1914–1915: (Farnham the Dangerous Counselor: Wall Street Whispers and the German Pretext): Farnham — in some senses an American Spenser St.

1914–1915: (Farnham the Dangerous Counselor: Wall Street Whispers and the German Pretext): Farnham — in some senses an American Spenser St. John — in his own words afforded Bryan insights somewhat different from the view one obtains from regular official reports. Dana Munro remarked that he was a dangerous counselor, and it gives ample testimony to Bryan’s credulity that, archpriest though he was of populism, he allowed his policies to be manipulated by a Wall Street banker who viewed Haiti across the ledgers of the National City Bank. A favorite theme of Farnham’s was that European intervention could be forestalled only if Washington was prepared to preempt Paris and especially Berlin — a proposition that gained credibility from Germany’s past brutalization of Haiti, from commercial penetration and political meddling, and from hardly disguised German aspirations toward the Môle and at least a share in customs control. The synchronous opening in 1914 of World War I and of the Panama Canal heightened U.S. concern over the West Indies as well as American sensitivity toward what Germany evidently saw as its special position in Haiti — as the war went on, this sensitivity changed to suspicion. It was against this background that the United States sought Haitian assent to customs receivership, with Bryan’s instructions including a regiment of Marines poised to take charge of Port-au-Prince. Ever since mid-1914, the Navy Department maintained contingency plans for taking over the capital — such plans did not indicate long-matured secret designs to subjugate Haiti, but merely that Haiti’s instability, political degeneration, and sanguinary history made it a place of concern to planners who prudently anticipated events.