the United States for seven months. Mr. Maumus replied on March 29, suggesting postponement of all discussion of the budget until Mr. McIlhenny's return. Nevertheless, the Legislative body, in pursuance of the law, opened on its constitutional date, Monday, April 5. Despite the great urgency of the matter in hand, the Haitian administration was obliged to mark time until June 1, when Mr. McIlhenny returned to Haiti. Several conferences with the various ministers were then undertaken. On June 12, at one of these conferences, there arrived in the place of the Financial Adviser a note stating that he would be obliged to stop all study of the budget "until the time when certain affairs of considerable importance to the well-being of the country shall be finally settled according to recommendations made by me to the Haitian Government." As he did not give in his note the slightest idea what these important affairs were, the Haitian Secretary wrote asking for information, at the same time calling attention to the already great and embarrassing delay, and reminding Mr. McIlhenny that the preparation of the accounts and budget was one of his legal duties as an official attached to the Haitian Government, of which he could not divest himself.

On July 19 Mr. McIlhenny supplied his previous omission in a memorandum which he transmitted to the Haitian Department of Finance, in which he said: "I had instructions from the Department of State of the United States just before my departure for Haiti in a part of a letter of May 20, to declare to the Haitian Government that it was necessary to give its immediate and formal approval to:

1. A modification of the Bank Contract agreed upon by the Department of State and the National City Bank of New York.

2. Transfer of the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti to a new bank registered under the laws of Haiti, to be known as the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti.

3. The execution of Article 15 of the Contract of Withdrawal prohibiting the importation and exportation of non-Haitian money except that which might be necessary for the needs of commerce in the opinion of the Financial Adviser."

Now, what is the meaning and significance of these proposals? The full details have not been given out, but it is known that they are part of a new monetary law for Haiti involving the complete transfer of the Banque Nationale d'Haiti to the National City Bank of New York. The document embodying the agreements, with the exception of the clause prohibiting the importation of foreign money, was signed at Washington, February 6,1920, by Mr. McIlhenny, the Haitian Minister at Washington and the Haitian Secretary of Finance.

The Haitian Government has offically declared that the clause prohibiting the importation and exportation of foreign money, except as it may be deemed necessary in the opinion of the Financial Adviser, was added to the original agreement by some unknown party. It is for the purpose of compelling the Haitian Government to approve the agreements, including the "prohibition clause," that pressure is now being applied. Efforts on the part of business interests in Haiti to learn the character and scope of what was done at Washington have been thwarted by close secrecy. However, sufficient of its import has become known to understand the reasons for the unqualified and definite refusal of President Dartiguenave and the Government to give their approval. Those reasons are that the agreements would give to the National Bank of Haiti and thereby to the National City Bank of New York, exclusive monopoly upon the right of importing and exporting American and other foreign money to and from Haiti, a monopoly which would carry unprecedented and extraordinarily lucrative privileges.

The proposal involved in this agreement has called forth a vigorous protest on the part of every important banking and business concern in Haiti with the exception, of course, of the National Bank of Haiti. This protest was transmitted to the Haitian Minister of Finance on July 30 past. The protest is signed not only by Haitians and Europeans doing business in that country but also by the leading American business concerns, among which are The American Foreign Banking Corporation, The Haitian-American Sugar Company, The Panama Railroad Steamship Line, The Clyde Steamship Line, and The West Indies Trading Company. Among the foreign signers are the Royal Bank of Canada, Le Comptoir Français, Le Comptoir Commercial, and besides a number of business firms.

We have now in Haiti a triangular situation with the National City Bank and our Department of State in two corners and the Haitian government in the third. Pressure is being brought on the Haitian government to compel it to grant a monopoly which on its face appears designed to give the National City Bank a strangle hold on the financial life of that country. With the Haitian government refusing to yield, we have the Financial Adviser who is, according to the Haitian-American Convention, a Haitian official charged with certain duties (in this case the approval of the budget and accounts), refusing to carry out those duties until the government yields to the pressure which is being brought.

Haiti is now experiencing the "third degree." Ever since the Bank Contract was drawn and signed at Washington increasing pressure has been applied to make the Haitian government accept the clause prohibiting the importation of foreign money. Mr. McIlhenny is now holding up the salaries of the President, ministers of departments, members of the Council of State, and the official interpreter. [These salaries have not been paid since July 1.] And there the matter now stands.

Several things may happen. The Administration, finding present methods insufficient, may decide to act as in Santo Domingo, to abolish the President, cabinet, and all civil government -- as they have already abolished the Haitian Assembly -- and put into effect, by purely military force, what, in the face of the unflinching Haitian refusal to sign away their birthright, the combined military, civil, and financial pressure has been unable to accomplish. Or, with an election and a probable change of Administration in this country pending, with a Congressional investigation foreshadowed, it may be decided that matters are "too difficult" and the National City Bank may find that it can be more profitably engaged elsewhere. Indications of such a course are not lacking. From the point of view of the National City Bank, of course, the institution has not only done nothing which is not wholly legitimate, proper, and according to the canons of big business throughout the world, but has actually performed constructive and generous service to a backward and uncivilized people in attempting to promote their railways, to develop their country, and to shape soundly their finance.

That Mr. Farnham and those associated with him hold these views sincerely, there is no doubt. But that the Haitians, after over one hundred years of self-government and liberty, contemplating the slaughter of three thousand of their sons, the loss of their political and economic freedom, without compensating advantages which they can appreciate, feel very differently, is equally true.

Notes

1. The National City Bank originally (about 1911) purchased 2,000 shares of the stock of the Banque Nationale d'Haiti. After the Occupation it purchased 6,000 additional shares in the hands of three New York banking firms. Since then it has been negotiating for the complete control of the stock, the balance of which is held in France. The contract for this transfer of the Bank and the granting of a new charter under the laws of Haiti were agreed upon and signed at Washington last February. But the delay in completing these arrangements is caused by the impasse between the State Department and the National City Bank, on the one band, and the Haitian Government on the other, due to the fact that the State Department and the National City Bank insisted upon including in the contract a clause prohibiting the importation and exportation of foreign money into Haiti subject only to the control of the financial adviser. To this new power the Haitian Government refuses to consent.

2. Originally, Mr. James P. McDonald secured from the Haitian Government the concession to build the railroads under the charter of the National Railways of Haiti. He arranged with W. R. Grace & Company to finance the concession. Grace and Company formed a syndicate under the aegis of the National City Bank which issued $2,500,000 bond, sold in France. These bonds were guaranteed by the Haitian Government at an interest of 6 percent on $32,500 for each mile. A short while after the floating of these bonds, Mr. Farnham became President of the company. The syndicate advanced another $2,000,000 for the completion of the railroad in accordance with the concession granted by the Haitian Government. This money was used, but the work was not completed in accordance with the contract made by the Haitian Government in the concession. The Haitian Government then refused any, longer to pay the interest on the mileage. These happenings were prior to 1915.

3. "The general accounts and the budgets prescribed by the preceding article must be submitted to the Legislative Body by the Secretary of Finance not later than eight days after the opening of the Legislative Session."

4. "The President of Haiti shall appoint, on the nomination of the President of the United States, a Financial Advisor who shall be attached to the Ministry of Finance, to whom the Secretary (of Finance) shall lend effective aid in the prosecution of his work. The Financial Advisor shall work out a system of public accounting, shall aid in increasing the revenues and in their adjustment to expenditures...."

Self-Determining Haiti

IV. The Haitian People

By James Weldon Johnson

The Nation 111 (Sept. 25, 1920).

T

he first sight of Port-au-Prince is perhaps most startling to the experienced Latin-American traveler. Caribbean cities are of the Spanish-American type -- buildings square and squat, built generally around a court, with residences and business houses scarcely interdistinguishable. Port-au-Prince is rather a city of the French or Italian Riviera.

Across the bay of deepest blue the purple mountains of Gonave loom against the Western sky, rivaling the bay's azure depths. Back of the business section, spreading around the bay's great sweep and well into the plain beyond, rise the green hills with their white residences. The residential section spreads over the slopes and into the mountain tiers. High up are the homes of the well-to-do, beautiful villas set in green gardens relieved by the flaming crimson of the poinsettia.

Despite the imposing mountains a man-made edifice dominates the scene. From the center of the city the great Gothic cathedral lifts its spires above the tranquil city. Well paved and clean, the city prolongs the thrill of its first unfolding. Cosmopolitan yet quaint, with an old-world atmosphere yet a charm of its own, one gets throughout the feeling of continental European life. In the hotels and cafes the affairs of the world are heard discussed in several languages. The cuisine and service are not only excellent but inexpensive. At the Café Dereix, cool and scrupulously clean, dinner from hors d'oeuvres to glaces, with wine, of course, recalling the famous antebellum hostelries of New York and Paris, may be had for six gourdes [$1.25].

A drive of two hours around Port-au-Prince, through the newer section of brick and concrete buildings, past the cathedral erected from 1903 to 1912, along the Champ de Mars where the new presidential palace stands, up into the Peu de Choses section where the hundreds of beautiful villas and grounds of the well-to-do are situated, permanently dispels any lingering question that the Haitians have been retrograding during the 116 years of their independence.

In the lower city, along the water's edge, around the market and in the Rue Républicaine, is the "local color." The long rows of wooden shanties, the curious little booths around the market, filled with jabbering venders and with scantily clad children, magnificent in body, running in and out, are no less picturesque and no more primitive, no humbler, yet cleaner, than similar quarters in Naples, in Lisbon, in Marseilles, and more justifiable than the great slums of civilization's centers -- London and New York, which are totally without aesthetic redemption. But it is only the modernists in history who are willing to look at the masses as factors in the life and development of the country, and in its history. For Haitian history, like history the world over, has for the last century been that of cultured and educated groups.

To know Haitian life one must have the privilege of being received as a guest in the houses of these latter, and they live in beautiful houses. The majority have been educated in France; they are cultured, brilliant conversationally, and thoroughly enjoy their social life. The women dress well. Many are beautiful and all vivacious and chic. Cultivated people from any part of the world would feel at home in the best Haitian society.

If our guest were to enter to the Cercle Bellevue, the leading club of Port-au-Prince, he would find the courteous, friendly atmosphere of a men's club; he would hear varying shades of opinion on public questions, and could scarcely fail to be impressed by the thorough knowledge of world affairs possessed by the intelligent Haitian. Nor would his encounters be only with people who have culture and savoir vivre; he would meet the Haitian intellectuals -- poets, essayists, novelists, historians, critics.

Take for example such a writer as Fernand Hibbert. An English authority says of him, "His essays are worthy of the pen of Anatole France or Pierre Loti." And there is Georges Sylvaine, poet and essayist, conférencier at the Sorbonne, where his address was received with acclaim, author of books crowned by the French Academy, and an Officer of the Légion d'Honneur. Hibbert and Sylvaine are only two among a dozen or more contemporary Haitian men of letters whose work may be measured by world standards. Two names that stand out preeminently in Haitian literature are Oswald Durand, the national poet, who died a few years ago, and Damocles Vieux.

These people, educated, cultured, and intellectual, are not accidental and sporadic offshoots of the Haitian people; they are the Haitian people and they are a demonstration of its inherent potentialities.

However, Port-au-Prince is not all of Haiti. Other cities are smaller replicas, and fully as interesting are the people of the country districts. Perhaps the deepest impression on the observant visitor is made by the country women. Magnificent as they file along the country roads by scores and by hundreds on their way to the town market, with white or colored turbaned heads, gold-looped-ringed ears, they stride along straight and lithe, almost haughtily, carrying themselves like so many Queens of Sheba.

The Haitian country people are kind-hearted, hospitable, and polite, seldom stupid but rather, quick-witted and imaginative. Fond of music, with a profound sense of beauty and harmony, they live simply but wholesomely. Their cabins rarely consist of only one room, the humblest having two or three, with a little shed front and back, a front and rear entrance, and plenty of windows. An aesthetic touch is never lacking -- a flowering hedge or an arbor with trained vines bearing gorgeous colored blossoms. There is no comparison between the neat plastered-wall, thatched-roof cabin of the Haitian peasant and the traditional log hut of the South or the shanty of the more wretched American suburbs. The most notable feature about the Haitian cabin is its invariable cleanliness.

At daylight the country people are up and about, the women begin their sweeping till the earthen or pebble-paved floor of the cabin is clean as can be. Then the yards around the cabin are vigorously attacked. In fact, nowhere in the country districts of Haiti does one find the filth and squalor which may be seen in any backwoods town in our own South. Cleanliness is a habit and a dirty Haitian is a rare exception.

The garments even of the men who work on the wharves, mended and patched until little of the original cloth is visible, give evidence of periodical washing. The writer recalls a remark made by Mr. E. P. Pawley, an American, who conducts one of the largest business enterprises in Haiti. He said that the Haitians were an exceptionally clean people, that statistics showed that Haiti imported more soap per capita than any country in the world, and added, "They use it, too." Three of the largest soap manufactories in the United Statea maintain headquarters at Port-au-Prince.

The masses of the Haitian people are splendid material for the building of a nation. They are not lazy; on the contrary, they are industrious and thrifty. Some observers mistakenly confound primitive methods with indolence. Anyone who travels Haitian roads is struck by the hundreds and even thousands of women, boys, and girls filing along mile after mile with their farm and garden produce on their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. With modern facilities, they could market their produce much more efficiently and with far less effort.

But lacking them they are willing to walk and carry. For a woman to walk five to ten miles with a great load of produce on her head which may barely realize her a dollar is doubtless primitive, and a wasteful expenditure of energy, but it is not a sign of laziness. Haiti's great handicap has been not that her masses are degraded or lazy or immoral. It is that they are ignorant, due not so much to mental limitations as to enforced illiteracy. There is a specific reason for this. Somehow the French language, in the French-American colonial settlements containing a Negro population, divided itself into two branches, French and Creole. This is true of Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and also of Haiti. Creole is an Africanized French and must not be thought of as a mere dialect. The French-speaking person cannot understand Creole, excepting a few words, unless he learns it. Creole is a distinct tongue, a graphic and very expressive language. Many of its constructions follow closely the African idioms.

For example, in forming the superlative of greatness, one says in Creole, "He is great among great men," and a merchant woman, following the native idiom, will say, "You do not wish anything beautiful if you do not buy this" The upper Haitian class, approximately 600,000, speak and know French, while the masses, probably more than 2,000,000 speak only Creole. Haitian Creole is grammatically constructed, but has not to any general extent been reduced to writing.

Therefore, these masses have no means of receiving or communicating thoughts through the written word. They have no books to read. They cannot read the newspapers. The children of the masses study French for a few years in school, but it never becomes their every-day language. In order to abolish Haitian illiteracy, Creole must be made a printed as well as a spoken language. The failure to undertake this problem is the worst indictment against the Haitian Government.

This matter of language proves a handicap to Haiti in another manner. It isolates her from her sister republics. All of the Latin-American republics except Brazil speak Spanish and enjoy an intercourse with the outside world denied Haiti. Dramatic and musical companies from Spain, from Mexico and from the Argentine annually tour all of the Spanish-speaking republics. Haiti is deprived of all such instruction and entertainment from the outside world because it is not profitable for French companies to visit the three or four French-speaking islands in the Western Hemisphere.

Much stress has been laid on the bloody history of Haiti and its numerous revolutions. Haitian history has been all too bloody, but so has that of every other country, and the bloodiness of the Haitian revolutions has of late been unduly magnified. A writer might visit our own country and clip from our daily press accounts of murders, robberies on the principal streets of our larger cities, strike violence, race riots, lynchings, and burnings at the stake of human beings, and write a book to prove that life is absolutely unsafe in the United States.

The seriousness of the frequent Latin-American revolutions has been greatly overemphasized. The writer has been in the midst of three of these revolutions and must confess that the treatment given them on our comic opera stage is very little farther removed from the truth than the treatment which is given in the daily newspapers. Not nearly so bloody as reported, their interference with people not in politics is almost negligible. Nor should it be forgotten that in almost every instance the revolution is due to the plotting of foreigners backed up by their Governments. No less an authority than Mr. John H. Allen, vice-president of the National City Bank of New York, writing on Haiti in the May number of The Americas, the National City Bank organ, who says, "It is no secret that the revolutions were financed by foreigners and were profitable speculations."

In this matter of change of government by revolution, Haiti must not be compared with the United States or with England; it must be compared with other Latin American republics. When it is compared with our next door neighbor, Mexico, it will be found that the Government of Haiti has been more stable and that the country has experienced less bloodshed and anarchy. And it must never be forgotten that throughout not an American or other foreigner has been killed, injured or, as far as can be ascertained, even molested. In Haiti's 116 years of independence, there have been twenty-five presidents and twenty-five different administrations.

In Mexico, during its 99 years of independence, there have been forty-seven rulers and eighty-seven administrations. "Graft" has been plentiful, shocking at times, but who in America, where the Tammany machines and the municipal rings are notorious, will dare to point the finger of scorn at Haiti in this connection.

And this is the people whose "inferiority," whose "retrogression," whose "savagery," is advanced as a justification for intervention -- for the ruthless slaughter of three thousand of its practically defenseless sons, with the death of a score of our own boys,own today as the author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.Fiat justitia, ruat coelum!

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1933) is probably best known today as the author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. He was secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and visited Haiti to investigate conditions there on its behalf. He later became a vice-chairman of the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society, a member of the publications committee of the American Fund for Public Service Committee on American Imperialism, and served on the national committees of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Committee on Militarism in Education.

Hearing the Truth About Haiti

By Helena Hill Weed

The Nation (Nov. 1921).

H

ow Haiti was reduced to the state of a conquered province; how the process was prepared in Washington long before intervention began; how little excuse there was for American intervention, and how little America has accomplished there apart from killing Haitians -- these things have become a matter of public record, as told by the men responsible for the intervention and as revealed in the United States Navy's secret dispatch-book, in the hearings before the Senate Commission on Haiti and Santo Domingo, Medill McCormick, chairman, these past weeks. The newspapers for some reason have been silent, but here are the facts as they have become part of the record:

Roger L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank of New York, which controls the National Bank of Haiti -- the man whom many Haitians regard as the responsible author of their troubles with the United States -- testified of the American Occupation:

I know of nothing that has been undertaken to develop with the natives the agricultural resources of the island or seriously to develop schools or educational methods. The only schools are those which existed before the Occupation maintained by the Jesuit priests. I never knew of any policy for the development of Haiti. I think that is the trouble with Haiti. In 1918 Haiti was as quiet as a graveyard. Pacification had been completed and the relations between the natives and the Occupation were good. One and all awaited some plan of development. Many programs were suggested but all in Haiti were powerless. Individuals and groups of Haitians appealed to the United States Government officials in Haiti, the Financial Adviser, and the American Minister. I personally came to Washington and called on the Secretary of State and suggested that something be done and be done promptly, but nothing was done.

 

Then the military leaders began to talk to the people and tell them that they were worse off than before the Occupation, which had brought them nothing but the death of their relatives and friends in the early days of the Occupation. Out of that situation grew conditions worse than those that prevailed when we first went in.... The Occupation was always drifting in the absence of any policy in Washington. As far as I know nothing was ever done for the economic rehabilitation of the country, the establishment of schools generally, the development of agriculture, or the development of the capacity of the Haitian people for self-government. The Occupation was a failure and, when I say a failure, I mean the failure of the United States Government. Washington, not Port au Prince, was to blame.

Admiral Caperton, the commanding officer of the American naval forces in Haiti from 1916 to 1917, said to members of the committee in a dazed way:

What I cannot understand is why has not the treaty been put into operation. We were sent down there to pacify the island and put through the treaty. We did our work and the treaty was ratified September 16, 1915, exactly as the United States demanded it. Now we are in complete power and the Haitians are powerless to do anything for themselves. Yet we do not keep our agreements made with them in this treaty. I cannot understand it. I like the Haitians and I am sorry for them, and I hope that something can be done for them.

Rev. L. Ton Evans, for 28 years a Baptist missionary in Haiti, testified that there was no condition which justified the intervention; that the Occupation was accomplished in direct violation of public pledges made in both America and Haiti when the landings were made; that the Occupation in many parts of the country was carried on in a lawless, inhuman manner; that Haitian independence was deliberately destroyed and their land alienated in violation of the most solemn pledges made to the Haitian people by the United States Government; that an unwanted President was forced on the people by military coercion; that a treaty "legalizing" these acts of political and international violence was imposed by military force, and a new constitution, putting the stamp of legality upon this illegal treaty, was obtained by unconstitutional methods, and that finally all efforts at criticism or resistance, moral or physical, were suppressed by military coercion and compulsion.

The insertion in the record of the Navy's hitherto secret dispatch-book disclosed that American intervention in Haiti had long been planned and that the assassination of President Guillaume Sam in 1915 was only a plausible excuse. A treaty giving the United States certain rights over Haiti was drafted in Washington at least as early as July 2,1914. Four months later -- almost a year before actual intervention -- a series of letters between Mr. Bryan, Secretary of State, President Wilson, and Mr. Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, disclosed that a naval demonstration in Haitian waters was already planned to support the United States policy because "a renewal of negotiations seems probable." Landing of troops was already contemplated. The Haitian Government, however, then and again early in 1915, refused to yield and maintained its independence. Then came the revolution of July, 1915. American troops were landed forthwith.

Haitians say that this "revolution" was an almost unanimous political uprising against the President because he was believed to be ready to agree to the treaty which the United States had been demanding for more than a year, giving the United States control of the Haitian custom houses. Since the income from the customs receipts was almost the sole source of government revenue, such control, they say, was sure to mean the loss of political independence. The lives and property of foreigners, or indeed of Haitians themselves not directly involved in the revolutionary activities, were never in danger.

Admiral Caperton himself, on cross examination by Ernest Angell, attorney for the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society, admitted that no foreigners or their property were molested in this revolution; he said his landings were made "as a precautionary measure." He stated that he could remember no instances in earlier revolutions when the lives or property of foreigners had been attacked. Mr. Farnham corroborated this testimony, saying:

Before the American Occupation there has never been any danger to any white man who traveled through the country. I have been through while "revolutions" were on and a white man was never molested. If he kept out of the mess himself and minded his own business he was perfectly safe. After the American Occupation many of the Haitians seemed to turn against the whites and all white men looked alike. The natives were aroused by the talk of the chiefs and generals that the whites were going to make slaves of them again. That was the usual cry, and that the Haitians would have to resist the marines if they wanted to get rid of them. Otherwise they would be made slaves. That is the fear uppermost in the minds of all Haitians, ignorant as they are.... They observed their foreign obligations always.

Mr. Evans in his testimony confirmed this statement, adding:

After American commercial investments began in Haiti in 1910, the Germans who had heretofore controlled 95 percent of the commercial life, fearing American competition, began to tell the Haitians to beware of the Americans, that they were coming to steal their land and reenslave them. When the Americans finally did come and by military force compelled them to sign a treaty that deprived them of their political independence and alienated their land, and when they were reduced to actual physical slavery and its accompanying cruel treatment under the illegal application of the old corvée law, they believed that what the Germans had told them of the Americans was true. It became a matter of loyalty to their country, their independence, and their human liberties to fight the Americans with every weapon at their command.

Much propaganda has been devoted to defining "Cacos" and revolutionists as bandits. Admiral Caperton defined "Caco" as a "mountaineer of northern Haiti who would fight for pay in the ranks of the revolutionary leader who offered him the most pay. The Cacos after the Occupation were the backbone of the opposition to the Occupation." "All the Cacos were opposed to the Occupation," he said, "and all those who opposed the Occupation joined the ranks of the revolution under the standard of the Cacos." He made it clear that the term Caco as used in the naval orders and messages meant "an opponent of the Occupation," and that a "revolution" was "any organized movement against the Occupation or its policies."

The revolution which gave excuse for the landing of troops was led by Bobo, who with his followers claimed that President Guillaume Sam was about to agree to the treaty submitted by the United States in 1914, giving the United States absolute control of the custom houses of Haiti. The revolution was successful. The victorious troops entered Port au Prince and demanded the abdication of Sam.

On the night of July 27 Sam ordered the summary execution of seventy political prisoners, whose only crime had been to oppose his political administration. He then fled, through a secret door in the wall which separated the palace from the French Legation, into technical "French soil." In the morning the executions became known and the enraged relatives and friends of the murdered men, knowing Sam's hiding place, broke into the French Legation and, without touching the person or property of other occupants, hunted out the fugitive, dragged him outside the wall, and killed him in the city streets. When their revenge was satisfied quiet was restored, and no further rioting occurred. A Committee of Safety, which Admiral Caperton testified was composed of responsible citizens who did not participate in party strife and always acted in this capacity when governments fell by revolution or violence, then took over the governmental functions of the city. They were in control when the marines landed.

The Haitian Congress was then in session and the next day it was about to elect a President to succeed Sam, but this was postponed by the request of Admiral Caperton. The Admiral reported to the Navy Department on August 2 that he had put off the election because if he had allowed it Bobo would surely have been elected. He said he believed he could control the Congress but that he would need another regiment of marines "if U.S. desires to negotiate treaty for financial control Haiti."

He earnestly requested to be informed fully of the policy of the United States. Apparently he was not yet perfectly sure why he had been ordered to land troops. Dispatches flew back and forth between Caperton and Washington. Caperton told the Department that as long as there was no President he had everything in his complete control. Washington directed him to assume full military control of the capital and not to permit an election. Haiti was ready, willing, and anxious to restore constitutional government but was not permitted to do so by the American forces until a candidate for President had been found who would pledge himself in advance to the ratification of a treaty with the United States embodying any demands that the United States might make.

Among the candidates sought was J. N. Legere, former Haitian Minister to the United States. He sent word to Admiral Caperton: "Tell the Admiral that I cannot become a candidate until I know what demands the United States will make. I must be in a position to defend my country. I am for Haiti, not for the United States." In Dartiguenave the Admiral finally found a candidate who would "agree in advance to any terms the United States demanded and professed to believe that any terms the United States might demand would be for Haiti's benefit."

On August 8 Admiral Caperton telegraphed the Department as follows:

Senators, deputies, and citizens clamoring for an election. Today was fixed for election but postponed by my request;... Request be informed immediately earliest date Department willing for an election to take place for purpose allaying excitement. Will use every effort delay election but cannot guarantee delay later than Thursday unless use force....

All this time Washington was giving out statements to the effect that the absence of a President and constitutional government in Haiti necessitated the troops remaining there. On the following day the Navy Department sent this dispatch to Admiral Caperton:

Whenever the Haitians wish you may permit the election of a President to take place. The election of Dartiguenave is preferred by the United States. You will assure the Haitians that the United States has no other motive than the establishing of a firm and lasting government by the Haitian people and wishes to assist them now, and at all times in the future, to maintain both their political independence and their territorial integrity unimpaired.

Admiral Caperton so assured them in a public proclamation. In view of the negotiations which preceded, and the acts which followed that proclamation, can one conclude otherwise than that the Navy Department instructed Admiral Caperton to lie?

Admiral Caperton reported to Washington on August 11 that he had caused the presidential candidates and the Congress which was to elect the President to be assembled before him and the American Charge d'Affaires the previous evening and had informed them of the intentions and policies of the United States Government, and that on account of the hostile and disturbing influence of the Bobo and Zamor factions he had informed them that "they would be considered public enemies of the United States if they attempted to further menace the policies of the United States." The following day, with the hall of Congress policed by American marines, with Captain Beach, the Admiral's diplomatic and political representative, on the floor of the assembly as the voting progressed, Dartiguenave was almost unanimously elected.

Admiral Caperton was then instructed by Secretary Daniels to push the treaty through:

You will please prepare a draft of treaty as outlined in this cablegram and without delay submit it informally to the President-elect and advise him that this Department believes that, as a guaranty of sincerity and interest of the Haitians in orderly peaceful development of their country, the Haitian Congress will be pleased to pass forthwith a resolution authorizing the President-elect to conclude, without modification, the treaty submitted to you....

The constitution of Haiti at that time -- we later had it changed -- contained the following words:

The Republic of Haiti is one and indivisible, essentially free, sovereign, and independent. Its territory and dependent islands are inviolable, and cannot be alienated by any treaty or convention.

Secretary Daniels's instructions to Admiral Caperton required insertion in the treaty of a provision ceding Mole Saint Nicolas to the United States. The method of ratification proposed was as unconstitutional as the treaty itself. Our officials, however, continued to proclaim to the world that we had intervened in Haiti to maintain law and order and to teach the Haitians constitutional government!

The Congress refused to accede to the puppet President's request for ratification. Immediately under orders from Washington the custom houses and with them the financial resources of the Government were seized. Secretary Daniels instructed Admiral Caperton to have the American Charge d'Affaires confer with Dartiguenave in order to have him solicit American occupation of the custom houses -- "but whether President so requests or not proceed to carry out State Department's desire." Even Dartiguenave balked at such hypocrisy.

The orders further directed Caperton to take over all the receipts (regardless of the fact that much of them was pledged, and had been for years, for the interest on Haiti's foreign debt) and to deposit them in the local branches of the National City Bank's Haiti connection, and to draw against this account for expenses of the Occupation, the administration of the custom houses, and such public works as local military administrators saw fit. (These works, the Admiral testifies, were instituted primarily for military advantage.) The balance was to be held in trust for Haiti by the Navy Department. It was this arbitrary act of the American forces which caused Haiti to pass the interest payments on her foreign debt for the first time in her history.

The adoption of a new constitution was forced upon Haiti by similar methods.

When Admiral Caperton was asked how he justified the difference between his proclamation to Haiti on August 9, 1915, declaring "that the United States had no designs on the political independence or the territorial integrity of Haiti," and his proclamation declaring martial law on September 3 and the series of acts which destroyed the political independence of Haiti, he replied that he did it under orders. He said he had to do it to protect the forces, that they were in danger of their lives so great was the opposition to the intervention. General Smedley Butler advised against lifting martial law during the coming visit of the Senate Committee of Investigation in Haiti, because he feared that if martial law was lifted it would mean death to the marines because of the bitterness against the Occupation.

"When the flag is ordered into a foreign country there goes with it the absolute right of protection of their lives to the officers and men who carry the flag," he said.

Thus far, then, the hearings at Washington have disclosed that the intervention was prepared by Messrs. Bryan, Wilson, and Daniels -- under whose inspiration is not yet clear -- a year before it began; that no danger threatened foreigners' lives or property until after American Occupation was complete; that American military force was used to obtain, first, the election of a puppet President pledged to act under our orders, then to force acceptance of an unconstitutional and bitterly hated treaty, and finally illegally to revise the Haitian constitution so that foreigners -- in particular the National City Bank of New York -- might hold land; and that in six years of Occupation we have done nothing for Haiti and have not even been able to establish order, so bitter is the patriotic hostility of the Haitians to foreign intervention. The hearings continue.

Helena Hill Weed was secretary of the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society.

Haiti and Santo Domingo Today -- I

By Ernest H. Gruening

The Nation 114 (Feb. 8, 1922).

I

n ten days' diligent inquiry in the Dominican Republic I could not find a single native who did not want the American Occupation to get out, bag and baggage, at the earliest possible moment. In twice that period in Haiti I could not discover a single Haitian who was not profoundly unhappy, disillusioned about all things American, and did not desire the return of Haitian sovereignty and independence.

Among thinking Haitians I found that beneath the universal discontent were varying shades of sentiment. First, there is the group, by far the largest, represented by the Union Patriotique, which sees the American Occupation exactly for what it is -- an illegal and unwarranted assault conceived in wholly selfish motives on the rights and liberty of an independent, small, and always friendly state -- and stands in consequence for unconditional return of unqualified Haitian sovereignty at the earliest moment.

A second group, which includes a fair proportion of the small business men, while longing for the withdrawal of the Americans still hopes that some kind of an advantageous situation in the nature of a compromise may be worked out -- it wants Haiti's liberty but still hopes for unselfish American assistance. A third group, insignificant numerically but holding by virtue of the American Occupation all the privileges and perquisites which the latter can bestow, is willing to connive with the Occupation as the best course for its members personally in a situation which they feel rather hopeless. In this group are the President, his council of state of twenty-one members, and a few of the other more important state-appointed functionaries.

Their views are in part undoubtedly colored by their positions, by the strenuous efforts of the Occupation to cause a split in Haitian ranks, and in part by the inevitable personalities of such men who after the six and a half years of oppression are the docile and pliant residue from whom have been gradually filtered those who preferred principle to expediency and would not longer assist in riveting the chains on their country. The Occupation propaganda which was visibly absorbed by Senator Pomerene -- I cannot account for his discourteous heckling of M. Georges Sylvain in any other way -- that the Union Patriotique merely represents the political "outs" is amply disproved by the history of those of its members that have had public careers. Virtually everyone of these has been tempted with high office, many in vain, while others having tried it for a time in the hope of rendering some service to their country have found themselves inevitably forced into a position which they believed to be wholly against Haiti's interests.

For the government so-called, in short, the President -- for his council merely executes his orders and the slightest resistance on the part of any of them causes his dismissal -- is a phantom government, a marionette of which the Occupation pulls the strings. Ever since Secretary Daniels's radio ⁽¹⁾ ordering Admiral Caperton, one week after the election of Dartiguenave, to seize Haitian custom-houses with the prescription: "Have President Dartiguenave solicit it, but whether President so requests or not, proceed," the Occupation has attempted to follow this ingenious policy. Every act of autocratic tyranny for which President Dartiguenave could be induced to take verbal responsibility has been made to appear to have the sanction of the Haitian Government.

And unfortunately for the Haitians, Dartiguenave, the man whose election "the United States prefers," according to Admiral Benson's radio to Admiral Caperton,⁽²⁾ has been more than pliant. The testimony of Generals Butler, Waller, Cole, and other high marine officers before the Senatorial Commission would indicate that in many instances he exceeded the wishes of the Occupation in demanding repressive measures. Of course the situation is admirably adapted to the game known as "passing the buck," but a psychoanalytical study would go far to explain President Dartiguenave's course.

The Eumenides are haunting his waking hours. In not one of the three interviews I had with him privately, nor in the meeting with President Henriquez y Carvejal, at which I was present, could he keep from talking of his enemies and how they were attacking him. As he is amply protected by American bayonets, these fears are but the reflection of his own conscience. I believe not many Haitians would hold up against him his responsibility for the treaty which they now fear has destroyed their birthright -- they all hope, not irretrievably. They realized at the time -- and the whole world now knows since the Navy Department's dispatches have been read into the record -- that he was under every kind of pressure, and that in that grave crisis his course may have seemed the wisest. At least no one could expect that the United States would itself fail -- as it has -- to carry out a single one of its own obligations in the treaty which it had written and imposed.

No, not for that would the name of Dartiguenave be anathema in Haiti today, but rather because having turned over the country to the alien invader he used his every effort to defeat the attempt of other Haitians to regain the lost independence. His position of unique security and vantage he used to oppress his own fellow-countrymen, to demand himself the imprisonment of patriotic journalists who were criticizing his actions, and, most ignominious of all, to decorate, to adorn with his own hands, the breasts of marine officers for the exploits against the Haitians who were revolting against the invader. Surely, they say in Haiti, that was a depth to which he need not have sunk.

Only once did he resist the encroachments of the Americans: in the summer of 1920 when he opposed the efforts of Mr. McIlhenny, the financial adviser, to put through a loan and was punished by having his salary held up for weeks -- one of scores of gross illegalities practiced by American officials in Haiti. This resistance may have been inspired wholly by patriotic motives. On the other hand the military Occupation has no love for Mr. McIlhenny. President Dartiguenave showed me the carbon of a letter written November 10 last to President Harding in which he demanded McIlhenny's removal and protested against the loan which the latter was negotiating, but he took occasion to devote the second part of this letter dealing supposedly with financial matters to an enthusiastic eulogy of Colonel John H. Russell, the chief of the Occupation, expressing the hope that he would be retained in Haiti whatever else happened. The working alliance between these two has long been obvious.

It is just to record here that I also heard Colonel Russell highly praised by Archbishop Conan of Port au Prince and by Bishop Pichon of Aux Cayes, who spoke to me of the chief of the Occupation as a fine, upstanding man, beloved of all the Haitians. Truth compels me to report that I did not find the view shared by any Haitians (the clergy is French) although in my personal relations with him I found Colonel Russell thoroughly courteous and kind. I tried to ascertain whether his general unpopularity was merely the natural opposition of an oppressed people to the chief agent of the Occupation, but I found the Haitians distinguishing sharply between individuals. Everywhere I heard nothing but the highest praise for certain marine officers who had in the past held responsible posts in Haiti -- General Catlin, Colonel Little, and Lieutenant Colonel Wise -- of whom without exception all who discussed the marine personnel spoke in terms of admiration and even affection. Here were three officers, I was told, who had understood the tragic difficulty of the Haitian position and had been friendly and sympathetic.

The question of personnel is of course tremendously important as long as the Occupation continues, though nobody, be he ever so kindly and human, can wholly transmute a military Occupation into a lawn party; and it should not be forgotten for an instant that the great atrocity in Haiti is that we are there at all -- and the manner of our going in. And this is fundamentally why the present situation is and will continue impossible, even should we substitute a more sympathetic type of marine personnel and replace the civilian "deserving Democrats," the most important of whom Senator McCormick described as "both socially attractive and personally charming, but how otherwise qualified I am not informed."

As Haiti has not been permitted under the rigid color line the Occupation has drawn to enjoy their social attractiveness and personal charm, the actual benefit derived is not difficult to calculate. The situation is fundamentally impossible because the Haitians now firmly believe, following the preliminary report of the Senatorial Commission, that faith and honor are not in the United States. They had been hopeful and confident in the belief that the invasion of 1916 was the act of an irresponsible autocracy in Washington, undertaken without the consent of Congress or the knowledge of the American people, as indeed it was. They hoped that when the American people was finally informed, all this would be swept away and that their century-old liberty would be regained. President Harding's campaign declarations on the subject of Haiti naturally fortified their hope.

What is behind the seizure of Haiti and Santo Domingo? How much is commercial and financial, how much military, and how much just plain blundering? One of the earliest impressions I received, even en route to Haiti, was the way in which marine officers took the Caribbean for granted as a field of activity; being detailed to Costa Rica to keep the Panamanians in their place, or getting "action" in Nicaragua appeared to be all in the day's work; and Haiti and Santo Domingo, while apparently viewed as United States domains, furnished splendid military opportunities, The Caribbean, indeed, is already a great Marine Corps "proving" ground, and the subconscious effect on the attitude of the average marine officer is evident. The corps is not a large body, and its proportion of officers to men is larger than in army or navy.

Marines now hold Haiti and Santo Domingo; they have been in Nicaragua since 1912; detachments are in Cuba,⁽³⁾ Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Canal Zone, Panama, and for all any ordinary citizen of our democracy is permitted to know, in other Central American republics. It would perhaps need but one more "Occupation" to necessitate an increase in the size of the Marine Corps -- and that means more officers and more rapid promotion.

Moreover the opportunities for the individual officer are obviously far greater under conditions of military rule than they would be at some dull post in the United States, as indeed they always are in the field. In Santo Domingo a formerly obscure paymaster, Lieutenant Commander Mayo, the man who floated the notorious 14 percent loan, became the financial mogul of that republic. In Haiti American officers live infinitely better than they could at home. A lieutenant can afford a large house and several servants, and as an officer in the Gendarmerie d'Haiti (or Guardia Nacional in Santo Domingo) he gets an automobile at the expense of the Haitians or Dominicans, and other perquisites.

As for the chiefs of the respective Occupations, they are not only civil and military dictators but the supreme social arbiters of the foreign colony as well. N every sense they are monarchs of all they survey. No one who incurs the royal displeasure in Haiti is received at the American Club or at other social American functions. The business man, American and foreign, soon finds that it is not merely to his advantage but essential to his well-being to keep on good terms with them.

One American business man who complained to me bitterly that the methods employed by the Americans in Haiti had destroyed the prestige and good name of the United States and that such a policy was bound to work to our commercial disadvantage, shuddered at the suggestion of relating these facts to the Senatorial Commission. In answer to my inquiry, he said, "Frankly, because I have a wife and children, and I want to stay in Haiti." I asked him whether he really felt that giving such information to the Commission would endanger his safety "I would certainly be put out of business," he said. "As far as my life is concerned, all I can say is that most everyone here knows what happened to Lifschütz." Lifschütz was the one American civilian who dared openly to criticize the Occupation and he happens also to have been the only American civilian ever killed in Haiti.

Senator McCormick, who long before the Commission was created recorded himself publicly in favor of our retention for twenty years of the Civil Occupation of Haiti, but now accepts the military view completely, told me in conversation that his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine gave us "militant rights down to the Orinoco Basin." This, I take it, means that we can according to our needs more or less gobble up everything in and around the Caribbean. South of the Orinoco, Senator McCormick is "wiring that the united States should pursue a noli me tangere policy." Mr. McCormick's successor may substitute the Amazon for the Orinoco, and Senator Some-one-else may feel that our sphere of militancy should not stop short of the Straits of Magellan. But the fruits of this policy are already visible in our actual, partial, potential, and rapidly increasing domination of the weaker states of the Caribbean.

Of course all this proceeds under the guise of be benevolence -- a pretension solemnly maintained with evident sincerity by a great number of persons and with a tongue in cheek by others. Colonel Russell told me that it was the two million Haitian country people that he wanted to help, and that he was very fond of them but against the "three hundred agitators in Port au Prince," and this view was echoed by other officers. The Occupation's affection for the Haitian proletariat is truly touching. Obviously if the intellectual crowd, which for better or worse has made Haiti for a century or more, is eliminated, the most docile and cheapest labor supply that a concessionaire ever dreamed of will be easily available. Twenty cents a day is the current Haitian wage.

But if this was Colonel Russell's view, it was not that of his friend H. P. Davis, vice-president and general manager of the United West Indies Corporation, the American civilian who is generally referred to as the spokesman of the Occupation. To me, at least, he was engagingly frank. "There has been a lot of bunk about helping the Haitians," he said in answer to my inquiry. "I am not here to help the Haitians. I am here to make money out of Haiti for myself and my friends. I am an expert in developing and discovering new territories for development for banks. It is true that in helping myself I have helped some Haitians, but I have helped them incidentally and for purely selfish reasons." It is generally rumored in Haiti that Mr. Davis has ambitions to succeed Mr. McIlhenny as financial adviser should we remain in Haiti. I fail to see why he is not eminently eligible. But nowhere is the situation more lucidly pictured than in the verses which begin:

And yet -- despite all this there are Americans in Hati who have broken through the iron pressure of their environmental opinion -- and know better. There must be others -- like one clear-eyed officer of no mean rank who said to me: "We've no business here. The fact is that the fellows who stood up against us and were shot down were patriots. These people have as much right to their independence as we have." And another told me simply that the "job is impossible. We don't understand them and they don't understand us. We can't change their natures, and that is what we'd have to do to make them do things our way. It's not the Marine Corps' work anyway."

And they are right -- but it is not the prevailing or the official opinion, nor one that these officers could express openly with impunity. We have no business there and our being there benefits no one unless it be a few investors. It will not help the Haitians -- although we may build them a few roads; you do not need an Occupation for that. It's no job for young rosy-cheeked boys of yesteryear -- who return to the States, burned out by the tropical sun, soaked with rum, often irremediably diseased as well. And above all it never will help the United States -- unless we consider the lining of the pockets of a handful a help to our country, to be weighed against the dislike and bitter resentment of a formerly friendly people and the distrust and fear of a dozen others who dread the day when their turn will come.

And even for the capitalists -- Haiti so far has been a graveyard of high hopes. Eight millions have been sunk in the Haitian-American Sugar Company and a receiver is in charge; the National City Bank's venture has not been profitable despite its special advantages; the largest American cotton-growing venture was a flat failure; the West Indies Trading Company literally went up in smoke when I was in Port au Prince -- all this despite the Occupation and the Franklin Roosevelt constitution. Maybe there's a fatality about it; Roger L. Farnham of the National City Bank told the Commission of acres of American cotton that withered while Haitian cotton planted adjacently flourished -- the Mamaloi's curse, it might be called in fiction.

The really important thing to salvage from Haiti is American honor. It can still be retrieved. Admiral Caperton's revealing we - are - getting - this - treaty - through - thanks - to - military - pressure cable⁽⁴⁾ and Josephus Daniels's infamous message⁽⁵⁾ ordering the admiral on - your - own - authority - to - tell - the - Haitians - that - unless - they - sign - the - Occupation - will - be - permanent can hardly be formally voted into the American archives of famous documents. Will the Senate of the United States care to enshrine them with the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry's invocation, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg address? For it is doubtful whether a single Senator knew when he voted to ratify the Haitian treaty in 1916 by what methods it had been imposed. If there be one, let him stand up!

Yet is it more moral to condone an offense because it has occurred? Senator McCormick had no hesitancy in condemning to me in unsparing terms the crime committed against Haiti by Woodrow Wilson and Josephus Daniels. Yet his preliminary report, which gives no inkling that the United States had illegally seized two republics and held them since against the will of their inhabitants, condones this crime. Senator McCormick knows better; he is intelligent enough to know that what we did in Haiti in 1915 and in Santo Domingo in 1916 was dishonest, indecent, and rotten. Senator King's bill calling for withdrawal and abrogation of the treaty fortunately shows the way out.

Notes

n the Dominican Republic the situation is simpler than in Haiti. Where the Haitians suffered from the betrayal at the hands of Sudre Dartiguenave, the Dominicans were fortunate in having as their President Dr. Henriquez y Carvajal, a man of rare integrity, statesmanship, and patriotism. Moreover, the Dominicans had had in May, 1916, when the Americans invaded their country, the advantage of six months' observation of the execution of America's promise to Haiti of "no aim except to insure, establish, and help maintain Haitian independence."⁽¹⁾ In consequence, though America tried precisely as in Haiti to force a humiliating and enslaving treaty upon the Dominicans, they refused to sign.⁽²⁾ Where in Haiti today a dummy government carries out the Occupation's wishes, a constant potential wedge to split the Haitians, in Santo Domingo absolute unity exists.

In the Hispanic Republic, where there is no vestige of national government and the Occupation derives its only sanction from brute force, where, further, the archbishop and all the priests are Dominicans, the church is strongly patriotic. In Haiti, on the other hand, a Concordat with the Vatican established in 1860 provides that the church must sustain the Haitian Government (as indeed it is the church's policy to sustain constituted authority everywhere) and that the government must support in turn the church.

A special clause provides for the blessing of the Haitian president by name after every high mass. Whatever, therefore, may be the original force and fraud upon which the present Haitian Government rests, it is for the time being the legally constituted authority. Moreover, the Haitian clergy is not national. Archbishops, bishops, and a great majority of the priests are French and their interest in Haiti's nationalism is quite naturally less keen than if they were natives. Nevertheless, the Occupation was at first not viewed with favor by the clergy, as indeed it is not today by many of the priests. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Williams testified before the Senatorial Commission that he believed some of the Haitian countrymen were inspired by the priests to make complaints of brutal treatment, and that the relations between the American officers and the priests were officially unsatisfactory.

This feeling he believed was largely due to the influence of the bishop of North Haiti, Monseigneur Kersuzan. Bishop Kersuzan a few months ago celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as a priest in Haiti. The Occupation has, however, made valiant efforts, especially since attention was first called to Haitian conditions a year and a half ago, to capture the clergy. Whereas, previously, the church had suffered directly from the Occupation,⁽³⁾ every attempt was now made to conciliate it. Priests' salaries were raised.

The sacristan of the cathedral at Port au Prince told me personally that the Occupation had promised to put a new roof on that edifice, the present roof leaking badly after the severe tropical storms. This he said would be done without expense to the church "by the Occupation," which means, of course, at the expense of the Haitian people. And today, while the church does not and will not officially and openly run counter to the prevailing national sentiment by indorsing the Occupation, it cannot and will not, as the church in Santo Domingo, oppose it.

The Dominicans also profit by their membership in a great Hispanic-American family of nations. Protests against the treatment of Santo Domingo and its citizens have come from Spain and from virtually all South American countries which are bound to Santo Domingo by ties of race, culture, and language. Hispanic America sees in both Haiti and Santo Domingo an augury of a possible fate. But its encouragement and sympathy have naturally gone to the country which speaks the same language.

The Dominican morale has thus received constant sustenance and is also better, no doubt, because of the gestures of withdrawal that Washington has made. In their last days in office the Democrats had made overtures looking toward retiring the Occupation. Last May the "Harding plan," as it is called by the Dominicans, was presented with a flourish. As it turned out to be merely a device to legalize the situation and under the guise of withdrawal to make Santo Domingo virtually a subject state, the Dominicans refused to touch it. Their cooperation to the extent of holding elections was essential. Today the attitude of the Dominicans is unchanged. "We will sign nothing," is their watchword. "If necessary we will remain in slavery a hundred years, but never will we sign away our birthright."

At present, however, largely because withdrawal has been in the wind, conditions are better than in Haiti. The sense of oppression so evident in Port au Prince is lacking in Santo Domingo. I cannot speak for the interior, which I did not visit and where, I was told, the rigors of martial law still fall heavily upon some of the inhabitants. But in the capital I witnessed an easy banter between the provost marshal, Captain Fay, who is highly esteemed by the Dominicans, and the editors of the Listin Diario, which has valiantly upheld the national cause. In an affair at the private house of a Dominican which I attended the orchestra was composed of marines. Both these situations would be unthinkable in Haiti. Moreover, I found among Dominicans a friendly attitude toward the military governor, Admiral S. S. Robison, of whom I heard only kind words -- a good impression which I looked forward with pleasure to reporting, but which unfortunately was marred by an eleventh-hour incident I witnessed.

It was the day of the Senatorial Commission's departue. The sub-chaser carrying the Senators and their wives had just flipped away from the dock bound for the transport Argonne lying under steam in the harbor. A second boat-load containing newspaper correspondents and other personnel of the Commission was about to follow. Mr. Horace G. Knowles, counsel for the Dominicans, came hurrying to the wharf. He was formerly American minister to Bolivia, to Serbia, and to the Dominican Republic, a Roosevelt appointee. He had come with the Commission but was staying behind a few days to collect additional evidence.

How the Occupation hated Knowles! He had committed the unpardonable crime of criticizing it and of taking the part of the Dominicans. (How little they understood that he had really been taking the part of America!) As he leaned over the boat to hand the official stenographer a letter for Senator McCormick he was, according to his account, pushed aside by the Commission's liaison officer, Captain Day, U.S.N., and told he could not send it. A lieutenant commander who was present told me later that Knowles's conversation had delayed the boat and that he had been politely requested to remove himself. But when he attempted to remonstrate Admiral Robison stepped up from behind and in thundering tones overheard by not less than fifty people shouted: "Get out of this; get the hell off this wharf!" Knowles withdrew and the Admiral proceeded to tell his entourage: "We've seen enough of that man around here; I've got no use for him.

Any man that will make the charges he has, has no right here." Later in the day, Mr. Knowles told me subsequently, he was summoned by the governor to headquarters. On telling the provost marshal who conveyed the order that in the circumstances he did not care to call on the Admiral but would be at his hotel should the Admiral desire to call upon him, he was informed that he had better come; that otherwise the provost marshal's orders were to take him to the palace by force. Mr. Knowles went. It is regrettable that he did so. It would have been interesting to find out just what rights an American citizen has in a country where our alleged justification for conquest is "to protect American interests," and how far our militarism can stage its own Zabern with impunity. Moreover, a couple of days previously the Admiral had told Captain Angell, who accompanied the Commission, that but for the fact that Mr. Knowles was there by Senatorial courtesy he would have deported him.

This episode was more illuminating than pages of testimony. Occurring to a man of Mr. Knowles's position in the presence of Americans, particularly of newspaper men bound for home, with the Senators barely out of earshot, it furnishes a clue to the fate of those who incur the displeasure of the military Occupation.

What happens to the poor devils of natives who are voiceless, helpless, and without means of redress can well be imagined. As a matter of fact, Admiral Robison's proposed treatment of an American citizen is in line with Occupation policy. Americans have been deported unceremoniously. Needless to say if questions are asked they are generally slandered and labeled undesirable citizens; but the reason for their deportation is almost invariably antagonism to the Occupation. An American woman resident in Santo Domingo told me that, burning with shame over the acts of certain individuals in the Occupation, and profoundly unhappy over the oppression practiced in the name of the American people, she had repeatedly resolved to write to various persons and to newspapers in the United States, but had invariably been deterred by the fear of deportation.

Her husband was in business in the country and she did not feel justified in jeopardizing his safety and future as well. While I was in Port au Prince an American marine, a former gendarmerie officer, was ordered deported. Ha had been detailed to the prison at Port au Prince and announced that he had intended to testify about some of the cruelties practiced there. Just before the Commission's arrival his deportation order, which had been published in Le Moniteur, the official organ, was held up. When I saw him again he said he knew neither why he had been ordered deported nor why the order had been suspended, that he did not intend to testify, and that I had misunderstood him when he said he would.

Of course what goes on behind the scenes the four Senators neither learned nor cared to learn. Their minds were obviously closed. I do not want to imply the slightest doubt of the sincerity of any of them; but the absurd anomaly of having one of the parties to a controversy act as jury, judge, yes, and executioner, must be self-evident. The only proper or possible way to have the case of Haiti or of Santo Domingo vs. the United States justly settled is to have some disinterested third party -- Denmark, Belgium, Uruguay, the A.B.C. Powers, or the Irish Free State -- act as arbitrator.

The same fallacy on a smaller scale was subscribed to by the Senators themselves when they solemnly urged all those whom they had not time to hear to report their grievances to the respective heads of the Occupations. As for the Senatorial astigmatism it is also true that the investigation has been foreshadowed for a year and a half and that conditions had been pretty well cleaned up in both republics, where relative quiet exists today. Testimony was general that The Nation's campaign of exposure had brought about a decided lessening of many abuses which had existed.

I have in my possession a copy of a confidential order issued from "Headquarters" at Santo Domingo City on September 10, 1920, which reads in part as follows:

Officers of discretion will be instructed to spread a bit of propaganda here and there in a very careful and discreet manner so that it may not appear that it is being done officially. Present and past conditions may be compared along many lines, the aims and ambitions of the government explained. A few specially chosen officers might sound some of the people on the question of annexation, merely by conversation telling the people that in 1876 the majority of Dominicans desired annexation and asked for it, but that our Congress refused it because we did not know the country and the Dominicans as well at that time. Certain people who seem to be receptive could be induced to spread the idea by showing them how much better situated they would be today had they been part of the United States for the past forty years. Conditions in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and even Cuba could be cited as examples.

The order is signed by Colonel George C. Reid, U.S.M.C., commanding officer of the Guardia Nacional. I showed it to Senator Pomerene just after he had finished addressing with much sound and wind a great patriotic gathering of Dominicans. He had told them that he had learned of a few misguided persons who believed that the United States had annexationist designs on their country but that there was no basis whatever for such belief and that he had never heard the subject mentioned in Washington. I supposed that since he was there to investigate he would be interested in learning about this order issued by the third highest officer in the island, the highest American military official in direct contact with the Dominicans.

But he merely replied that it was the act of an individual and had nothing whatever to do with American policy. Senator Pomerene is back from his flying trip and is probably thinking more of his campaign in Ohio next fall than of the Dominicans. But the Occupation which issued the order "in a very careful and discreet manner, so that it may not appear it is being done officially" stays on. It stays to perpetuate the six years of martial law upon an always friendly and inoffensive people, and it will stay on according to the verdict of the McCormick-Pomerene Commission until Santo Domingo comes to terms and signs on the dotted line. For less than a week after its return the chairman of the Commission gave out an interview that the status quo would continue in Santo Domingo until the proposals of last spring were acceded to.

Meanwhile three great American banking houses are "negotiating" for a loan with the Haitian "government." Each of these loans is based on the convention of 1915 and further hog-ties the Haitian Republic for a period of thirty years. Negotiations were already under way before the Commission went to the Caribbean. Senator McCormick was in favor of that loan from the beginning and insists upon it now. The Haitians neither want nor need the loan.

But the Occupation wants it, and American high finance needs it. Once it is consummated and only the thin resistance of Dartiguenave the Docile stands in the way, needless to say we shall have to stay in further to protect "American interests," the interests of the National City Bank of New York, of the Sugar Trust, of King Cotton, of the horde of carpet-bagging concessionaires that are the camp-followers of America militaristic imperialism.

Notes

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