In August, 1906, an insurrection broke out in Cuba which the Cuban Government, headed by President Palma, was entirely unable to quell. It appealed to the President to intervene. It was evident that chaos was impending and that immediate intervention was imperative. With his usual lack of hesitation, the President, without waiting to summon Congress to direct him, acted at once. "Thanks to the preparedness of our Navy," he said in his annual message to Congress in December following, "I was able immediately to send enough ships to Cuba to prevent the situation from becoming hopeless." He also sent the Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, and the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Robert Bacon, to take charge in behalf of the United States Government. When President Palma resigned and there was no quorum of the Cuban Congress to accept his resignation, the Cuban Government came to a halt. Acting in accordance with the so-called Platt Amendment embodied in the Cuban Constitution, President Roosevelt proclaimed a provisional government for the island, with Taft acting as Provisional Governor, until one could be appointed. The President then named for that position Charles E. Magoon, who had formerly been Governor of the Canal Zone and United States Minister to Panama. He also sent a small army of pacification to relieve the navy for the protection of the lives and property of citizens. The insurgent chiefs immediately had their troops lay down their arms and disband. The Provisional Government left unchanged as far as possible the personnel of the old government and the old laws and administered the island until tranquillity was restored and a new government, chosen at a properly conducted election, was installed in January, 1909. In a letter to Senator Lodge, September 27, 1906, the President thus explained his action:

"I did not send Taft and Bacon to Havana until Palma had repeatedly telegraphed us that his unalterable purpose was to resign forthwith; that the Vice-President and the members of his Cabinet would decline to take or remain

in office, and that he was entirely unable to quell the insurrection. I have, I need hardly say, a horror of putting what is in effect a premium upon insurrection by letting the insurrectionists receive benefit from their action; but Palma's utter weakness-or, to speak with literal exactness, his impotence-to do anything effective toward quelling the revolt (for I treat as of less moment the undoubted and gross misbehavior of the party in power at the last election) made it absolutely imperative that I should take some step unless I wished to see chaos come in the island. "Of course if I had announced, as Mr. Bryan advised, that under no circumstances would I use armed force; or if, as Foraker desires, I had stated I could take no action until Congress decided what to do-just imagine my following the Buchanan-like course of summoning Congress for a six weeks' debate by Bacon, John Sharp Williams, and Tillman as to whether I ought to land marines to protect American life and property-the fighting would have gone on without a break, the whole island would now be a welter of blood. Of course our permanent policy toward the island must depend absolutely upon the action of Congress, no matter what construction is given the Platt Amendment. Congress has nothing to do but to refuse appropriations to put it into effect, and the Platt Amendment vanishes into air, and any stay of marines and troops in the island becomes impossible.

"Equally of course, I should be ashamed to look anybody in the face if I hesitated to take important measures to try to secure peace, if necessary by landing sailors and marines or even troops, so as to try to reestablish some government in Cuba and keep the island so far as possible in decent condition until Congress meets, when it can itself take action.

"I hope that we shall not have to intervene in any permanent form at present, and that we can simply make temporary arrangements to keep order until an election can be held and a new government or modified government started. I am inclined to think that, thanks to the fact that I have

shown that I was ready to intervene by force of arms if necessary, the necessity will be for the present avoided; but I am greatly disheartened at what has occurred and doubt very much whether in the end we shall not have to exercise a more immediate control over Cuba, and of course it is possible that we shall be unable to make a working scheme even now, and that we shall have to take possession of the island temporarily this fall. But I shall do all that I can to avoid this and I hope to be successful.”

An incident which excited wide public interest and much partisan rancor at the time occurred also in August, 1906. This was the attack by a body of colored troops of the regular army upon the city of Brownsville in Texas. The troops were stationed at Fort Brown, close beside the city, and considerable hostility had developed between them and the citizens. Near midnight on August 13, a body of colored soldiers, numbering from nine to fifteen or twenty according to varying estimates, scaled the walls of the fort and went through the town, shooting whomsoever they saw moving and firing into houses wherever they saw lights. They fired upon and hit in the arm the lieutenant of police who approached them, fired also at two policemen, killed one man in a saloon and wounded another, and came very near to killing several women and children. Investigation showed that the bullets and shells found on the ground were from government rifles and that bullet-holes in the houses were made by such bullets. There were no bullet-holes in the structure of the fort, showing that there had been no attack upon it. The commander of the fort testified that he was convinced that the raiders had slipped out of their quarters, got possession of their rifles, shot up the town and returned to the barracks without being discovered. All efforts to extort confessions from the suspected soldiers, or to get their associates to give evidence against them failed.

After full investigation of the facts, the President ordered the discharge of nearly all the members of three

companies of the regiment that were known to contain guilty members, holding that the innocent members had entered into a conspiracy of silence to protect their guilty associates, thereby violating their oaths of enlistment by refusing to help discover the criminals. The President's action led to a bitter partisan debate in the Senate, led by Senator Foraker of Ohio, which continued for many weeks, but in the end the President's course was sustained. Letters that he wrote at the time disclose his feelings and motives in the case. Writing to Mr. Silas McBee, editor of The Churchman, on November 27, 1906, he said:

"I have been amazed and indignant at the attitude of the negroes and of shortsighted white sentimentalists as to my action. It has been shown conclusively that some of these troops made a midnight murderous and entirely unprovoked assault upon the citizens of Brownsville-for the fact that some of their number had been slighted by some of the citizens of Brownsville, though warranting criticism upon Brownsville, is not to be considered for a moment as provocation for such a murderous assault. All the men of the companies concerned, including their veteran noncommissioned officers, instantly banded together to shield the criminals. In other words, they took action which cannot be tolerated in any soldiers, black or white, in any policeman, black or white, and which, if taken generally in the army would mean not merely that the usefulness of the army was at an end but that it had better be disbanded in its entirety at once. Under no conceivable circumstances would I submit to such a condition of things. There has been great pressure not only by the sentimentalists but by the Northern politicians who wish to keep the negro vote. As you know I believe in practical politics, and where possible, I always weigh well any action which may cost votes before I consent to take it; but in a case like this, where the issue is not merely one of naked right and wrong but one of vital concern to the whole country, I will not for one moment consider the political effect.

"There is another side to this also. In that part of my

message about lynching, which you have read, I speak of the grave and evil fact that the negroes too often band together to shelter their own criminals, which action had an undoubted effect in helping to precipitate the hideous Atlanta race riots. I condemn such attitude strongly, for I feel that it is fraught with the gravest danger to both races. Here, where I have power to deal with it, I find this identical attitude displayed among the negro troops. I should be recreant to my duty if I failed by deeds as well as words to emphasize with the utmost severity my disapproval of it."

To Dr. B. Lawton Wiggins, Vice Chancellor, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee:

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'When I took the stand I did on these negro troops I of course realized that trouble would come of it politically because of the attitude certain to be taken, I regret to say, by unwise sentimentalists and self-seeking demagogues in our Northern States, especially in those where the negro vote is an important factor. But it was just one of those vital matters where I did not feel that I had any right to consider questions of political expediency, and still less of personal expediency. Do not misunderstand me. I believe in being thoroughly practical in politics, and in paying all proper heed to political considerations. As things actually are in this world, I do not feel that a man can accomplish much for good in public life unless he does so. But I believe still more strongly that when we come to root questions affecting the welfare of the entire nation, it is out of the question for an honorable man, whether in public or private life, to consider political expediency at all. In this instance the question was really one of those root questions. If the troops had been white troops, nothing would have been said about my action. It is a curious thing that these same politicians and sentimentalists who denounce me because I refuse to do injustice in favor of the colored troops, have always opposed me when I have endeavored