The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1898-04-15

President Mckinley Monday sent the
following message to the congress Of
the United States:
Obedient to that precept of the consti-
tuition which commands the president to
give from time to time the congress in
formation of the state of the Union and
to recommend to its consideration such
measures as he shall judge necessary and
expedient, it becomes my duty now to
address your body with regard to the
grave condition that has arisen in the
relations of the United States and Spain.
by reason of the warfare that for more
than three years has ragged in the neigh
boring island of Cuba. 1 do so because OF
the intimate connection of the Cuban
question with the state of our Union, and
because of the grave relations which the
course which is incumbent upon the nation
to adopt must needs bear to the ira
ditional policy of our government If 1t
is to accord with the precepts laid down
by the founders of the republic and re-
ligiously observed by succeeding admins
trations to the present day.
The Cuban Revolution.
The present revolution is but the sue
cessor of other similar instructions Wh1ch
have occurred in Cuba against the do
minion of Spain, extending over period
of nearly half century, each or Whlch'
during its progress, has subjected the
United States to great effort and expense
in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused
enormous loss to American trade ana
commerce, caused irritation, annoyance
and disturbance among our citizens, ana
by the exercise of cruel, barbarous ana
uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked
the sensibiIities and offended the humane
sympathies of our people.
Since the present revolution began, In
February, 1895, this country has seen the
fertile domain at our threshold ravaged
by fire and sword in the course of a
struggle unequaled in the history of the
island and rarely paralleled as to the
number of the combatants and the bitter
ness of the contest by any revolution of
modern times, where a dependent people
striving to be free have been opposed by
the power of the sovereign state. Our
people have beheld a once prosperous
community reduced to comparative want,
its commerce virtually paralyzed, its ex-
ceptional productiveness diminished, its
fields laid waste, it's mills in ruins and
its people perishing by tens of thousands
from hunger and destitution.
Damage to American Interests.
We have felt ourselves constrained, in
the observance of that strict neutrality
which our laws enjoin and which the laws
of nations command, to police our own
waters and watch our own seaports in
prevention of any unlawful act in aid of
Cuba. Our trade has suffered; the capi-
tai invested by our citizens in Cuba has
been largely lost, and the temper and for
bearance of our people have been SO
sorely tried as to beget -perilous unrest
among our own citizens, which has inevt-
tably followed its expression from time
to time in the national legislature so that
issues wholly external to our body poll
tic engross attention and stand in the way
of more close devotion to domestic ad-
vancement that becomes a self-contented
commonwealth, whose primal maxim has
been the avoidance of all foreign en-
tanglements. All this must needs awaken
and has indeed aroused the utmost con-
Germ on the part of this government as
well during my predecessors as dur
ing my own administration.
A Previous Effort to Restore Peace.
In April, 1896, the evils from which our
country suffered through the Cuban war
became so enormous that my predecessor
made an effort to bring about peace
through the mediation of the government
in any way that might tend to an honor
able adjustment of the contest between
Spain and her revolving colony on the ba-
sis of some effective scheme of self
government for Cuba, under the flag
and sovereignty of Spain. 1t failed,
through the refusal of the Spanish gov
ernment then in power to consider any
form of mediation or indeed any plan
of settlement which did not begin with
the actual submission of the insurgents
to the mother country and then only on
such terms as Spain herself might see fit
to grant.
WeyIer's Inhuman Policy.
The war continued unabated. The re-
sistance of insurgents was in no wise
diminished. The efforts of Spain were in
creased, both by the dispatch of fresh
levies to Cuba and by additions to the
horrors of the strife. The new and in
human phase, happily unprecedented in
the modern history of civilized Christian
people, the policy of devastation and con-
centration, inaugurated by the captain
generals ban of October q, 1885, in the
province of Pinar del Rio, was thence
extended to embrace all of the island to
which the power of the Spaniards was
able to reach by occupation or by mill
tary operations. The peasantry, includ-
ing all dwelling In the open agricultural
interior, were driven into the garrisoned
towns or isolated places held by the Span
ish troops. The raising of provisions of
all kinds was interdicted. Fields were
laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired,
mills destroyed, and, in short, everything
that cou.u desolate the land and render 1t
unfit for human habitation or support
was commanded by one or the other con-
tending parties and executed by all the
powers at their disposal.
By the time the present administration
took office year ago, reconcentration-
so called-had been effective over the bet
ter part of four central and western prov
inces, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana
and Pinar del Rio. The agricultural pop
ulation, to the estimated number of 3OO,-
900 or more, was herded within the towns
and their immediate vicinity, deprived of
all means of support, rendered destitute
of shelter, left poorly clad and exposed
to the most unsatisfactory conditions.
Suferings of ReconcentradOs.
AS the scarcity of food increased with
the devastation of the depeopled areas of
production, destitution and want became
misery and starvation. Month by month |
the death rate increased in alarming ra- |
tio, and by March, 1898, according to con- |
servative estimates from official Spanish |
sources, the mortality among the recon- |
centrados from starvation and the dis |
eases thereto incident exceeded 50 per |