In latin american relations, Woodrow Wilson sought to revolutionize United States policy by supplanting the “Big Stick ”diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt and the “Dollar Diplomacy ”of William H. Taft with a new Pan Americanism. He not only reiterated his desire to be a good neighbor in numerous speeches, particularly his famous Mobile address of October, 1913, but he even formulated a Pan American Pact to promote hemispheric unity by providing for mutual sovereign and territorial respect. His pact failed largely because of the nationalistic opposition of Chile, and his grand design, though cropping up later in the League of Nations idea, ultimately went the way of all Utopian dreams. Then, since Wilson turned his attention to European and domestic affairs, it remained for his three successive secretaries of state, William Jennings Bryan, Robert Lansing, and Bainbridge Colby, to face the realities of Latin American relations and to apply their own policies in dealing with the immediate problems, especially of the smaller republics. Though each man predicated his policies upon Wilson’s promises of friendship as far as possible, and referred critical problems to the president, each generally left the imprint of his own beliefs and personality on hemispheric relations.

Bryan was sympathetic with the president’s goal of the brotherhood of nations, but he conceived his own plan for resolving international conflicts by proposing that all nations sign bilateral arbitration treaties and then submit their differences for at least a year’s consideration to an international arbitral board. He believed that if nations could be deterred from a hasty resort to arms, they would either “cool off ”while awaiting the decision or have their problem solved. But, Bryan, like Wilson, was not to achieve his larger objective because of nationalistic opposition, and he had to do what he could as a “Good Samaritan ”to help all nations become, like the United States, constitutionally sound republics.

The Seven Years’ war brought an end to almost 200 years of Spanish residence in Florida. Following the 1763 Treaty of Paris which settled the long and costly conflict between Great Britain and the Bourbon Family Compact (France and Spain), all Spanish possessions in North America east and southeast of the Mississippi River, were ceded to His Britannic Majesty, George III of England. Because Havana, Cuba, had capitulated to a British invasion in the summer of 1762, Marqués de Grimaldi, the Spanish plenipotentiary at Paris, reluctantly relinquished Florida to England in order to recover the Caribbean Island for His Catholic Majesty, Charles III. The treaty of Paris thus reduced Spain’s territorial holdings in the Americas. However, since the Spaniards were determined to leave to the British Crown an empty and unpopulated colony, all the population and portable possessions of Spanish Florida were transported to other areas of the Hispanic Indies.

Students of the life and writings of José Martí y Pérez (1853–1895), the National Hero of Cuba, will be forever indebted to the lifelong efforts of Marti’s close friend, fellow revolutionist, and “literary heir,” Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, and to those of his son, Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda. Through painstaking research and editing they have preserved, over a period of nearly seventy years, the record of Martí’s prodigious writings as a revolutionist, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and poet. It is no exaggeration to say that most of the writing on this remarkable Cuban is derived from their carefully edited collections of his works. Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, as one of the architects of Cuban independence, Cuba’s first Minister to the United States, and major participant in the early International Conferences of American States, is deserving of special attention by scholars in the Americas. Now that a third official edition of Marti’s writings is nearing completion by Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda in Cuba, a biographical and bibliographical sketch of the Quesadas, father and son, is in order.

The Nearness of Cuba to the United States, lying as it does a scant ninety miles from the coast of Florida, has always provided a strong reason for American preoccupation with the “Pearl of the Antilles.” This geographic proximity has been a source of political consideration and concern for over a century. The historical roots of the western hemisphere, with Columbus’ landings in the Caribbean, the Spanish, English, and French colonization and imperialism, and our own interest, expressed most notably in the Monroe Doctrine, have kept Cuba central in our thoughts. Our continued interest during the twentieth century, following the removal of Spanish control from the island at the turn of the century, has intensified through the years, partly because its sugar has been important to our economy, and partly because the island has become politically unfriendly in the past decade.

This book is a major study of one of the most serious problems of the Church in Latin America today, the shortage of priests, by the Secretary General of the Latin-American College of Louvain University. Ten years have been devoted to research, and this effort is reflected in the extensive bibliography, numerous statistical tables, and the wide range of facts contained in the text. In a word, this study is a notable effort to understand and explain the lack of priests in an area which is traditionally looked upon as Catholic.

Archbishop Ramón Casaus y Torres arrived in the Captaincy General of Guatemala in July, 1811. At this time events in Spain blanketed with confusion the lines of authority to the colonies. And in the colonies factions had begun to form, favoring local control until the return of Ferdinand VII. In Mexico fear of just such a faction impelled influential Peninsulars and creoles to depose Viceroy Iturrigaray, providing precedent for Miguel Hidalgo’s Grito de Dolores. As bishop of Oaxaca, Casaus y Torres witnessed these events; and as a fiercely loyal Peninsular, he issued a scathing denunciation of Hidalgo. Casaus thus had taken his position before he came to Guatemala. Shortly after he arrived in the capital, uprisings occurred in San Salvador, León, Granada, and Guatemala City. Predictably, Casaus y Torres supported the action of Captain General José de Bustamante.