The Cubans willingly recognise that the Americans have performed an excellent work in education and finance, but accuse them of having provoked in political life a corruption analogous to that of the leaders or bosses of Tammany Hall, which replaces violence by fraud. It is difficult to speak of such a matter, but perhaps the reaction against these dangerous methods was insufficient. In 1906, after four years of independent life, President Estrada Palma demanded intervention. It must be recognised that the Americans did not respond without some uneasiness. Mr. Roosevelt, in a letter to the Cuban diplomatist Gonzalo de Quesada, gave some admirable advice: "I solemnly exhort the Cuban patriots," he said, "to form a close union, to forget their personal differences and ambitions, and to remember that they have one means of safeguarding the independence of the Republic: to evade, at all costs, the necessity of foreign intervention, intended to deliver them from civil war and anarchy." Heedless of the voice of the shepherd of the American people, they asked him to put an end to the long quarrel between the liberals and the moderates. The Americans occupied the island for a year; Mr. Taft, the new President, was one of the pacificators. It is difficult to judge whether the anarchical inhabitants of the island have gained ground since the departure of the Americans. One of their most remarkable politicians, Señor Mendez Capote, believes that in Cuba--and more generally {321} in any very young country where the government has need of an unfailing authority in order to check discord--representatives of one or both parties ought to belong to the Cabinet in order to render political life less changeable and to decrease its contrasts.[4] This organisation is impossible in a democracy which passes alternately from revolt to dictatorship. Some Cubans, satisfied with the material progress effected, would prefer annexation. Others, and among them one of the most remarkable writers of the country, Señor Jesus Castellanos, are never tired, remembering their happy intervention, of calling the United States, "the great sister Republic." Certainly the States have given Cuba autonomy, but was it not a treacherous gift? _Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_. The historic interest of Cuba for the Americans is to-day increased by imperialistic ambitions. A Harvard professor, Mr. Coolidge, writes in a book already cited: "A glance at the map is enough to show us how important the island is to the United States. Of great value by virtue of its natural resources and its temperate climate, it is strategically the key to the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi Valley terminates facing the Caribbean Sea and the future Panama Canal. Its situation is comparable to that of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean."