The Saint Paul globe., 1897-05-30
DIR DEEP DISGRACE.

OUR DEEP DISGRACE.
Never at any time since the outbreak
of the insurrection in Cuba has the re-
sronsibility of the United States been
so plain. and never has the disgrace or
its inaction taken a deeper hue. The
house of representatives. acting under
the orders of its imperator, stands be-
tween Mr.. Mckinley and the embar-
howIs of jingo patriots of the Repub-
Eoan pe1suasion have been stilled.
They told US a year ago that, if the
Republican party were in power, the
strong hand of this nation would be
stretched out to protect the Cuban
people They told US six months ago,
with lavish abuse of Mr.. Cleveland,
that Mr. Mckinley would no sooner be
seated firmly in the presidential chair
than he would see to the wiping out
of the stain upon our honor. Never
for an instant has the demand upon
our sympathies and the call for our
action and our help been what it is
today. A year ago there was a pre-
tense of actual military operations in
Cuba. There were two contesting
armies in the field, and it was actual
war that existed. 1t is such no longer.
Prosperity is in ruins, industry is
dead, and the people of Cuba them
selves are being exterminated quickly
by the painful process of military tyr
amy and direct starvation.
We wish that every citizen Of the
United States might read the account,
by an eye witness, in the last number
OF Harper's Weekly, of the state of af-
fairs in Cuba today. He tells us how
that island has been desolated by the
wicked orders of the Spanish COM
mander. Unable to achieve success by
arms, he has turned the whole power
of the forces under his control against
the peaceful population. Of these non
combatants, who were engaged in till
ing the soil and in sustaining their
lives under the unhappy conditions
that have existed in Cuba, 400, 900 were
driven at the muzzle Of the musket
and the point Of the bayonet from
their homes, and herded without
means of support in the towns that
have been turned by Weyler into mil
itary posts. There they are left to per-
Ish. Men and women and chill
dren, who have never lifted a fin
ger to oppose the Spaniard or to aid
their country, were taken from their
quiet homes and forced into these
camps under circumstances compar-
able only to the horrors Of Anderson
vile and Libby. There they are today,
surrounded by a Gordon of brutal
soldiery, without food, without cloth
ing and without shelter Huddled
under miserable thatched huts that
form no protection against the rainy
season, fathers and mothers see their
children waste away and die. Not a
night passes that some man, goaded to
madness by the sufferings of those
force his way through the lines for the
sole purpose Of gathering in the fields
some stalks of grain, Or of digging in
the ground some life-sustaining root
dependents for a little while the sure
approach of death Every such man
is pursued with the rifle ball or cut
down by the deadly machete, and every
morning the death carts bring back
their loads of these apprehended fugi-
tives and tumble them into nameless
graves. This is all that is left of
Cuba today.
The fields that these once happy
and peaceful people titled have been
scourged and ravaged by guerrilla and
, conscript, every habitation has been
burned and every vestige Of plant or
herb that might go to sustain life has
been cut down or torn up by the roots
Cuba, as far as production is concern
ed, outside Of the narrow limits of the
Spanish lines, is desert. But these
wretched 100000 people, whose only
crime is that they live in Cuba, are
dying or being murdered by hundreds
daily, at the orders cf power that is
helpless to conquer in the field, and
whose sole remaining policy is extermi-
nation
We go into paroxysms Of horror over
the atrocities in Armenia-and. surely,
they were enough to shock the civil.
lized world-yet the Turk, who bathed
his hands in Christian blood, had at
least the excuse Of religious fanati-