(See front cover)
George Andrews, third secretary of the U. S. Embassy in Havana, went fishing with a Captain Leslie Waggett last week and saw something pink fluttering over the water about three miles off the Jaimanitas Yacht Club. It was a light summer dress tied to an oar and the oar was held by Cinemactor Alexander Kirkland clinging to the keel of an overturned sailboat. With him, without her dress and painfully sunburned, was Actress Ann Harding Bannister with her secretary Marie Lombard. Hysterically they told what had happened and how the boat's skipper, one Majin Alvarez Piedra, had started swimming to shore. Gibbered Miss Harding:
"A fin cut through the water . . . going at the swimming man, and there was a scream and he was dragged down. We drew ourselves up further on the keel."
Here was news, news that all Cuban newspapers could print without fear, and they spread themselves with pictures, columns of text and descriptions of the inquest of the shark-killed boatman. Miss Harding flew for Hollywood, heavily veiled, after providing a $25-a-month pension for the boatman's widow. Only briefest mention was given another ship far more important to every Cuban, the United Fruit liner Peten carrying lean young Benjamin Sumner Welles from "New York to his post as U. S. Ambassador to Cuba.
Terror still gripped Havana. In socialite Vedado suburb a young Negro attempted to steal a bicycle, ducked round a corner when he was seen. It was a stupid move for round that corner was the wall of Principe Fortress, on the wall was a prison guard with a rifle in his hand and nothing to do. The reaction of a Cuban guard to a running Negro is precisely that of a British sportsman to a rocketing pheasant. He killed him with a single shot.
In Oriente Province, where armed rebellion still sputtered and flared last week, Cubans learned of the resourcefulness of Corporal Gort. With two privates Corporal Gort captured six men accused of participating in the rebel raid on San Luis fortnight ago (TIME, May 8) and started to march them back to Santiago. Suddenly he realized that he was outnumbered two to one. Drawing his revolver he shot four prisoners dead and herded the other two into town.
President Machado's own police were not safe from President Machado's gunmen. Despite denials from frightened neighbors and government officials, U. S. correspondents took enough stock in the battle of the Sixth Police Station to cable full details north: Two armed soldiers swung up in a car, rushed into the building and emerged in a few minutes with three uniformed policemen and two plainclothesmen. Following the honored formula, the five were told to run, were shot in the back. But the plainclothesmen had not been sufficiently searched. They returned the fire. Before they too fell, the soldiers were badly wounded.
For too many months too many men have died in just such ways for Cubans to be particularly incensed at these new assassinations. The one thought in every Cuban mind was: what was the United States going to do? What orders had been given long-headed young Sumner Welles?
According to his own statements, Ambassador Welles was going to do nothing. At the time of his appointment he summoned reporters and wordily announced :