The horns of Cuba's dilemma last week were the two terra cotta towers of Havana's elaborate Hotel National. There 400 army and navy officers who refused to accept the student-supported government of President Ramon Grau San Martin, some in undershirts, some in crumpled linen suits but all with thumping big pistols at their waists, were marooned, peeling their own potatoes, running the elevators, making the beds. The guests, including U. S. Ambassador Sumner Welles, had departed. So had the staff, with the exception of two managers who felt a mariner's duty to stick by the ship. The self-promoted sergeants in command of Cuba's army doubled the guards around the hotel, prevented anyone from entering or leaving. They trained two field guns on the entrances of the building, set up sentry posts and cots in the lee of the nearby Ford plant. Thus checkmated, matters rested. Cubans used to living on volcanos' edges made a 16-block detour and went on about their business.
The question everywhere was how long could matters last. President Grau San Martin and his bewildered professorial Cabinet remained in Gerardo Machado's ornate palace. The army was restive, wondering where its next month's pay would come from. The treasury remained almost without money. Tax collection which had revived under the short-lived de Cespedes government ceased abruptly. In the interior, sugar workers were on the rampage. Even in Havana labor was so disorderly that business paralysis impended.
Irritably amused by all this were the opposition politicians, themselves pretty disorganized. When Dr. Grau San Martin went stiffly to dicker with them for support, he first decreed the dissolution of all political parties, then refused to give them any hand in the Government. They gave as the first condition of their support that he resign. Scoring their "impertinence," President Grau San Martin nevertheless had good grounds for fearing last week that he was about to pass on into History. While a coalition of his opponents mulled over an ultimatum to serve on him, President Grau San Martin philosophically announced: "The person who occupies the government is unimportant; the fulfillment of the revolutionary program is the thing."
Directorio Estudiantil The real rulers of Cuba last week were not the sergeant-led army, nor the Cabinet of President Grau San Martin, but a group of 30 tousle-haired, secretly worried young people known as the Directorio Estudiantil All had been oppressed, not a few had been imprisoned and tortured, by Machado the Butcher. The youngest is 19, the oldest 30, and all were students of the University of Havana which was shut by Dictator Machado in 1930.