1922, March 10: (Russell’s Proconsulship Begins: The North Dakota, the Smell of Port-au-Prince, and the Egyptian Parallel): On March 10, 1922, while the old …

1922, March 10: (Russell’s Proconsulship Begins: The North Dakota, the Smell of Port-au-Prince, and the Egyptian Parallel): On March 10, 1922, while the old battleship North Dakota plowed steadily down the Gulf of La Gonâve toward Port-au-Prince, General Russell, aft in the flag cabin, removed his starched whites and turned in as the land breeze brought Haiti’s pungent presence — charcoal fires, dung, frangipanis, overripe mangoes, and the distant tap of drums — in through the open ports. His mind dropped back to 1893, when as a midshipman aboard U.S.S. Atlanta he had first seen and smelled Port-au-Prince, which in his journal he had called the dirtiest city he had ever seen, expressing the hope he would never visit the country again — however, inexorable Fate decreed otherwise. Next morning the American High Commissioner went ashore, greeted by the magistrat communal, a smart honor guard of gendarmes, the palace band, and the Port-au-Prince crowd that had cheered many another new ruler of Haiti. There was no Te Deum, but the mounted Gendarmerie escort and burnished Ford touring car clattered authoritatively up Rue des Fronts Forts, past the cathedral where the French Fathers watched impassively, and thence to the American legation. Secretary Hughes had written in Russell’s instructions that the history of American intervention in Haitian affairs was not viewed with satisfaction by this Government — it was with these words before him that Russell issued his first directive. The treaty services were reorganized: all correspondence by treaty officials with the Haitian government, Washington, or each other would pass over the high commissioner’s desk, and no statement of policy, project of law, or budget item would issue save by Russell’s writ. The president, his ministers, and the Conseil d’État would not enjoy much power — behind official pomp, invariably and tactfully sustained by the high commissioner, stood American officials who would direct the affairs of Haiti. An imperial analogy well known to Russell suited the case closely: Cromer’s account of British administration in Egypt, in which one alien race, the English, had to control and guide a second alien race, the Turks, by whom they were disliked, in the government of a third race, the Egyptians — if applied to the Americans, the elite, and the peasants, the parallel was nearly exact. Yet there was another dimension: back in 1920, with Batraville barely cold in his grave, Russell had issued an order he would reaffirm as high commissioner — where the duty of officers brought them in contact with the Haitian people, such duty would be performed with a minimum of harshness and a regard for decency and human kindness, for no people with any spirit could view the presence of troops of another nation as anything other than a heavy blow to their pride.