HAITI-THE BLACK REPUBLIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

HAITI-THE BLACK REPUBLIC.

(By CAPTAIN JOHN HOUSTON CRAIGE, U.S.M.C.)

Where U.S. Marines Made History.

Captain Craige, an authority on Latin-American affairs, ! has made an especial study of Haiti. From 1925 to 1928 i he was lent to Haiti by the Marine Corps, and served ' as an officer in the Haitian Gendarmerie, the negro ' constabulary. For most of that period he was chief of ' police of the capital, Port au Prince. The Haitian Govern- i ment awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal. !

r WARDS the eiid of last year orders came from Washington for the Marine Brigade to move, and soon the American Occupation of Haiti, which ], a g controlled the destinies of that country for 19 years, will have passed into history. On every hand stately public buildings rise, constructed by the Americans. The gracious avenues, lined with nodding royal palms, are paved from kerb to kerb with American concrete. An electric lighting plant, constructed in Schenectady, gives efficient illumination to highways and byways. Street-clean-ing gangs, modelled on th? white wings of New York, keep the town immaculate. Malaria, and the mosquitoes that bred it, have been banished by American sanitary experts. Epidemics of disease are a thing of the past.

Streets that once ran red with blood of murder and anarchy are now sleepily serene, patrolled by stalwart black policemen, trained by United States Marines. Despite the world depression the country is fairly prosperous. All its financial obligations have been met as they fell due, and there is a balance in the Treasury, carefully conserved by American financial experts. In the hills voodoo drums beat. African peasants crouch before primitive altars. In 19 years they have been hustled forward in material progress across a gap representing a thousand years in the world's history. Before the Americans came ■■ •omen carried their crops of coffee and cotton to market on their kinky heads. Now automobile trucks, built in Detroit, roar to market over roads laid down by the Yankees. Familiar to Outsiders. Materially, at least, Haiti presents a wonderful picture of the benefits to a backward country which have accrued from taking a dose of Uncle Sam s civilising medicine. Now the medicineman is shutting up his shop. How much of the benefits will the patient be able to retain? Most Americans and Europeans know almost nothing of the Haitian Republic, and probably not one in a thousand is familiar with the momentous experiment in government for the benefit of the governed which the United States has carried on there in the last score of years. Destiny first took me to Haiti _ more than 20 years ago. Since that I have made numerous visits, including one of more than three years' duration when I served as an officer in the negro constabulary, trained by American Marines, which maintains order. When first I saw Port au Prince it was not the beautifully kept city which at present attracts the tourist. I was a young man then, travelling with a huge Louisiana Irishman, Hennessey, on a tiny German tramp steamer. We were voyaging for our health, having just succeeded in beating the Government troops to the ship when a revolution folded up without warning in the country farther sojith. Our ship dropped anchor at night and we engaged a jabbering black boy in a gee-string to take us ashore in the morning. Next day an entirely different Haitian showed up. Hennessey, who spoke Louisiana Creole and was a mine of information on the land, asked why. "Our other boy died last night of fever, he informed me. Apparently death took few holidays in Port au Prince. Ashore, we picked our way through a malodorous marsh of sewage, extending a hundred yards from the water's edge to solid ground. Then we reached the commercial quarter of Port au Prince. This presented a jig-saw puzzle of contrast. Half the buildings were of solid masonry, with thick walls and iron doors and windows, while the_ rest were of flimsy wooden construction, unpaintcd and with walls and roofs cocked at the craziest imaginable angles. Everywhere along the streets were gaps, in which stood the remnants of structures destroyed by fires. There were no sidewalks and not a yard of paved streets existed. In ana out, among deep holes in the streets, wound trails used by pedestrians. Theie were no wheeled vehicles in the city. As we plodded along we noticed the absence of able-bodied males. Hennessey explained that this was because a new revolution was impending. Men caught abroad were likely to be shot at sight, or, failing this, were sure to be enlisted in one army or the other.

White House Victim of Rebels. We made our way inland and presently came to a large open space. In one coi - ner was a ruined building from which u 'nolvO still ascended. "Haitian White

House." Hennessey explained. "We got here just too late to see it blown up. Night before last the Democrats got together with the captain of the President's guard and touched off a couple of tons of dynamite in his cellar. Next day the Democratic candidate was elected-by a unanimous vote of the Legislature. Any legislator who voted against him would have been shot. That is what they call a free election." Leaving Hennessey, wjio had business m the town, and bearing to the east from the ruins of the smouldering palace, I ran into a revolutionary army. I was climbing a peaceful mountain trail when, suddenly, it boiled into view ahead. It was composed in almost equal parts of negroes on foot and negroes on horseback. Hardly any of them had shoes. Some had trousers and coats of bltie cotton. Some had very few. clothes,

indeed. One had a magnificent pair of tan boots. I took him to be the generalissimo. Those of the soldiers who had guns would load and fire when the notion struck them. They would sing together at times, and, at times, burst into roars of laughter about nothing in particular. It looked to mo like a circus parade on a spree. But I was informed that such armies had been known to fight desperately on occasion. Later in the evening, I saw tliia same army executing prisoners. Why they had taken the prisoners I never understood, but, according to the game laws of the country, it appeared that all prisoners were executed. These seemed harmless enough wretches, bound together with straw rope, ankle to ankle. Their captors took them down to the marshes back og Croix de Bossales and shot them in groups of a dozen at a time, then pushed the bodies into the marshes. Haiti Discovered By Columbus. Back in the United States, I ransacked libraries for information concerning Haiti. Haiti, I learned, was discovered by Columbus on his first voyage in 1492. Columbus found on the island an aboriginal race of Indians, who had no money, no law courts, and no word in their langua-ge for work. The Spaniards soon taught these Arcadians about work, but the Indians showed their lack of appreciation by dying off completely within a few generations. Then the Dons imported negro slaves from Africa. In 1007, the French acquired by trcatj approximately what is now the Haitian Republic. They imported African slaves in "Teat numbers, and worked them with unexampled vigour, intelligence and severity. Haiti rewarded their labours by bursting into miraculous bloom. It became the most valuable and wealthy colony ever owned by any European nation. Its exports in 1780 were worth approximately half a billion dollars, fiLured in the values of to-day. Then came the French Reyolutwn. Frenchmen in Paris dedared that a men were free and equal and began killing each other with Gallic abandon to prove their point. The contagion spread to Haiti and soon the colony was aflame with civil war. , , Colonial society in Halt! founded nn slavery. There were about 500,uuu slaves, about 20,000 free mulattoes and about 40,000 white French . Both mulattoes and slaves took part in the revolutionary disturbances. In the en they united under Toussaint 1 Ouverture r„7 ?,„■»<* »p». " h '"'jrai them from the island. In 1805 the revolted .slaves prociaimcd Haiti th first negro republic m the world '"Toussa'nt, meanwhile, had died a prisoner in a French dungeon, bo the first Haitian President was Jean JacqueDessalines, who had been ToussainU lieutenant. Dcssalines liked the rum in his cocktails seasoned with blood and gunpowder and personally si)ipenntended the massacre of thousands ofFrench men, women and children He soon rrj-ew dissatisfied with the title of Piesklent. In 180(5 lie proclaimed lnmsel Emperor and organised Haiti as the firs! empire in the Western hemisphere After a reign of about a year he wa= assassinated in Haiti's first rcvolution Dessalines was succeeded by Chris tophe, a man of much ability, but ar iron despot. Like Dessalines he wa ; not satisfied with being president, bui proclaimed himself king and orgamset the portion of Haiti which he rule as the first Kingdom of the America! continent. He was upset by Haiti: second revolution and committed suicidi with a golden bullet. Revolutions Came Frequently. Other rulers came and went in muc. the same manner. In the period fro'i the independence of Haiti in ISOS un„i the marines landed in 1915, 26 ruler

held power. These included two emperors, one king and 23 presidents. The careers of all but one of these were ended by revolutionary uprisings. Four of them were butchered by mobs, one committed suicide, five died in office from unexplained causes and 15 fled into exile to escape successful revolutionists. Only one president in the history of the republic finished his term and retired peacefully on the constitutional date.

Chaos and disorder became chronic in the Haitian State. The vast plantations and agricultural works created by the French fell into ruins. Aqueducts and roads crumbled. National finances were in a deplorable condition. Business languished and almost disappeared. Despite the natural wealth of the island few of the population could get enough to eat, and actual death from starvation was not uncommon.

"Worst of all was the "Army." At one gillie, this consisted of 1200 generals and less than 300 discoverable privates. The army lived for revolution. When it became time to overthrow a President, thousands of Cacos, or bandits from the mountains, would add themselves to its ranks and march 011 Port au Prince, burning and plundering as they came. The revolutions often have been painted by foreigners in comic colours, but they were not at all funny to the natives. Even a mikl revolution cost from five to ten thousand lives. Sometimes when there was organised resistance, the toll went higher. Thirty thousand are said to have been killed when the town of Petit Goave was sacked and burned in 1902 by order of President Nord Alexis.

In tlio early days of Haitian independence, tlie doings of tlie little country did not greatly concern the outside world. Distances were vast and communications were slow. Then came the submarine telegraph and the wireless. Swift steamships ploughed the sea. Distances grew shorter. Disturbances in Port au Prince were reported net morning with all their harrowing details in the

capitals of the world. Holders of | Haitian bonds began to press their Government for action. On several occasions, foreign fleets trained their guns on the Haitian capital. Threats involving the use of force byEuropean Powers against Haiti produced a strong reaction in the United States. Public opinion considered the tiny black Republic one of America's wards under the Monroe Doctrine. It was American national policy that no foreign Power should be allowed to take action by force against any of these. Affairs came to a climax in July, 1915. A revolution was brewing against President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. According to the Haitian tradition, President Sam should have taken the remaining funds in tlio public treasury and gone aboard a steamer for Jamaica. Instead, he sent his police and arrested many of the leading citizens of the city who he believed were conspiring against him. With them, he gathered up their friends and relatives to the number of IG7, locking them in the grim old national penitentiary. When the revolutionists continued to advance, he sent executioners into their cells who butchered all these captives. When the news of the massacre became public, the populace rose and demanded Sam's life. The palace was stormed and captured and the President wounded in the leg. He fled to the French Legation for sanctuary. The inhabitants of the city were so aroused at Sam's conduct that they broke into the Legation, dragged him out and cut him to pieces in the street. T'he French Government was outraged. It demanded reparation at once. England, France, Italy and Germany were pressing the United States State Department for action on debts owed their citizens. .A United States fleet was in Haitian waters on watch in caso of emergency. President Wilson and his Cabinet felt the emergency had arrived. On July 28, 1915, Admiral Caperton, commanding officer of the American fleet, received orders to disembark his marines and take possession of the strategic points of the Haitian capital. Uncle Sam assured the French' and other foreign Governments that the marines would not be withdrawn until public order had been restored and some measure of regularity introduced into the finances of the country. That afternoon United States - marines landed at Bizoton, a suburb of Port au Prince, and the American occupation of Haiti was under way.— N.A.N.A. (To be continued.)