OLD AND NEW HAVANA

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1607, 14 February 1925, Page 2

OLD AND NEW HAVANA

WHERE GAMBLERS CANNOT HELP WINNING.

Between the three leading islands of the West Indies there is little in common except a dogged determination to keep a traveller from passing, on his lawful occasions, from one to another. It is generally simpler to go from Trinidad to Jamaica by way of England, from Jamaica to Cuba by way of New York or Panama. A quicker passage is not unknown; but, until British shipping companies overhaul their West Indian sailings, it will remain precarious.. Unless a change comes soon, English visitors to the Caribbean will look in vain for historic Havana (declares Stephen McKenna in the Times). They will, indeed, find the narrow., crooked streets, even if the breakneck 20 cent Fords in which everyone goes from one part of the city to another prevent their ever finding their way about them. They will identify Castle Morro and the site of the English landing and the place where the Maine was sunk; but the Spanish city is being enclosed like a fossil and new Havana is surrounding the old in an incrustation that spreads for ten miles. There has been nothing like it in the chequered history of Cuba. What is more interesting, there has been nothing like it in the foreign history of America. When the government of the island was handed over to the Cubans, the United tSates preserved elastic powers of intervention; and, if these are sparingly used, they are always available to guide the stumbling feet of an infant republic and to inspire confidence in the minds of the American capitalists. Ignorant and distrustful of imperialism, but unavoidably responsible for American lives and money, Washington tried t'he delicate experiment of setting up a practical, if unavowed, protectorate; and it is in reliance on this that American freight cars pour into Havana by train ferries from the sea road between Key West and the mainland of Florida. Whether Cuba and the United States would have benefited more by annexation cannot be guessed; but, by the criterion of prosperity, the experiment has been a success. Cuba is stable and orderly; the relations between the Government and the American residents are cordial; the interests of the other powers—notably the British interest in the Havana railways—could be left undisturbed; and Havana, with its American currency and press, its American hotels and its banks, its übiquitous evidence of American enterprise, could hardly have been more completely Americanised if Cuba had been incorporated as a new star in the American flag. The incrustation that constitutes the new city is an American growth. During the boom in the war years sugar rose to fantastic prices; and Cuba enjoyed a brief period of unexampled propserity. The sugar boom led to a land boom as the new riches sought an outlet in new houses; by greater good fortune than usually attends a growing city, the land was laid out 'by an architect of genius; and, though the work is not yet one-quarter finished, the broad, brilliantly-lighted roads, the| double avenidas with their dividing gardens of flowering shrubs, the new houses, hotels, and clubs give a promise of such magnificence and beauty as many dream and few realise. Now Havana will exhibit the luxuriant wealth of Latin America disciplined by the constructiveness of the United States and chastened by the taste of England. Some time must pass before the work is completed, for Cuba is recovering painfully from a financial crisis. Judged by the frenzy of speculation that it caused, the prosperity of the war years has proved a calamity; Havana went mad, and behaved as if famine prices would always rule. When they fell the harbour was packed with American freight ships which could not discharge their cargoes; the docks were piled with goods for which the consignees could not pay; the public services were demoralised, and a vigorous broom has been needed to sweep the island clean. Even now the merchants’ safes are stuffed with worthless paper; the new houses are being sold or left unfinished; Cuban credit is throbbing after its debauch; the domestic and foreign traders walk timorously. It is only a passing phase, for the world will smoke Havana cigars so long as it can pay for them; it will buy Cuban sugar, whether the mills are run by their, old owners or by the banks. The soil is more constant than the heads of those who live by it; and, on such a soil, some one must always be rich. This is well, for Havana is being built for millionaires. During the winter, when American visitors pour souith from Florida, the prices—at no time trifling—are automatically doubled; at all times life is conducted on a golden standard. To live as Havana lives you must be very rich and very, lazy, with an infinite capacity for sitting up all the night. Beyond the new city an American syndicate has built a race track and a casino. What you make with little effort at the first you can lose with even less at the second. You can find out the probable winners from

the bar-tender of your hotel; and, if you are ready to lay the odds, you can hack the favourites, which seldom fail to win. There is no noise from the rails, for the spectators are distributed in armchairs under awnings; there is no roar of the ring, for the bookmakei’s are sheltered in a vast betting hall, and an official messenger carries your stake from the Jockey Club stand and deducts a commission for his trouble. There is no turmoil, for no one visits the paddock; no canvassing of action or condition, for the horses parade at a bugle blast behind a white-coated usher instead of exhausting themselves by galloping down to the post. No one seems to care whether he wins or not; but it is difficult not to win. And in • the casino it is yet more difficult not to lose, for at roulette there is a double zero, and the odds in the other games favour the bank even more strongly. But in Havana, if you did win, you would spend it in some other. At sundown the city stirs expensively to life; it dines and it dances; it watches a match of jai alai (pelota); it gambles on this and on anything else that offers a chance of making money without working for it. Finally, it goes to bed—in daylight. Time has ho meaning, unless it be “ ora Inglesa,” which stands for punctuality; money has no purpose except to spend. Though they live 'together in amity there can hardly be more difference than between the two peoples who preponderate in Cuba; in speech, the •Spanish tongue contends with the lish; in civilisation, the Latin with the Anglo-Saxon; in religion, the unreformed with the reformed; in character, “manana” with “hustle”; in looks and dress and thoughts and habits of life, the south with the north. America may in time prevail oyer Spain, but for the present Spain has conquered her conquerors. May any re-conquest come slowly! Punctuality, efficiency, enterprise, and industry are estimable qualities, but they will alter Cuba beyond recognition. They are the qualities that have made England and America what they are; and that, perhaps, is why English and American visitors surrender with so little protest to the magic of Havana.