232 CRUISE OF THE BARRERA 



accepted some cigarettes as proof of friendship but 

 not as pay for the water. 



The greater part of this rich land is owned by 

 absentee landlords. There can be no high degree 

 of stability, political, social, or otherwise, in a 

 land where the masses of the people do not own 

 their own homes. The peasant farmer, who can 

 sit in the shade of his own fig tree after his work 

 is done, thinks twice before he will exchange his 

 plow for a rifle in the cause of some plausible 

 orator who wishes to be president. Cuba must 

 encourage the small ownership of land in her popu- 

 lation for no less reason than for her stability as 

 a nation, even though the system may not make 

 for the ' ' economic efficiency ' ' of large estates. It 

 is enough for any country that its manufactures 

 should be corporate owned and controlled, possibly 

 even better that they should be, but it is not good 

 to make peons of peasants. 



The rank and file of the Cuban population is 

 not warlike, nor even disputatious. They merely 

 ask for security and an opportunity to make a 

 living. They are, however, impressionable and 

 temperamental. An orator too easily lashes them 

 into frenzy with a stock-in-trade recital of their 



