Mother Stuff Fails

When the might of 5,000 U. S. Marines had failed to quell Nicaragua's Patriot-General Augusto Calderon Sandino (TIME, Dec. 31), the last desperate expedient was tried of sending him a letter from his mother.* She begged her son to surrender, and enclosed two letters of sterner but similar purport--one from Marine Commander Brigadier-General Logan Feland, the other from Rear Admiral David F. Sellers, commanding the U. S. war boats in Nicaraguan waters.

Only last week did Admiral Sellers receive a reply from General Sandino, dated "Jan. 1" at the latter's remote headquarters at El Chipote, in the northern wilds of Nicaragua. Excerpts:

". . . Although you say that a continuation of my armed resistance serves no purpose, my resistance alone will bring the benefits to which you allude. . . . To arrive at an effective peace settlement it is indispensable that the American forces withdraw from Nicaragua, . . . Patriotism compels me to repel force by force.

"For country and freedom!"

"A. C. Sandino"

In the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, General Feland was received, last week, by the man who has been elected President of Nicaragua as a result of the election which General Feland has supervised --namely General Jose Maria Moncada. Altogether merry was the meeting. Glasses were raised and their contents lowered. Previously the Nicaraguan Congress had conferred on the General "in gratitude," the rank (not of course the title) of a Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to Nicaragua.

Almost it seemed as though the merrymakers had forgotten General Sandino, still at large and mocking the power of Presidents Moncada and Coolidge. Presently however General Moncada remembered. He said that General Sandino had just proposed to him by letter that Nicaragua split into a northern and a southern republic--the former under Sandino, the latter under Moncada.

"Some Nicaraguans consider Sandino a hero," said President Moncada, "and a few people in other countries regard him as a great patriot. . . . His latest proposal is mere lunacy and constitutes high treason. I shall take steps. . . ."

Intimates of General Sandino denied that he had ever made such a proposal--damned it as "U. S. propaganda"--and waited to see what "steps" can be taken by Jose Maria Moncada which have not already been taken by 5,000 U. S. leathernecks.

*Not only simplest souls but also the most sophisticated still adore this fetish. Thus every night in Manhattan, at David Belasco's new devil-play Mima (TIME, Dec. 24) the audience claps furiously and occasionally cheers when the Arch-Demon's enormous machine for corrupting souls is utterly destroyed and exploded into ruins on the stage by a letter from the hero's mother.