Il 
 
 liiiiii 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cubainwartimeOOdavi 
 
CUBA 
 
 IN WAR TIME 
 
 By 
 
 RICHARD 
 
 HARDING 
 
 DAVIS 
 
 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmimmmmmmmmammmmmmmmmi 
 
 Illustrated By 
 
 pREDERic Remington 
 
 New York 
 R. H. Russell 
 

 /4 *%-- 
 
S8^sL-:^ijssr.3w,,.^^__^_ , 
 
 
 
 
 The Death of Rodriguez 
 
CUBA 
 
 IN WAR TIME 
 
 BT 
 
 Richard Harding Davis 
 
 Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society ; 
 Author of ** Three Gringos in Venezuela 
 and Central America," *'The Princess 
 Aline," " Gallegher," *'Van Bibber, and 
 Others," ** Dr. Jameson's Raiders," etc., etc, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BT 
 
 Frederic Remington 
 
 JTVl 
 
 NEW YORK . R. H. RUSSELL 
 1898 
 
Ho©« collection 
 
 10O\63 
 
 1912 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1898 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT HOWARD RUSSELL 
 
 ■<J- 
 
 -'^Q. 
 
 
Contents 
 
 List of Illustrations - - 7 
 
 Author's Note - - "9 
 
 Cuba in War Time - - 11 
 
 The Fate of the Pacificos - 41 
 
 The Death of Rodriguez - 59 
 
 Along the Trocha - '77 
 
 The Question of Atrocities - 103 
 
 The Right of Search of American 
 
 Vessels - - - 121 
 
Illustrations 
 
 The Death of Rodriguez . Frontispiece 
 A Spanish Soldier . . . . 15 
 
 Guerrillas with Captured Pacificos . 21 
 A Spanish Officer , . . . 27 
 Insurgents Firing on Spanish Fort . 33 
 Fire and Sword in Cuba . . 40 
 
 A Spanish Guerrilla .... 45 
 Murdering the Cuban Wounded . 51 
 
 Bringing in the Wounded ... 58 
 Young Spanish Officer . . . 63 
 The Cuban Martyrdom . . .69 
 Regular Cavalryman — Spanish . 76 
 One of the Block Houses . . .81 
 Spanish Cavalry o . . « 85 
 
 One of the Forts Along the Trocha 89 
 
The Trocha ..... 95 
 
 Spanish Troops in Action . .102 
 
 Amateur Surgery in Cuba . , 107 
 
 Scouting Party of Spanish Cavalry 1 1 3 
 
 An Officer of Spanish Guerrillas . 120 
 
 A Spanish Picket Post . . . 125 
 
 General Weyler in the Field . -131 
 
 Spanish Cavalryman on a Texas 
 
 Broncho 137 
 
 For Cuba Libre . . . • 141 
 NOTE 
 
 These illustrations were made by Mr. Frederic 
 Remington, from personal observation while in 
 Cuba, and from photographs, and descriptions 
 furnished by eye-witnesses. 
 
Author's Note 
 
 A FTER my return from Cuba many people 
 asked me questions concerning the situation 
 there, and I noticed that they generally asked the 
 same questions. This book has been published 
 with the idea of answering those questions as fully 
 as is possible for me to do after a journey 
 through the island, during which I traveled in four 
 of the six provinces, visiting towns, seaports, plan- 
 tations and military camps, and stopping for several 
 days in all of the chief cities of Cuba, with the ex- 
 ception of Santiago and Pinar del Rio. 
 
 Part of this book was published originally in the 
 form of letters from Cuba to the New York Journal 
 and in the newspapers of a syndicate arranged by 
 the Journal', the remainder, which was suggested by 
 the questions asked on my return, was written in 
 this country, and appears here for the first time. 
 
 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. 
 
Cuba in War Time 
 
 WHEN the revolution broke out in Cuba 
 two years ago, the Spaniards at once 
 began to build tiny forts, and con- 
 tinued to add to these and improve those already 
 built, until now the whole island, which is eight 
 hundred miles long and averages eighty miles in 
 width, is studded as thickly with these little forts 
 as is the sole of a brogan with iron nails. It is 
 necessary to keep the fact of the existence of these 
 forts in mind in order to understand the situation 
 in Cuba at the present time, as they illustrate the 
 Spanish plan of campaign, and explain why the war 
 has dragged on for so long, and why it may con- 
 tinue indefinitely. 
 
 The last revolution was organized by the aristo- 
 crats ; the present one is a revolution of the puebleo, 
 and, while the principal Cuban families are again 
 among the leaders, with them now are the repre- 
 sentatives of the "plain people," and the cause is 
 now a common cause in working for the success 
 of which all classes of Cubans are desperately in 
 earnest. 
 
12 Cuba in War Time 
 
 The outbreak of this revolution was hastened by 
 an offer from Spain to make certain reforms in the 
 internal government of the island. The old revo- 
 luti#nafy*4€ad'ers7HFea«*ig4ha4;-.^^^ 
 reforms might satis|y,,,th&«£vib2.ns, and that they 
 would cease to hope for complete independence, 
 started the revolt, and asked all loyal Cubans not to 
 accept the so-called reforms when, by fighting, they 
 mis^ht obtain their freedom. Another cause which 
 precipitated the revolution was the financial depres- 
 sion which existed all over the island in 1894, and 
 the closing of the sugar mills in consequence. Owing 
 to the lack of money with which to pay the labor- 
 ers, the grinding of the sugar cane ceased, and the 
 men were turned off by the hundreds, and, for want 
 of something better to do, joined the insurgents. 
 Some planters believe that had Spain loaned 
 them sufficient money with which to continue 
 grinding, the men would have remained on the 
 centrals, as the machine shops and residence of a 
 sugar plantation are called, and that so few would 
 have gone into the field against Spain that the in- 
 surrection could have been put down before it had 
 gained headway. An advance to the sugar plan- 
 ters of five millions of dollars then, so they say, 
 would have saved Spain the outlay of many hun- 
 dreds of millions spent later in supporting an army 
 
Cuba in War Time i 7 
 
 ^ 
 
 in the field. That may or may not be true, and it 
 is not important now, for Spain did not attack the 
 insurgents in that way, but began hastily to build 
 forts. These forts now stretch all over the island, 
 some in straight lines, some in circles, and some 
 zig-zagging from hill-top to hill-top, some within 
 a quarter of a mile of the next, and others so near 
 that the sentries can toss a cartridge from one to 
 the other. 
 
 The island is divided into two great military 
 camps, one situated within the forts, and the other 
 scattered over the fields and mountains outside 
 of them. The Spaniards have absolute control 
 over everything within the fortified places; that is, 
 in all cities, towns, seaports, and along the lines of 
 the railroad; the insurgents are in possession of all 
 the rest. They are not in fixed possession, but they 
 have control much as a mad bull may be said to 
 have control of a ten-acre lot when he goes on the 
 rampage. Some farmer may hold a legal right to 
 the ten-acre lot, through title deeds or in the shape 
 of a mortgage, and the bull may occupy but one 
 part of it at a time, but he has possession, which is 
 better than the law. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine a line drawn so closely, 
 not about one city or town, but around every city 
 and town in Cuba, that no one can pass the line 
 
14 Cuba in War Time 
 
 from either the outside or the inside. The Span- 
 iards, however, have succeeded in effecting and 
 maintaining a blockade of that kind. They have 
 placed forts next to the rows of houses or huts on 
 the outskirts of each town, within a hundred yards 
 of one another, and outside of this circle is another 
 circle, and beyond that, on every high piece of 
 ground, are still more of these little square forts, 
 which are not much larger than the signal stations 
 along the lines of our railroads and not unlike them 
 in appearance. No one can cross the line of the 
 forts without a pass, nor enter from the coun- 
 try beyond them without an order showing from 
 what place he comes, at what time he left that place, 
 and that he had permission from the commandante 
 to leave it. 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. When on the cars you are still in 
 
A Spanish Soldier 
 
Cuba in War Time 17 
 
 the presence and under the care of Spanish sol- 
 diers, and the progress of the train is closely 
 guarded. A pilot engine precedes it at a distance 
 of one hundred yards to test the rails and pick up 
 dynamite bombs, and in front of it is a car covered 
 with armor plate, with slits in the sides like those 
 in a letter box, through which the soldiers may fire. 
 There are generally from twenty to fifty soldiers in 
 each armored car. Back of the armored car is a flat 
 car loaded with ties, girders and rails, which are 
 used to repair bridges or those portions of the track 
 that may have been blown up by the insurgents. 
 Wherever a track crosses a bridge there are two 
 forts, one at each end of the bridge, and also at al- 
 most every cross-road. When the train passes one 
 of these forts, two soldiers appear in the door and 
 stand at salute to show, probably, that they are 
 awake, and at every station there are two or 
 more forts, while the stations themselves are usually 
 protected by ramparts of ties and steel rails. There 
 is no situation where it is so distinctly evident that 
 those who are not with you are against you, for you 
 are either inside of one circle of forts or passing 
 under guard by rail to another circle, or you are with 
 the insurgents. There is no alternative. If you walk 
 fifty yards away from the circle you are, in the eyes 
 of the Spaniards, as much in "the field" as though 
 
1 8 Cuba in War Time 
 
 you were two hundred miles away on the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 The Hnes are so closely drawn that when you 
 consider the tremendous amount of time and labor 
 expended in keeping up this blockade, you must 
 admire the Spaniards for doing it so well, but you 
 would admire them more, if, instead of stopping 
 content with that they went further and invaded the 
 field. The forts are an excellent precaution; they 
 prevent sympathizers from joining the insurgents 
 and from sending them food, arms, medicine or 
 messages. But the next step, after blockading the 
 cities, would appear to be to follow the insurgents 
 into the field and give them battle. This the 
 Spaniards do not seem to consider important, nor 
 wish to do. Flying columns of regular troops and 
 guerrillas are sent out daily, but they always return 
 each evening within the circle of forts. If they 
 meet a band of insurgents they give battle readily 
 enough, but they never pursue the enemy, and, in- 
 stead of camping on the ground and following him 
 up the next morning, they retreat as soon as the 
 battle is over, to the town where they are stationed. 
 When occasionally objection is made to this by a 
 superior officer, they give as an explanation that 
 they were afraid of being led into an ambush, and 
 that as an officer's first consideration must be for his 
 
Cuba in War Time 19 
 
 men, they decided that it was wiser not to follow 
 the enemy into what might prove a death-trap; or 
 the officers say they could not abandon their 
 wounded while they pursued the rebels. Some- 
 times a force of. one thousand men will return with 
 three men wounded, and will offer their condition 
 as an excuse for having failed to follow the enemy. 
 About five years ago troops of United States 
 cavalry were sent into the chapparal on the border 
 of Mexico and Texas to drive the Garcia revolution- 
 ists back into their own country. One troop, G, 
 Third Cavalry, was ordered out for seven days' ser- 
 vice, but when I joined the troop later as a corre- 
 spondent, it had been in the field for three months, 
 sleeping the entire time under canvas, and carry- 
 ing all its impedimenta with it on pack mules. It had 
 seldom, if ever, been near a town, and the men wore 
 the same clothes, or what was left of them, with 
 which they had started for a week's campaign. Had 
 the Spaniards followed such a plan of attack as that 
 when the revolution began, instead of building 
 mud forts and devastating the country, they might 
 not only have suppressed the revolution, but the 
 country would have been of some value when the 
 war ended. As it is to-day, it will take ten years 
 or more to bring it back to a condition of produc- 
 tiveness. 
 
20 Cuba in War Time 
 
 The wholesale devastation of the island was 
 an idea of General Weyler's. If the captain of 
 a vessel, in order to put down a mutiny on board, 
 scuttled the ship and sent everybody to the bot- 
 tom, his plan of action would be as successful as 
 General Weyler's has proved to be. After he had 
 obtained complete control of the cities he decided to 
 lay waste the country and starve the revolutionists 
 into submission. So he ordered all pacificos, as the 
 non-belligerents are called, into the towns and 
 burned their houses, and issued orders to have all 
 fields where potatoes or corn were planted dug up 
 and these food products destroyed. 
 
 These pacificos are now gathered inside of a dead 
 line, drawn one hundred and fifty yards around the 
 towns, or wherever there is a fort. Some of them 
 have settled around the forts that guard a bridge, 
 others around the forts that guard a sugar planta- 
 tion; wherever there are forts there are pacificos. 
 
 In a word, the situation in Cuba is something like 
 this: The Spaniards hold the towns, from which 
 their troops daily make predatory raids, invariably 
 returning in time for dinner at night. Around each 
 town is a circle of pacificos doing no work, and for 
 the most part starving and diseased, and outside, 
 in the plains and mountains, are the insurgents. No 
 one knows just where any one band of them is to- 
 
Oh 
 
 u 
 
 o 
 
Cuba in War Time 23 
 
 day, or where it may be to-morrow. Sometimes 
 they come up to the very walls of the fort, lasso a 
 bunch of cattle and ride off again, and the next 
 morning their presence may be detected ten miles 
 away, where they are setting fire to a cane field or a 
 sugar plantation. 
 
 This is the situation, so far as the inhabi- 
 tants are concerned. The physical appearance of 
 the country since the war began has changed 
 greatly. In the days of peace Cuba was one of the 
 most beautiful islands in the tropics, perhaps in the 
 world. Its skies hang low and are brilliantly beau- 
 tiful, with great expanses of blue, and in the early 
 morning and before sunset, they are lighted with 
 wonderful clouds of pink and safifron, as brilliant and 
 as unreal as the fairy's grotto in a pantomime. 
 There are great wind-swept prairies of high grass 
 or tall sugar cane, and on the sea coast mountains 
 of a light green, like the green of corroded copper, 
 changing to a darker shade near the base, where 
 they are covered with forests of palms. 
 
 Throughout the extent of the island run many 
 little streams, sometimes between high banks of 
 rock, covered with moss and magnificent fern, with 
 great pools of clear, deep water at the base of high 
 waterfalls, and in those places where the stream 
 cuts its way through the level plains double rows 
 
24 Cuba in War Time 
 
 of the royal palm mark its course. The royal palm 
 is the characteristic feature of the landscape in 
 Cuba. It is the most beautiful of all palms, and 
 possibly the most beautiful of all trees. The cocoa- 
 nut palm, as one sees it in Egypt, picturesque as it 
 is, has a pathetic resemblance to a shabby feather 
 duster, and its trunk bends and twists as though it 
 had not the strength to push its way through the 
 air, and to hold itself erect. But the royal palm 
 shoots up boldly from the earth with the grace and 
 symmetry of a marble pillar or the white mast of a 
 great ship. Its trunk swells in the centre and 
 grows smaller again at the top, where it is hidden 
 by great bunches of green plumes, like monstrous 
 ostrich feathers that wave and bow and bend in the 
 breeze as do the plumes on the head of a beautiful 
 woman. Standing isolated in an open plain or in 
 ranks in a forest of palms, this tree is always 
 beautiful, noble and full of meaning. It makes 
 you forget the ugly iron chimneys of the centrals, 
 and it is the first and the last feature that appeals to 
 the visitor in Cuba. 
 
 But since the revolution came to Cuba the beauty 
 of the landscape is blotted with the grim and pitia- 
 ble signs of war. The sugar cane has turned to a 
 dirty brown where the fire has passed through it, 
 the centrals are black ruins, and the adobe houses 
 
Cuba in War Time 25 
 
 and the railroad stations are roofless, and their 
 broken windows stare pathetically at you like blind 
 eyes. War cannot alter the sunshine, but the 
 smoke from the burning huts and the blazing corn 
 fields seems all the more sad and terrible when it 
 rises into such an atmosphere, and against so soft 
 and beautiful a sky. 
 
 People frequently ask how far the destruction of 
 property in Cuba is apparent. It is so far apparent 
 that the smoke of burning buildings is seldom ab- 
 sent from the landscape. If you stand on an elevation 
 it is possible to see from ten to twenty blazing 
 houses, and the smoke from the cane fields creeping 
 across the plain or rising slowly to meet the sky. 
 Sometimes the train passes for hours through burn- 
 ing districts, and the heat from the fields along the 
 track is so intense that it is impossible to keep 
 the windows up, and whenever the door is opened 
 sparks and cinders svx^eep into the car. One morn- 
 ing, 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 distin- 
 guished 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 
 
26 Cuba in War Time 
 
 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 re- 
 mainder with machetes, to prevent it from falling 
 into the hands of the Spaniards. If the Spaniards 
 pass first, they act in exactly the same way. 
 
 Cane is not completely destroyed if it is burned, 
 for if it is at once cut down just above the roots, it 
 will grow again. When peace is declared it will 
 not be the soil that will be found wanting, nor the 
 sun. 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 hun- 
 dreds of thousands of dollars, and in the aggre- 
 gate 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. For the 
 Spaniards themselves are acting in a way which 
 makes many people suspect that they are not mak- 
 ing an effort to bring it to an end. The sincerity of 
 the Spaniards in Spain is beyond question; the per- 
 sonal sacrifices they made in taking up the loans 
 
Cuba in War Time 
 
 29 
 
 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 un- 
 questionably aiding the insurgents in secret, and 
 though they shout "Viva Espaiia" in the cities, they 
 pay out cartridges and money at the back door of \ 
 
 their plantations. 
 
 It was because Weyler suspected that they 
 were playing this double game that he issued 
 secret orders that there should be no more grind- 
 ing. For he knew that the same men who bribed 
 him to allow them to grind would also pay black- 
 mail to the insurgents for a like permission. He did 
 not dare openly to forbid the grinding, but he in- 
 structed his officers in the field to visit those places 
 where grinding was in progress and to stop it by 
 some indirect means, such as by declaring that the 
 laborers employed were suspects, or by seizing all 
 the draught oxen ostensibly for the use of his army, 
 or by insisting that the men employed must show 
 a fresh permit to work every day, which could only 
 be issued to them by some commandante stationed 
 not less than ten miles distant from the plantation 
 on which they were employed. 
 
 And the Spanish officers, as well as the planters — 
 the very men to whom Spain looks to end the rebel- 
 
^ Cuba in War Time 
 
 .ion — are chief among those who are keeping it 
 aUve. The reasons for their doing so are obvious ; 
 they receive double pay while they are on foreign 
 service, whether they are fighting or not, promo- 
 tion 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. A certain class of Spanish 
 officer has a strange sense of honor. He does 
 not consider that robbing his government by falsi- 
 fying 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 per- 
 fectly willing to die for his country, but should he 
 be permitted to live he will not hesitate to rob her. 
 A lieutenant, for instance, will take twenty men 
 out for their daily walk through the surrounding 
 country and after burning a few huts and butcher- 
 . ing a pacifico or two, will come back in time for 
 dinner and charge his captain for rations for fifty 
 men and for three thousand cartridges ''expended 
 in service." The captain vises his report, and the 
 two share the profits. Or they turn the money 
 
Cuba in War Time 31 
 
 over to the colonel, who recommends them for red 
 enamelled crosses for "bravery on the field." 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 Span- 
 ish 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 sup- 
 pose that the rebellion is a profitable experience for 
 the officers, and they have no intention of losing 
 the golden eggs. 
 
 And the insurgents on the other side are equally 
 determined to continue the conflict. From every 
 point of view this is all that is left for them to do. 
 They know by terrible experience how little of 
 mercy or even of justice they may expect from 
 the enemy, and, patriotism or the love of indepen- 
 dence aside, it is better for them to die in the 
 field than to risk the other alternative; a lin- 
 gering life in an African penal settlement or the 
 fusillade against the east wall of Cabafias prison. 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 
 
32 Cuba in War Time 
 
 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 al- 
 ready more than they can arm. 
 
 People in the United States frequently ex- 
 press impatience at the small amount of fighting 
 which takes place in this struggle for liberty, and it 
 is true that the lists of killed show that the death 
 rate in battle is inconsiderable. Indeed, when 
 compared with the number of men and women who 
 die daily of small-pox and fever and those who are 
 butchered on the plantations, the proportion of 
 killed in battle is probably about one to fifteen. 
 
 I have no statistics to prove these figures, but, 
 judging from the hospital reports and from what the 
 consuls tell of the many murders of pacificos, I 
 judge that that proportion would be rather under 
 than above the truth. George Bronson Ri.e, the 
 Herald correspondent, who was for nine months 
 with Maceo and Gomez, and who saw eighty fights 
 and was twice wounded, told me that the largest 
 number of insurgents he had seen killed in one bat- 
 tle was thirteen. 
 
 Another correspondent said that a Spanish officer 
 had told him that he had killed forty insurgents out 
 of four hundred who had attacked his column. 
 
Insurgents Firing on a Spanish Fort 
 " One Shot for a Hundred " 
 
B 
 
Cuba in War Time 35 
 
 "But how do you know you killed that many?" 
 the correspondent asked. "You say you were 
 never nearer than half a mile to them, and that you 
 fell back into the town as soon as they ceased 
 firing." 
 
 "Ah, but I counted the cartridges my men had 
 used," the officer replied. "I found they had ex- 
 pended four hundred. By allowing ten bullets to 
 each man killed, I was able to learn that we had 
 killed forty men." 
 
 These stories show how little reason there is to 
 speak of these skirmishes as battles, and it also 
 throws some light on the Spaniard's idea of his 
 own marksmanship. As a plain statement of fact, 
 and without any exaggeration, one of the chief rea- 
 sons 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 excep- 
 tion of the Guardia Civile, is a most excellent 
 weapon for those who like clean, gentlemanly war- 
 fare, in which the object is to wound or to kill out- 
 right, and not to "shock" the enemy nor to tear his 
 flesh in pieces. The weapon has hardly any tra- 
 jectory up to one thousand yards, but, in spite of 
 its precision, it is as useless in the hands of a guer- 
 rilla or the average Spanish soldier as a bow and 
 
36 Cuba in War Time 
 
 arrow would be. The fact that when the Spaniards 
 say ''within gun fire of the forts" they mean within 
 one hundred and fifty yards of them shows how 
 they estimate their own skill. Major Grover Flint, 
 the Journal correspondent, told me of a fight that he 
 witnessed in which the Spaniards fired two thou- 
 sand rounds at forty insurgents only two hundred 
 yards away, and only succeeded in wounding three 
 of them. Sylvester Scovel once explained this bad 
 marksmanship to me by pointing out that to shift 
 the cartridge in a Mauser, it is necessary to hold 
 the rifle at an almost perpendicular angle, and close 
 up under the shoulder. After the fresh cartridge 
 has gone home the temptation to bring the butt to 
 the shoulder before the barrel is level is too great 
 for the Spanish Tommy, and, in his excitement, he 
 fires most of his ammunition in the air over the 
 heads of the enemy. He also fires so recklessly 
 and rapidly that his gun often becomes too hot for 
 him to handle it properly, and it is not an unusual 
 sight to see him rest the butt on the ground and 
 pull the trigger while the gun is in tliat position. 
 
 On the whole, the Spanish soldiers during this 
 war in Cuba have contributed little to the informa- 
 tion of those who are interested in military science. 
 The tactics which the ofBcers follow are those 
 which were found effective at the battle of Water- 
 
 I 
 
Cuba in War Time 37 
 
 loo, and in the Peninsular campaign. When at- 
 tacked from an ambush a Spanish column forms at 
 once into a hollow square, with the cavalry in the 
 centre, and the firing is done in platoons. They 
 know nothing of "open order," or of firing in skir- 
 mish line. If the Cubans were only a little better 
 marksmen than their enemies they should, with 
 such a target as a square furnishes them, kill about 
 ten men where they now wound one. 
 
 With the war conducted under the conditions 
 described here, there does not seem to be much 
 promise of its coming to any immediate end unless 
 some power will interfere. The Spaniards will 
 probably continue, to remain inside their forts, and 
 the officers will continue to pay themselves well out 
 of the rebellion. 
 
 And, on the other hand, the insurgents who 
 call themselves rich when they have three cart- 
 ridges, as opposed to the one hundred and fifty cart- 
 ridges that every Spanish soldier carries, will prob- 
 ably very wisely continue to refuse to force the 
 issue in any one battle. 
 
The Fate of the Pacificos 
 
u 
 
 I 
 
The Fate of the 
 Pacificos 
 
 As is already well known in the United States, 
 General Weyler issued an order some months ago 
 commanding the country people living in the prov- 
 inces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and Matanzas to 
 betake themselves with their belongings to the for- 
 tified towns. His object in doing this was to pre- 
 vent the pacificos from giving help to the insur- 
 gents, and from sheltering them and the wounded 
 in their huts. So flying columns of guerrillas and 
 Spanish soldiers were sent to burn these huts, and 
 to drive the inhabitants into the suburbs of the cit- 
 ies. When I arrived in Cuba sufficient time had 
 passed for me to note the effects of this order, and 
 to study the results as they are to be found in the 
 provinces of Havana, Matanzas and Santa Clara, 
 the order having been extended to embrace the lat- 
 ter province. 
 
 It looked then as though General Weyler was 
 reaping what he had sown, and was face to face 
 
42 Cuba in War Time 
 
 with a problem of his own creating. As far as 
 a visitor could judge, the results of this famous or- 
 der seemed to furnish a better argument to those 
 who think the United States should interfere in be- 
 half of Cuba, than did the fact that men were being 
 killed there, and that both sides were devastating 
 the island and wrecking property worth millions of 
 dollars. 
 
 The order, apart from being unprecedented in 
 warfare, proved an exceedingly short-sighted one, 
 and acted almost immediately after the manner of 
 a boomerang. 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 insur- 
 gent 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. 
 
 The order failed also In its original object of em- 
 barrassing the insurgents, for they are used to liv- 
 ing out of doors and to finding food for themselves, 
 and the destruction of the huts where they had been 
 made welcome was not a great loss to men who, in 
 
The Fate of the Pacificos 43 
 
 a few minutes, with the aid of a machete, can con- 
 struct a shelter from a palm tree. 
 
 So the order failed to distress those against whom 
 it was aimed, but brought swift and terrible suffer- 
 ing to those who were and are absolutely innocent 
 of any intent against the government, as well as to 
 the adherents of the government. 
 
 It is easy to imagine what happened when hun- 
 dreds 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. 
 
 It is true that in the country, also, these people 
 had no covering for their huts but palm leaves, but 
 those huts were made stoutly to endure. When 
 a man built one of them he was building his home, 
 not a shelter tent, and they were placed well apart 
 from one another, with the free air of the plain or 
 mountain blowing about them, with room for the 
 sun to beat down and drink up the impurities, and 
 with patches of green things growing in rows over 
 the few acres. I have seen them like that all over 
 Cuba, and I am sure that no disease could have 
 sprung from houses built so admirably to admit the 
 sun and the air. 
 
44 Cuba in War Time 
 
 I have also seen them, I might add in parenthe- 
 sis, rising in sluggish columns of black smoke 
 against the sky, hundreds of them, while those who 
 had lived in them for years stood huddled together 
 at a distance, watching the flames run over the dry 
 rafters of their homes, roaring and crackling with 
 delight, like something human or inhuman, and 
 marring the beautiful sunlit landscape with great 
 blotches of red flames. 
 
 The huts in which these people live at present 
 lean one against the other, and there are no broad 
 roads nor green tobacco patches to separate one 
 from another. There are, on the contrary, only 
 narrow paths, two feet wide, where dogs and 
 tattle and human beings tramp over daily growing- 
 heaps of refuse and garbage and filth, and where 
 malaria rises at night in a white winding sheet of 
 poisonous mist. 
 
 The condition of these people differs in degree; 
 some are living the life of gypsies, others are as des- 
 titute as so many shipwrecked emigrants, and still 
 others find it difficult to hold up their heads and 
 breathe. 
 
 In Jaruco, in the Havana province, a town of 
 only two thousand inhabitants, the deaths from 
 small-pox averaged seven a day for the month of 
 December, and while Frederic Remington and I 
 
A Spanish Guerrilla 
 
The Fate of the Pacilicos 47 
 
 were there, six victims of small-pox were carried 
 past us up the hill to the burying ground in the 
 space of twelve hours. There were Spanish sol- 
 diers as well as pacificos among these, for the 
 Spanish officers either know or care nothing about 
 the health of their men. 
 
 There is no attempt made to police these military 
 camps, and in Jaruco the filth covered the streets 
 and the plaza ankle-deep, and even filled the cor- 
 ners of the church which had been turned into a 
 fort, and had hammocks swung from the altars. 
 The huts of the pacificos, with from four to six peo- 
 ple in each, were jammed together in rows a quar- 
 ter of a mile long, within ten feet of the cavalry 
 barracks, where sixty men and horses had lived for 
 a month. Next to the stables were the barracks. No 
 one was vaccinated, no one was clean, and all of 
 them were living on half rations. 
 
 Jaruco was a little worse than the other towns, 
 but I found that the condition of the people is about 
 the same everywhere. Around every town and 
 even around the forts outside of the towns, you will 
 see from one hundred to five hundred of these palm 
 huts, with the people crouched about them, covered 
 with rags, starving, with no chance to obtain work. 
 
 In the city of Matanzas the huts have been built 
 upon a hill, and so far neither small-pox nor yellow 
 
48 Cuba in War Time 
 
 fever has made headway there; but there is nothing 
 for these people to eat, either, and while I was there 
 three babies died from plain, old-fashioned starva- 
 tion and no other cause. 
 
 The government's report for the year just ended 
 gives the number of deaths in three hospitals of 
 Matanzas as three hundred and eighty for the year, 
 which is an average of a little over one death a day. 
 As a matter of fact, in the military hospital alone the 
 soldiers during several months of last year died at 
 the rate of sixteen a day. It seems hard that Spain 
 should hold Cuba at such a sacrifice of her own 
 people. 
 
 In Cardenas, one of the principal seaport towns 
 of the island, I found the pacificos lodged in huts at 
 the back of the town and also in abandoned 
 warehouses along the water front. The condition 
 of these latter was so pitiable that it is difficult to 
 describe it correctly and hope to be believed. 
 
 The warehouses are built on wooden posts 
 about fifty feet from the water's edge. They were 
 origina^lly nearly as large in extent as Madison 
 Square Garden, but the half of the roof of one has 
 fallen in, carrying the flooring with it, and the 
 adobe walls and one side of the sloping roof and the 
 high wooden piles on which half of the floor once 
 rested are all that remain. 
 
The Fate of the Pacificos 49 
 
 Some time ago an unusually high tide swept in 
 under one of these warehouses and left a pool of 
 water a hundred yards long and as many wide, 
 around the wooden posts, and it has remained there 
 undisturbed. This pool is now covered a half-inch 
 thick with green slime, colored blue and yellow, 
 and with a damp fungus spread over the wooden 
 posts and up the sides of the walls. 
 
 Over this sewage are now living three hundred 
 women and children and a few men. The floor be- 
 neath them has rotted away, and the planks have 
 broken and fallen into the pool, leaving big gaps, 
 through w^hich rise day and night deadly stenches 
 and poisonous exhalations from the pool below. 
 
 The people above it are not ignorant of their sit- 
 uation. 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 bar- 
 riers across these abandoned warehouses, and there 
 they are now sitting on the floor or stretched on 
 heaps of rags, gaunt and hollow-eyed. Outside, in 
 the angles of the fallen walls, and among the refuse 
 
50 Cuba in War Time 
 
 of the warehouses, they have built fireplaces, and, 
 with the few pots and kettles they use in common, 
 they cook what food the children can find or beg. 
 
 One gentleman of Cardenas told me that a hun- 
 dred of these people called at his house every day 
 for a bit of food. 
 
 Old negroes and little white children, some of 
 them as beautiful, in spite of their rags, as any chil- 
 dren I ever saw, act as providers for this hapless 
 colony. They beg the food and gather the sticks 
 and do the cooking. Inside the old women and 
 young mothers sit on the rotten planks listless and 
 silent, staring ahead of them at nothing. 
 
 I saw the survivors of the Johnstown flood when 
 the horror of that disaster was still plainly written 
 in their eyes, but destitute as they were of home and 
 food and clothing, they were in better plight than 
 those fever-stricken, starving pacificos, who have 
 sinned in no way, who have given no aid to the reb- 
 els, and whose only crime is that they lived in the 
 country instead of in the town. They are now to 
 suffer because General Weyler, finding that he can- 
 not hold the country as he can the towns, lays it 
 waste and treats those who lived there with less 
 cofisideration than the Sultan of Morocco shows to 
 the murderers in his jail at Tangier. Had these 
 people been guilty of the most unnatural crimes, 
 
The Fate of the Pacificos 53 
 
 their punishment could not have been more severe 
 nor their end more certain. 
 
 I found the hospital for this colony behind three 
 blankets which had been hung across a corner of 
 the warehouse. A young woman and a man were 
 lying side by side, the girl on a cot and the man on 
 the floor. The others sat within a few feet of them 
 on the other side of the blankets, apparently lost to 
 all sense of their danger, and too dejected and hope- 
 less to even raise their eyes when I gave them 
 money. 
 
 A fat little doctor was caring for the sick woman, 
 and he pointed through the cracks in the floor at 
 the green slime below us, and held his fingers to his 
 nose and shrugged his shoulders. I asked him 
 w^hat ailed his patients, and he said it was yellow 
 fever, and pointed again at the slime, which moved 
 and bubbled in the hot sun. 
 
 He showed me babies with the skin drawn so 
 tightly over their little bodies that the bones 
 showed through as plainly as the rings under a 
 glove. They were covered with sores, and they 
 protested as loudly as they could against the treat- 
 ment which the world was giving them, clinching 
 their fists and sobbing with pain when the sore 
 places came in contact with their mothers' arms. A 
 planter who had at one time employed a large 
 
54 Cuba in War Time 
 
 number of these people, and who was moving about 
 among them, said that five hundred had died in 
 Cardenas since the order to leave the fields had 
 been issued. Another gentleman told me that in 
 the huts at the back of the town there had been 
 twenty-five cases of small-pox in one week, of 
 which seventeen had resulted in death. 
 
 I do not know that the United States will in- 
 terfere in the afifairs of Cuba, but whatever may 
 happen later, this is what is likely to happen now, 
 and it should have some weight in helping to de- 
 cide the question with those whose proper busi- 
 ness 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 cleanli- 
 ness or sanitation, who have no doctors to care for 
 them and who cannot care for themselves. 
 
 Many of them are dying of sickness and some of 
 starvation, and this is the healthy season. 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 
 
The Fate of the Pacificos ^5 
 
 hundreds, and women and children who are inno- 
 cent 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. 
 
 All this is going to happen, I am led to believe, 
 not from what I saw in any one village, but in hun- 
 dreds of villages. It will not do to put it aside by 
 saying that ''War is war," and that "All war is 
 cruel," or to ask, '*Am I my brother's keeper?" 
 
 In other wars men have fought with men, and 
 women have suffered indirectly because the men 
 were killed, but in this war it is the women, herded 
 together in the towns like cattle, who are going to 
 die, while the men, camped in the fields and the 
 mountains, will live. 
 
 It is a situation which charity might help to bet- 
 ter, but in any event it is a condition which deserves 
 the most serious consideration from men of com- 
 mon sense and judgment, and one not to be treated 
 with hysterical head lines nor put aside as a neceS' 
 sary evil of war. 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 
 
pq 
 
 1 
 
 •I 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 
 
 Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban 
 farmer, who Hves nine miles outside of Santa Clara, 
 beyond the hills that surround that city to the 
 north. 
 
 When the revolution broke out young Rodriguez 
 joined the insurgents, leaving his father and mother 
 and two sisters at the farm. He was taken, in 
 December of 1896, by a force of the Guardia Civile, 
 the corps d'elite of the Spanish army, and defended 
 himself when they tried to capture him, wounding 
 three of them with his machete. 
 
 He was tried by a military court for bearing 
 arms against the government, and sentenced to be 
 shot by a fusillade some morning, before sunrise. 
 
 Previous to execution, he was confined in the 
 military prison of Santa Clara, with thirty other 
 insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, 
 one after the other, on mornings following the exe- 
 cution of Rodriguez. 
 
 His execution took place the morning of the 19th 
 of January, at a place a half-mile distant from the 
 city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts 
 
6o Cuba in War Time 
 
 out to the hills, beyond which Rodriguez had lived 
 for nineteen years. At the time of his death he was 
 twenty years old. 
 
 I witnessed his execution, and what follows is an 
 account of the way he went to death. The young- 
 man's friends could not be present, for it was im- 
 possible for them to show themselves in that crowd 
 and that place with wisdom or without distress, and 
 I like to think that, although Rodriguez could not 
 know it, there was one person present when he died 
 who felt keenly for him, and who was a sympa- 
 thetic though unwilling spectator. 
 
 There had been a full moon the night preceding 
 the execution, and when the squad of soldiers 
 marched out from town it was still shining brightly 
 through the mists, although it was past five o'clock. 
 It lighted a plain two miles in extent broken by 
 ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high grass 
 and with bunches of cactus and palmetto. In the 
 hollow of the ridges the mist lay like broad lakes of 
 water, and on one side of the plain stood the walls 
 of the old town. On the other rose hills covered 
 with royal palms, that showed white in the moon- 
 light, like hundreds of marble columns. A line of 
 tiny camp fires that the sentries had built during the 
 night stretched between the forts at regular inter- 
 vals and burned brightly. 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 6i 
 
 But as the light grew stronger, and the moon- 
 Hght faded, these were stamped out, and when the 
 soldiers came in force the moon was a white ball in 
 the sky, without radiance, the fires had sunk to 
 ashes, and the sun had not yet risen. 
 
 So, even when the men were formed into three 
 sides of a hollow square, they were scarcely able to 
 distinguish one another in the uncertain light of the 
 morning. 
 
 There were about three hundred soldiers in the 
 formation. They belonged to the Volunteers, and 
 they deployed upon the plain with their band in 
 front, playing a jaunty quickstep, while their offi- 
 cers galloped from one side to the other through 
 the grass, seeking out a suitable place for the ex- 
 ecution, while the band outside the line still played 
 merrily. 
 
 A few men and boys, who had been dragged out 
 of their beds by the music, moved about the ridges, 
 behind the soldiers, half-clothed, unshaven, sleepy- 
 eyed, yawning and stretching themselves nerv- 
 ously and shivering in the cool, damp air of the 
 morning. 
 
 Either owing to discipline or on account of the 
 nature of their errand or because the men were 
 still but half awake, there was no talking in the 
 ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning 
 
62 Cuba in War Time 
 
 on their rifles, with their backs turned to the town, 
 looking out across the plain to the hills. 
 
 The men in the crowd behind them were also 
 grimly silent. They knew that whatever they 
 might say would be twisted into a word of 
 sympathy for the condemned man or a protest 
 against the government. So no one spoke; even 
 the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, 
 and the men in the crowd did not mix together, 
 but looked suspiciously at one another and kept 
 apart. 
 
 As the light increased a mass of people came hur- 
 rying from the town with two black figures leading 
 them, and the soldiers drew up at attention, and 
 part of the double line fell back and left an opening 
 in the square. 
 
 With us a condemned man walks only the short 
 distance from his cell to the scaffold or the electric 
 chair, shielded from sight by the prison walls; and 
 it often occurs even then that the short journey is 
 too much for his strength and courage. 
 
 But the merciful Spaniards on this morning 
 made the prisoner walk for over a half-mile across 
 the broken surface of the fields. I expected to 
 find the man, no matter what his strength at other 
 times might be, stumbling and faltering on this cruel 
 journey, but as he came nearer I saw that he led 
 
^l 
 
 Young Spanish Officer 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 65 
 
 all the others, that the priests on either side of him 
 were taking two steps to his one, and that they 
 were tripping on their gowns and stumbling over 
 the hollows, in their efforts to keep pace with him 
 as he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in 
 advance of them. 
 
 He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant 
 type, a light, pointed beard, great wistful eyes and a 
 mass of curly black hair. He was shockingly 
 young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a 
 Neapolitan than a Cuban. You could imagine him 
 sitting on the quay at Naples or Genoa, lolling in 
 the sun and showing his white teeth when he 
 laughed. He wore a new scapula around his neck, 
 hanging outside his linen blouse. 
 
 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 arro- 
 gantly 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. 
 
 It was very quickly finished, with rough, and, 
 but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swift- 
 ness. The crowd fell back when it came to the 
 square, and the condemned man, the priests and 
 
66 Cuba in War Time 
 
 the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in 
 and the Hne closed behind them. 
 
 The officer who had held the cord that bound' 
 the Cuban's arms behind him and passed across his 
 breast, let it fall on the grass and drew his sword, 
 and Rodriguez dropped his cigarette from his lips 
 and bent and kissed the cross which the priest held 
 up before him. 
 
 The elder of the priests moved to one side and 
 prayed rapidly in a loud whisper, while the other, a 
 younger man, walked away behind the firing squad 
 and covered his face with his hands and turned his 
 back. They had both spent the last twelve hours 
 with Rodriguez in the chapel of the prison. 
 
 The Cuban walked to where the officer directed 
 him to stand, and turned his back to the square 
 and faced the hills and the road across them which 
 led to his father's farm. 
 
 As the officer gave the first command he 
 straightened himself as far as the cords would 
 allow, and held up his head and fixed his eyes 
 immovably on the morning light which had just 
 begun to show above the hills. 
 
 He made a picture of such pathetic helplessness, 
 but of such courage and dignity, that he reminded 
 me on the instant of that statue of Nathan Hale, 
 which stands in the City Hall Park, above the roar of 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 67 
 
 Broadway, and teaches a lesson daily to the hur- 
 rying crowds of moneymakers who pass beneath. 
 
 The Cuban's arms were bound, as are those of the 
 statue, and he stood firmly, with his weight resting 
 on his heels like a soldier on parade, and with his 
 face held up fearlessly, as is that of the statue. But 
 there was this difference, that Rodriguez, while 
 probably as willing to give six lives for his country 
 as was the American rebel, being only a peasant, 
 did not think to say so, and he will not, in conse- 
 quence, live in bronze during the lives of many 
 men, but will be remembered only as one of thirty 
 Cubans, one of whom was shot at Santa Clara on 
 each succeeding day at sunrise. 
 
 The ofBcer had given the order, the men had 
 raised their pieces, and the condemned man had 
 heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled 
 back, and he had not moved. And then happened 
 one of the most cruelly refined, though uninten- 
 tional, acts of torture that one can very well 
 imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, 
 preparatory to giving the signal, one of the 
 mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out 
 silently what I had already observed with some sat- 
 isfaction, that the firing squad w^ere so placed that 
 when they fired they would shoot several of the sol- 
 diers stationed on the extreme end of the square. 
 
68 Cuba in War Time 
 
 Their captain motioned his men to lower their 
 pieces, and then walked across the grass and laid 
 his hand on the shoulder of the waiting prisoner. 
 
 It is not pleasant to think what that shock must 
 have been. The man had steeled himself to receive 
 a volley of bullets in his back. He believed that in 
 the next instant he would be in another world; he 
 had heard the command given, had heard the click 
 of the Mausers as the locks caught — and then, at 
 that supreme moment, a human hand had been 
 laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear. 
 
 You would expect that any man who had been 
 snatched back to life in such a fashion would start 
 and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down 
 altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, 
 and followed with his eyes the direction of the offi- 
 cer's sword, then nodded his head gravely, and, 
 with his shoulders squared, took up a new position, 
 straightened his back again, and once more held 
 himself erect. 
 
 As an exhibition of self-control this should surely 
 rank above feats of heroism performed in battle, 
 where there are thousands of comrades to give in- 
 spiration. This man was alone, in the sight of the 
 hills he knew, with only enemies about him, with 
 no source to draw on for strength but that which 
 lay within himself. 
 
! 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
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 ^ 
 1 
 
 C- 
 
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 h 
 
 I 
 
 % _ . 
 
 ^■' 
 
 
 
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 • 
 
 "■^t ' 
 
 k • 
 
 
 
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 c-^V - 
 
 • 
 
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 '_ <, 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 71 
 
 The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his 
 blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men 
 once more leveled their rifles, the sword rose, 
 dropped, and the men fired. At the report the 
 Cuban's head snapped back almost between his 
 shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some 
 one had pushed him gently forward from behind 
 and he had stumbled. 
 
 He sank on his side in the wet grass without a 
 struggle or sound, and did not move again. 
 
 It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie 
 there, that it could be ended so without a word, 
 that the man in the linen suit would not get up on 
 his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, as he 
 apparently had started to do, to his home; that there 
 was not a mistake somewhere, or that at least some 
 one would be sorry or say something or run to pick 
 him up. 
 
 But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the 
 priests returned — the younger one, with the tears 
 running down his face — and donned their vest- 
 ments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while 
 the squad stood uncovered, and the men in hollow 
 square shook their accoutrements into place, and 
 shifted their pieces and got ready for the order to 
 march, and the band began again with the same 
 quickstep which the fusillade had interrupted. 
 
72 Cuba in War Time 
 
 The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and 
 no one seemed to remember that it had walked 
 there of itself, or noticed that the cigarette still 
 burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where 
 the figure had first stood. 
 
 The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad 
 shook itself like a great snake, and then broke into 
 little pieces and started ofi jauntily, stumbling in 
 the high grass and striving to keep step to the 
 music. 
 
 The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, 
 and so close to it that the file closers had to part 
 with the column to avoid treading on it. Each sol- 
 dier as he passed turned and looked down on it, 
 some craning their necks curiously, others giving a 
 careless glance, and some without any interest at 
 all, as they would have looked at a house by the 
 roadside or a passing cart or a hole in the road. 
 
 One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing 
 vine, and fell forward just opposite to it. He grew 
 very red when his comrades giggled at him for his 
 awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell 
 in on either side of the band. They had forgotten 
 it, too, and the priests put their vestments back in 
 the bag and wrapped their heavy cloaks about 
 them, and hurried ofif after the others. 
 
 Every one seemed to have forgotten it except 
 
The Death of Rodriguez 73 
 
 two men, who came slowly toward it from the town, 
 driving a bullock cart that bore an unplaned coffin, 
 each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his 
 throat wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning 
 mists. 
 
 At that moment the sun, which had shown some 
 promise of its coming in the glow above the hills, 
 shot up suddenly from behind them in all the 
 splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disc of heat, 
 and filled the air with warmth and light. 
 
 The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in 
 it, and at the sight of it a rooster in a farmyard near 
 by crowed vigorously and a dozen bugles answered 
 the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes of the 
 reveille, and from all parts of the city the church 
 bells jangled out the call for early mass, and the 
 whole world of Santa Clara seemed to stir and 
 stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just 
 begun. 
 
 But as I fell in at the rear of the procession and 
 looked back the figure of the young Cuban, who 
 was no longer a part of the world of Santa Clara, 
 was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless 
 arms still tightly bound behind him, with the scap- 
 ula twisted awry across his face and the blood from 
 his breast sinking into the soil he had tried to free. 
 
Along the Trocha 
 
Regular Cavalryman — Spanish 
 76 
 
Along the Trocha 
 
 This is an account of a voyage of discovery along 
 the Spanish trocha, the one at the eastern end of 
 Cuba. It is the longer of the two, and stretches 
 from coast to coast at the narrowest part of that 
 half of the island, from Jucaro on the south to Mo- 
 ron on the north. 
 
 Before I came to Cuba this time I had read 
 in our newspapers about the Spanish trocha without 
 knowing just what a trocha was. I imagined it to 
 be a rampart of earth and fallen trees, topped with 
 barbed wire; a Rubicon that no one was allowed to 
 pass, but which the insurgents apparently crossed 
 at will with the ease of little girls leaping over a 
 flying skipping rope. In reality it seems to be a 
 much more important piece of engineering than is 
 generally supposed, and one which, when com- 
 pleted, may prove an absolute barrier to the pro- 
 gress of large bodies of troops unless they are 
 supplied with artillery. 
 
 I saw twenty-five of its fifty miles, and the engi- 
 neers in charge told me that I was the first Ameri- 
 can, or foreigner of any nationality, who had been 
 
78 Cuba in War Time 
 
 allowed to visit it and make drawings and photo- 
 graphs of it. Why they allowed me to see it I do 
 not know, nor can I imagine either why they should 
 have objected to my doing so. There is no great 
 mystery about it. 
 
 Indeed, what impressed me most concerning 
 it was the fact that every bit of material used in 
 constructing this backbone of the Spanish defence, 
 this strategic point of all their operations, and their 
 chief hope of success against the revolutionists, was 
 furnished by their despised and hated enemies in 
 the United States. Every sheet of armor plate, 
 every corrugated zinc roof, every roll of barbed 
 wire, every plank, beam, rafter and girder, even the 
 nails that hold the planks together, the forts them- 
 selves, shipped in sections, which are numbered in 
 readiness for setting up, the ties for the military rail- 
 road which clings to the trocha from one sea to the 
 other — all of these have been supplied by manufac- 
 turers in the United States. 
 
 This is interesting when one remembers that the 
 American in the Spanish illustrated papers is rep- 
 resented 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 
 
Along the Trocha 79 
 
 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. 
 
 If the insurgents have found as much difficulty in 
 crossing the trocha by land as I found in reaching 
 it by water, they are deserving of all sympathy as 
 patient and long-suffering individuals. 
 
 A thick jungle stretches for miles on either side 
 of the trocha, and the only way of reaching it 
 from the outer world is through the seaports at 
 either end. Of these. Moron is all but landlocked, 
 and Jucaro is guarded by a chain of keys, which 
 make it necessary to reship all the troops and 
 their supplies and all the material for the trocha to 
 lighters, which meet the vessels six miles out at 
 sea. 
 
 A dirty Spanish steamer drifted with us for two 
 nights and a day from Cienfuegos to Jucaro, and 
 three hundred Spanish soldiers, dusty, ragged and 
 barefooted, owned her as completely as though she 
 had been a regular transport. They sprawled at 
 full length over every deck, their guns were stacked 
 in each corner, and their hammocks swung four 
 deep from railings and riggings and across com- 
 panionways, and even from the bridge itself. It 
 was not possible to take a step without treading on 
 
8o Cuba in War Time 
 
 one of them, and their hammocks made a walk on 
 the deck something Hke a hurdle race. 
 
 With the soldiers, and crowding them for space, 
 were the ofificers' mules and ponies, steers, calves 
 and squealing pigs, while crates full of chickens were 
 piled on top of one another as high as the hurricane 
 deck, so that the roosters and the buglers vied with 
 each other in continual contests. It was like trav- 
 eling with a floating menagerie. Twice a day the 
 bugles sounded the call for breakfast and dinner, 
 and the soldiers ceased to sprawl, and squatted on 
 the deck around square tin cans filled with soup or 
 red wine, from which they fed themselves with 
 spoons and into which they dipped their rations of 
 hard tack, after first breaking them on the deck 
 with a blow from a bayonet or crushing them with 
 a rifle butt. 
 
 The steward brought what was supposed to be a 
 sample of this soup to the officer seated in the pilot 
 house high above the squalor, and he would pick 
 out a bean from the mess on the end of a fork and 
 place it to his lips and nod his head gravely, and the 
 grinning steward would carry the dish away. 
 
 But the soldiers seemed to enjoy it very much, 
 and to be content, even cheerful. There are many 
 things to admire about the Spanish Tommy. In the 
 seven fortified cities which I visited, where there 
 
One of the Block Houses 
 From a photograph taken by Mr. Davis 
 
Along the Trocha 83 
 
 were tHousands of him, I never saw one drunk or 
 aggressive, which is much more than you can say of 
 his officers. On the march he is patient, eager 
 and alert. He trudges from fifteen to thirty miles 
 a day over the worst roads ever constructed by 
 man, in canvas shoes with rope soles, carrying 
 one hundred and fifty cartridges, fifty across his 
 stomach and one hundred on his back, weighing in 
 all fifty pounds. 
 
 With these he has his Mauser, his blanket and an 
 extra pair of shoes, and as many tin plates and bot- 
 tles and bananas and potatoes and loaves of white 
 bread as he can stow away in his blouse and knap- 
 sack. And this under a sun which makes even a 
 walking stick seem a burden. In spite of his offi- 
 cers, and not on account of them, he maintains good 
 discipline, and no matter how tired he may be or 
 how much he may wish to rest on his plank bed, he 
 will always struggle to his feet when the officers 
 pass, and stand at salute. He gets very little in 
 return for his efiforts. 
 
 One Sunday night, when the band was playing 
 in the plaza, at a heaven-forsaken fever camp called 
 Ciego de Avila, a group of soldiers were sitting 
 near me on the grass enjoying the music. They 
 loitered there a few minutes after the bugle had 
 sounded the retreat to the barracks, and the officer 
 
84 Cuba in War Time 
 
 of the day found them. When they stood up he 
 ordered them to report themselves at the cartel 
 under arrest, and then, losing all control of himself, 
 lashed one little fellow over the head with his col- 
 onel's staff, while the boy stood with his eyes shut 
 and with his lips pressed together, but holding his 
 hand at salute until the officer's stick beat it down. 
 
 These soldiers are from the villages and towns 
 of Spain; some of them are not more than seven- 
 teen 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. 
 
 The second night out the ship steward showed 
 us a light lying low in the water, and told us that 
 was Jucaro, and we accepted his statement and 
 went over the side into an open boat, in which we 
 drifted about until morning, while the colored man 
 who owned the boat, and a little mulatto boy who 
 steered it, quarreled as to where exactly the town 
 of Jucaro might be. They brought us up at last 
 against a dark shadow of a house, built on wooden 
 
lilSiHi^ 
 
 
 m 
 
 flnHfl^^^^' 
 
 
 1*" 
 
 • *• s|F-««»#<.,r- "m.^I-a^^«^»i|M(«fe«jM(j|M«!W-'' 
 
 Spanish Cavalry 
 From photographs taken by i\Ir. Da^ 
 
Along the Trocha 8 
 
 7 
 
 posts, and apparently floating in the water. This 
 was the town of Jucaro as seen at that hour of the 
 night, and as we left it before sunrise the next 
 morning, I did not know until my return whether 
 I had slept in a stationary ark or on the end of a 
 wharf. 
 
 We found four other men sleeping on the floor 
 in the room assigned us, and outside, eating by a 
 smoking candle, a young English boy, who looked 
 up and laughed when he heard us speak, and said: 
 
 "You've come at last, have you? You are the 
 first white men I've seen since I came here. That's 
 twelve months ago." 
 
 He was the cable operator at Jucaro; and he sits 
 all day in front of a sheet of white paper, and 
 watches a ray of light play across an imaginary line, 
 and he can tell by its quivering, so he says, 
 all that is going on all over the world. Out- 
 side of his whitewashed cable oflice is the land- 
 locked bay, filled with wooden piles to keep 
 out the sharks, and back of him lies the village 
 of Jucaro, consisting of two open places filled with 
 green slime and filth and thirty huts. But the 
 operator said that what with fishing and bathing 
 and "Tit-Bits" and "Lloyd's Weekly Times," Ju- 
 caro was quite enjoyable. He is going home the 
 year after this. 
 
88 Cuba in War Time 
 
 "At least, that's how I put it," he explained. 
 "My contract requires me to stop on here until De- 
 cember of 1898, but it doesn't sound so long if you 
 say *a year after this,' does it?" He had had the 
 yellow fever, and had never, owing to the war, been 
 outside of Jucaro. "Still," he added, "I'm seeing 
 the world, and I've always wanted to visit foreign 
 parts." 
 
 As one of the few clean persons I met in Cuba, 
 and the only contented one, I hope the cable oper- 
 ator at Jucaro will get a rise in salary soon, and 
 some day see more of foreign parts than he is see- 
 ing at present, and at last get back to "the Horse 
 Shoe, at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and 
 Oxford street, sir," where, as we agreed, better en- 
 tertainment is to be had on Saturday night than 
 anywhere in London. 
 
 In Havana, General Weyler had given me a pass 
 to enter fortified places, which, except for the 
 authority which the signature implied, meant noth- 
 ing, as all the cities and towns in Cuba are fortified, 
 and any one can visit them. It was as though 
 Mayor Strong had given a man a permit to ride in 
 all the cable cars attached to cables. 
 
 It was not intended to include the trocha, but I 
 argued that if a trocha was not a "fortified place" 
 nothing else was, and I persuaded the comman- 
 
One of the Forts Along the Troch; 
 
 From a photograph taken by Mr. Davis 
 
Along the Trocha 91 
 
 dante at Jucaro to take that view of it and to vise 
 Weyler's order. So at five the following morning a 
 box car, with wooden planks stretched across it for 
 seats, carried me along the line of the trocha from 
 Jucaro to Ciego, the chief military port on the for- 
 tifications, and consumed five hot and stifling hours 
 in covering twenty-five miles. 
 
 The trocha is a cleared space, one hundred and 
 fifty to two hundred yards wide, which stretches for 
 fifty miles through what is apparently an impass- 
 able jungle. The trees which have been cut down 
 in clearing this passageway have been piled up at 
 either side of the cleared space and laid in parallel 
 rows, forming a barrier of tree trunks and roots 
 and branches as wide as Broadway and higher than 
 a man's head. It would take a man some time to 
 pick his way over these barriers, and a horse could 
 no more do it than it could cross a jam of floating 
 logs in a river. 
 
 Between the fallen trees lies the single track of 
 the military railroad, and on one side of that is the 
 line of forts and a few feet beyond them a maze of 
 barbed wire. Beyond the barbed wire again is 
 the other barrier of fallen trees and the jungle. In 
 its unfinished state this is not an insurmountable 
 barricade. Gomez crossed it last November by 
 daylight with six hundred men, and with but the 
 
92 
 
 Cuba in War Time 
 
 loss of twenty-seven killed and as many wounded. 
 To-day it would be more difficult, and in a few 
 months, without the aid of artillery, it will be 
 impossible, except with the sacrifice of a great loss 
 of life. The forts are of three kinds. They are best 
 described as the forts, the block houses and the lit- 
 tle forts. A big fort consists of two stories, with a 
 cellar below and a watch tower above. It is made 
 of stone and adobe, and is painted a glaring 
 white. One of these is placed at intervals of every 
 half mile along the trocha, and on a clear day the 
 sentry in the watch tower of each can see three forts 
 on either side. 
 
 Midway between the big forts, at a distance of a 
 quarter of a mile from each, is a block house of two 
 stories with the upper story of wood, overhanging 
 the lower foundation of mud. These are placed at 
 right angles to the railroad, instead of facing it, as 
 do the forts. 
 
 Between each block house and each fort are three 
 little forts of mud and planks, surrounded by a 
 ditch. They look something like a farmer's ice 
 house as we see it at home, and they are about as 
 hot inside as the other is cold. They hold five men, 
 and are within hailing distance of one another. 
 Back of them are three rows of stout wooden 
 stakes, with barbed wire stretching from one row 
 
Along the Trocha 93 
 
 to the other, interlacing and crossing and running 
 in and out above and below, like an intricate cat's 
 cradle of wire. 
 
 One can judge how closely knit it is by the fact 
 that to every twelve yards of posts there are four 
 hundred and fifty yards of wire fencing. The 
 forts are most completely equipped in their way, 
 but twelve men in the jungle would find it quite 
 easy to keep twelve men securely imprisoned in one 
 of them for an indefinite length of time. 
 
 The walls are about twelve feet high, with a cel- 
 lar below and a vault above the cellar. The roof 
 of the vault forms a platform, around which the 
 four walls rise to the height of a man's shoulder. 
 There are loopholes for rifles in the sides of the 
 vault, and where the platform joins th^ walls. These 
 latter allow the men in the fort to fire down almost 
 directly upon the head of any one who comes 
 up close to the wall of the fort, where, without 
 these holes in the floor, it would be impossible 
 to fire on him except by leaning far over the ram- 
 part. 
 
 Above the platform is an iron or zinc roof, sup- 
 ported by iron pillars, and in the centre of this is 
 the watch tower. The only approach to the fort is 
 by a movable ladder, which hangs over the side like 
 the gangway of a ship of war, and can be 
 
94 Cuba in War Time 
 
 raised by those on the inside by means of a rope 
 suspended over a wheel in the roof. The opening 
 in the wall at the head of the ladder is closed at 
 the time of an attack by an iron platform, to which 
 the ladder leads, and which also can be raised by a 
 pulley. In October of 1897 the Spanish hope to 
 have calcium lights placed in the watch towers of 
 the forts with sufficient power to throw a search- 
 light over a quarter of a mile, or to the next block 
 house, and so keep the trocha as well lighted as 
 Broadway from one end to the other. 
 
 As a further protection against the insurgents 
 the Spaniards have distributed a number of bombs 
 along' the trocha, which they showed with great 
 pride. These are placed at those points along the 
 trocha where the jungle is less thickly grown, and 
 where the insurgents might be expected to pass. 
 
 Each bomb is fitted with an explosive cap, to 
 which five or six wires are attached and staked 
 down on the ground. Any one stumbling over 
 one of these wires explodes the bomb and throws 
 a charge of broken iron to a distance of fifty feet. 
 How the Spaniards are going to prevent stray 
 cattle and their own soldiers from wandering into 
 these man-traps it is difficult to understand. 
 
 The chief engineer in charge of the trocha de- 
 tailed a captain to take me over it and to show me 
 
The Trocha 
 From a photograph taken by Mr. Davi 
 
Along the Trocha 97 
 
 all that there was to see. The officers of the in- 
 fantry and cavalry stationed at Ciego objected to 
 his doing- this, but he said: "He has a pass from 
 General Weyler. I am not responsible." It was 
 true that I had an order from General Weyler, 
 but he had rendered it ineffective by having me 
 followed about wherever I went by his police and 
 spies. They sat next to me in the cafes and in the 
 plazas, and when I took a cab they called the next 
 one on the line and trailed after mine all around the 
 city, until my driver would become alarmed for fear 
 he, too, was suspected of something, and would 
 take me back to the hotel. 
 
 I had gotten rid of them at Cienfuegos by pur- 
 chasing a ticket on the steamer to Santiago, three 
 days further down the coast, and then dropping off 
 in the night at the trocha, so while I was visiting it 
 I expected to find that my non-arrival at Santiago 
 had been reported, and word sent to the trocha that 
 I was a newspaper correspondent. And whenever 
 an officer spoke to the one who was showing me 
 about, my camera appeared to grow to the size of 
 a trunk, and to weigh like lead, and I felt lonely, 
 and longed for the company of the cheerful cable 
 operator at the other end of the trocha. 
 
 But as I had seen Mr. Gillette in "Secret Ser- 
 vice" only seventeen times before leaving New 
 
98 Cuba in War Time 
 
 York, I knew just what to do, which was to smoke 
 all the time and keep cool. The latter require- 
 ment was somewhat difficult, as Ciego de Avila is a 
 hotter place than Richmond. Indeed, I can onlv 
 imagine one place hotter than Ciego, and I have not 
 been there. 
 
 Ciego was an interesting town. During every 
 day of the last rainy season an average of thirty 
 soldiers and officers died there of yellow fever. 
 While I was there I saw two soldiers, one quite an 
 old man, drop down in the street as though they 
 had been shot, and lie in the road until they were 
 carried to the yellow fever ward of the hospital, 
 under the black oilskin cloth of the stretchers. 
 
 There was a very smart officers' club at Ciego 
 well supplied with a bar and billiard tables, which I 
 made some excuse for not entering, but which 
 could be seen through its open doors, and I sug- 
 gested to one of the members that it must be a 
 comfort to have such a place, where the officers 
 might go after their day's march on the mud banks 
 of the trocha, and where they could bathe and be 
 cool and clean. He said there were no baths in the 
 club nor anywhere in the town. He added that he 
 thought it might be a good idea to have them. 
 
 The bath tub is the dividing line between savages 
 and civilized beings. And when I learned that 
 
Along the Trocha 99 
 
 regiment after regiment of Spanish officers and 
 gentlemen have been stationed in that town — and 
 it was the dirtiest, hottest and dustiest town I ever 
 visited — for eighteen months, and none of them 
 had wanted a bath, I beheved from that moment all 
 the stories I had heard about their butcheries and 
 atrocities, stories which I had verified later by 
 more direct evidence. 
 
 From a military point of view the trocha im- 
 pressed me as a weapon which could be made to 
 cut both ways. What the Spaniards think of it is 
 shown by the caricature which appeared lately in 
 "Don Quixote," and which shows the United 
 States represented by a hog and the insurgents rep- 
 resented by a negro imprisoned in the trocha, while 
 Weyler stands ready to turn the Spanish lion on 
 them and watch it gobble them up. 
 
 It would be unkind were Spain to do anything so 
 inconsiderate, and besides, the United States is 
 rather a large mouthful even without the insur- 
 gents who taken alone seem to have given the lion 
 some pangs of indigestion. 
 
 If the trocha were situated on a broad plain or 
 prairie with a mile of clear ground on either side of 
 it, where troops could manoeuvre, and which would 
 prevent the enemy from stealing up to it unseen, it 
 might be a useful line of defence. But at present. 
 
loo Cuba in War Time 
 
 along its entire length, stretches this almost impas- 
 sable barrier of jungle. Now suppose the troops 
 are sent at short notice from the military camps 
 along the line to protect any particular point? 
 
 Not less than a thousand soldiers must be sent 
 forward, and one can imagine what their condition 
 would be were they forced to manoeuvre in a space 
 one hundred and fifty yards broad, the half of which 
 is taken up with barbed wire fences, fallen trees and 
 explosive bomb shells. Only two hundred at the 
 most could find shelter in the forts, which would 
 mean that eight hundred men would be left outside 
 the breastworks and scattered over a distance of a 
 half mile, with a forest on both sides of them, from 
 which the enemy could fire volley after volley into 
 their ranks, protected from pursuit not only by the 
 jungle, but by the walls of fallen trees which the 
 Spaniards themselves have placed there. 
 
 A trocha in an open plain, as were the English 
 trochas in the desert around Suakin, makes an ad- 
 mirable 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 at- 
 tacked in force it will prove to be a Valley of Death 
 to the Spanish troops. 
 
The Question of 
 Atrocities 
 
CI, 
 CO 
 
The Question of . 
 Atrocities 
 
 One of the questions that is most frequently- 
 asked of those who have been in Cuba is how much 
 truth exists in the reports of Spanish butcheries. It 
 is safe to say in answer to this that while the report 
 of a particular atrocity may not be true, other atro- 
 cities just as horrible have occurred and nothing 
 has been heard of them. I was somewhat skepti- 
 cal 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? 
 
I04 Cuba in War Time 
 
 It is difficult to believe, for instance, the account of 
 a horrible butchery if you read in the para- 
 graph above it that two correspondents have been 
 taken prisoners by the Spanish, when both of these 
 gentlemen are sitting beside you in Key West and 
 are, to your certain knowledge, reading the para- 
 graph over your shoulder. Nor is it unnatural 
 that one should grow doubtful of reported Cuban 
 victories if he reads of the taking of Santa Clara 
 and the flight of the Spanish garrison from that 
 city, when he is living at Santa Clara and cannot 
 find a Cuban in it with sufficient temerity to assist 
 him to get out of it through the Spanish lines. 
 
 But because a Jacksonville correspondent has 
 invented the tale of one butchery, it is no reason 
 why the people in the United States should dismiss 
 all the others as sensational fictions. After I went 
 to Cuba I refused for weeks to listen to tales 
 of butcheries, because I did not believe in them 
 and because there seemed to be no way of 
 verifying them — those who had been butchered 
 could not testify and their relatives were too fearful 
 of the vengeance of the Spaniards to talk about 
 what had befallen a brother or a father. But 
 towards the end of my visit I went to Sagua la 
 Grande and there met a number of Americans and 
 Englishmen, concerning whose veracity there 
 
The Question of Atrocities 105 
 
 could be no question. What had happened to 
 their friends and the laborers on their plantations 
 was exactly what had happened and is happening 
 to-day to other pacificos all over the island. 
 
 Sagua la Grande is probably no worse a city 
 than others in Cuba, but it has been rendered 
 notorious by the presence in that city of the guer- 
 rilla chieftain, Benito Cerreros. 
 
 Early in last December Leslie's Illustrated Weekly 
 published half-tone reproductions of two photo- 
 graphs which were taken in Sagua. One was a pic- 
 ture of the bodies of six Cuban pacificos lying on 
 their backs, with their arms and legs bound and 
 their bodies showing mutilation by machetes, and 
 their faces pounded and hacked out of resemblance 
 to anything human. The other picture was of a 
 group of Spanish guerrillas surrounding their 
 leader, a little man with a heavy mustache. His 
 face was quite as inhuman as the face of any of the 
 dead men he had mutilated. It wore a satisfied smile 
 of fatuous vanity, and of the most diabolical cruelty. 
 No artist could have drawn a face from his imagina- 
 tion which would have been more cruel. The 
 letter press accompanying these photographs 
 explained that this guerrilla leader, Benito Cerre- 
 ros, had found six unarmed pacificos working in a 
 field near Sagua, and had murdered them and then 
 
io6 Cuba in War Time 
 
 brought their bodies in a cart to that town, and had 
 paid the local photographer to take a picture of 
 them and of himself and his body guard. He 
 claim.ed that he had killed the Cubans in open bat- 
 tle, but was so stupid as to forget to first remove 
 the ropes with which he had bound them before he 
 shot them. The photographs told the story with- 
 out any aid from the letter press, and it must have 
 told it to a great many people, judging from the 
 number who spoke of it. It seemed as if, for the 
 first time, something definite regarding the reported 
 Spanish atrocities had been placed before the peo- 
 ple of the United States, which they could see for 
 themselves. I had this photograph in my mind 
 when I came to Sagua, and on the night that I ar- 
 rived there, by a coincidence, the townspeople were 
 giving Cerreros a dinner to celebrate a fresh victory 
 of his over two insurgents, a naturalized American 
 and a native Cuban. 
 
 The American was visiting the Cuban in the 
 field, and they wxre lying in hiding outside of the 
 town in a hut. The Cuban, who was a colonel in 
 the insurgent army, had captured a Spanish spy, 
 but had given him his liberty on the condition that 
 he would go into Sagua and bring back some medi- 
 cines. The colonel was dying of consumption, but 
 he hoped that, with proper medicine, he might re- 
 

 
 ■'■M^%m-\ 
 
 
 ^^^^^c^ 
 
 Amateur Surgery in Cuba 
 
The Question of Atrocities 109 
 
 main alive a few months longer. The spy, instead of 
 keeping his word, betrayed the hiding place of the 
 Cuban and the American to Cerreros, who rode out 
 by night to surprise them. He took with him 
 thirty-two guerrillas, and, lest that might not be 
 enough to protect him from two men, added twelve 
 of the Guarda Civile to their number, making forty- 
 four men in all. They surrounded the hut in which 
 the Cuban and the American were concealed, and 
 shot them through the window as they sat at a 
 table in the light of a candle. They then hacked 
 the bodies with machetes. It was in recognition of 
 this victory that the banquet was tendered to Cer- 
 reros by admiring friends. 
 
 Civilized nations recognize but three methods of 
 dealing with prisoners captured in war. They are 
 either paroled or exchanged or put in prison; that 
 is what was done with them in our rebel- 
 lion. It is not allowable to shoot prisoners; at 
 least it is not generally done when they are seated 
 unconscious of danger at a table. It may be said, 
 however, that, as these two men were in arms 
 against the government, they were only suffering 
 the punishment of their crime, and that this is not a 
 good instance of an atrocity. There are, however, 
 unfortunately, many other instances in which the 
 victims were non-combatants and their death sim- 
 
no Cuba in War Time 
 
 ply murder. But it is extremely difficult to tell 
 convincingly of these cases, without giving names, 
 and the giving of names might lead to more deaths 
 in Sagua. It is also difficult to convince the reader 
 of murders for which there seems to have been no 
 possible object. 
 
 And yet Cerreros and other guerrillas are mur- 
 dering men and boys in the fields around Sagua as 
 wantonly and as calmly as a gardener cuts down 
 weeds. The stories of these butcheries were told 
 to me by Englishmen and Americans who could 
 look from their verandas over miles of fields that 
 belonged to them, but who could not venture with 
 safety two hundred yards from their doorsteps. 
 They were virtually prisoners in their own homes, 
 and every spot of ground within sight of their win- 
 dows marked where one of their laborers had been 
 cut down, sometimes when he was going to the 
 next central on an errand, or to carry the mail, and 
 sometimes when he was digging potatoes or cut- 
 ting sugar cane within sight of the forts. Passes 
 and orders were of no avail. The guerrillas tore up 
 the passes, and swore later that the men were sus- 
 pects, and were at the moment of their capture 
 carrying messages to the insurgents. The stories 
 these planters told me were not dragged from them 
 to furnish copy for a newspaper, but came out in 
 
The Question of Atrocities 1 1 1 
 
 the course of our talk, as we walked over the 
 small extent which the forts allowed us. 
 
 My host would say, pointing to one of the pacifi- 
 cos huddled in a corner of his machine shop : "That 
 man's brother was killed last week about three hun- 
 dred yards over there to the left while he was dig- 
 ging in the field." Or, in answer to a question 
 from our consul, he would say: "Oh, that boy 
 who used to take care of your horse — some guer- 
 rillas shot him a month ago." After you hear 
 stories like these during an entire day, the air seems 
 to be heavy with murder, and the very ground on 
 which you walk smells of blood. It was the same 
 in the town, where any one was free to visit the 
 cartel, and view the murdered bodies of the pacifi- 
 cos hacked and beaten and stretched out as a warn- 
 ing, or for public approbation. There were six so 
 exposed while I was in Sagua. In Matanzas they 
 brought the bodies to the Plaza at night when the 
 band was playing, and the guerrillas marched 
 around the open place with the bodies of 
 eighteen Cubans swinging from the backs of ponies 
 with their heads hanging down and bumping 
 against the horses' knees. The people flocked to 
 the sides of the Plaza to applaud this ghastly pro- 
 cession, and the men in the open cafes cheered the 
 guerrilla chief and cried, "Long live Spain!" 
 
1 1 2 Cuba in War Time 
 
 Speaking dispassionately, and with a full knowl- 
 edge of the details of many butcheries, it is impos- 
 sible for me to think of the Spanish guerrillas other- 
 wise 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. 
 These men kill to feed their vanity, in order that 
 they may pose as brave soldiers, and that their 
 friends may give them banquets in hotel parlors. 
 
 If what I say seems prejudiced and extravagant 
 it may be well to insert this translation from a Span- 
 ish paper. El Pais: 
 
 "There are signs of civilization among us; but the 
 truth is that we are uncultured, barbaric and cruel. 
 Although this may not be willingly acknowledged, 
 the fact is that we are committing acts of savagery 
 of which there is no counterpart in any other Euro- 
 pean country. 
 
 ''Let us not say a word of the atrocities perpe- 
 trated at the Castle of Montjuich; of the iniquitous 
 and miserable massacre of the Novelda republicans; 
 of the shootings which occur daily in Manila; of the 
 
Oh 
 
The Question of Atrocities 1 1 5 
 
 arbitrary imprisonments which are systematically 
 made here. We wish now to say something of the 
 respect due to the conquered, of generosity that 
 should be shown to prisoners of war, for these are 
 sentiments which exist even among savage people. 
 
 ''The Cuban exiles who disembark at Cadiz are 
 sent on foot to the distant castle of Figueras. The 
 unfortunate exiles,' a letter from Carpio says, 
 'passed here barefooted and bleeding, almost naked 
 and freezing. At every town, far from finding rest 
 for their fatigue, they are received with all sorts of 
 insults; they are scoffed and provoked. I am in- 
 dignant at this total lack of humanitarian sentiment 
 and charity. I have two sons who are fighting 
 against the Cuban insurgents; but this does not pre- 
 vent me from denouncing those who ill-treat their 
 prisoners. I have witnessed such outrages upon 
 the unfortunate exiles that I do not hesitate to say 
 that nothing like it has ever occurred in Africa.' " 
 
 I do not wish what I have said concerning the 
 Florida correspondents to be misunderstood as re- 
 ferring to those who are writing, and have v/ritten 
 from the island of Cuba. They suffer from the 
 ''fakirs" even more than do the people of the United 
 States who read the stories of both, and who con- 
 found the sensation-mongers with those who go to 
 find the truth at the risk of their lives. For these 
 
1 1 6 Cuba in War Time 
 
 latter do risk their lives, daily and hourly, when 
 they go into these conflicts looking for the facts. I 
 have not been m any conflict, so I can speak of 
 these men without fear of being misunderstood. 
 
 They are taking chances that no war correspon- 
 dents ever took in any war in any part of the world. 
 For this is not a war — it is a state of lawless butch- 
 ery, and the rights of correspondents, of soldiers 
 and of non-combatants are not recognized. Archi- 
 bald Forbes, and "Bull Run" Russell and Frederick 
 Villiers had great continental armies to protect 
 them; these men work alone with a continental 
 army against them. They risk capture at sea and 
 death by the guns of a Spanish cruiser, and, es- 
 caping that, they face when they reach the island 
 the greater danger of capture there and of being 
 cut down by a guerrilla force and left to die in a 
 road, or of being put in a prison and left to die of 
 fever, as Covin was cut down, as Delgardo died 
 in prison, as Melton is lying in prison now, where 
 he will continue to lie until we have a Secretary of 
 State who recognizes the rights of the correspon- 
 dent as a non-combatant, or at least as an Ameri- 
 can citizen. 
 
 The fate of these three American correspondents 
 has not deterred others from crossing the lines, and 
 they are in the field now, lying in swamps by day 
 
The Question of Atrocities 1 1 7 
 
 and creeping between the forts by night, standing 
 under fire by the side of Gomez as they stood beside 
 Maceo, going without food, without shelter, with- 
 out the right to answer the attacks of the Spanish 
 troops, cHmbing the mountains and crawHng across 
 the trochas, creeping to some friendly hut for a cup 
 of coffee and to place their despatches in safe 
 hands, and then going back again to run the 
 gauntlet of Spanish spies and of flying columns and 
 of the unspeakable guerrillas. 
 
 When you sit comfortably at your breakfast in 
 New York, with a policeman at the corner, and 
 read the despatches which these gentlemen write of 
 Cuban victories and their interviews with self-im- 
 portant Cuban chiefs, you should remember what it 
 cost them to supply you with that addition to your 
 morning's budget of news. Whether the result is 
 worth the risk, or whether it is not paying too great 
 a price, the greatest price of all, for too little, is not 
 the question. The reckless bravery and the un- 
 selfishness of the correspondents in the field in 
 Cuba to-day are beyond parallel. 
 
 It is as dangerous to seek for Gomez as Stanley 
 found it to seek for Livingston, and as few men 
 return from the insurgent camps as from the Arctic 
 regions. 
 
 In case you do not read a New York paper, it is 
 
1 1 8 Cuba in War Time 
 
 well that you should know that the names of these 
 correspondents are Grover Flint, Sylvester Scovel 
 and George Bronson Rae. I repeat, that as I could 
 not reach the field, I can write thus freely of those 
 who have been more successful. 
 
The Right of Search of 
 American Vessels 
 
An Officer of Spanish Guerrillas 
 
The Right of Search of 
 American Vessels 
 
 On the boat which carried me from Cuba to Key- 
 West were three young girls, who had been exiled 
 for giving aid to the insurgents. The brother of 
 one of them is in command of the Cuban forces in 
 the field near Havana. More than once his sister 
 had joined him there, and had seen fighting and 
 carried back despatches to the Junta in Havana. 
 For this she and two other young women, who 
 were also suspected, were ordered to leave the 
 island. 
 
 I happened to sit next to this young lady at table 
 on the steamer, and I found that she was not an 
 Amazon nor a Joan of Arc nor a woman of the peo- 
 ple, with a machete in one hand and a Cuban flag 
 in the other. She was a well-bred, well-educated 
 young person, speaking three languages. 
 
 This is what the Spaniards did to these girls : 
 
 After ordering them to leave the island on a cer- 
 tain day they sent detectives to the houses of each on 
 
122 Cuba in War Time 
 
 the morning of that day and had them undressed 
 and searched by a female detective to discover if 
 they were carrying letters to the Junta at Key West 
 or Tampa. They were seached thoroughly, even to 
 the length of taking off their shoes and stockings. 
 Later, when the young ladies stood at last on the 
 deck of an American vessel, with the American flag 
 hanging from the stern, the Spanish officers fol- 
 lowed them there, and demanded that a cabin 
 should be furnished them to which the girls might 
 be taken, and they were then again undressed and 
 searched by this woman for the second time. 
 
 For the benefit of people with unruly imagina- 
 tions, of whom there seem to be a larger proportion 
 in this country than I had supposed, I will state 
 again that the search of these women was con- 
 ducted by women and not by men, as I was re- 
 ported to have said, and as I did not say in my 
 original report of the incident. 
 
 Spanish officers, with red crosses for bravery on 
 their chests and gold lace on their cuffs, strutted 
 up and down wdiile the search was going on, and 
 chancing to find a Cuban suspect among the pas- 
 sengers, ordered him to be searched also, only 
 they did not give him the privacy of a cabin, but 
 searched his clothes and shoes and hat on the main 
 deck of this American vessel before the other pas- 
 
The Right of Search 123 
 
 sengers and myself and the ship's captain and his 
 crew. 
 
 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, vises your passport and so signifies 
 that your request is granted. After you have com- 
 plied 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 Span- 
 ish soldiers' control over you and your movements 
 should cease, for they relinquish all their rights 
 when they give you back your passport. 
 
 At least the case of Barrundia justifies such a 
 supposition. It was then shown that, while a pas- 
 senger or a member of a crew is amenable to the 
 "common laws" of the country in the port in which 
 the vessel lies, he is not to be disturbed for political 
 ofifenses against her government. 
 
 When the officers of Guatemala went on board a 
 vessel of the Pacific Mail line and arrested Barrun- 
 dia, who was a revolutionist, and then shot him be- 
 tween decks, the American Minister, who had per- 
 mitted this outrage, was immediately recalled, and 
 the letter recalling him, which was written by 
 James G. Blaine, clearly and emphatically sets forth 
 
124 Cuba in War Time 
 
 the principle that a poHtical offender is not to be 
 molested on board of an American vessel, whether 
 she is in the passenger trade or a ship of war. 
 
 Prof. Joseph H. Beale, Jr., the professor of inter- 
 national law at Harvard, said in reference to the 
 case of these women when I first wrote of it: 
 
 "So long as a state of war has not been recog- 
 nized by this country, the Spanish government has 
 not the right to stop or search our vessels on the 
 high seas for contraband of war or for any other 
 purpose, nor would it have the right to subject 
 American citizens or an American vessel in Cuban 
 waters to treatment which would not be legal in the 
 case of Spanish citizens or vessels. 
 
 "But the Spanish government has the right in 
 Cuba to execute upon American citizens or vessels 
 any laws prevailing there, in the same way as they 
 would execute them upon the Spaniards, unless 
 they are prevented by the provisions of some treaty 
 with the United States. The fact that the vessel in 
 the harbor of Havana was flying a neutral flag 
 could not protect it from the execution of Spanish 
 law. 
 
 "However unwise or inhuman the action of the 
 Spanish authorities may have been in searching the 
 women on board the Olivette, they appear to have 
 been within their legal rights." 
 
"-^^ 
 
 \ r- 
 
The Right of Search 1 27 
 
 The Spanish Minister at Washington has also 
 declared that his government has the right of search 
 in the harbor of Havana. Hence in the face of two 
 such authorities the question raised is probably 
 answered from a legal point of view. But if that is 
 the law, it would seem well to alter it, for it gives 
 the Spanish authorities absolute control over the 
 persons and property of Americans on American 
 vessels, and that privilege in the hands of persons 
 as unscrupulous and as insolent as are the Spanish 
 detectives, is a dangerous one. So dangerous a 
 privilege, indeed, that there is no reason nor ex- 
 cuse for not keeping an American ship of war in 
 the harbor of Havana. 
 
 For suppose that letters and despatches had been 
 found on the persons of these young ladies, and 
 they had been put on shore and lodged in prison; 
 or suppose the whole ship and every one on board 
 had been searched, as the captain of the 
 Olivette said the Spanish officers told him they 
 might decide to do, and letters had been found on 
 the Americans, and they had been ordered over the 
 side and put into prison — would that have been an 
 act derogatory to the dignity of the United States? 
 Or are we to understand that an American citizen 
 or a citizen of any country, after he has asked and 
 obtained permission to leave Cuba and is on board 
 
128 
 
 Cuba in War Time 
 
 of an American vessel, is no more safe there than 
 he would be in the insurgent camp? 
 
 The latter supposition would seem to be correct, 
 and the matter to depend on the captain of the ves- 
 sel and her owners, from whom he receives his in- 
 structions, and not to be one in which the United 
 States government is in any way concerned. I do 
 not believe the captain of a British passenger 
 steamer would have allowed one of his passengers 
 to be searched on the main deck of his vessel, as I 
 saw this Cuban searched; nor even the captain of 
 a British tramp steamer nor of a coal barge. 
 
 The chief engineer of the Olivette declared to me 
 that in his opinion, "it served them just right," and 
 the captain put a cabin at the disposal of the Span- 
 ish spies with eager humility. And when one of 
 the detectives showed some disinclination to give 
 back my passport, and I said I would keep him on 
 board until he did it, the captain said: "Yes, you 
 will, will you? I would like to see you try it," sug- 
 gesting that he was master of his own ship and of 
 my actions. But he was not. There is not an 
 unwashed, garlicky, bediamonded Spanish spy in 
 Cuba who has not more authority on board the 
 Olivette than her American captain and his subser- 
 vient crew. 
 
 Only a year ago half of this country was clamor- 
 
The Right of Search 129 
 
 ing for a war with the greatest power it could have 
 selected for that purpose. Yet Great Britain 
 would have been the first to protect her citi- 
 zens and their property and their self-respect if 
 they had been abused as the self-respect and prop- 
 erty and freedom of Americans have been abused 
 by this fourth-rate power, and are being abused 
 to-day. 
 
 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. We have tolerated what no Euro- 
 pean power would have tolerated; we have been 
 patient with men who have put back the hand oi 
 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. 
 
 The British lately sent an expedition of eight 
 hundred men to the west coast of Africa to punish 
 a savage king who butchers people because it does 
 
130 Cuba in War Time 
 
 not rain. 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 be- 
 tween the King of Benin who crucifies a woman 
 because he wants rain and General Weyler who 
 outrages a w^oman 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? 
 
 If the English were right — and they were right — 
 in punishing the King of Benin for murdering his 
 subjects to propitiate his idols, we are right to pun- 
 ish these revivers of the Inquisition for starving 
 women and children to propitiate an Austrian arch- 
 duchess. 
 
 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. 
 
 But if the executive and the legislators wish to 
 assure themselves, like "Fighting Bob Acres," that 
 
The Right of Search 133 
 
 they have some right on their side, they need not 
 turn back to the Virginms incident. There are 
 reasons enough to-day to justify their action, if it is 
 to be their intellects and not their feelings that must 
 move them to act. American property has been 
 destroyed by Spanish troops to the amount of many 
 millions, and no answer made to demands of the 
 State Department for an explanation. American 
 citizens have been imprisoned and shot — some 
 without a trial, some in front of their own domi- 
 ciles, and American vessels are turned over to the 
 uses of the Spanish secret police. These would 
 seem to be sufficient reasons for interfering. 
 
 But why should we not go a step farther and a 
 step higher, and interfere in the name of human- 
 ity? Not because we are Americans, but because we 
 are human beings, and because, within eighty miles 
 of our coast, Spanish officials are killing men and 
 women as wantonly as though they were field 
 mice, not in battle, but in cold blood — cutting them 
 down in the open roads, at the wells to which they 
 have gone for water, or on their farms, where they 
 have stolen away to dig up a few potatoes, hav- 
 ing first run the gauntlets of the forts and risked 
 their lives to obtain them. 
 
 This is not an imaginary state of aflFairs, nor are 
 these supposititious cases. I am writing only of the 
 
1 34 
 
 Cuba in War Time 
 
 things I have heard from eye witnesses and of some 
 of the things that I have seen. 
 
 President Cleveland declared in his message to 
 Congress: "When the inability of Spain to deal 
 successfully with the insurgents has become mani- 
 fest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is 
 extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful exis- 
 tence, and when a hopeless struggle for its re-estab- 
 lishment 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 dis- 
 charge!" 
 
 These conditions are now manifest. A hopeless 
 struggle for sovereignty has degenerated into a 
 strife which means not the useless, but the wanton 
 sacrifice of human life, and the utter destruction of 
 the subject-matter of the conflict. 
 
 What further manifestations are needed? Is it that 
 the American people doubt the sources from which 
 their information comes? They are the consuls 
 all over the island of Cuba. For what voice cry- 
 ing in the wilderness are they still waiting? What 
 will convince them that the time has come? 
 
The Right of Search 135 
 
 If the United States is to interfere in this mat- 
 ter she should do so at once, but she should only 
 do so after she has informed herself thoroughly 
 concerning it. She should not act on the reports 
 of the hotel piazza correspondents, but send men 
 to Cuba on whose judgment and common sense she 
 can rely. General Fitzhugh Lee is one of these 
 men, and there is no better informed American on 
 Cuban matters than he, nor one who sees more 
 clearly the course which our government should 
 pursue. Through the consuls all over the island, 
 he is in touch with every part of it, and in daily 
 touch ; but incidents which are frightfully true there 
 seem exaggerated and overdrawn when a typewrit- 
 ten description of them reaches the calm corridors 
 of the State Department. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves the houses burning and the smoke arising 
 from every point of the landscape ; who can see the 
 bodies of ''pacificos" brought into the cities, and 
 who can sit on a porch of an American planter's 
 house and hear him tell in a whisper how his sugar 
 
136 Cuba in War Time 
 
 cane was set on fire by the same Spanish soldiers 
 who surround the house, and who are supposed to 
 guard his property, but who, in reaHty, are there 
 to keep a watch on him. 
 
 He should hear little children, born of American 
 parents, come into the consulate and ask for a piece 
 of bread. He should see the children and the 
 women herded in the towns or walking the streets 
 in long processions, with the Mayor at their head, 
 begging his fellow Spaniards to give them food, the 
 children covered with the red blotches of small-pox 
 and the women gaunt with yellow fever. He 
 should see hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth 
 of machijiery standing idle, covered with rust and 
 dirt, or lying twisted and broken under fallen walls. 
 He will learn that while one hundred and fifty-six 
 vessels came into the port of Matanzas in 1894, 
 only eighty-eight came in 1895, and that but six- 
 teen touched there in 1896, and that while the 
 export of sugar from that port to the United 
 States in 1894 amounted to eleven millions of dol- 
 lars, in 1895 it sank to eight millions of dollars, and 
 in 1896 it did not reach one million. I copied these 
 figures one morning from the consular books, and 
 that loss of ten millions of dollars in two years in 
 one little port is but a sample of the facts that show 
 what chaos this war is working. 
 
Spanish Cavalryman on a Texas Broncho 
 137 
 
The Right of Search 139 
 
 In three weeks any member of the Senate or of 
 Congress who wishes to inform himself on this 
 reign of terror in Cuba can travel from one end of 
 this island to the other and return competent to 
 speak with absolute authority. No man, no mat- 
 ter what his prejudices may be, can make this jour- 
 ney and not go home convinced that it is his duty 
 to try to stop this cruel waste of life and this wan- 
 ton destruction of a beautiful country. 
 
 A reign of terror sounds hysterical, but it is an 
 exact and truthful descriptive phrase of the condi- 
 tion in Cuba. Insurgents and Spaniards alike are lay- 
 ing waste the land, and neither side shows any sign 
 of giving up the struggle. But while the men are 
 in the field fighting after their fashion, for the inde- 
 pendence of the island, the old men and the infirm 
 and the women and children, v/ho cannot help the 
 cause or themselves, and who are destitute and 
 starving and dying, have their eyes turned toward 
 the great republic that lies only eighty miles away, 
 and they are holding out their hands and asking 
 "How long, O, Lord, how long?" 
 
 Or if the members of the Senate and of Congress 
 can not visit Cuba, why will they not listen to those 
 who have been there? Of three men who traveled 
 over the island, seeking the facts concerning it, two 
 correspondents and an interpreter, two of the three 
 
140 Cuba in War Time 
 
 were for a time in Spanish hospitals, covered with 
 small-pox. Of the three, although we were to- 
 gether until they were taken ill, I was the only one 
 who escaped contagion. 
 
 If these other men should die, they die because 
 they tried to find out the truth. Is it likely, hav- 
 ing risked such a price for it that they would lie 
 about what they have seen? 
 
 They could have invented stories of famine and 
 disease in Havana. They need not have looked for 
 the facts where they were to be found, in the sea- 
 ports and villages and fever camps. Why not lis- 
 ten to these men or to Stephen Bonsai, of the New 
 York Herald, in whom the late President showed 
 his confidence by appointing him to two diplomatic 
 missions? 
 
 Why not listen to C. E. Akers, of the London 
 Times, and Harper's Weekly, who has held two 
 commissions from the Queen? Why disregard a 
 dozen other correspondents who are seeking the 
 truth, and who urge in every letter which they 
 write that their country should stop this destruc- 
 tion of a beautiful land and this butchery of harm- 
 less non-combatants? 
 
 The matter lies at the door of Congress. Each 
 day's delay means the death of hundreds of 
 people, every hour sees fresh blood spilled, and 
 
The Right of Search 143 
 
 more houses and more acres of crops sinking into 
 ashes. A month's delay means the loss to this 
 world of thousands of lives, the unchecked growth 
 of terrible diseases, and the spreading devastation 
 of a great plague. 
 
 It would be an insult to urge political reasons, or 
 the sure approval of the American people which 
 the act of interference would bring, or any other 
 tmworthy motive. No European power dare inter- 
 fere, and it lies with the United States and with her 
 people to give the signal. If it is given now it 
 will save thousands of innocent lives ; if it is delayed 
 just that many people will perish. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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