837.00/4409: Telegram
The Ambassador in Cuba (Welles) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received 12:40 p.m.]
463. Batista has just sent his aide Captain Hernandez to visit me. The ostensible reason for the visit was for me to receive Batista’s assurance that he deeply deplored the attacks which were being made in governmental circles against the United States and against this Embassy in particular and to advise me that neither he himself nor the members of his staff had any participation in those attacks nor had any belief in the allegations made. The statement was further made [Page 523] by Captain Hernandez that the false and malicious propaganda which was being spread was solely the work of the civilians close to Dr. Grau. It was plain, however, that Batista is very much exercised as to my own views concerning the present situation in the light of the announcement made this morning of my intended conference with the President at Warm Springs on Sunday.
I requested Captain Hernandez to advise Colonel Batista that I appreciated his message and his assurances and that I could only repeat what I had previously said personally to Colonel Batista, namely, that at a moment like this in order to prevent further disturbances and to permit the Cuban people to have confidence in their government and to devote their energies until such time as elections could be held for a new constitutional government towards a reconstruction of their shattered national economy, it should be the purpose of every patriotic Cuban to find through compromise some satisfactory arrangement as the result of which a government in Cuba might be constituted which would be responsive to the natural will and capable of providing guarantees to all Cubans. Hernandez assured me that this was Batista’s own desire and that he more than any one else realized the necessity of it. He further informed me that Batista was already working towards that end.