Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1898-03-16

Our relations with Spain are still in
a condition of suspense. Nothing
more is known outside the commits
sion of inquiry than was known the
day after the Maine was blown up;
and yet the conviction that the ex-
plosion was the result of design rather
than of accident seems to have been
gaining ground, and yet war-scare
was witnessed last week in Wall street,
some of the stocks going off Is per
cent. in a couple of days. The fact of
the matter is that whatever may have
been the cause of the Maine disaster,
the conditions in Cuba are becoming
too iutolerable to be endured much
longer. 1t is high time that somebody
with the power to put a stop to them
interfered and interfered effectively.
International law is one thing, but the
claims of humanity are fundamental
law, and if international law require
that 100000 900 people sit passively by
and see such prolonged misery as is to
NC WAbCCooCu III SuOd hOWp lhC
quicker such law is violated the bet
ter. The stories which Miss Clara
Barton, head of the Red Cross Society,
tells about the scenes of suffering
among the non-combatants, are heart
rending in the extreme. At one place
she finds three or four thousand people
starving to death. They are found in
groups of ten and a dozen where they
Julian Hawthorne, who is also on the
ground, declares that nothing in
India, from which he has lately come,
can equal the horrors in Cuba. 1t is
estimated by some that half million
people have already literally starved
to death, partly as the result or the de-
struction of their property by the in
surgents, partly as the result of the
orders issued by the Spanish army.
Are we bound to sit by and see this
sort of thing go on indefinitely? These
people have nothing to do with the
fighting. If it was simply to sit still
while the Spaniards and insurgents
fought it out, we could endure that. II
it was simply to sit still while our COM
merce was wasted away, we could en-
dure that. But to see hundreds of
thousands of people, men, women and
children, starving to death day after
day as the result of war with which
they have nothing to dove for one
are not in favor of enduring that for
another day. 1t is time to call off that
war. And if to do that we must incur
= the risk of a war for ourselves,w shall
have the consciousness that we are
fighting in behalf of humanity, not
from any selfish ambition; not from
love of fighting, but from love of
peace. A holier war never has been
fought than that would be. The Lon
don Spectator is certainly not inf1u-
enced by American jingoism, and yet
this is what it has to say on the sub
ject:
"But though we wish to see Cuba
separated from Spain for the sake of
spain, this Is not our strongest reason
for desiring American intervention to
put an end to the instruction, and to
give Cuba her freedom. The condition
of the island is at this moment so ter
rible, and has been SO appallingly
miserable for the last three or four
years, that as one reads even moderate
and well-balanced accounts, such as
that in this months Blackwood, one
wonders whether even in the Thirty
Years War itself the negation of
God was ever more effectually carried
out by human beings. The wretched
island is tormented beyond belief. .
The only hope is in the United States
sternly declaring that the Spanish
troops must leave the island, and that
then the Cubans must be allowed to
settle their own fate, and to decide
whether they will have autonomy or
independence.