A CARIBBEAN TOPSY

Perhaps the enervating climate of the Caribbean is sapping the morale of the Marines. At any rate Haiti recently dared to reject a new financial treaty with the United States. About a decade ago, they refused to allow foreigners to own land in Haiti. Immediately their assembly was dissolved, a new constitution was drafted by Wall Street, and a remarkable plebiscite was conducted by the Marines, in which there were less than three hundred dissenting votes in a total of sixty-three thousand. Since then beautiful roads have been built by forced labor; finances have been stabilized by American officeholders; an efficient army, officered and drilled by Marines has been created. Haiti can indeed thank American intervention for a peaceful countryside and financial stabilization; American influence is everywhere paramount.

Today Haitians are even more bitter against American domination than they were when the Navy shipped their gold reserve to New York in 1915. One reason for this is the racial make-up of the country. The French made the original mistake in bringing prisoners of war to work the land. These were no black slaves, but the sons of native kings and warriors who were accustomed to hold slaves themselves. France discovered this when the ragged troops of Toussaint L'Ouverture drove the army of the great Napoleon to the sea, and later repulsed the forces that England sent against them. In the Haitians is the fierce, arrogant spirit of ancestors used to independence and conquest.

Further, they are filled with a strong nationalism, not the nationalism of an old and settled empire, but nationalism as a Pole or an Irishman understands it--a love of independence that sweeps away all other considerations. They have a culture and a civilization of their own and they will never be content under the dominion of the United States.

"Bearing the white man's burden," if it involved ruthless exploitation in fact, was in theory at least a fifty percent altruistic process. It has given way to an open and unashamed "dollar diplomacy" for which there can be no excuse on other than selfish grounds. The Marines putting down Haitian and Nicaraguan "bandits" and the Japanese subduing Chinese "bandits" are instruments of similar policies. Manifest destiny calls and kindly paternalism answers with guns if need be.

So long as Haiti is a good child, she will be patted on the head and well treated. Unluckily for Wall Street, however, Haiti is proving a Topsy in the family of Pan-American dependents. In the long run, the United States will do much better to take its paternalistic hand off Halti's head.