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The articles and documents in this pamphlet wereprinted in The Nation during the summer of 1920.They revealed for the first time to the world the nature ofthe United States' imperialistic venture in Haiti. While,owing to the censorship, the full story of this fundamentaldeparture from American traditions has not yet been told,it appears at the time of this writing, October, 1920, that"pitiless publicity" for our sandbagging of a friendly andinoffensive neighbor has been achieved. The report ofMajor-General George Barnett, commandant of the MarineCorps during the first four years of the Haitian occupation,just issued, strikingly confirms the facts set forth by TheNation and refutes the denials of administration officialsand their newspaper apologists. It is in the hope that byspreading broadly the truth about what has happened inHaiti under five years of American occupation The Nationmay further contribute toward removing a dark blot fromthe American escutcheon, that this pamphlet is issued.
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TO know the reasons for the present political situationin Haiti, to understand why the United States landedand has for five years maintained military forces in thatcountry, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, andchildren have been shot down by American rifles and machineguns, it is necessary, among other things, to knowthat the National City Bank of New York is very muchinterested in Haiti. It is necessary to know that the NationalCity Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti andis the depository for all of the Haitian national funds thatare being collected by American officials, and that Mr. R. L.Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, is virtuallythe representative of the State Department in mattersrelating to the island republic. Most Americans have theopinion—if they have any opinion at all on the subject—thatthe United States was forced, on purely humanegrounds, to intervene in the black republic because of thetragic coup d'etat which resulted in the overthrow and deathof President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and the execution ofthe political prisoners confined at Port-au-Prince, July 27-28,1915; and that this government has been compelled tokeep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify thecountry and maintain order.
The fact is that for nearly a year before forcible interventionon the part of the United States this governmentwas seeking to compel Haiti to submit to "peaceable" intervention.Toward the close of 1914 the United States notifiedthe government of Haiti that it was disposed to recognizethe newly-elected president, Theodore Davilmar, as soonas a Haitian commission would sign at Washington "satisfactoryprotocols" relative to a convention with the UnitedStates on the model of the Dominican-American Convention.On December 15, 1914, the Haitian government, throughits Secretary of Foreign Affairs, replied: "The Governmentof the Republic of Haiti