Willis Fletcher Johnson

“ Sympathetic, alert, untiring, frank, without vanity or ostentation, resolute, diplomatic, and always supremely just, General Wood's personality stood to the people of Cuba for qualities seldom if ever before associated with the occupant of the governor's palace, while his energy in fighting disease, relieving distress, reviving industry and maintaining order revealed to them as the Spanish régime never had done the beneficence of enlightened government. ”

“ Four years ago Leonard Wood went down to Cuba,{252} has served there ever since, has rendered her literally invaluable service; a man who through these four years thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up the standard of political and social life in that island, to clean it physically and morally, to make justice even and fair in it, to found a school system which should be akin to our own, to teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as government righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men. ”

“ Thus as the manhood of Cuba with a unanimity which the few exceptions only emphasized rallied to the call of the President to throw the material and militant might of the Republic on the side of law, of civilization and of democracy, the womanhood of Cuba, with no less unanimity and zeal, followed Señora Menocal in the equally necessary and grateful tasks of the campaign which women even better than men could perform. ”

“ The people of the United States thus came to the conclusion that the Spanish were unable to subdue the Cubans, and that the Cubans were unable to expel the Spanish, and that the war was therefore nothing but a campaign of destruction and extermination, which would end only when one side was exhausted or extirpated. It was impossible that a civilized and humane nation should regard such a spectacle at its very doors with indifference. ”

“ No tribute could be too high to render to these devoted women, who were always ready to make personal sacrifices of time, of strength, of money, of work, for the cause of humanity. Amid all its historic fiestas and pageants, Havana has seen no fairer or more inspiring spectacle than that of the Red Cross women, Senora Menocal at their head, marching in stately procession through her streets to manifest their devotion to the cause and to arouse others to equal earnestness. ”

“ And what do you expect to accomplish as her President?"
"Cuba," replied General Menocal, "needs an honest administration of its governmental affairs; and that is what I can give it and will give it. But more than that, Cuba needs more citizens anxious to develop its marvellous resources and fewer citizens anxious to hold office. I was not elected as a politician, and I have no ambition to succeed as a politician." ”

“ Only a couple of thousand men were engaged on each side, but it was one of the most significant battles of the war, because it was the first in which the Cubans relied upon the machete, and the result of the experiment made that fearful weapon thereafter their favorite arm, particularly in cavalry charges, and it struck a terror into the hearts of the Spanish soldiers such as nothing else could do. The machete was an enormous knife, as long as a cavalry sabre or longer, with a single edge as sharp as a razor on a blade almost as heavy as the head of a woodsman's axe. ”

“ The coat of arms of the Republic of Cuba displays the colors of the flag, and by their side the Royal Palm, perhaps the most notable of the trees in Cuba. The tree springs from a grassy plain, at the back of which is a mountain range; agriculture and mining being thus typified. Across the top of the shield extends a landscape-seascape, representing the ocean, with Florida at one side and Yucatan at the other, while between them lies the Key, Cuba. From the far horizon rises the sun. ”

“ With a sad heart, with tear-suffused eyes, and with a hand that trembled to hold a pen far more than ever it had to wield a sword, General Jiminez Castellanos signed the document which abdicated and relinquished Spanish sovereignty in that Pearl of the Antilles which was nevermore to be known as the "Ever Faithful Isle." The crimson and gold barred banner of Spain descended. The Stars and Stripes rose in its place. ”

“ There what were formerly barren fields have been transformed by something more than the touch of a magician's wand into the greatest sugar-producing establishment in the world. Nor does it consist merely of the gigantic mills. Houses for homes, schools, stores, churches, surround it, forming a city of no fewer than 30,000 prosperous inhabitants, devoted to the manufacture of sugar. Of this unique community, General Menocal was the chief creator and for years the responsible head. ”

“ As long as Cuba was under Spanish domination, there was no use in parties. So long as there was doubt concerning the intentions of the United States in Cuba, there was little encouragement to their formation. But the moment the Stars and Stripes actually went down from the Palace and from the Morro, the great fact dawned upon the Cuban mind that what many had scarcely dared to expect or to hope for was actually achieved. Cuba was independent. ”

“ Meantime the masses of thoughtful, patriotic citizens, disgusted with what they regarded as governmental extravagance and corruption, held themselves in admirable restraint, hoping that the peril of intervention would be in some way avoided until they could have an opportunity of permanently averting it through the election of a government which would give the United States no further cause for anxiety or for even a thought of resuming control of Cuban affairs. ”

“ The United States did not intervene in 1917. It was not, as President Menocal confidently assured it, necessary for it to do so. But it is pleasant to recall that it stood ready to do so, and there is of course no possible doubt as to what the purport of its intervention would have been. During that episode no fewer than five messages were addressed to the people of Cuba by the government of the United States, warning them against any attempt at forcible revolution. They breathed the spirit of the epigram of John Hay in 1903: "Revolutions have gone out of fashion in our neighborhood." ”

“ General Zayas and other patriotic leaders operated in the southern part of Santa Clara, and soon that province was almost as fully aflame with revolution as Oriente itself. This was the more significant, because it was a populous and opulent province, where the inhabitants had much to lose through the ravages of war. But like the Romans in the "brave days of old," the Cubans of the revolution "spared neither lands nor gold, nor limb nor life," for the achievement of their national independence. ”

“ Not even Estrada Palma possessed a higher sense of duty to the state and to the world than Mario G. Menocal, nor gave to it more tangible and efficient exposition. Nor shall we incur reproach of lack of reverence for a great name if we perceive that in certain essential and potent particulars Cuba's third President is even more capable of discharging that responsibility than was the first. The younger, alert, practical man of affairs, expert in the duties of both peace and war, has the advantage over the elder sage whose life for many years had been cloistered in academic calm. ”

“ After reviewing the story of the Cuban revolution and the condition into which it had plunged the island, he said: "The war in Cuba is of such a nature that, short of subjugation or extermination, a military victory for either side seems impracticable." Then, recounting the efforts of the United States to effect a just settlement by negotiation, he added: "The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. ”

“ In endowing Cuba with a school system it would have been indecent for the United States to take for the standard its own poorest and most discreditable systems. It was necessary that it should take rather the best that it had as an example to be emulated. It may be added that these criticisms were made chiefly by General Wood's American critics, and by those who ignorantly and arrogantly regarded Cuba as an inferior country for which an inferior system was good enough. The Cubans themselves with practical unanimity gave to the work their hearty and grateful approval. ”

“ Indeed, though the fact was unrecognized at the time, it is not too much to say that Leonard Wood bore in his hand and mind and heart the destinies of Cuba. There might, it is true, have been found some other man who as a soldier would have pacified the island and would have held it firmly in the grasp of peace. There might have been found a sanitarian and physician who would free the island of pestilence. ”

“ With Cuba under Spanish domination, they were enabled to amass great wealth, and they wanted such conditions and such opportunities of enrichment continued. That was not an exalted attitude, and it was naturally odious to the Cuban patriots who were serving without pay and sacrificing their all for the independence of the island and for the attainment of a degree of material prosperity as well as of civic and spiritual enfranchisement immeasurably beyond the sordid conceptions of these selfish time-servers. ”

“ In this deplorable state of affairs have been the main springs of most of the troubles which the young Republic has thus far suffered in its political and governmental affairs.
The Conservative party is confined very largely to the owners of property, men of good reputation and business standing. In other words, it consists of men who have nothing to gain through a revolution, and everything to lose during a period of upheaval which means destruction, not alone of actual property, but of the assets of the country, especially its credit and standing in the markets of the world. ”

“ The government of the United States is naturally always on the side of law and order among its neighbors, and while it of course scrupulously refrains from meddling in their affairs unless under intolerable provocation, as in the case of Cuba in 1898, it has always given and doubtless will always give its sympathy and moral support to those who are striving for peace and progress and the security of life and property. ”

“ As before, President Palma refused, until the last moment, to believe that a serious uprising or revolution against his government was possible, on the ground that Cuba, although a young republic, had been very prosperous, that money was plentiful, that work was abundant for any man who cared to occupy himself, and that there was no real reason that would justify or cause a revolution. ”

“ When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurrection 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 reestablishment has degenerated into a strife which means 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. ”

“ One night in the month of July, 1905, a group of thirty armed men suddenly appeared at the barracks of the Rural Guards, shot a dozen of them to death as they lay sleeping on their cots, seized their arms, ammunition and horses, and fled into the country, shouting the cry of "Revolution against the Palma government!" ”

“ On the very day after his arrival at Guantanamo the new Captain-General issued a proclamation to the people of Cuba. In it he pledged himself to fulfil in good faith all the reforms which had been promised in his own Treaty of Zanjon and in subsequent legislation by the Spanish Cortes, provided the loyal parties in Cuba would give him their support; this admission of dependence upon the people being obviously a bid for popularity. The parties in question were, of course, the Spaniards, who were divided into Conservatives and Reformists, and the Autonomists, or Cuban Home Rulers. ”

“ The powers of government are much more centralized than those in the United States. The six Provinces have no such rights as have the states of America, though they have a liberal measure of local governmental power. They are not states or provinces, however, but mere departments—fractions of the whole instead of integral units. Each has a Governor and an elected Assembly. So each city and town has a mayor and a council. Municipalities have the power to levy taxes for local needs. The control of railroads and telegraphs is a national function, and the judicial system is also national. ”