Robert P. Porter

“ We stood with dignity when we were burdened with a system of colonial servitude, it was with dignity that we rebelled, staining the chains that bound us with our own and foreign blood; we have kept our dignity whilst the Americans have cut them for us; when to-morrow comes, and we ask for annexation to the United States, we shall do so with the same dignity. ”

“ The future is more hopeful, perhaps, but replete with difficult problems and many dangers. The war has emancipated the people of Cuba from Spain, made them a self-governing people protected by a great nation, the flag of which is a symbol of freedom and a guaranty of the fruits of individual endeavour. The fate of Cuba and the Cubans no longer rests in the hands of a small cabal of mediæval and selfish statesmen at Madrid, intent only upon enriching the mother country. ”

“ In part exchange for these things, we get from Cuba sugar and tobacco, and control the markets of the world in these products; mahogany and all manner of beautiful hard woods; bananas and cocoanuts and fruits, pleasing to the palate and wholesome to the health; honey from the flowers; glycerine, no less sweet, from the fats of cattle; manganese and molasses; cigars and coffee; beeswax and birds, and the vast fields of tropical wealth and luxuries for the millions of our colder clime scarcely yet touched. ”

“ In the political problem, the condition of the population of Cuba must be considered. It is not a new country, but four hundred years old,—a totally different nation, with different habits, ways, and languages. Then how can you profitably absorb that population as a State? You cannot afford to sacrifice the United States for Cuba, but must lend Cuba both moral and material riches without forgetting yourself. Is it profitable for the United States to absorb Cuba as a State? If I were an American, I would oppose it. I do not think the Cuban people have sufficient adaptation ”

“ If you attempt to govern by carpet-bag legislation, you will bring on an insurrection. If you help the indigent, and bring them to a condition like they were before the war, you will do them no good. Therefore, you must have a force to establish an indisputable power, and then you must have a policy in which each one finds a solution to his own interest and welfare, under the idea that the Cuban people are unable to take care of themselves to-day, and that none of them have definite ideas or definite plans for their welfare. ”

“ With millions of acres of the richest and best cane land on the globe, yet untouched by the plough, with a climate unsurpassed for the growth and development of sugar cane, and with a prestige for Cuban sugar second to none in the markets of the world, the future of Cuba’s sugar presents a possibility of wealth surpassing the richness of the gold and silver which came to Columbus in the marvellous tales of the interior of the magnificent Island which he had discovered. ”

“ He has not the energies of a total being. The Island of Cuba has been debased by a war of extermination, brought about by its own manner of warfare, and by the Spanish warfare. The Island of Cuba is now totally inert and totally incapable of any governing faculties, not only because of the dead, but by making the rich poor, by making the poor indigent, and the indigent dying. You have in the Island of Cuba a reduced specimen both of material and moral wealth, and these individuals are not capable of determinations of value and worth towards the natural end of civilisation. ”

“ Presumptuous as it may be to pass judgment on the utterances of a man of such wide range of experience in Cuba as the Marquis de Apezteguia, I believe the President of the late Conservative party of Cuba underestimates the Cuban capacity, both for self-government and for annexation to the United States. The work of final absorption may take a generation, but it will surely come. Once annexed, Cuba would become an English-speaking country, and the alert Cuban mind would grasp those great principles of fundamental liberty with far greater alacrity than the Spanish. ”

“ Cuba, as it was left at the close of this year by the Spanish, who to the last moment seemed loth to leave the emaciated body which their inordinate greed had thus reduced, presents a picture so sad and sorrowful that, for the sake of our common humanity, it is better to draw a curtain over the past and direct attention to the happier omens which point to the possibilities of the future. ”

“ Let the word go forth to teach English in every schoolhouse in Cuba, and the work of amalgamation would be half done. The more the Cubans know of the United States and of our institutions, the better they will like us. As confidence takes the place of distrust in the minds of the population of Cuba,—native or foreign-born, black or white,—the sooner all will reach the conclusion that the most promising future for Cuba can only be attained by complete union with the greater Republic. ”

“ In foreign countries the thrift of the working classes is the corner-stone of new industries. Are there in Cuba any economies or annual profits that can be capitalised? The sugar industry, the base of Cuban wealth, yields to-day no profit save in exceptional cases. The tobacco industry since 1895 has been in a critical condition, and as all the other industries depend on these two, or are of comparatively limited importance, it may be said that work and capital yield no profit in Cuba at present; since either no profits are realised, or, if they are, they leave the Island. ”

“ Under the influence of their surroundings, they have developed into a gentle, industrious, and normally peaceable race, not to be judged by the combativeness which they have developed under a tyranny such as has never been imposed upon any other people. The better class of Camagueynos, as the natives are fond of calling themselves, are certainly the finest, the most valiant, and the most independent men of the Island, while the women have the highest type of beauty. It is their boast that no Cuban woman has ever become a prostitute, and crime is certainly almost unknown among them. ”

“ The power that forced the Spanish to evacuate the Island is the power which the world will hold responsible for the future welfare of its people. The timid, the weak, and the craven-hearted who contend that the United States has no responsibility, after it has assumed all responsibility, are entitled to no voice in the disposition of Cuba. The cost to the United States cannot be put in the balance against the duty of the United States. The moral obligation, therefore, toward Cuba and humanity must come first. ”

“ Beginning with Havana, the capital of the country and the largest city in it, the stories of its great filthiness can scarcely be believed by those who have seen the place upon the surface and moved about in beautiful parks, in brilliant cafés, on the lovely drives, and elsewhere, among pleasure-loving people, all clothed in their clean white suits and smoking their dainty cigarettes. ”

“ The fact has been, however, that the Cuban native population has been kept in a condition similar to slavery. The means employed have been skilful and full of cunning. Leaving to the Cubans complete liberty of discussion by means of the press, the Government has felt itself powerful enough to despise them, and when warned of the danger of a new revolution, always considered impossible this last extremity. This feeling of absolute confidence and reliance on the military power of Spain has constantly been expressed in Madrid, both officially and privately, and also by the Spanish party in Cuba. ”

“ The officers and soldiers on duty in the Island of Cuba are American citizens as well as American soldiers, accustomed to rendering loyal obedience to law; and they will not abandon on this Island their devotion to the principles of American liberty regulated by law. I therefore repeat that the people of Cuba may safely trust the officers and soldiers of the United States to establish and maintain the principles of government as set forth in our Constitution and laws, which mean freedom, not licentiousness, and equality before the law for all. ”

“ If you name your high officials Cubans, this will run off into Cuban solution, and not American. If the occupation is made by sufficient force, and you name only a few high officials who have the confidence of the Administration and have a general plan to carry through, and these appoint lower officials, taking the best class of Cubans and insurgents, the problem is solved. As a Spaniard born in Cuba and wishing this country all the good I can, I think it would be absurd to hope for the peace of the Island without a strong military force. ”

“ Cuba should have established a central railway system running the length of the Island from east to west, with branches extending on all sides, like its rivers, to the many good towns and harbours on both north and south coasts. Instead of this it has a little less than a thousand miles of line, operated by seven timid companies, extending in various directions, but leaving the two ends of the Island farther apart in actual days of travel than are New York and San Francisco. The capital city of Cuba, Havana, has within it the possibilities of a great and beautiful city ”

“ The purchasing power that would be gathered into and concentrated in the United States by such trade would be largely expended in procuring those requirements of an ever-advancing refinement and civilisation which Europe can, at present at least, furnish better than we can ourselves. We appreciate and want these things—none more so—and the wealth which a practical monopoly of the South American trade would give us would make us Europe’s best customer for those things of which she is the best producer. ”

“ Cuba looks to the United States for encouragement, for strength, for education, for development, for business—for union, shall we say?—and, as her nearest neighbour, the United States will pledge itself that the Queen of the Antilles shall not look in vain. ”

“ Cuba has to be American territory, and cannot be anything else, with restringent or lax ties uniting it; but in the exterior life it will have to be American. You have no laws so far that can be established here; the new political right will have to be created because of the way in which you acquired the Island. You cannot govern it until you give it those things which have been assured it. You have acquired responsibilities which you are not at liberty to throw away and go back on; that is your position towards Cuba and towards the world, and therefore towards yourself. ”

“ While Jamaica is a well-governed country, and its revenue is all honestly expended for the public good of the people, it is far from an economically administered government. Order is thoroughly established, laws are obeyed, justice for the humblest is easily obtainable, education is general, sanitary matters admirably administered, roads maintained, the rights of all conserved, and the revenue honestly collected and expended. In these particulars the government of Jamaica differs widely from that which the author found in Cuba. In that unhappy Island all is absolutely the reverse of this. ”

“ Stations burned, bridges destroyed, tracks torn up, freight-cars made into portable blockhouses, locomotives blown to pieces, and passenger-cars dilapidated and dingy. In short, a country more systematically pillaged, more infamously deprived of its resources, more wantonly plundered of its revenues, and a population more completely deprived of its rights by those who had every reason to foster and protect a valuable possession cannot be found recorded in ancient or modern history. ”