"Compromise with Machado"

Only the U. S. State Department still troubled to insist last week that the efforts of sleek, long-faced, socialite U. S. Ambassador Sumner Welles to clean up Cuba's mess of political terror are "unofficial and purely personal."

Seventy leaders of the A. B. C., ablest and largest of Cuba's revolutionary organizations, met secretly in Havana, voted solemnly to accept Mr. Welles as Cuba's mediator. Next day the Machado Government announced that they had secretly accepted Mediator Welles as such two weeks ago. At the news all Cuba rejoiced. Thugs and counter-thugs rested from their shooting, knifing, bombing. Away from Cuba with, his sons and a governess sailed the Government's thug par excellence, bull-necked Major Arsenio ("Butcher") Ortiz, famed for shooting suspects neatly at the base of the brain (TIME, May 29). To friends who hailed him as a good fellow, piled his cabin with roses, "Butcher"' Ortiz said that he plans to reside in Germany almost indefinitely.

Precisely how Sumner Welles will proceed to mediate between Cubans was uncertain. The A. B. C., cautious lest fellow Latins think they had "sold out to Washington," handed Ambassador Welles a stiff little memorandum which he obligingly made public: ''Faithful to its program and conscious of its duties to public opinion, the A. B. C. reserves the right to withdraw from the process of mediation, which it accepts in principle, if this should be excessively prolonged, or if it should assume a trend, in the opinion of the A. B. C., contrary to the interests and ideals of the Cuban people, or if it should be developed under oppressive circumstances [i. e. military intervention by the U. S.]."

As Mr. Welles began to mediate Havana buzzed with rumors that President Gerardo Machado will recreate the office of Vice President (which he abolished five years ago), permit a Vice President to be lawfully elected and resign in favor of the people's choice early in 1934, thus ending his Dictatorship. In Manhattan and Miami last week Cuba's active groups of expatriate rebels sniffed suspiciously at what some called Ambassador Welles's "compromise with Machado," said that they would wait a while before accepting mediation.

No novice at mediation, suave but aggressive Benjamin Sumner Welles first tamed obstreperous Latins as U. S. Special Commissioner to the Dominican Republic in 1922. Later he was rushed on a U. S. cruiser to Honduras, put down a revolution in the banana republic by harshly imposing liberal terms. One of President Roosevelt's first appointments was to make Mr. Welles chief of the State department's Latin American section with the rank of Assistant Secretary of State, but Cuba soon boiled up so hot that he was quickly packed off to Havana as Ambassador.

Rich Mrs. Welles, onetime spouse of former Senator Peter Goelet Gerry, has learned to ignore gruesome Latin threats, no longer winces when some hot-head shrieks at her husband "Murderer!"

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