The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-01-20
Free Cuba.
nor Long

Agar ago the sch0olmasters OF Har-
ward College were passing severe judg-
ments upon President Cleveland, Sec
rotary Olney, the Congress and the
American people in general, for inter-
posing between Great Britain and the
proposed victim of her rapacity, Venez-
uela. War and every nameless evil
were to descend upon this Nation for
coming between weak South Amer
lean republic and its powerful despoiler.
AS patriots, philanthropists or prophets,
the Harvard pedagogues are conspicu-
Gus failures. The issue of the Venez-
uelan interference should cover them
with confusion. But now the domi-
MES, learning nothing from that school
in which fools are taught, experience,
or undismayed by it's lessons, are ut
tering jeremiads over the proposition
to acknowledge the independence of
Cuba, and condemning the Cubans to
endless and deserved subsection to
Spanish tyranny. They are unfit for
government, these clustered in
structors of American youth declare,
and their proper place is under the rod
of the successors to Torquemada and
the Duke of Alva.
The same taunt has been uttered
against every people, long ground I'M
der the heels of tyrants, that has turned
and smitten its oppressors. Time is
answering it, and vindicating the faith
of the believers in republican govern
ment. Probably republic could never
rise from more chaotic and less prom
Using conditions than existed liz the
Spanish American colonies, but during
the last half century they have made
commendable and encouraging prog
ress. In spite of the baleful legacy of
their parent, Spain, they are becoming
quite reputable members Of the sister
hood of free republics, and in the third
or fourth generation they will unques-
tionably have emerged from their semi
barbaric condition, presenting exam
Piles of stable governments and peoples
loving order and obeying constituted
authority. Some very crude material
for citizenship came to this country q
half century and more ago, but their
children's children are making very
worthy and intensely patriotic Ameri-
can citizens. Mexico is showing that
after half century of grinding in the
mills of revolution she has risen on the
ruins of besotting Spanish power and
priestly domination to become the pos
SCISSOR of stable government, under
which modern institutions exist, order
prevails, justice is administered, law is
obeyed and the modern machinery of
progress-moral and material-and of
industrial development is in successful
operation. In the same direction her
sister republics are "inching along"
But the Harvard professor of some
three generations past, if of the same
degenerate species as his successors,
and as lacking in faith in human prog
ress, would have condemned the Mexi-
can to eternal servitude to his Spanish
master.
We believe Cuba possesses more
promising material for self govern
ment than any of the colonies which
circumstances, in their efforts to throw
off the Spanish yoke, have more pow
erfully aided. The close proximity of
the island to the United States, the
neerer influence of her example and in
stitutions, intimate personal and com.
mercial associations, the residence in
the United States of many of the lead
ing spirits among the Cuban patriots,
their knowledge of American ipstitu-
tions, their incubation with American
republication, all promise better gov
eminent, at the outset, than any that
has been built on the ruins of Spanish
power in either of the Americas, and
assure more rapid and satisfactory
progress in the evolution of he'repub-
lie of Cuba.
Boards of trade and chambers of
commerce may protest against any
form of assistance 10 Cuba, as they did
a generation or two ago against any
form of interference with the "pecu-
liar institution of the South. Trade
organizations are sometimes accused of
heartlessness; they do not represent
the patriotic, freedom loving, sympa-
thetic impulses of the people. Trade