Richard Harding Davis

“ Why should we tolerate Spanish savages merely because they call themselves "the most Catholic," but who in reality are no better than this naked negro? What difference is there between the King of Benin who crucifies a woman because he wants rain and General Weyler who outrages a woman for his own pleasure and throws her to his bodyguard of blacks, even if the woman has the misfortune to live after it—and to still live in Sagua la Grande to-day? ”

“ These soldiers are from the villages and towns of Spain; some of them are not more than seventeen years old, and they are not volunteers. They do not care whether Spain owns an island eighty miles from the United States, or loses it, but they go out to it and have their pay stolen, and are put to building earth forts and stone walls, and die of fever. It seems a poor return for their unconscious patriotism when a colonel thrashes one of them as though he were a dog, especially as he knows the soldier may not strike back. ”

“ Speaking dispassionately, and with a full knowledge of the details of many butcheries, it is impossible for me to think of the Spanish guerrillas otherwise than as worse than savage animals. A wild animal kills to obtain food, and not merely for the joy of killing. These guerrillas murder and then laugh over it. The cannibal, who has been supposed hitherto to be the lowest grade of man, is really of a higher caste than these Spanish murderers—men like Colonel Fondevila, Cerreros, and Colonel Bonita—for a cannibal kills to keep himself alive. ”

“ More men like Lee should go to Cuba to inform themselves, not men who will stop in Havana and pick up the gossip of the Hotel Ingleterra, but who will go out into the cities and sugar plantations and talk to the consuls and merchants and planters, both Spanish and American; who can see for themselves the houses burning and the smoke arising from every point of the landscape ”

“ When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurgents has become manifest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle for its re-establishment has degenerated into a strife which is nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject-matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge! ”

“ I was somewhat skeptical of Spanish atrocities until I came to Cuba, chiefly because I had been kept sufficiently long in Key West to learn how large a proportion of Cuban war news is manufactured on the piazzas of the hotels of that town and of Tampa by utterly irresponsible newspaper men who accept every rumor that finds its way across the gulf, and pass these rumors on to some of the New York papers as facts coming direct from the field.
It is not surprising that one becomes skeptical, for if one story proves to be false, how is the reader to know that the others are not inventions also? ”

“ A stranger in any city in Cuba to-day is virtually in a prison, and is as isolated from the rest of the world as though he were on a desert island or a floating ship of war. When he wishes to depart he is free to do so, but he cannot leave on foot nor on horseback. He must make his departure on a railroad train, of which seldom more than two leave any town in twenty-four hours, one going east and the other west. From Havana a number of trains depart daily in different directions, but once outside of Havana, there is only one train back to it again. ”

“ One morning, just this side of Jovellanos, all the sugar cane on the right side of the track was wrapped in white smoke for miles so that nothing could be distinguished from that side of the car, and we seemed to be moving through the white steam of a Russian bath.
The Spaniards are no more to blame for this than are the insurgents; each destroy property and burn the cane. When an insurgent column finds a field planted with potatoes, it takes as much of the crop as it can carry away and chops up the remainder with machetes, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Spaniards. ”

“ A trocha in an open plain, as were the English trochas in the desert around Suakin, makes an admirable defence, when a few men are forced to withstand the assault of a great many, but fighting behind a trocha in a jungle is like fighting in an ambush, and if the trocha at Moron is ever attacked in force it will prove to be a Valley of Death to the Spanish troops. ”

“ It is easy to imagine what happened when hundreds of people, in some towns thousands, were herded together on the bare ground, with no food, with no knowledge of sanitation, with no covering for their heads but palm leaves, with no privacy for the women and young girls, with no thought but as to how they could live until to-morrow. ”

“ We have tolerated what no European power would have tolerated; we have been patient with men who have put back the hand of time for centuries, who lie to our representatives daily, who butcher innocent people, who gamble with the lives of their own soldiers in order to gain a few more stars and an extra stripe, who send American property to the air in flames and murder American prisoners. ”

“ In April and May the rains will come, and the fever will thrive and spread, and cholera, yellow fever and small-pox will turn Cuba into one huge plague spot, and the farmers' sons whom Spain has sent over here to be soldiers, and who are dying by the dozens before they have learned to pull the comb off a bunch of cartridges, are going to die by the hundreds, and women and children who are innocent of any offense will die with them, and there will be a quarantine against Cuba, and no vessel can come into her ports or leave them. ”

“ As a plain statement of fact, and without any exaggeration, one of the chief reasons why half the insurgents in Cuba are not dead to-day is because the Spanish soldiers cannot shoot well enough to hit them. The Mauser rifle, which is used by all the Spanish soldiers, with the exception of the Guardia Civile, is a most excellent weapon for those who like clean, gentlemanly warfare, in which the object is to wound or to kill outright, and not to "shock" the enemy nor to tear his flesh in pieces. ”

“ It is difficult to know what the American people do want. They do not want peace, apparently, for their senators, some through an ignorant hatred of England and others through a personal dislike of the President, emasculated the arbitration treaty; and they do not want war, for, as some one has written, if we did not go to war with Spain when she murdered the crew of the Virginius, we never will. ”

“ This is interesting when one remembers that the American in the Spanish illustrated papers is represented as a hog, and generally with the United States flag for trousers, and Spain as a noble and valiant lion. Yet it would appear that the lion is willing to save a few dollars on freight by buying his armament from his hoggish neighbor, and that the American who cheers for Cuba Libre is not at all averse to making as many dollars as he can in building the wall against which the Cubans may be eventually driven and shot. ”

“ The sincerity of the Spaniards in Spain is beyond question; the personal sacrifices they made in taking up the loans issued by the government are proof of their loyalty. But the Spaniards in Cuba are acting for their own interests. Many of the planters in order to save their fields and centrals from destruction, are unquestionably aiding the insurgents in secret, and though they shout "Viva España" in the cities, they pay out cartridges and money at the back door of their plantations. ”

“ Before I went to Cuba I was as much opposed to our interfering there as any other person equally ignorant concerning the situation could be, but since I have seen for myself I feel ashamed that we should have stood so long idle. We have been too considerate, too fearful that as a younger nation, we should appear to disregard the laws laid down by older nations. ”

“ I do not know that the United States will interfere in the affairs of Cuba, but whatever may happen later, this is what is likely to happen now, and it should have some weight in helping to decide the question with those whose proper business it is to determine it.
Thousands of human beings are now herded together around the seaport towns of Cuba who cannot be fed, who have no knowledge of cleanliness or sanitation, who have no doctors to care for them and who cannot care for themselves. ”

“ The only store in Matanzas that was doing a brisk trade when I was there was a jewelry shop, where they had sold more diamonds and watches to the Spanish officers since the revolution broke out than they had ever been able to dispose of before to all the rich men in the city. The legitimate pay of the highest ranking officer is barely enough to buy red wine for his dinner, certainly not enough to pay for champagne and diamonds; so it is not unfair to suppose that the rebellion is a profitable experience for the officers, and they have no intention of losing the golden eggs. ”

“ In order to leave Havana, it is first necessary to give notice of your wish to do so by sending your passport to the Captain General, who looks up your record, and, after twenty-four hours, if he is willing to let you go, visés your passport and so signifies that your request is granted. After you have complied with that requirement of martial law, and the Captain General has agreed to let you depart, and you are on board of an American vessel, the Spanish soldiers' control over you and your movements should cease, for they relinquish all their rights when they give you back your passport. ”

“ The people above it are not ignorant of their situation. They know that they are living over a death-trap, but there is no other place for them. Bands of guerrillas and flying columns have driven them in like sheep to this city, and, with no money and no chance to obtain work, they have taken shelter in the only place that is left open to them.
With planks and blankets and bits of old sheet iron they have, for the sake of decency, put up barriers across these abandoned warehouses, and there they are now sitting on the floor or stretched on heaps of rags, gaunt and hollow-eyed. ”

“ The able-bodied men of each family who had remained loyal or at least neutral, so long as they were permitted to live undisturbed on their few acres, were not content to exist on the charity of a city, and they swarmed over to the insurgent ranks by the hundreds, and it was only the old and infirm and the women and children who went into the towns, where they at once became a burden on the Spanish residents, who were already distressed by the lack of trade and the high prices asked for food. ”

“ A certain class of Spanish officer has a strange sense of honor. He does not consider that robbing his government by falsifying his accounts, or by making incorrect returns of his expenses, is disloyal or unpatriotic. He holds such an act as lightly as many people do smuggling cigars through their own custom house, or robbing a corporation of a railroad fare. He might be perfectly willing to die for his country, but should he be permitted to live he will not hesitate to rob her. ”

“ It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with at such a time, but I confess to have felt a thrill of satisfaction when I saw, as the Cuban passed me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not arrogantly nor with bravado, but with the nonchalance of a man who meets his punishment fearlessly, and who will let his enemies see that they can kill but can not frighten him. ”

“ In an island with a soil so rich and productive as is that of Cuba there will always be roots and fruits for the insurgents to live upon, and with the cattle that they have hidden away in the laurel or on the mountains they can keep their troops in rations for an indefinite period. What they most need now are cartridges and rifles. Of men they have already more than they can arm. ”

“ It will be the lack of money and the loss of credit that will keep the sugar planters from sowing and grinding. And the loss of machinery in the centrals, which is worth in single instances hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in the aggregate many millions, cannot be replaced by men, who, even when their machinery was intact, were on the brink of ruin.
Unless the United States government interferes on account of some one of its citizens in Cuba, and war is declared with Spain, there is no saying how long the present revolution may continue. ”

“ And the Spanish officers, as well as the planters—the very men to whom Spain looks to end the rebellion—are chief among those who are keeping it alive. The reasons for their doing so are obvious; they receive double pay while they are on foreign service, whether they are fighting or not, promotion comes twice as quickly as in time of peace, and orders and crosses are distributed by the gross. They are also able to make small fortunes out of forced loans from planters and suspects, and they undoubtedly hold back for themselves a great part of the pay of the men. ”