A. D. Hall

“ We are a people entirely Spanish, and we were born to a civilized life under a flag that was, and we hope ever will be, that of our wives and children. For four hundred years the warmth of the mother of our native country has given life to our organisms, ideas to our brains, majestic thoughts to our souls, and generous undertakings to our hearts, and in those four centuries the glories of the Spanish house have been our glories, her gayeties our gayeties, and her misfortunes our own misfortunes. ”

“ The deaths have occurred in ghastly numbers. More than two hundred thousand have perished from starvation and starvation alone, with no hand from the government stretched out to aid them. The record made by the butcher and the butcher's emissaries is without parallel in all history. No wonder that the United States held its breath in horror, before raising its mailed hand to strike forever the chains from this suffering people.
General Weyler did not care how deeply he should wade in blood, nor to what age or sex this blood belonged, so long as he should attain his ends. ”

“ Porto Ricans! the moment is rising when not a single man of this country gives a step backwards, as it is said commonly; the hour of organizing ourselves for defense is sounded. The Spanish lion has shaken his dishevelled mane, and our duties calls us around him. Our temper is to fight, and we shall fight. Our fate is to overpower, and we shall overpower. Honor imposes upon us the obligation of saving home, and we shall save it in this land of our loves. ”

“ Not until her machetes shall have been returned to their original use can Cuba develop the riches bestowed upon her by Nature. After the dawn of peace, when her sons are free to settle down to the tranquil life of the untrammeled husbandman, there will be no hunted exiles in the long grass of her savannas. When Cuba has attained the quiet calm that her younger generation has never known, she will show the world that it was not for idle brigands that Maceo died. ”

“ To-day the flag of the United States floats as an emblem of undisputed authority over the island of Porto Rico, giving promise of protection to life, of liberty, prosperity and the right to worship God in accordance with the dictates of conscience. The forty five States represented by the stars emblazoned on the blue field of that flag unite in vouchsafing to you prosperity and protection as citizens of the American Union.
"Your future destiny rests largely with yourselves. Respect the rights of each other. ”

“ Campos was fat, good-natured, wise, philosophical, slow in his mental processes, clear in his judgment, emphatic in his opinions, outspoken and withal, lovable, humane, conservative, constructive, progressive, with but one object ever before him, the glorification of Spain as a motherland and a figure among peaceful, enlightened nations. Weyler is lean, diminutive, shriveled, ambitious for immortality, irrespective of its odor, a master of diplomacy, the slave of Spain for the glory of sitting at the right of her throne, unlovable, unloving, exalted. ”

“ Such is the imperialism that has become interwoven with the destiny of our great free Government, and it will be welcomed by our people regardless of party lines, and will command the commendation of the enlightened powers of the Old World, as it rears, for the guidance of all, the grandest monuments of freedom as the proclaimed policy and purpose of the noblest Government ever reared by a man or blessed by Heaven. ”

“ Can the Cubans, if they obtain freedom, govern themselves, or will not a free Cuba become a second Hayti with all the horrors of that island?
To this our reply is: Most emphatically Cuba will be able to govern herself; not in the beginning, perhaps, where mistakes must of necessity be made, but most certainly in the end.
The Cuban leaders are men of high intelligence and lofty purposes, and they know what reforms must be instituted. Some one has said that "love of liberty is the surest guarantee of representative government." ”

“ Before North American people carry their boldness so far as to tread our sea-coasts it is necessary that we must be ready to receive them; that they may find in every Porto Rican an inexorable enemy, in every heart a rock, in each arm a weapon to drive them away; that that people feels that here it is detested intensely, and that Porto Rica's spirit is Spanish, and she will ever be so; therefore, inhabitants of Guayama, we invite you for a meeting at the Town House next Tuesday and offer our kind offices to the government, who will give us arms. ”

“ I can assure your highnesses that so much care would not have been taken in securing our effects in any part of Spain, as all our property was put together in one place near his palace, until the houses which he wanted to prepare for the custody of it were emptied. He immediately placed a guard of armed men, who watched during the whole night, and those on shore lamented as if they had been much interested in our loss. The people are so affectionate, so tractable and so peaceable, that I swear to your highnesses that there is not a better race of men nor a better country in the world. ”

“ Every extension of our territory hitherto made has been resisted by a spirit the same in essence as that which now timidly opposes our improving the wonderful opportunities put in our hands by the happy fortune of war; but such opposition has failed of its purpose invariably hitherto, and it will fail now with the American people. The sacrifices of the war will not have been in vain and the victories won by the valor of our navy and army will not fail of their legitimate and well-earned points. ”

“ They persisted in closing the magnificent harbors of Cuba to the commerce of the rest of the world, and that, too, when Spain could not begin to use the products of the island. Still she could not and would not allow one bit of gold to slip from between her fingers. She has always held on with eager greed to all that she could lay her hands on. It is certainly food for the unrestrained laughter of gods and men that she has recently been sneering at the United States as a nation of traders and money grubbers. ”

“ The second great menace to the future of the Porto Rican people is the danger of an outbreak of violence and intolerance on the part of one section of your people against another; the danger of insular turning against peninsular; of Porto Rican turning against Spaniard, with the torch and dagger, to avenge himself for the wrongs and oppressions, real or imaginary, which have so long characterized the Spanish domination in this beautiful island. ”

“ We no longer desire the annexation of Cuba. The present war is a holy war. It has been entered into wholly and entirely from motives of philanthropy, to give to a suffering and downtrodden people the blessings of freedom which we ourselves enjoy.
Moreover, the manifesto clearly shows that the causes of Cuban uprising are of no recent date; and that, before the United States rose in its wrath, it was patient and long-suffering. ”

“ The Massachusetts carried three troops of cavalry from New York and Pennsylvania to Porto Rico and the events of the voyage have been thus narrated by an eye-witness:
"With the penetrating of the tropics come days of languor and nights of inactivity so delicious it seems profanation to move. More than one thousand men, who boarded the Massachusetts with the vigor of the North in their veins, have succumbed, one by one, to the lethargy of the soft breeze of the Bahamas. ”

“ War is justifiable, when waged, as the present one unquestionably is, from purely unselfish motives, simply from a determination to rescue a people whose sufferings had become unbearable to them and to the lookers-on. The United States, by its action, has set a lesson for the rest of the world, which the latter will not be slow to learn and for which future generations will bless the name of America. ”

“ When in tranquil hours we heard in our hearths our predecessors' epopee, describing as superfluously exact their achievements; giving them lively color that always inspires our tropical fancy, our nerves felt the thrill produced by enthusiasm; at those moments, our being all affected, our breast with its strong aspirations and our fiery tears rolling down the cheeks reminded us, obliging the cords of patriotism to vibrate, that we were Spaniards, and we neither could nor would like any other thing than to remain Spaniards. ”

“ Senor Estrado Palma, the representative of Cuba in the United States, has declared in a manifesto that the Cubans threw themselves into the struggle advisedly and deliberately, that they knew what they had to face and decided unflinchingly to persevere until they should free themselves from the Spanish government. Experience has taught them that they have nothing to envy in the Spaniards; that in fact, they feel themselves superior to them, and can expect from Spain no improvement, no better education. ”