The Patriot Army

Weyler's Barbarity

gave themselves to the patriot army, which fought without pay and often without food. When the army was without arms and ammunition, as often happened, it eluded the Spanish columns, and the men scattered, to return later to an appointed rendezvous. Whenever able, it made sudden attacks on Spanish garrisons or upon the marching Spanish columns. The Cuban army could not fight great battles, because there never were enough arms to equip a large force at one time; but the harassing attacks of the small bodies of patriots were so audacious and frequent that the Spanish officers despaired of reducing the rebellion by any other means than starvation.

Consequently, in her extremity Spain resorted to barbarous measures for the suppression of the rebellion. It was believed in Madrid that Governor-General Campos was too mild for the emergency; so General Weyler was sent to take his place. Weyler already had a record for unexceeded mercilessness, and was popularly known as "the butcher." He straightway instituted new methods, which were based upon the deliberate purpose of making Cuba such a desert that the Cuban army could not obtain the least subsistence.

In pursuance of this plan he ordered his soldiers to burn the buildings and the ripening crops on all the estates. All the farming population throughout the island were driven from their homes by his guerrillas, and were gathered in the heavily garrisoned cities, where they were huddled within great pens called trochas." These expulsions, and the long marches

War upon the Homes

Spanish "Peace"

of the weary and fainting people from their homes to the distant garrisons, were so pitiful as to stir the hearts of all except the most incorrigible.

It became a war not only upon men, but also upon women and children. Its horrors seemed to bring back the days of Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. The Spanish soldiers, exasperated by the lack of success in the field against the armed patriots, attacked hospitals and murdered the wounded and sick, just as in July, 1898, their sharpshooters around Santiago shot the wounded American soldiers.

When residents of Cuba, loyal to Spain, protested against these outrages they were considered to be traitors and were also shot.

These things are not from the history of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands; they occurred in 1896 and 1897, almost within sight of the United States.

While the Spanish soldiers were perpetrating these deeds, General Weyler was declaring to his Government that Cuba was almost pacified; he was making it a desert and calling it peace.

Of course the Spanish denied many of the reports of personal outrages which were sent from Cuba by American and English observers. But there was no attempt to deny the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of the poor "reconcentrados," as the people driven from their homes to the cities by the soldiers were called; their beggary, and their starving to death in the streets of the cities, where they had been driven as into prison-pens, were too evident,

Senator Proctor's Observations

of the "Reconcentrados"

Senator Proctor of Vermont, who went to Cuba early in 1898, to satisfy himself of what was being done, addressed the Senate of the United States upon the subject. The character of the man and the deliberation with which he spoke carried conviction to the country. A few sentences from this address must suffice, but they are full of meaning.

He said: "I saw no house or hut for four hundred miles of railroad. They had lived in cabins made of palms, or in wooden houses. Some of them had houses of stone, the blackened walls of which are all that remain to show that the country was ever inhabited. . In the trochas they were allowed to build huts of palm-leaves. They have no floor but the ground, no furniture, and but little clothing.

"The commonest sanitary provisions are impossible. Conditions are unmentionable in this respect. With foul earth, foul air, foul water, and foul food or none, it is not strange that one half have died and that one quarter of the living are now so diseased that they cannot be saved.

"Little children are walking about with arms and chests terribly emaciated, eyes swollen, and abdomen bloated to three times the natural size. The physicians say their cases are hopeless.

Deaths in the

They have

street have not been uncommon. been found dead about the markets in the morning, where they have crawled in the hope of getting some stray bits of food.

"These people were independent and self-support

Famine and Death

ing before.

Cubans at Disadvantage

They have not learned the art of

begging. Rarely is a hand held out to you for alms when going among their huts, but the sight of them makes an appeal stronger than words.

worse.

"I saw a hospital in Havana where four hundred women and children were lying on stone floors in an indescribable state of emaciation and disease, many with the scantiest covering of rags,-and such rags! "And the conditions in other cities were even Two hundred thousand have died within these Spanish prison walls within a few months. It is unnecessary to extend the details of the distressing narrative: it is the story of men but half clothed and half fed, ignorant and simple, fighting in the bushes for freedom; their wives and children dead or dying of starvation and abuse; their fields untilled and their homes in ruins; the whole of their beautiful island laid desolate; the future as dark as an eternal night; yet refusing all overtures, and pressing on without hesitation either to victory or else to utter extermination.

Much has been said against the Cubans to show that they are incapable of self-government. Many of these charges are true. They are poor; they are ignorant, not more than one tenth having received any education at all; they are not accustomed to manage their own affairs; they have had no chance; they have been without schools; no high ideals have been held up to them; they have been robbed of their property and their freedom and their self-respect by a blind Govern