President Coolidge sent 6,000 Marines to Nicaragua and their officers told them to "Get Sandino dead or alive!" In two years of furious guerrilla fighting no one ever "got" General Augusto Calderon Sandino, though at last this slender, sallow, wild-eyed patriot was driven from Nicaragua after his men had killed 21 U. S. Marines (TIME, March 12, 1928). Last week a roving correspondent found Sandino in Yucatan, the arid Mexican state which bulges like a sand blister out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Sympathizers in the U. S. and Latin America still contribute to Patriot Sandino's support, enable him to occupy the whole top floor of the only modern hotel in Merida, Yucatan. All day the hotel patio teems with sombre-eyed young men carrying pistols, brooding fresh revolt. At night they sleep dormitory fashion around their commander. Asked for an interview, the top-floor patriot sent out a brief message:
Since the American people hate me I will not say anything to an American reporter.
A. C. Sandino, General
President Hoover is keeping only 1,500 Marines in Nicaragua-as mentors for the newly established native National Guard. Recently a group of leading editors in Managua, Nicaraguan Capital, manifestoed: "We have reached the limit. On the one side the Marines and on the other the National Guard . . . are committing disgraceful acts left and right. . . . We are complying with our inalienable duty as editors and patriotic Nicaraguans in pointing out the danger and calling the attention of the Nicaraguan Government ... to the need of enforcing order and decency in the troops who command us."
Blandly next day President Jose Maria Moncada of Nicaragua (chosen as the result of the Coolidge-supervised election) issued a tactful communique:
"The duties of the office of President of Nicaragua require me to write for publication some statements that are a little severe. ... It seems to me that a crime was committed against this country when ... a nation friendly to Nicaragua was offended in the greatest pride that it can have, the honor of its army and of its marines. I refer to the United States of America. . . .
"Outrages of which the press complains in connection with the Marines and the National Guard are transitory, as are all human institutions. . . .
"I am watchful. Peace and order will be maintained. I have not come to power to navigate turbulent waters without clear vision."
Last week no officers and men of Company F of the U. S. Eleventh Engineers sailed from Panama for Nicaragua well loaded with tripods, telescopes, plumb lines, and other surveyors' gadgets. By order of Secretary of War James William Good they will map the route along which the U. S. has the right to build an inter-ocean Nicaraguan Canal. The right was bought in 1916 for $3,000,000.