The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-03-04
CUBAN INTERVENTION.
Question Must Come Before Congress,
and Decided Action May Result.

Question Must Come Before Congress,
and Decided Action May Result.
NEW YORK, March 3.-The Washington
correspondent of the Evening Sun says:
When the Maine verdict shall have been
rendered 1T will be Mr.. McKinIey's turn to
speak. Assuming the verdict to have been
all the optimists could have wished for, as
Stunning it to have been fixed and declared
authoritatively that the wreck of the battle
ship was an ''act of Cod and not of a
treacherous enemy, what, then, is it the
chief of the Nation has to tell the Nation?
He has, by request of Congress, to lay
before 1t the reports of the American con-
suls on the unhappy island which Weyler
devasted and his countrymen have been tor
turing for generation. The Evening Sun
pointed out the purport of these reports yes
terday. Two hundred and fifty thousand
men, women and children starved to death
in one year under that inhuman rule Off
cial facts and figures prove the horrible tale
true and the process going on unabated.
| Spain has owned to 1t when she asked for
food, moved by the appeals of the perishing
or by fear of the awful truth arraigning
her before the world as the most ruthless of
murderers, it does not matter which. She
owned it, owned her helplessness to stay
the famine she had summoned; owned her
failure and her shame, as her representative
here owned the collapse of her attempt to
govern by appeal to the people she had
robbed and starved. But as for interven-
tion in affairs exclusively her own she
will not for a moment tolerate it," She
will fight first
These are the facts President Mckinley
has to lay before Congress by invitation.
Both houses have called for them. He has
them now and knows what they mean.
Congress cannot go home without hearing
them. So far the peace-at-any-price men
will not dare to go; for they would go home
to sure and overwhelming defeat at the
polls, justly charged with cowardice They
must stay and hear them, and having heard
them, what?
1t is around that corner that the men who
frame the question in and out of Congress
Can war be averted?" think they can see.
There is, they say. but one answer to such
an exhibit as the report of the consuls
makes--intervention. 1t Is impossible that
the truth should be borne for an instant
once it is officially made known. The con-
science of the country to which the appeal
is made will give the answer-intervention
equally on the ground of humanity and of
national self-interest and self-respect which
doors another day.
Intervention is mild word, but it means
war. Spain says she will fight rather than
have blot put upon her honor and she
will do it. When nation upon whose ears
the cry of the starving thousands has fallen
unheeded says that, she means it. She new
er would or could say it unless possessed
of an unnatural pride with which it is i'm
possible to reason. She will fight for what
she thinks her honor; the right to kill the
remaining population of the island, and the
United States will fight for humanity, for
civilization. Nothing in the world will be
able to prevent it, the far-sighted ones say,
and then Cuba will be free.
Intervention may take one of three
shapes. Congress may formally grant the
insurgents belligerent rights. it may recog-
nize the independence of the island or it
may do what Cleveland said a year ago
and Mckinley less than a year ago-inter-
vene forcibly. In any case war is inevi-
table. 1t will all amount to the same thing.
Spain will fight; indeed, she will probably
have to-
The pride that cannot bear Intervention
in her affairs in the name of our common
humanity will certainly upset her throne If
she does not 1t may be upset anyway,
but 1t assuredly will be If it let's Cuba go
without blow. And in countries with
dynasties the throne is the thing to look
out for. OF course it is-the dynasty sits
on 1t. If it is upset the dynasty gets fall
Dynasties do not recover from falls in our
days.
So it seems, according to the far-sighted.
that there is to be a fight, whatever hap
pened to the Maine. The optimists mis-
named in this instance, scoff at this reason
ing. They scoffed at the idea of the Maine
being a casus belli in any case. An in
demnity would fix it. They are at least con-
sistent. To the mind which could find in
the blowing up of $50 brave American sailor
lads cause for fight it is not to be ex-
pected that the killing of 100000 Cubans by
slow starvation should appeal more strong
ly. There were more of them, to be sure
but they were so much farther away, and
they didn't belong to US, anyway. 1t is
the same argument with which the Eu-
ropean Pharisees justified nonintervention
in the Armenian slaughter. That was over
there. 1t Is not likely, say the men who
think war may not be averted, that the
American people will rest quiet under the
reminder that we are reproducing it here
on an even larger scale.
Apparently the Navy and Army Depart
ments lean TO the view of the far-sighted
ones. They go on getting ready for war
as If Congress were not pooh-poohing the
whole business. And. curiously in this they
seem to be tacitly backed and supported
by Mr.. Mckinley, who has the evidence
shortly to be laid before the country. The
last calamity of a lighting navy seems
even to be impending in spite Of anguished
protests and beseechings of the weak and
Continued ON Second PageJ