For about a week the fiercest storm that Mr. Taft had ever encountered raged about his head. His one immediate desire was to avoid bloodshed. His investigations proved that no real obstacle to tranquillity, or to compromise, existed and he made every effort to induce the Cubans to settle their differences on high nonpartisan grounds, each yielding something to the other for the sake of the general good. But he found very little interest in the “general good.” Indeed, all through his despatches during those days there runs a complaint that except with President Palma and a few others patriotism was not very apparent, that petty jealousies and personal ambitions, often of a brazen or a sordid nature, constituted the chief secret of all the dissension and strife.