Sneer, Honor, Screw

President Gerardo Machado y Morales of Cuba and President Jose Serrato of Uruguay maintained an air of Augustan calm last week while their Foreign Ministers quarreled over a sneer. Senor Alfredo Guani, Uruguayan representative in the Assembly of the League of Nations, allegedly launched the sneer by remarking while at Geneva last fall: "Cuba is tied to the U. S. by her Permanent Treaty."* This remark, unheeded by the rest of the world, has been bandied for months by the Cuban and Uruguayan press until, last week, Cuba broke off diplomatic relations with Uruguay, alleging that, "the Cuban national honor has been made the subject of derogatory remarks in Uruguay." Twenty-four hours later an Uruguayan "apology" was delivered at Havana; whereupon at Montevideo, capital of Uruguay, the Cuban Minister, whose trunks had been packed, ordered them unpacked again. Many a Cuban plebeian, unconscious that the national honor had been saved, learned with ogreish interest of how an iron screw was slowly turned in the Santiago prison last week. The screw tightened a steel collar fitted with an iron spike and encircling the neck of Quesado Castillo, a Negro who had murdered his wife and daughter. At 6:03 a. m. the garrote began to contract. At 6:11 1/2 a.m. Castillo was pronounced dead.

*PresumabIy the reference is to the agreement of 1901 whereby Cuba was granted independence by the U. S. on condition that she shall never: 1) Conclude a treaty with a foreign power endangering her independence; 2) Contract debts which her current revenues would not suffice to pay; 3) Debar the U. S. from "the right of intervention."