the southern part of Haiti with his father, especially the towns of Port-au-Prince and Jacamel, and he was struck with the difference in the people. Cap Haitien is a working town and its people are higher grade than the dwellers in the southern part of the republic. The south, however, is more populous. Haiti is thickly inhabited, with 2,500,000 people, of whom only 5,000 are foreigners, and of these, not more than 1,000 are whites. The island is incredibly fertile. A century and a quarter ago it was rich, and could be rich again. Its coffee crop, alone, could bring in ample wealth.

To Stuart's eyes, coffee was everywhere. The carts were loaded with coffee, the sacks the negroes carried were coffee-sacks, the shining green berries were exposed to dry on stretches of sailcloth in vacant lots, among the ruins on the sides of the streets. Haitian coffee is among the best in the world, but the Haitian tax is so high that the product cannot be marketed cheaply, the American public will not pay the high prices it commands, and nearly all the crop is shipped to Europe.

"Look at that coffee!" Stuart's father had exclaimed, just a week before. "Where do you suppose it comes from, Stuart? From cultivated plantations? Very little of it. Most of the crop is picked from half-wild shrubs which are the descendants of the carefully planted and cultivated shrubs which still linger on the plantations established under French rule, a century and a half ago. A hundred years of negro power in Haiti has stamped deterioration, dirt and decay on the island."

"But that'll all change, now we've taken charge of the republic!" had declared Stuart, confident that the golden letters "U. S." would bring about the millennium.

His father had wrinkled his brows in perplexity and doubt.

"It would change, my boy," he said, "if America had a free hand. But she hasn't."

"Why not?"

"Because, officially, we have only stepped in to help the Haitians arrive at 'self-determination.' The treaty calls for our aid for ten years, with a possibility of continuing that protection for another ten years. But we're not running the country, we're only policing it and advising the Haitians as to how things should be handled."

"Do you think they'll learn?"

"To govern themselves, you mean? Yes. To govern themselves in a civilized manner? No. I wouldn't go so far as to say that slavery or peonage are the only ways to make the up-country Haitian negro work, though a good many people who have studied conditions here think so.

"The program of the modern business man in Haiti is different: Make the negro discontented with his primitive way of living, give him a taste for unnecessary luxuries, teach him to envy his neighbor's wealth and covet his neighbor's goods, and then make him work in order to earn the money to gratify these wishes, and civilization will begin.

"Mark you, Stuart, I don't say that I endorse this program, I'm only telling you, in half-a-dozen words, what it really is. It is sure, though, that when the black man rules, he relapses into savagery; when he obeys a white master, he rises toward civilization."

Stuart remembered this, now, as he sat outside the café, and looked pridefully at the tents of the U. S. Marines in the distance. He realized that American improvements in the coast towns had not changed the nature of the Haitian negro, or creole, as he prefers to be called.

Under his father's instruction, the boy had studied Haitian history, and he knew that the Spaniards had ruled by fear, the French had ruled by fear, the negro emperors and presidents had ruled by fear, and, under the direct eye of the U. S. Marines, Haiti is still ruled by fear. In a dim way—for Stuart was too young to have grasped it all—the boy felt that this was not militarism, but the discipline necessary to an undeveloped race.

Only the year before, Stuart himself had been through an experience which brought the innate savagery of the Haitian vividly before his eyes. He had been in Port-au-Prince when the Cacos undertook to raid the town, seize the island, and sweep the United States Marines into the sea. And, as he had heard a Marine officer tell his father, but for a chance accident, they might have succeeded.

In October, 1919, Charlemagne Peralte, the leader of the Cacos, was killed by a small punitive party of U. S. Marines. The Cacos may be described as Haitian patriots or revolutionists, devotees of serpent and voodoo worship, loosely organized into a secret guerilla army. They number at least 100,000 men, probably more. About one-half of the force is armed with modern rifles. The headquarters of the Cacos is in the mountain country in the center of the island, above the Plain of Cul-de-Sac, where no white influence reaches. No one who knew Haitian conditions doubted that revenge would be sought for Charlemagne's death, and all through the winter of 1919-1920, the Marines were on the alert for trouble.

The Cacos leadership had devolved upon Benoit, a highly educated negro, who had secured the alliance of "the Black Pope" and Chu-Chu, the two lieutenants of Charlemagne. Upon Benoit fell the duty of "chasing the white men into the sea" and exterminating the Americans, just as Toussaint l'Ouverture drove the English, and Dessalines, Christophe and Pétion drove the French, a century before.

Nearly four years of American occupation had passed. That the purpose of the United States was purely philanthropic was not—and is not—believed by the vast majority of the Haitians. Though living conditions have improved vastly, though brigandage on the plains has ceased, and though terrorism has diminished, at heart only the Haitian merchants and job-holders like the American occupation. The educated Creoles tolerate it. The semi-savages of the hills resent it.

On January 16, some of the white men in Port-au-Prince noticed that the Creoles were excited and nervous. At the Café Bordeaux, at the Seaside Inn, at the Hotel Bellevue, strange groups met and mysterious passwords were exchanged. Sullen and latent hostility was changing from smouldering rancor to flaming hate. Port-au-Prince was ripe for revolt.

Stuart remembered his father's return that night.

"Son," he had said, putting a revolver on the little table beside his bed, "I hope you won't have to use this, but, at least, I've taught you to shoot straight."

That night, Benoit, gathering up the local detachments of his forces, moved them in scattered groups through the abandoned plantations and off the main roads to the outskirts of the city. He had over 1,800 men with him. Most had modern rifles. All had machetes. All over the island other bands were in readiness, their orders being to wait until they heard of the fall of Port-au-Prince, when the massacre of all whites might begin.

Benoit's plan was to take the city at daybreak. At midnight, he started three columns of 300 men each, from three directions. They wandered into the city by twos and threes, taking up positions. Their orders were, that, at the firing of a gun at daybreak, when the stores opened, they were to rush through the business district, setting fires everywhere and killing the white men and the gendarmerie. Benoit believed that, while his men could not withstand a pitched battle with the Marines, they could sweep the town in guerilla fashion when the Marines were scattered here and there, putting out fires. Moreover, the Cacos general was sure that, once a massacre of the whites was begun, race hatred would put all the black population on his side.

Two o'clock in the morning came. Mr. Elliott, manager of a sugar refinery at Hascoville, a suburb two miles out