1929, December 7 – 1930, February 28: (A Palliative, Not a Remedy: The Cayes Massacre Aftermath, Hoover’s Promise, and the Forbes Commission Arrives): The Na…

1929, December 7 – 1930, February 28: (A Palliative, Not a Remedy: The Cayes Massacre Aftermath, Hoover’s Promise, and the Forbes Commission Arrives): The Nation quickly dubbed the killings at Les Cayes the Cayes Massacre, and the issue went beyond any justification of self-defense — in the later words of Dean Acheson, a free people cannot long steel itself to dominate another people by sheer force. On December 7, even as the strike quickly collapsed in the face of the Marines’ show of force and a round of flag-showing by U.S.S. Galveston sent from Guantánamo Bay, President Hoover — who since his March 1929 inauguration had been searching for a way to get out of Haiti — asked Congress to establish a commission to determine when and how to withdraw and what to do in the meantime. Within ten days martial law and curfew were lifted, papers were again published, the Damien dispute was settled, and Dr. Freeman was on his way out. On February 7, 1930, Hoover named a five-man Commission for the Study and Review of Conditions in Haiti, named for its senior member W. Cameron Forbes — distinguished Boston lawyer, former governor-general of the Philippines, and recognized colonial expert — who wryly confided to his diary that what his mission was to be was laid out for him in no uncertain terms. The Forbes Commission arrived in Port-au-Prince on February 28, 1930, welcomed by a nineteen-gun salute, banners courtesy of the Union Patriotique calling for an end to the occupation, and a special English-language edition of Le Nouvelliste taking a similar line. The next afternoon General and Mrs. Russell held a reception for the commission, a function boycotted by a number of invited Haitians — some recipients chose the columns of La Presse to print replies whose tenor can be judged from that of Roumain: Nègre Jacques Roumain does not deign to associate with whites.