Some efforts to deal with Dominican problems led to more general charges. The Bosch administration tried to cut unemployment by hiring as many government employees as could fit into office space, and by swelling the payrolls of government controlled industries. Bosch then was charged with inefficiency and over-bureaucratization. Yet his alternative was still more unemployment.

Attacks on the Dominican government were by no means limited to conservatives. There was also considerable discontent among those who had elected Bosch. He had, they felt, failed to live up to his campaign promises of economic equality.

Nevertheless, despite the heavy pressure from right and left, Bosch might have stayed in power. But his administration suffered from a momentous strategic flaw: the president's inflexibility. During his years of exile, Bosch's political sense was developed from textbook democracy and the model of United States politics. As a result, Bosch tried to rule from theory, not from pragmatic understanding of Dominican needs.

Bosch and the Military

Typically unyielding were his relations with the military. In July, while riding to the air base for a speech, he was assured by various military officers that he had their "full support against extremist groups in the country." He curtly told them to mind their own business. The military is apolitical and should take no stand either for or against the government, he explained. Such tactlessness was hardly likely to encourage the military to remain apolitical. From July on, the Dominican "elitist alliance" was only concerned with the timing of the coup and with the hope of quick American recognition.

Finally, on September 25, Bosch was overthrown.

Today, after 32 years of dictatorship, the Dominican people have been asked to chart their own future. Many of their present concerns reflect a society allowed to examine itself for the first time. Involved in such thought are the most fundamental questions of man and his relation to society. A chief issue of the summer, for example, became whether illegitimate children deserve equal status under the law.

With the assassination of Trujillo, Dominican society found itself cut loose from the only foundation it had ever known, the feudal supports of personal power and privilege. Present turmoil in the Dominican Republic is at bottom a struggle to define a system of values and law. The only hope for stability rests with the elite; they must shed the remnants of a feudal mentality and develop some sense of social responsibility. If not, stability can only come after violent revolution.