The River Falls times. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1894-1933, 1898-04-19


sent the following message to the congress of
the United States:
Otedient to the precept of the constitution
which commands the PRESIDENT to give from
time to time to congress the information of
the state of the Union, ami to recommend to
their consideration such measures as he shall
Judge necessary and expedient, it becomes my
duty huw to address your body with reGaTd
to the grave crisis that has arisen in the re-
lation of the United States to Spain by rea-
son Of the warfare that for more than three
years has ragged in the neighboring island of
Cuba.
do so because Of the intimate connection
Of the Cuban question with the state of our
own Uhioh and the grave relation the course
which it is now Incumbent upon the nation
TO adopt must needs bear to the traditional pol
icy of our government If it is to accord with
the precepts laid down by the founders of the
republic and religious1y observed by succeed
ing administrations to the present day.
The present revolution is but the successor
of other similar Instructions which have &C.
Cured in Cuba, against the dominion of
Spain, extending over peri ID Of nearly half
a century, each of which during its progress
as subjected the United States to great effoit
and epense in enforcing its neutra1it ylaWs.
caused enormous losses to the American trade
and commerce, caused irritation annoyance
and disturbance among citizens and by
the exercise of cruel barberous and
UncfViIfZed Practices of Warfare
shocked the sensibilities and offended the hui
name synipathies of Our people Since the
present revolution began in February, 1885,
this country has seen the fertile domain at
the course of q struggle lnequalled in the
history of the island and rarely paral1eled as
to the humber of the combatants and the bit
terness of the contest, by any revolution of
modern times, where dependent people, striv-
ing to be free have been opposed by the pow
er of the sovereign state. Our people have
beheld a once prosperous community redu~ ed
to comparative want; it's commerce virtually
paralyzed; its exceptional productiveness d.
minished; its fields laid waste it's mills in
ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thou
sands from h and dpStitutiOn. We
found ourselves constrained in the observance
of that strict neutrality which laws enjoin,
and which the law of nations commands, to
police our own waters and watch our own
Eeaports in prevention of any unlawful act in
aid of the Cubans. Our trade has suffered;
the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba
base been largely lost and the temper of for
bearance of people have been so sorely
tried as to been perilous unrest among
own citizens, which has inevitably found its
expression from time to time in the national
legislature, so that issues wholly external to
our own body polite engross attention and
stand in the way of that close devotion to
domestic advancement that becomes a self
contented commonwealth whose primal maxim
has been the avoidance of all foreign entangle-
Tnents. All this must needs awaken and has
indeed aroused the utmost concern on the part
OF this government, well during my prede-
cessor's my own.
In April, 1896, the evils from which
country suffered through the Cuban be-
came onernus that my predecessor made
an effort to bring about peace through the
might tend to honorable adjustment of the
contest between Spain and her revolted colony,
on the basis of some effective scheme Of self
government for Cuba under the flag and sover
eighty IF Spain. 1t failed through the refusal
OF the Spanish government, then in power, to
consider any form of mediation or, indeed,
plan of settlement which did not begin the
actual submission of the insurgents to the
mother country and then only such terms
as Spain herself might fit to grant. The
war continued unabated The resistance of the
insurgents is in nowise diminished. The eff
forts of Spain were increased, both by the
despatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the
addition to the horrors of the strife of
A Cruel and Inhuman Phase,
highly unprecedented in the modern history of
civilized christian peoples. The policy of de-
Nastatlon and concentration, inaugurated by
Capt. Gen. Pando, of Oct, 1896 in the prov
ince of Pinar Del Rio, then extended to. en-
brace all of the island to which the power OF
the Spanish arms was able to reach by oc-
cupaton by military operations. The peas
antry, including all dwelling in the open agrl-
cultural interior, were driven into the garri-
son towns of insulated places held by the
troops. The raising and movement of provis-
ions of all kinds We're interdicted. The fields
We're laid waste dwellings, unroofed and hred,
mills destroyed and in short everything that
could Gesolate the land and render 1t unit Tor
human habitation or support was commanded
by or the other of the contending parties
and executed by all the powers at their dis
posal By the time the present administration
took office a year ago, recommendation So
called, had been made effective over the pet
ter part of the four central and western prov
inces of Santa Clara Matanzas, Havana and
Pinar Del Rio The agricultural population to
the estimated number of three hundred thou
sand or more were herded within three towns
and the immediate vicinity, deprived or the
means of support, left without shelter and
left to the most unsanitary conditions AS the
scarcity of food incre ased with the deVasta-
ton of the depopulate0 areas of productlon' the
situation became mise rable. Month by month
the death rate increased in an alarming ratlo.
BY March, 1897. according to conservative es-
Inmates from official Spanish sources, the NOR
tally among the reconcentrados
From Starvation
and the diseases thereto incidental exceeding
fifty percentum of their total number NO
practical relief was accorded to the destltute.
The overburdened towns already suffering from
called zones of cultivation, established WITHIN
the immediate area OF effective military colt
troll about the cities and fortified camps
prov ed illuSory rs a remedy for the suffering.
The unfortunates being for the most part
women and children, with aged and helpless
nen, enfeebled by disease and hunger, could
not have titled the soil without tools, seed or
shelter, for their own. support or for the sup
ply Of the cities. Recommendation, ador ted
avowedly as a war measure in order to cut
off the resources of the Insurgents, worked its
pedestined result As 1 said in my MESSAGE OF
last December, it was not civilized warfare:
It was determination. The only peace &c could
heset was that of the wilderness and the
grave
Meanwhile the military situation in the island
mad undergone a noticeable change. The extra
ordinary activity that characterized the second
Year of the war. when the Insurgents invaded
del Rio and carried havoc and destitution ND
70 the walls of the city of Havana itself, HAD