When we arrived in London I sent the boys over to the station from which we were to leave for our steamer to make sure that our baggage had really been delivered as promised. Unfortunately the boys got to the station just as King Edward arrived, and they were so excited about getting a glimpse of the monarch that they gave up trying to look after baggage. We, having nothing else to do, drove to the station a full hour before the steamer train was to leave, and had occasion to congratulate ourselves for being so early. Our trunks were not in the station. My friend jumped in a hansom and rushed to the station where we had come in. I spent the time ransacking every corner and looking over piles of all kinds of luggage and three-quarters of an hour passed before a telephone message came to say the trunks were found and that they had started across town.
But the train would leave in five minutes! I was frantic. Otherwise I should never have played my last card and exposed myself to the jibes of my family forever after. I rushed into the office of the stationmaster determined to overawe him by revealing to him my official position.
“I am Mrs. William Howard Taft of Washington,” I cried. “I must get my trunks on that boat train. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Can’t you hold it for me!”
He looked at me blankly.
“My husband is the Secretary of War of the United States,” I went on desperately.
“I am very sorry, Madam,” he began, then I made my last effort.
“You must have heard of him. He’s travelling now with Miss Alice Roosevelt.”
At last I had produced the effect I desired. Immediately the station was my castle. The stationmaster was my humble servant. He accompanied me out, ordered the train held, and superintended a whole obsequious force which hustled our baggage aboard as soon as it arrived. Since we made the boat, which we would not otherwise have done, I was able to bear the chaffing of my children and friends when they continued to refer to me as The Mrs. Taft whose husband was travelling with Miss Alice Roosevelt.
Early in the autumn of 1906 the American Consul General at Havana began cabling to the government at Washington that the Cuban republic under President Palma was rapidly going to pieces. What was described as “devastating and paralysing civil strife” was rampant, and a serious insurrection was threatened.
The Constitution of the Cuban republic and the Cuban Treaty with the United States contains a “self-acting” clause, known as the Platt Amendment, which was introduced by the United States Congress, and which provides for American intervention in Cuban affairs whenever such intervention is deemed requisite to a continuance of peace and good government in the island.
Sometime during the first week in September the situation became acute and President Palma, fearing that it would become formidable and knowing that he had no adequate force to protect life and property, urgently, though secretly begged our government to send warships to his assistance. On September 12 he despatched a cablegram imploring that an American Army be landed in Havana at once to prevent a threatened massacre of citizens; on September 13 he decided to resign the Presidency and compel the United States to assume the responsibility of government; on September 14 President Roosevelt called a conference at Oyster Bay where it was decided that Mr. Taft should undertake the task of Cuban pacification, peaceful if possible—and on September 20 Mr. Taft, accompanied by Mr. Robert Bacon, Assistant Secretary of State, as a fellow Peace Commissioner, landed at Havana. They didn’t lose much time.
Then began what Mr. Taft always refers to as “those awful twenty days.” The people were divided into various warring factions, the result, largely, of political habits inherited from the old Spanish regime wherein a new party arose on the slightest provocation, basing its antagonism to the others on nothing finer nor more patriotic than individual desire for political patronage.
President Palma still held the reins of government, but camped just outside Havana were twenty thousand men under arms ready at any moment to open hostilities. These insurgents, as well as the party in power, had appealed to the United States for intervention, but neither faction had any intention of accepting any form of compromise which did not include all their demands.
For about a week the fiercest storm that Mr. Taft had ever encountered raged about his head. His one immediate desire was to avoid bloodshed. His investigations proved that no real obstacle to tranquillity, or to compromise, existed and he made every effort to induce the Cubans to settle their differences on high nonpartisan grounds, each yielding something to the other for the sake of the general good. But he found very little interest in the “general good.” Indeed, all through his despatches during those days there runs a complaint that except with President Palma and a few others patriotism was not very apparent, that petty jealousies and personal ambitions, often of a brazen or a sordid nature, constituted the chief secret of all the dissension and strife.
Events must have moved with feverish rapidity. The insurrectos demanded the annulment of the election which continued the Palma government in power, and the situation developed new complications with every argument and piece of testimony presented by either side. Finally when it was decided to begin an investigation of
