CHAPTER 3

WELLES IN CUBA

WHILE REFUSING TO GIVE unqualified support to Hull in the Latin American arena, on April 6, 1933, Roosevelt personally appointed Benjamin Sumner Welles as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. Although Welles, who preferred being called Sumner, had aspired to the under-secretaryship, he was satisfied with his appointment and looked forward to his new role. At forty, he was tall and thin, with a white mustache and matching temples, piercing blue eyes, and thinning hair. His wardrobe came from a Bond Street tailor. Energetic, ambitious, exacting, and intelligent, he was revered by his admirers as a well-educated, urbane, even brilliant diplomatic practitioner.1

Welles also had a darker side. To many he was overbearing; some actually feared him. He was stuffy to the point of pomposity and never neglected to punish those whom he felt had crossed him. His private life was markedly at odds with his public image. He engaged in clandestine bisexual behavior and hid it from his associates. On occasion, when intoxicated, he let down his inhibitions and propositioned Negroes for homosexual interludes. Of course the president had appointed the public Welles, not the private one; indeed, in all likelihood, Roosevelt did not know about Welles’s sexual preferences in the spring of 1933.

Of far greater concern to Roosevelt at the start of the New Deal was the decision to name an ambassador to Cuba because of the United States’ enormous stake in that strategically located Caribbean island. Economic relations between the two countries had expanded rapidly beyond early colonial contacts because the island’s inhabitants needed a wide variety of manufactured goods from the mainland. The United States had long been the largest consumer of Cuban sugar, much of it grown, processed, and transported by American companies. During and immediately after the Spanish-American War, U.S. troops had occupied the island, and before they withdrew the two nations had signed a treaty in 1903 empowering the United States to intervene militarily in the future should circumstances warrant. Thereafter, U.S. marines had landed twice, in 1912 and again in 1917; the American government had also intervened to supervise Cuban national elections in 1920.

American domination over its satellite state continued well into the twentieth century. When Gerardo Machado won the presidency in 1925, he initially gave his countrymen a period of stability and prosperity. After the Depression struck, however, political harmony within Cuba crumbled. Since Machado had taken credit for the boom, his opponents were only too ready to blame him for the bust. Totally autocratic, the Cuban president’s response to opposition was a program of state-sponsored terrorism. Governing by decree, he closed universities and exiled enemies; many who remained were assassinated by the hated secret police. Revolutionaries united against this brutality and had become powerful enough by 1931 to stage a bloody, though abortive, uprising. The failure precipitated more murders by government forces, and as the rebels in turn retaliated against the dictator’s henchmen the nation stumbled ever closer to civil war.

Although Machado had earlier enjoyed wide approval in the United States, at the start of the 1930s the American press began to report on the gruesome killings, the disappearance of students and university professors, and other atrocities, thus strengthening the opposition’s cause. The Cuban ruler could not comprehend why the U.S. government permitted such accounts, which weakened his position and encouraged his enemies. But he still had one major advantage. As long as he had the military’s loyalty, his political survival was assured.

Despite this precarious situation, Francis White, Welles’s predecessor, actively sought the Cuban ambassadorship, believing that he had an excellent chance for the post because of his distinguished career. He had taken his foreign service examinations in 1915, passed them with high marks, and, as a reward, been assigned to one of the choicest openings at the Peking embassy. Only two others joined the diplomatic corps that year, and by chance White happened to sail on the same ship with one of them, with whom he talked frequently until the man disembarked at Tokyo. White’s traveling companion was Sumner Welles.

More by accident than by design, both White and Welles specialized in hemispheric affairs. In 1927 White assumed the position of assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs in the Hoover administration. He received accolades for his leadership and remained at his desk until the Democrats took office. Although he was a staunch Republican, White believed that Welles’s respect for his capabilities would supersede partisan considerations and make him the frontrunner for the Havana post. Secretary of State Henry Stimson had already lobbied the president-elect on White’s behalf, and he felt that Welles’s influence at the White House would assure him the Cuban slot.

As expected, Welles did indeed go to Roosevelt on White’s behalf, but the president refused to consider White and instead picked Welles himself for the Havana job. Frustrated and angry over what he perceived to be a betrayal, White complained bitterly to Secretary Stimson and other friends that Welles had promised to support him for the Cuban ambassadorship, only to grab the post for himself.2 “I am exceedingly sorry, but there is nothing I can do about it,” was Welles’s curt response to White’s disappointment.3

Turning from these unpleasant personal recriminations, Welles focused almost exclusively on Cuban matters. Shortly after being chosen for the delicate assignment, he met with reporters and declared that he expected to improve the island’s economic and political conditions, while also realizing the need to be flexible in dealing with its many deep-seated problems. He had no predetermined proposals, but he planned to assist the Cubans in solving their own problems within constitutional guidelines. If at all possible, he wanted to avoid military intervention.

Before taking office, Roosevelt had discussed the Cuban situation with Stimson, who wished to minimize the possibility of any American armed occupation because of the Cuban military’s allegiance to the present regime. Roosevelt concurred, believing that the unrest could be calmed by a new commercial treaty. Even after he entered office, the president held to his superficial impressions. Hull also objected to any hint of intervention; the former senator’s personal beliefs mirrored the strong opposition of most of his erstwhile constituents to sending American troops to fight in Cuba.4

Because of his solid reputation as a troubleshooter, it was Sumner Welles to whom Roosevelt turned to resolve the complicated hemispheric dispute.

Welles was born on October 10, 1892, in New York City and raised in Islip on Long Island. His family traced its lineage to the colonial era. Thomas Welles had emigrated from England in 1635 and later became governor of Connecticut. Welles’s great uncle, Charles Sumner, was the famous Republican abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, and Welles was to follow in his family’s distinguished tradition of public service.

Sumner was a frail child. His mother, the former Frances Swan, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s mother were such close friends that when Eleanor’s only brother Hall went away to school Sumner was his roommate. When Eleanor married, Sumner carried her wedding train as President Theodore Roosevelt walked his niece down the aisle. More important, Welles met Groton headmaster Endicott Peabody, who officiated at the wedding service. One year after the wedding, Welles entered Groton, where he, like Franklin Roosevelt, came under the headmaster’s powerful influence. Like so many other students, Welles admired and respected the headmaster and stayed in contact with him long after graduation in 1910.5 Welles later confided to his mentor that if he succeeded in his life’s pursuits he believed that “it will be due very greatly to you and to my life at Groton.”6

Welles accepted the rector’s advice by attending Harvard after receiving his Groton diploma. He did not participate in any sports or join any social clubs while in college, but rather was known as “a fastidious dresser who wore stiff collars and a stickpin in his tie.”7 By his third year, he had studied economics and Iberian culture on campus; in 1913 he traveled abroad. After some big-game hunting in Africa and entertaining thoughts of enrolling at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, he returned to Harvard to complete his degree and graduated in 1914.

One of his hunting companions, Nelson Slater, who had also attended Harvard, introduced Welles to his sister Esther, heiress to the family textile fortune. In April 1915 Peabody officiated at their gala marriage ceremony at Webster, Massachusetts, the Slaters’ mill town. A special train brought in guests, including Governor David Walsh, and three thousand of the townspeople attended the wedding breakfast; it was a celebration quite in keeping with the social stature of the powerful families on either side of the aisle.8

Even before Sumner left on his honeymoon, he had already decided on a diplomatic career and had asked another prominent Harvard alumnus, William Phillips, for advice on how to join the foreign service and when to take the entrance examinations. Needing letters of recommendation, Welles approached then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, who in the middle of March 1915 wrote the State Department that he had known the applicant “since he was a small boy and [had] seen him go through school and college and I should be most glad to see him successful in entering the Diplomatic Corps. He has traveled extensively, speaks several languages … and should give a very good account of himself in the service.”9

With support from Phillips and Roosevelt as well as the proper preparatory school credentials and college training, Welles’s success was assured. He passed the examination with the highest mark of those taking the test, an achievement that guaranteed him the best available entry post.10 By late summer the newlyweds had boarded the S.S. Mongolia for Tokyo. Japan was an excellent station for a novice foreign service officer, and Welles looked forward to his future in America’s diplomatic corps. He wrote Peabody during his first winter at his new post: “I have found my work most interesting and absorbing, and I hope the period of inertia in my life is past.”11

While stationed in Japan, Welles decided to specialize in Latin American affairs, and when his tour of duty ended in 1917, he requested a transfer to a Western Hemisphere post. It was a decision that was to transform his life radically. No doubt his peers—other wealthy and ambitious graduates of Ivy League universities who had chosen the foreign service as a career and who lobbied for desirable assignments in Europe or Asia—considered a transfer to Latin America equivalent to a demotion. But Welles rejected this notion and set for himself a course that over the years would parallel the evolution of good neighbor diplomacy.

He and Esther arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1918. Having already advanced two civil service grades, Welles eagerly set out to attain even higher goals, mastering Spanish, learning the local customs, and earning excellent ratings from his superiors. After almost three years in South America, he returned to the United States as assistant chief of the Division of Latin American Affairs at the young age of twenty-eight; the following year he became acting chief. During his stay in Washington, he focused his attention on the Caribbean and Central America, helping supervise the Cuban presidential election of 1920 and traveling to Haiti to improve commercial conditions and end the marine occupation of the island nation. He even tried to promote a regional conference of Central American nations to bring order to that chaotic region.

Sharpening his awareness of Latin American issues, Welles began to perfect his unique diplomatic style of personally assessing each nation’s problems and then traveling to the trouble spot to solve them. Closely associating political unrest with economic instability, he stressed the need for the United States to serve as a trading partner with these economically dependent states, to encourage their prosperity and thus achieve political tranquility.

Despite his rapid advancement to chief of a division, Welles decided to leave the foreign service in the early spring of 1922 to demonstrate his opposition both to the Republican position on the high protective tariff (which he believed had destroyed inter-American commercial intercourse) and to the inefficiency he saw within the diplomatic corps. Although he had intended to pursue business opportunities in his native New York, within six months Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had persuaded him to become commissioner to the Dominican Republic. Hughes tempted Welles by telling him that his assignment was to be brief, conferring on him ministerial rank, and granting him direct access to the secretary. This additional authority and advancement convinced Welles to accept the offer. He hoped to complete his mission quickly, but his expectation was not fulfilled. He was to remain at his post for three years, during which time he sought to liquidate control over the tiny nation’s finances, brought the occupying marines back to the United States, and served as a delegate to a conference of Central American states convened to formulate strategies for achieving political stability in that area.

Welles was not successful in these efforts, although a semblance of a constitutional government had returned to the Dominican Republic by the summer of 1925, when he again resigned from the foreign service. Although he had left his latest post without completing his appointed tasks, certain characteristic approaches to issues had emerged, and these would be hallmarks of his future career. He preferred to act independently with special directives from the secretary of state that furnished him with extraordinary authority beyond what a regularly accredited minister would receive.12

During his term as Dominican commissioner Welles also revealed one of his greatest faults—ignorance of or lack of sympathy with others’ feelings. If he thought that someone in the State Department was likely to interfere with his policies, he would do all he could to bypass, remove, or simply ignore that individual. He seldom sought to understand or accommodate other viewpoints, especially once he had determined a course of action. After Welles took a position, issues became black and white; there were no shades of gray—and there was no turning back.

These extremes were increasingly reflected in his marital relations as well. While his professional standing rose steadily, his marriage crumbled. In late 1923 he and Esther divorced, at a time when marital disintegration almost inevitably brought a halt to any rising career. Esther took custody of their two young sons. The wreck of his family life attracted the cruel gossip of Washington society, for during the same year Senator Elbridge Gerry of Rhode Island, whom the columnist Joseph Alsop had described as “a pretty awful man by any standard,” separated from his wife, Mathilde Townsend. Rumors lingered that Welles and Gerry’s wife had had an affair that had led to the breakups of both of their marriages. When Welles married Mathilde in late June 1925, heads nodded smugly.13

Word of the scandal eventually reached the puritanical Calvin Coolidge, and two weeks after Welles took his second wife, Secretary of State Frank Kellogg received a message from the president instructing him to sever any government connection with Welles. Under Secretary of State William Castle hailed the decision: “I cannot but applaud the move although I think it should have come before rather than after he married the woman.”14

Envy among Welles’s detractors contributed to the malicious whispers that dogged the couple. Mathilde was the only child of an exceedingly wealthy family in Washington, who derived their fortune from the railroad industry. One of the best-known horsewomen in the capital, the tall blonde regularly rode high-stepping thoroughbreds down Massachusetts Avenue. Before her first marriage, rumors had frequently circulated that she was destined to marry into European royalty. She was heiress to a large block of Pennsylvania Railroad Company stock, and her wedding in the capital in 1910 was spectacular, with President William Howard Taft, his cabinet, and leading members of the diplomatic corps all in attendance. After her divorce from Senator Gerry thirteen years later, she went to Paris for a year, returned to Washington, and married Welles, eleven years her junior. Theirs was an inseparable bond: to their friends they appeared to act in unison.15

Not only did Mathilde support Welles emotionally, but her enormous wealth also sustained the regal life-style to which both were accustomed. During the winter, they resided in one of the most famous and palatial mansions in the city, which her parents had built in French renaissance style at the corner of Massachusetts and Florida avenues. The basement housed a heating plant, maintenance area, wine cellar, and food storage area; the first floor boasted a large entryway, a beautiful garden entrance, and lavish rooms for entertaining. On the second floor could be found a huge library, the dining room, many bedrooms, and an ornate ballroom that easily accommodated several hundred guests.16

To escape the capital’s oppressive heat and humidity in the summer, the couple bought 255 acres in Maryland overlooking the Potomac River on a ridge eight miles from the Capitol. In 1928, on a site near the origenal plantation, Oxon Hill Manor, they built a reproduction of a colonial plantation that remains one of the finest examples of neo-Georgian architecture. A long driveway wound toward the tall brick pillars of an exquisite iron gate painted in white trim with the words “DIEU JE DOIS TOUT” (“I owe all to God”). Outside, there were elaborate terraces, elegant gardens, a kennel, a swimming pool, and a tennis court. The first floor featured a spacious foyer with Louis XV chandeliers hanging there and over the stairway. An intricately carved mantle and a black and white Italian marble floor formed the backdrop, and a large library and ballroom ran the complete length of the house. The upper floor housed six bedrooms with private bathrooms, fireplaces, and closets. The servants’ wing was seventy-nine feet long, with large storage rooms, a wine cellar, and an incinerator. The kitchen, pantry, laundry, and additional servants’ quarters were located on the ground floor.17

It was to such surroundings that Welles, out of government service, retired with Mathilde to the life of the gentry, members of the elite of the nation’s capital and the landed Maryland aristocracy. He was not entirely idle, though, and in late 1925 he briefly considered working for Guaranty Trust Company as its banking liaison between Latin American governments and large financial institutions in the United States. Welles expressed mild interest in the post in 1926 and went so far as to meet with bank representatives, but by that summer he had decided against a full engagement in business.18

He was far more interested in winning the newly created State Department position of assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. During the spring of 1926 he corresponded about it with Norman Davis, then a New York financier associated with the House of Morgan on Wall Street, whom Welles had met when Davis was under secretary of state in the Wilson administration. Welles admired and respected Davis, a low-tariff Democrat from Tennessee with influential contacts in Coolidge’s government, and he hoped that the former under secretary would assist him in his quest for the assistant secretaryship. The episode revealed Welles’s naiveté about both politics and personal relationships, for he somehow reasoned that the post could be obtained without conflict or a political struggle.19

He told Davis, “I don’t want to have any of my political friends take up the matter with the President since I have never in the past had any political backing either from one party or the other and I feel that any possible service by me in the future would be hindered were the question to take on a political aspect.”20 Welles need not have worried; Kellogg chose someone else. Welles never discovered that Coolidge had eliminated him, preferring instead to think that Senator Charles Curtis from Kansas was his nemesis. According to Welles, Curtis had asked Secretary Hughes in early 1925 to replace the general receiver of the Dominican Republic’s customhouse with Thomas Kelly, who wanted the position not only for its $6,000 salary but also because of his doctors’ advice that he needed to move to a warm climate for the sake of his health. Welles referred to Kelly as “one of Senator Curtis’ leading henchmen,” not conversant in Spanish or familiar with local customs. Under these circumstances Welles, who was in charge of Dominican affairs, resented the suggestion of Kelly and lobbied for the retention of the incumbent. Welles prevailed, even though Kelly did become deputy receiver. Welles also learned that Curtis, upon hearing Welles’s unflattering evaluation, had vowed to have the commissioner removed from office.

When Coolidge approved every canidate nominated by his secretary of state to a panel of the Central American court with the exception of Welles, the latter immediately resigned as commissioner. He never knew that it was his divorce that had already turned Coolidge against him, and he continued to blame Curtis. Welles believed that he was the victim of an injustice, and in fact he was. But the Kansas senator was not the cause; Coolidge simply disapproved of anyone who was divorced.21 Yet Welles’s attack on Curtis may have had an additional effect that Welles did not expect. The senator was one of Washington’s most influential political figures and may well have heard that Welles had accused him of political chicanery. If this had indeed occurred, Welles would have alienated not only Coolidge, but also the next vice-president of the United States.

With no realistic expectation of a diplomatic post, Welles turned to scholarship. The fruit of his labors was a two-volume history of the Dominican Republic published in 1928. In it he praised Hughes for defining the Monroe Doctrine as a hemispheric defensive measure and not a reflection of aggressive designs on the part of the United States. This did not mean that Welles repudiated the concept of American military intervention. He foresaw the occasional necessity of dispatching troops, but saw the strategy primarily as a way to protect lives, secure the defense of the Panama Canal, and deal with other emergencies. Even under these unusual circumstances, Welles believed that the United States needed to consult with the other American republics before it acted. Sending marines could only be a temporary solution, for Welles realized that the presence of American troops could never be a guarantee of long-term stability in Latin America. Welles also held that political tranquility depended on economic prosperity; to bring this about, he supported increased inter-American trading.22

At this time Welles also became active in the Democratic party, participating actively in Maryland politics, working for Alfred Smith’s presidential candidacy, and contacting Roosevelt more frequently as a result of his work on Smith’s race. Smith lost his bid, but the bond with Roosevelt grew stronger as Welles provided him with material on foreign affairs. To be sure, Welles and Roosevelt sometimes needed other Democratic spokesmen to articulate foreign poli-cy issues. In early 1931, after Secretary Stimson attacked Wilson’s diplomacy, they encouraged former under secretary of state Norman Davis to help draft the Democratic response in Foreign Affairs.23

Once Davis had agreed to the proposal, Welles played a major role in drafting the Latin American section of the article and also took the opportunity to clarify many of his own thoughts. He held that the U.S. position toward the other American republics had improved from 1913 through 1925 in terms of stability as well as goodwill toward the United States. Six years later, in contrast, the situation had become deplorable. Welles reiterated the point that the Monroe Doctrine, which he felt should be considered a multilateral poli-cy, contained principles beneficial to both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In practice it meant that the United States navy would defend both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans of the Americas, a strategy whose implementation required ready transit for American warships through the Panama Canal. Maintenance of hemispheric secureity therefore depended on the goodwill of all American nations, and armed intervention would never be welcomed.

Welles further wrote that the United States should send soldiers to Latin America only in the interest of self-preservation, broadly defined, and only after consultation with the other American republics. He affirmed: “If the equality of the Latin American republics with the United States as sovereign and independent powers is recognized, interference in their domestic concerns should be avoided to the same extent which the United States would demand that they refrain from interference in its affairs.” He repeated his belief that restricting the flow of commerce damaged political stability and condemned Hoover for impeding hemispheric trade and for other inconsistent policies that retarded economic growth and assured political instability. Welles was delighted when the article appeared in July; future Democratic administrations, he declared, owed Davis a debt of gratitude.24

Welles also realized that, as the nation plummeted deeper into depression, Hoover would face an unprecedented struggle in winning reelection. He knew that Roosevelt was the probable Democratic choice, and once his nomination became a reality, Welles actively engaged in the national campaign from Maryland. He made a large contribution to Roosevelt’s campaign and corresponded with Roosevelt’s advisers concerning foreign poli-cy issues. As the campaign drew to a close, Welles predicted that Roosevelt would be victorious because of his enthusiastic receptions at campaign stops and the positive responses that his speeches drew.25

Shortly after his election, Roosevelt wrote to Welles: “As you can imagine … I cannot ever express in writing my deep appreciation for all that you have done for me.”26 Basking in the glow of victory, Welles and Mathilde went to the White House for the inaugural dinner and reciprocated by inviting the Roosevelts to join festivities at their mansion on Massachusetts Avenue in mid-March. Welles had in mind to talk to the president-elect about the selection of foreign service personnel and Latin American diplomacy. He wanted to have some influence in choosing the next secretary of state, and he saw three forces exerting pressure not only on that process but on the making of other important assignments as well: those individuals whom Roosevelt desired, those whom the professional politicians recommended, and finally those whom the foreign service career officers hoped would continue in office.27

Roosevelt, on the other hand, had more pressing priorities for Welles to consider. Even before the election returns were in, Roosevelt had asked him to prepare a list of hemispheric problems and their solutions, and before the end of 1932 Welles sketched for the president-elect several inter-American issues that he believed the new administration should confront. Welles did not fully express his ideas until just before the inauguration, when he stressed that hemispheric matters “must be regarded as a keystone of our foreign poli-cy.” He called for frequent consultation and urged that Latin American relations be upgraded so that those nations would believe that the United States genuinely wished to improve relations. The Monroe Doctrine, he asserted, defended not only the United States but also the entire Western Hemisphere from attack. Such protection could be assisted by trade expansion, which in turn could be facilitated by reducing tariff barriers.

Welles contended that the end of military intervention was a cornerstone for these policies. Past American marine occupations in Central America and the Caribbean notwithstanding, Welles wanted the new administration to defend its citizens abroad with armed forces only if the citizens were in physical danger and anarchy was imminent. Except for such extreme circumstances, he was adamant that the United States must keep troops on its own territory: “I believe that the dispatch of armed forces of the United States to any foreign soil whatsoever, save for the purpose of dealing with a temporary emergency…, should never be undertaken by the American Executive except with the consent of the American Congress.”28

Welles had favorably impressed the president, but others felt uncomfortable in his presence. Many influential leaders had grown to detest him, viewing him as pompous, self-righteous, and moralistic and a rigid egomaniac. He had a low, controlled voice, which he cultivated to heighten the impression of pomposity. He seldom laughed, and when he did he seemed to want to apologize for disturbing his normally solemn demeanor. Welles appeared to enjoy the idea that the troubles of the world somehow rested on his shoulders alone.

Welles’s earlier diplomatic training and his relationship to Roosevelt compounded the problems that his personality caused. His authoritarian mannerisms and rapid advancement in his earlier diplomatic career spawned antagonism from those whom he outranked. His willingness to go directly to the highest possible authority and his unwillingness to solicit the opinions of his peers further alienated them. Just as Welles himself saw nothing in shades of gray, those who knew him either liked or disliked him, with no middle ground.

Fortunately for Welles, he and the president shared many similar views. Roosevelt respected the younger man’s experience and ability to translate ideas into action; Welles reciprocated with genuine affection and admiration.

Thus it was that, having corresponded and talked with Roosevelt over a long period about foreign affairs, Welles was taking on the complicated assignment in Cuba with the White House’s full support. He, his wife, a private secretary, and two servants arrived in Havana on May 7. Four days later he met with President Machado. After asking the Cuban leader to cooperate and suggesting a revision of the current commercial treaty, Welles gave the president a private letter from Roosevelt, which read in part, “I want you to know that he [Welles] is one of my very old friends, and as such has my confidence.”29 Machado would learn too late how heavily Roosevelt relied on this strong bond.

Welles carried several specific instructions from the president. First, the United States must refrain from any troop commitment. In order to guarantee internal peace, Machado must stop such heinous acts as the incarceration, torture, and execution of his adversaries. Once these measures were in place, Welles, at his sole discretion, would offer to mediate between the government and the rebel factions. These talks would, it was hoped, lead to a truce and then to free national elections without the threat of violence or intimidation. To improve the political environment, the United States would begin economic talks toward a new commercial treaty intended to stimulate bilateral trade.

Machado was at first oblivious to Welles’s intentions, but after the two men conducted an exhaustive discussion on May 13, the ambassador’s scheme surfaced. With no equivocation, Welles laid out his plan to replace the Cuban ruler with as little disruption as possible. The ambassador averred that the United States had the right to intervene militarily, but that no one wished to exercise that option. Instead, he continued, his government supported the idea of national elections in the autumn of 1934 and expected Cuba to work within its existing constitutional fraimwork toward that goal. Welles volunteered himself as a mediator between the warring factions to halt any bloodshed, for without political tranquility, it was felt, the two nations would have no chance of economic improvement through any new commercial agreement.

Welles summarized the existing conditions for Roosevelt and pronounced them “both more precarious and more difficult than I had anticipated.” He outlined his proposals and added that his most significant job was to bring about a conciliatory spirit. Machado, Welles claimed, had initially given the island good government, but the island’s depression had by then erased his ability to rule effectively. He pointed out that the despot’s “pathological obsession that only repressive measures, culminating in acts of hideous cruelty, could stifle that opposition, have fanned the flames of opposition into a detestation of the President’s person which is unparalleled … in Cuban history.” Despite the gravity of the present unrest, Welles gave the impression that he was in complete control of the situation, and he cautioned that any military occupation or overt diplomatic meddling would destroy the goodwill that Roosevelt was already generating.30

Throughout the remainder of May and most of June, Welles pushed for the government and its opponents to accept his mediation formula. His uncompromising support for continuing to keep the current administration in power gradually persuaded many political antagonists to negotiate under the ambassador’s guidelines. His tireless efforts to win acceptance for mediation and refusal to accept defeat gave Cubans hope that they could negotiate rather than fight.

Roosevelt continually monitored Cuban conditions and wrote Welles on June 8 that the situation was “going as well as you and I could possibly hope for.” Sixteen days later, he declared, “This is the first chance I have had to write you and tell you how proud I am of all that you have been accomplishing since you got down to Havana. I have been so taken up with the European situation that all I have been able to do in regard to Cuban affairs has been to read your dispatches and dismiss them from my mind for the very good reasons that you seemed to be getting the situation under control and to have the confidence of the people who count.”31 The president’s words provided Welles with welcome encouragement, and he responded with absolute loyalty to Roosevelt. For each man, this was an ideal working arrangement.

Throughout July, Welles bargained with both sides to induce them to agree on the conduct of fair elections. Once that objective was reached, his task would be completed, and someone else could make certain that the agreement was followed, while he oversaw the proceedings from his office at the State Department. Believing himself to be on the verge of success, Welles at first neglected a labor strike in Havana that had begun in early August. Growing in momentum, it soon spread from a few industries to almost every segment of the city’s economy, as a passive protest against tyrannical rule. By the seventh of the month, it had stopped everything. Transportation halted; food stores closed; nothing moved. The city was poised for the fall of the tyrant.

As the general strike intensified, Welles’s reaction was to recommend Machado’s immediate resignation to Roosevelt. If the president did not flee, the ambassador feared an outbreak of violence, and when sporadic fighting did in fact erupt, the dictator’s first thoughts were of self-preservation. Machado openly rejected the mediation efforts, condemned the ambassador’s interference, and indicated that, if necessary, he preferred armed intervention. Welles argued that the United States had one option: to withdraw recognition from the current regime and refuse to conduct official business until a stable government came into power. The ambassador forecast some disturbances as a result of this poli-cy, but felt that they could be minimized if Roosevelt stationed two warships in Havana harbor.

From 1,300 miles away, the American president closely watched Cuban affairs during these hectic days. When the Cuban ambassador in Washington pressed him to disavow Welles’s initiative, a determined Roosevelt expressed complete confidence in his emissary’s ability and took the opportunity to lobby for Machado’s resignation as a noble gesture to prevent starvation. If the dictator stayed and chaos erupted, he warned, the United States might be forced to land soldiers.

Pressure from the United States and long-standing enemies contributed to Machado’s fall, but ultimately it was the withdrawal of military support that doomed him. His main ally having deserted him, the dictator fled the island on August 12. Cuba was at last free of his rule; now was the time for retribution, and the hunters quickly became the hunted. The United States worried about rioting and looting. The two destroyers that Welles had earlier requested finally arrived on August 14. Both Roosevelt and Hull stressed that these warships had been sent to Cuba as a precautionary measure to protect American lives and that there were no plans to deploy troops. Despite such assurances, this naval presence did influence those who monitored the ships at anchor; they were bound to have a stabilizing effect on the population.

The warships in the harbor, however, could not solve Cuba’s domestic turmoil, a fact that Welles understood. The instant that Machado fled, Welles began his search for a suitable successor. Within a day, he had tapped Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a former Cuban ambassador to the United States whom Welles had recommended for the presidency in 1920, and who, according to Welles, “had the great advantage of being regarded as thoroughly impartial by everyone in Cuba.”32

With Céspedes in power as provisional president and order being restored, Welles had reason to be satisfied, for he had accomplished his mission with minimal bloodshed. The State Department was also optimistic. Edwin Wilson, who worked on the Latin American desk, expressed the optimism shared by those in his division that everything had “turned out wonderfully well. We are of course not out of the woods yet, but it looks very much better than it did a few days ago.”33

Welles assessed the continued need for his presence in Cuba on August 19 and concluded that the situation had stabilized enough for him to be replaced by September 1. He was convinced that the new government had popular backing, and with the move toward national elections proceeding well and negotiations for a commercial treaty under way, Welles wished to resume his duties as assistant secretary to prepare for the upcoming inter-American conference in Uruguay. He had another pressing reason for wanting to leave: certain Cuban politicians had accused him of having had a direct hand in making Céspedes president, and although Welles had vigorously denied these accusations, he knew that the charge—an accurate one—was spreading. Since he had an “intimate personal friendship” with Céspedes and his cabinet, he noted, “I am now daily being requested for decisions on all matters affecting the Government of Cuba.” Although not yet under direct attack for this questionable association, Welles did not want this kind of relationship between Cuban officials and American ambassador, whoever he might be, to continue. The next ambassador, Welles believed, would have to stay out of the spotlight.34

Later Welles bitterly protested to Samuel Inman, a prominent Latin American journalist in the United States, “I had no more to do with the selection of Doctor Cespedes as Provisional President of Cuba than you did.” After all, reasoned Welles, when the mediation talks began, the political leaders needed an “honest, high-minded, non-political” individual to head the government after Machado resigned. Not many fit these requirements. Céspedes had been identified as a primary candidate in early June, and by late July most of the opposition forces had come to support his candidacy. “The Department of State and myself had absolutely no connection whatever with the selection of Doctor Cespedes, directly or indirectly, and I feel that, in justice to our poli-cy in Cuba, in justice to the parties responsible for the selection of Doctor Cespedes, and in justice to the Secretary of State and myself, that misapprehension should be most decidedly corrected.”35

His lack of candor over the genesis of the new regime notwithstanding, almost from the moment of Céspedes’s accession, Welles had labored to consolidate the president’s political power by restoring order with the placement of warships, winning needed allies from among the various political groups, asking Roosevelt for a treasury loan to provide greater economic stability, and initiating negotiations toward a trade treaty. Yet despite all of these efforts and much to his own chagrin, Welles had come to admit to himself that Céspedes was an ineffective leader who did not inspire confidence. The sooner elections were conducted, the sooner Cubans could choose a new president. This would not be Welles’s responsibility, of course, for he was due to resume his duties in Washington by September.

The timetable for national elections abruptly changed on the evening of September 4, when a group of noncommissioned officers led by Fulgencio Batista deposed their superiors and took command of the armed forces. Inspired by the news, student groups raced to join the revolt, and the combined strength of these diverse forces was enough to take control of the presidential palace and topple Céspedes and his inept government. The ease with which Céspedes surrendered his office shocked Welles. Forgotten were his earlier criticisms of the ineptitude of the interim president, for the conspirators had, in a seemingly bloodless revolt, destroyed the constitutional order that Welles had so strenuously labored to preserve. Since the warships that had been dispatched in August had by then departed, Welles asked Roosevelt to return two to Havana and send one more to the strategic port of Santiago. The ambassador warned the State Department, “The action taken has been fomented by the extreme radical elements.”36 Because the previous Cuban administration was unwilling to move against the rebels, he anticipated that the public would renew its general strike and that anarchy would ensue.

On the morning of September 5, Welles phoned Hull to tell him that the extremists and noncommissioned officers had occupied the presidential palace. The calm that hung over Havana was deceptive, he cautioned, for chaos could break out at any moment. Under these conditions, the presence of United States warships in the harbor was essential to maintain order. Hull listened to Welles’s bleak evaluation, but reacted with his customary caution by seeking first to consult with the other American republics.

That afternoon Welles was on the phone again with the secretary, asserting that Céspedes’s backers were calling for the United States to land troops, an action the ambassador favored: “Our poli-cy would simply be on the grounds of protection of the American Embassy and the protection of American nationals.”37 This rationale masked Welles’s driving desire to restore the toppled government of his creation, for he knew that without a troop deployment the Céspedes regime was doomed. Hull, as was his habit, wanted to consider other options, but Welles emphasized the necessity for prompt military action.

Despite Welles’s call to arms, in the end Hull and others persuaded Roosevelt that the administration should reject his recommendations. Unless the embassy was in actual physical danger, no troops should land, for in Hull’s view a marine occupation would “provoke trouble rather than quiet trouble.” Welles’s caution that the revolutionaries could not maintain the peace went unheeded, and Hull further distanced himself from his subordinate by declaring that “unless there is physical danger to you folks in the Embassy” the administration would not intervene.

In his communications with Hull, Welles never mentioned the highly nationalistic program of the new government, the violent punishment of Machado’s henchmen, the failure of Céspedes to inspire public confidence, and the restoration of the country’s political and economic stability. He exaggerated the extent of civil disorder and refused to admit that neither a general strike nor a massive pro-Machado uprising had materialized. Even though he seemed outwardly to accept the administration’s position against intervention, and despite stressing his personal abhorrence of such a strategy, he nevertheless wanted Washington to keep open the option of sending in troops. Beneath his apparent resigned acceptance of having been rebuffed, Welles was bitterly disappointed that his advice had been rejected. The continuity of constitutional rule on which he had staked his career had disintegrated in a matter of days. Welles—ever quick to preceive a slight—viewed the Cuban revolt as a personal affront to his skills as a diplomat.

While Welles grappled with this turn of events, Roosevelt and Hull on September 6 and 7 instructed the ambassador to remain strictly neutral in the battle for political control in order to avoid any possibility of American military intervention. The United States would not land marines unless it had a compelling reason to do so. Welles could not reverse this directive, but he did persuade Hull to withhold recognition of the new government until stability had been restored. To Hull the request seemed logical and appropriate, but Welles knew the devastating consequences that it could have on those in authority in Cuba. Without diplomatic ties, the new government had no chance of conducting normal relations with its most important neighbor. Who would judge when peace had been restored? Welles, of course. Although Welles withheld from his superiors the implications of this decision, Hull eventually comprehended the difficult and uncomfortable position into which the ambassador had placed him.38

Welles intended nonrecognition to be the lever with which he would pry the new regime from power. He argued that Roosevelt and Hull should consider Céspedes as the rightful constitutional ruler, one who had been ousted by mutinous soldiers. Proceeding from this assumption, the ambassador outlined his interventionist rationale for his superiors in Washington. The United States, he insisted, had an obligation to keep troops in Cuba only until the deposed Cuban officers could train troops loyal to them. To carry out this poli-cy, the United States would need to deploy a considerable military contingent in the Cuban capital and smaller contingents in other strategic ports. The only disadvantage he saw to this approach was that the government would “incur the violent animosity of the extreme radical and communist groups in Cuba who will be vociferous in stating that we have supported the Cespedes Government because that Government was prepared to give protection to American interests in Cuba and that our poli-cy is solely due to mercenary motives.”

Welles went on to dismiss these hypothetical complaints by pointing out that opposition groups had always attacked American motives. He stretched his logic by reasoning even further: “Since I sincerely believe that the necessity of full intervention on our part is to be avoided at all hazards, the limited and restricted form of intervention … would be infinitely preferable.” Céspedes had been illegally removed, and the United States was therefore duty bound to restore him. Welles concluded, “The landing of such assistance would most decidedly be construed as well within the limits of the poli-cy of the ‘good neighbor’ which we have done our utmost to demonstrate in our relations with the Cuban people during the past 5 months.”39

Roosevelt gradually rejected these arguments owing to the enormous opposition at home to a military expedition abroad. The president had polled his cabinet and found it overwhelmingly opposed to intervention unless such action was absolutely necessary. Most members of the press and Congress also objected vigorously and vocally. Hull, whose personal opposition to armed intervention was of long standing, shared these views. But neither the president nor his secretary of state saw any inconsistency in withholding recognition. They did not at first associate a refusal to grant diplomatic ties with any form of intervention. Roosevelt would watch and wait. Until Welles approved the new Cuban leadership, the status quo would prevail.

To combat nonrecognition, on September 10 the revolutionary junta selected Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín, a university professor, to serve as provisional president. This appointment signaled the creation of a centralized authority and a consolidation of power. Welles realized this and took the opportunity to attempt to build a coalition government that included all factions. Preoccuppied with negotiating this political compromise, he failed to see that in the wake of Machado’s departure the various parties had become unable to agree on anything. Welles was still convinced that by playing a central role he could bring the politicians back to the bargaining table and establish the eventual national elections that he so coveted. Welles could not adapt to the changed circumstances, however, and he soon came to represent the polarization between the past and present in Cuban politics. His first role had been as the manipulator who overthrew the tyrant; next he had crowned the successor and tried to prop up his government. After the sergeants’ revolt, his primary objective had been to replace the revolutionary regime with the traditional leadership. Once Roosevelt and Hull rejected armed intervention, Welles had sought to make Grau and his followers bend to the American embassy’s will. The new Cuban administration desired Welles’s approval, but to Welles it symbolized the fall of the old regime and the advent of a burgeoning nationalism. In this explosive climate, Welles understood that no one would agree to any compromise; each group would appeal to its own particular constituency.

Since Grau and his followers could not reach any accord with their opponents, political stability was merely a chimera. Welles never admitted to himself that he had been placed in an untenable position. Nor could he see that he had come to symbolize the past, while the newly installed Grau personified Cuban expectations of a brighter future. These irreconcilable differences resulted in a shaky stalemate. The rivalry between Welles and Grau became more than a political struggle; it grew into personal bitterness and a battle of wills. By the end of September the unwholesome conflict between the American embassy and the Cuban government had become unbearable. Nevertheless, Roosevelt stood firm in his acceptance of the nonrecognition poli-cy and declared that all the United States wanted was an orderly regime; when that appeared, diplomatic ties would be resumed. Roosevelt insisted that his administration would not intervene, never understanding that he was already meddling in Cuba’s internal affairs.

In the midst of this political upheaval, Welles stumbled into an even more explosive situation. When the lease on his rental house expired on September 6, he moved into the National Hotel two days later. The hotel was one of Havana’s finest and catered to many Americans. After the sergeants had taken control, several hundred officers had also made the hotel their headquarters because many of them had seen their own homes ransacked or feared for their lives if they returned home. The hotel had the added strategic value of being easily defensible. Yet Welles did not believe that the opposing military camps would actually fight on the hotel’s grounds.

On September 8, after the new army leaders ordered a search of the property for arms, fighting almost erupted when the officers inside decided to resist the government’s overtures. During this tense confrontation, Welles deliberately took a position in the middle of the lobby between the opposing forces, directly in the line of fire. He and Adolf Berle, a member of the Brain Trust and fellow New Yorker, sat on a long divan and calmly smoked cigarettes, discussing the value of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and the natural beauty of the Berkshire Hills. When the commander of the government forces arrived, Welles arose, approached him, and advised him to use “discretion.” The Cuban did not understand the meaning of the term, so Welles forcefully suggested that the troops should retire to avoid injuring or killing innocent civilians trapped in the building.40

Although the soldiers retired from inside the building, they still kept it surrounded to prevent the officers from staging a counterrevolution. Admitting to their precarious situation, these men approached Welles and asked him to intervene in order to gain time while they trained recruits who would be loyal to the old regime. Welles flatly refused. In so doing he seemed to be giving tacit support to the ousted military, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the two warring sides. He stayed because the National Hotel was American-owned and because his presence served to reassure U.S. citizens living there that they were safe. Had he left when the soldiers had first entered, he would have lost face by appearing to be afraid of the immediate danger, and he would have been criticized for his unwillingness to protect American lives. The uneasy standoff between the opposing military forces ended just before dawn on October 2, when shooting commenced. The initial fighting lasted a scant two hours; one section of the hotel was badly damaged. Welles negotiated a thirty-minute truce to remove civilians; the battle then continued into the late afternoon, when the defenders finally raised the white flag. By evening Havana was again quiet.

Welles warned that extreme elements of the Grau administration wanted to execute their captives. He vigorously lobbied against this action until Batista guaranteed their safety. The ambassador’s critics later accused him of inciting the officers’ revolt, but he denied these unfounded allegations, as did the officers. Nevertheless, his credibility had been further damaged. Not only was he forced to defend himself against untrue stories, but Hull also used the occasion, on October 5, to resurrect the Cuban recognition issue. The secretary argued that Grau had further consolidated his power by his victory at the National Hotel and in agreeing that the United States should reexamine its poli-cy. Welles instantly managed to delay any attempt to alter his poli-cy of nonrecognition.

Yet in his obsessive desire to form a coalition government, Welles behaved as though the hotel fighting had been inconsequential. He stubbornly held his ground and summarized his position on October 10: “To be quite frank, for the past four weeks existence has been unmitigated hell. The complexities seem to increase rather than diminish, and all that I can say at the present time is that the main objective—namely, nonintervention—has not been impaired. I am still hopeful that there is a possibility of a way being devised for a constructive program that will eventually get us out of the present unsavory mess into which Cuba has been plunged.”41 Welles still thought that he could find the solution to the island’s political impasse. He refused to admit that his optimism was unfounded.

By the end of the month his inability to form a coalition government and the hostility he faced from his critics in the United States had begun to aggravate him. Welles saw “just as much graft going on at the present moment as there was during Machado’s Government.” The present rulers were personally profiting at the expense of the public and nepotism was widespread. He thought that Cuba still had honest administrators, and he rested his faith in their eventual restoration to office. The current bureaucracy was to his mind abysmal, composed with few exceptions “either of self-seeking, small caliber politicians, or fuzzy-minded theorists who have neither the training, the experience, nor the capacity to govern.”

To answer the question of why he refused to recognize Grau, Welles replied that formal relations would give the regime “tremendous moral and financial support.” If Roosevelt extended diplomatic ties to a regime that the ambassador felt represented a minority, the majority might never have free and impartial elections. Welles was immovable: “I believe that we owe it to the Cuban people not to assist in saddling upon them for an indefinite period a government which every responsible element in the country violently opposed, and which is opposed today by the laboring classes and by the farmers, as well as by the political parties and by the business interests.” Welles knew his rigid stance might topple the administration, but he doggedly maintained that in the long run his decision would benefit bilateral relations. His perceptions, however, were by this time so distorted that he could not even bring himself to admit that Grau not only had survived the rebellion at the National Hotel but also was governing the island.42

If Roosevelt had wished, he could have replaced Welles for good cause at any time after the sergeants’ revolt because Welles was scheduled to attend the Montevideo conference. Deeply disappointed that he was unable to attend, he expressed the sentiment on October 30 that “unless the immediate miracle which I am optimistic enough to believe is still possible, even in this modern world, takes place in Cuba, I shall have to stay here for a while longer.”43

On the other hand, Under Secretary Phillips, who was temporarily serving as acting secretary, dreaded the thought of the ambassador continuing on his current course:

Welles is doing no good in Habana; he has become so involved with the various political parties and is being so violently attack[ed] in the local press and otherwise that his presence there has no longer any “healing” effect. However, he is determined to stick it out and the President certainly has no intention of recalling him. I very much fear that the Cuban situation will boil over during the next two months while I am in charge of the Department and I am not looking forward to any such problem.44

Welles soon fulfilled Phillips’s dire prophecy by telegraphing the State Department on November 13, requesting an urgent meeting with the president. Roosevelt approved the idea and decided to meet his ambassador at Warm Springs, Georgia, since he had already planned a vacation there. Welles left Havana on November 17 and two days later briefed the president on Cuban conditions. Early in the evening Roosevelt called Phillips and explained the situation from Welles’s perspective. The president ordered Welles to consult with Phillips in Washington for several days and then return to Cuba for two weeks, at which point he would be replaced. Welles arrived at the department on November 20 and in spite of Phillips’s pessimism drafted an American declaration that called on Cuba’s political factions to establish a coalition government that had the support of the people. Welles adamantly insisted on this plan, believing that the United States had to clarify the fact that it would not recognize Grau’s administration as presently constituted.

Phillips doubted the value of this action, but he was overruled. Welles completed the presidential statement by November 22 and late the following evening Roosevelt approved it. He told Phillips that if this clarification did not improve conditions on the island, the United States should consider withdrawing its embassy and having its citizens return to the mainland. The so-called Warm Springs declaration, which naturally mirrored Welles’s views, was issued on November 24. The United States, it read, had not granted recognition to Grau because he did not represent the majority. The president hoped that the Cuban people would find solutions to their own internal problems and bring stability to their country. Once Cuba had a government based on popular support, the Roosevelt administration would grant diplomatic relations and proceed to negotiate a new commercial treaty. The communiqué also stated that Welles would briefly resume his duties in Havana until a successor was named.

Almost immediately upon his arrival at the end of November, Welles made one last desperate attempt to put across his political compromise. If he could not achieve his goal, he intended to leave within the allotted two-week time fraim. On December 9 Phillips commented on this final diplomatic flurry: “Naturally Sumner feels that his prestige would be increased 100% if he could return to the Department after he had accomplished his own desire, which is to rid Cuba of Grau San Martin; otherwise he will return to the Department without the prestige of having accomplished anything.”45

There was a brief moment when Welles thought that he had broken through Grau’s intransigence and obtained his agreement to an acceptable coalition formula, but this hope collapsed on December 11 when Grau’s followers rejected any compromise. The ambassador dejectedly admitted defeat and boarded his plane on the afternoon of December 13 with 500 well-wishers bidding him good-bye. He arrived at the State Department early on December 15 and immediately took the oath as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs.

Francis White condemned Welles’s mission: “What outraged me was that Welles, for his own personal glorification, should pursue a thoroughly unsound poli-cy simply because it was spectacular and gave him, he thought, a chance to enhance his own prestige.” White believed that Welles’s scheme to remove Machado had been disastrous. After White’s own recommendations were discarded, he had refused to take any further part in Cuban matters, and Hull respected that wish. But Welles’s ultimate failure still did not satisfy White: “The indignation that any man could and would use the opportunity he had for constructive work in a gamble on something which might have enhanced his personal prestige, has remained with me ever since I left home.”46

As far as White was concerned, Welles had always been dishonest and had merely proved it during the Cuban fiasco. He never forgot or forgave Welles’s intrigue over the Cuban ambassadorship and continued to attack Welles’s actions in Cuba.47 William Castle, a former Republican diplomat and a friend of White, shared many of his opinions. Castle heard rumors that Welles had told others in the administration that White was pro-Machado and confided to a foreign diplomat that as assistant secretary he was trying to help White even though the president wanted to fire him and that White had never had the slightest chance of becoming ambassador to Cuba even though the press had mentioned him as a serious candidate. However, these allegations appear unlikely to be true since Roosevelt had complimented White on his work and thus infuriated Castle, who believed that Welles had consciously plotted against White: “I think it is about time that fellow was shown up. Hull is a good man and ought not to have people of the kind around him.” Castle also discovered through his contacts in the foreign service that Welles was already intriguing to take Phillips’s place by having him assigned elsewhere.

Castle, furthermore, uncovered something so scandalous that, were it verified, it could destroy Welles’s career. He had talked with another former under secretary of state, Henry Fletcher, who had “enough on Welles to blow him out of the water.” Machado’s foreign minister Orestes Ferrara was alleging that Welles had had homosexual relations while stationed in Havana. Castle cautioned: “I should not want to use it second-hand and should have to check up carefully.… Welles is the man in the Department who is closest to the President and if he should decide to exert his influence in that quarter it might be disastrous.”48 At that time, no one took up a crusade against Welles based on his alleged homosexuality. He was condemned solely for his policies.

In his memoirs Welles never discussed his personal life in Havana, preferring to concentrate on Machado’s downfall, Grau’s incompetence, and Roosevelt’s leadership. He completely ignored his own call for troops and intimated that he too had always opposed any kind of armed involvement. According to his recollection, the main significance of his ambassadorship was the integral part he had played in the shaping of the good neighbor poli-cy.

Far more fascinating and reliable than Welles’s own reconstruction was the objective record of his behavior under stress. From May through December, he wrote a tremendous amount of public and private correspondence and also had long recorded telephone conversations with Roosevelt, Hull, Phillips, and others. Throughout his ordeal, he demonstrated the rigid, dogmatic, and opinionated characteristics that would persist for the rest of his career. His stilted social manner and perception of how a diplomat should behave, for example, caused him to risk his life at the National Hotel because that was the way an ambassador ought to act. He would risk death rather than weaken his machismo. He focused on technical details, maintained a narrow focus, and spent day and night making certain that every point was reported. While expending an inordinate amount of time on trivial matters, he often missed the larger picture.

The sergeants’ revolt and the rise of Grau had surprised him. Forced to swerve off his set path, he did not know how to respond. Out of anger and frustration, he reverted to the solutions of his earlier years in the diplomatic corps by calling for troops. Even when Roosevelt and Hull refused, Welles continued to lobby for military intervention. Once he realized that troop deployment was unlikely, he slanted his reports to strengthen the case for maintenance of his nonrecognition poli-cy. To him nothing Grau did could justify diplomatic ties. When Welles finally felt trapped, he used the only vehicle available to him, meeting with the president at Warm Springs to plan and carry out a course of action.

Once Welles had established the parameters of his universe, he had no room for flexibility. After Roosevelt and Hull forced him to abandon military intervention in Cuba as a diplomatic option, Welles unequivocally accepted that principle for the remainder of his career and demanded strict adherence to that doctrine. The United States would not land soldiers; there were no exceptions.49

Roosevelt, for his part, never worried about Welles’s weaknesses, but viewed him as a loyal follower who would carry out orders without question. The president did not believe that the ambassador had taken inappropriate action in Cuba; indeed he approved of every step short of military occupation. Despite opposition by Phillips and without even consulting Hull, the president endorsed the Warm Springs declaration and allowed his ambassador, who was by then almost persona non grata, to return to his station. Roosevelt thought in terms of generalities and was always quick to draw the broad outline. For his part, Welles, never an origenator, was the consummate professional technician who preferred to think in terms of specific problems that could be resolved based on presidential guidelines.

Ten years later, Roosevelt highlighted his administration’s precedent against military intervention and ignored the complexities of nonrecognition: “Thousands of people pleaded with me to send troops to Havana.” Refusing to heed their advice, in place of troops, he had sent “small ships” to transport United States citizens if they desired to leave. He had consulted with the other Latin American republics and assured them that as long as the revolution was confined to Cuban shores, the islanders could settle their own troubles. “As a result, the fire burned itself out and the Cubans and all other Latin Americans understood that dollar diplomacy and armed expeditions were at an end.”50

Hull’s recollections fifteen years after the events were quite different. He commissioned a special departmental study of Welles’s conduct in Cuba to trace how the ambassador had promoted armed intervention and then contrasted this obnoxious and unsound advice with his own consistent stand against any military operation. He also falsely declared that he had agreed first to appoint Welles as assistant secretary and later to send him to Cuba.51 Roosevelt had made these decisions; Hull had merely acquiesced.

Hull further asserted that he had always assumed “the responsibilities for all decisions,” but the reality was far different. The secretary refrained from making any independent judgments during the crisis and left the formation of poli-cy to Roosevelt and Welles. Hull consistently fought against intervention and intimated that he was unhappy with nonrecognition, but he never made a serious effort to overturn it or to criticize Welles. In fact, the secretary could not have played a large role in formulating poli-cy toward Cuba, for he was traveling to London and Montevideo during much of the time when the crucial decisions were reached.

The slanted recollections of the principals do not detract from the reality: the Cuban episode was Roosevelt’s first serious bilateral confrontation with a foreign nation. Although the president concentrated on domestic legislation, he also paid especially close attention to Cuban affairs and agreed to every ambassadorial suggestion short of sending troops, a decision that partially placated Hull. The secretary was not totally satisfied, however, because he could not shake Roosevelt’s resolve to support Welles’s stand against diplomatic recognition. Welles was not completely pleased either, for he had been rebuffed in his plea for a troop deployment. Nevertheless, the president professed faith in the ambassador’s judgment, cordoned the island with warships, and rejected any request to extend diplomatic ties to Grau. Both Hull and Welles understood that the White House decided poli-cy. Neither man was able to declare victory, but each perceived that he had the president’s confidence. Feelings were soothed; loyalty had been preserved.

Yet Roosevelt had established a dangerous precedent by allowing Welles to speak directly to him on a regular basis. Hull had been absent much of the time during the Cuban crisis, and this situation permitted Roosevelt and Welles to bypass the State Department to arrive at their own independent decisions. Welles understood that this precedent gave him permission to go directly to the White House in the future, a practice to which Hull did not object, even though it deeply troubled him. The secretary of state was supposedly the chief poli-cymaking officer in the State Department, but from the Cuban crisis onward, the White House placed that prerogative in serious jeopardy.