A. D. Hall

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the shadow of the feathered cocoa palms in the deep shade of the drooping heavy leaves where Gilard dreamed of liberty, great cities shall one day loom in the misty, tropic twilight, and peace shall brood over the land that now, seamed with the graves of Cuba's heroes, awaits the murdered bodies of Cuban victims. ”

“ At the time it was offered Gomez, that grand old man of Cuba said:
"This is a war to the death for independence, and nothing but independence will we accept. To talk of home rule is to idle away time. But I have hopes that the United States, sooner or later, will recognize our belligerency. It is a question of mere justice, and, in spite of all arts of diplomacy, justice wins in the long run. The day we are recognized as belligerents, I can name a fixed term for the end of the war.
"With regard to paying an indemnity to Spain, that is a question of amount. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Look at the old colonies of the American continent. All have ended in conquering their independence. Let Spain not forget the lesson; let the government be just to the colonies that remain. Thus she will consolidate her dominion over people who only aspire to be good sons of a worthy mother, but who are not willing to live as slaves under the sceptre of a tyrant."
In 1868 the annual revenue exacted from Cuba by Spain was in the neighborhood of twenty-six million dollars; and plans were in progress by which even this great revenue was to be largely increased. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Santiago is Spanish for St. James, who is the special patron saint of Spain, on account of a myth that he once made a journey to that country.
Cuba, in short, is one of the most beautiful and fertile countries on the face of the globe, but man, in the shape of brutal Spain, has done everything he could, to ruin the gifts Nature so lavishly bestowed.
Let us hope and believe, as surely we have every reason to do, that upon the "Pearl of the Antilles," the sun of prosperity will rise, driving away the gloomy shadows of oppression, and that the dawn will be not long postponed. ”

“ Now let us contrast, for a moment, the different methods of the Spaniards and the Cubans in waging warfare.
In the first place, we do not mean to affirm that the insurgents have not committed actions, which, in the light of civilization, are indefensible, but they are few and far between, and they were forced upon them. After all the horrors to which they were subjected, they would have been less than human if they had not retaliated.
The Cubans, both in the Ten Years' War and in the present one, have been merciful to those of the enemy who fell into their hands. ”

“ Now, Americans, people of the free and independent United States; you who enjoy all the blessings of liberty; you who can pursue your avocations without let or hindrance; you who are the jury in this case—the evidence is before you. ”

“ The insurgents have invariably been treated as if they were pirates. The tigerish nature of Weyler spared no one. Refugees, that is those who did not obey his barbarous proclamation, were shot down in cold blood. Starvation was his policy, and starvation too of those, whatever their sympathies might have been, had never raised a finger against the existing government. The reconcentrados, harassed beyond all measure, saw nothing before them but death, and the happiest among them were those who died first. ”

“ Education in Cuba is, or has been, at a very low ebb. That is due, as many other things are, to the wretched, short-sighted policy of Spain, the country which has never completely emerged from the darkness of barbarism. She was afraid to give education to the Cubans, thinking that she could better dominate them in their ignorance. There is a royal university in Havana, and a collegiate institute in each of the six provinces, the number of students in all amounting to nearly three thousand, but these come almost without exception from the ranks of the well-to-do. ”

“ When the time for the settlement of the Cuban question shall have come it will be an affair of give and take between the whites and the negroes, and if the negro does not succeed in convincing the white man that he is entitled to a full measure of civil authority, a measure which by reason of his numerical strength he will have a right, under a republican government, to exact, then we may have to stand by while Cuba engages in an internal struggle important enough to cripple or, to say the least, seriously hinder, her development. ”

“ Any form of Spanish rule would mean the entire subjection of the Cubans, and, had they accepted the proposed autonomy, there is no doubt but that the future would have been as bad, if not worse, than the past.
Public opinion in the United States was never so deeply aroused as it was now. Citizens in all ranks of life were calling loudly for interference, which, in the name of civilization and humanity, should end the horrible state of affairs in Cuba. ”

“ On the contrary, it was not long before the oppression became greater than ever. There were deprivation of political, civil and religious liberty, an exclusion of the islanders from all public offices, and a heavy and iniquitous taxation to maintain the standing army and navy.
Clothed as they were with the powers of an Oriental despot, most of the captain-generals from Spain covered themselves with infamy, the office as a rule having been sought (and this was distinctly realized by the Spanish government) only as an end and means to acquire a personal fortune. ”

“ Weyler declared to Mrs. Masterson that women, if combatants, would be treated just the same as men. As a matter of fact, whether combatants or non-combatants, he treated them worse than men.
He sneered at the Cuban leaders, at Maceo for being a mulatto, and for having, as he asseverated, no military instruction. And at Gomez, whom he declared was not a brave soldier and had never distinguished himself in any way.
It has always been the policy of the Spaniards to belittle the Cubans, sneering at them as being generaled by negroes, half breeds and illiterate to a degree. ”

“ Finally, Senor Enrique Jose Verona, who was at one time a deputy to the Spanish Cortes, sums up the situation as follows:
"Spain denies to the Cubans all effective powers in their own county. Spain condemns the Cubans to a political inferiority in the land where they were born. Spain confiscates the product of the Cubans' labor without giving them in return either safety, prosperity or education. Spain has shown itself utterly incapable of governing Cuba. Spain exploits, impoverishes and demoralizes Cuba." ”

“ There is scarcely a city in Europe which, to the American seemed so foreign as Havana. The whole appearance of the place, its manners and customs, were all totally different to what the American had been accustomed.
The streets are so narrow that vehicles by law are obliged to pass down one street and up another, while the sidewalks are not more than two feet wide and hollowed down in the centre by the constant trampling of feet. This applies to the city proper, for, outside the walls, there are many broad and beautiful avenues. The streets are very noisy and, as a rule, excessively unclean. ”

“ And why is it they seek, with all the desperate courage of despair, to cross that line where death is always awaiting their coming, and almost invariably overtakes them? They are attempting nothing that history will preserve upon its imperishable tablets, or even this passing generation remember. No, they are simply attempting to get beyond the starvation lines, to dig their potatoes and yams, to bring home again to the hovel in which their families are housed with death and hunger all about them. ”

“ Everywhere the breadwinners of Cuba are fleeing in terror before the Spanish columns, and the ranks of life are being turned into the ranks of death, for the Cuban who has seen his honest and harmless neighbors tied up and shot before his eyes, in order that some officer may get credit for a battle, takes his family to the nearest town or city for safety, and then goes out to strike a manly blow for his country. ”

“ The very ground on which they lie down to breathe their last might be planted with produce that would feed them to repletion. But so far from any effort to save them having been made by Spain, she has wilfully and designedly compassed their destruction. She has driven them in from their fields and plantations and forbidden them to help themselves; the plantations themselves have been laid waste, and should the miserable reconcentrados attempt under the pretended kindly dispensation of Blanco to return to their properties they would find the Spanish guerillas lying in wait to massacre them. ”

“ A land devastated and temporarily ruined; a gem besmirched almost beyond recognition; a heap of smoking ashes; a population of starving men, women and children, with an iron hand clutching remorselessly at their hearts; a horrible, ghastly picture of what savage men are capable of in the way of destruction. ”