The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-12-05
INpEPENpENT CUBA.
The Island Should Be Made a Nation
as Soon as Possible.

Spanish rule must be replaced by
just, benevolent and humane govern
ment, created by the people of Cuba,
capable of performing all international
obligations and which shall encourage
thrift, industry and prosperity and pro-
mote peace and good will among all the
inhabitants whatever may have been
their relations in the past. Neither
revenge nor passion should have
place in the government. Until there
is complete tranquility in the island and
a suitable government inaugurated,
military occupation will be continued.
With the exception of the rupture
with Spain, the intercourse of the Unit
ed States with the great family of ma
lions has been marked with a cordial
tty and the close of the eventful year
finds most of the issues that necessarily
arise in the complex relations of SOW
ereign states adjusted or presenting no
serious obstacles to a just and homo
rable solution by amicable agreement
A long unsettled dispute as to the
boundary between the Argentine re
public and Chile, stretching along the
Andean crests to the southern border
of the Atacama desert, from the Ma
gellan Straits, nearly third of the
length of the South American continent,
assumed an acute stage in the early
part of the year and afforded this gov
eminent occasion to express the hope
that the resort to arbitration, already
contemplated by existing conventions
between the parties, might prevail. de-
spite the grave difficulties arising in its
application. 7 am happy to say that
arguments to this end have been per-
fected, the question of fact upon which
the respective commissioners were I'M
able to agree being in course of refer
ence to her Britannia majesty for deter
minatiOn.e A residual difference touch
ing the northern boundary line across
the Atacama desert, for which existing
treaties provided no adequate adjust
ment, bids fair to be settled in like
manner by joint commission, upon
which the United States minister ar
Buenos Ayres has been invited to serve
as umpire in the last resort.
have found occasion to approach the
Argentine government with a view to
removing differences of rate charges
imposed upon the cables of an Ameri-
can corporation in the transmission be-
tween Buenos Ayres and the cities of
Uruguay and Brazil of through mes
sages, passing from and to the United
States. Although the matter is COM
plicated by exclusive concessions by
Uruguay and Brazil to foreign compa-
MES, there is strong hope that a good
will be reached and that
the important channels of commercial
communication between The United
States and Atlantic cities of South
America may be freed from an almost
prohibitory discrimination.
In this relation, may be permitted to |
express my sense of the fitness of an in !
terchange of messages over connecting !
ca bIes may be regulated on a fair ba- |
sis of uniformity The world has seen !
the postal system developed from one
of independent and exclusive service /
into a well ordered union, of which all |
countries found manifold benefits. It |
will be strange We're the nations not |
in time brought to realize that modern |
civilization, which owes so much of its |
progress to the humiliation of space by |
electrical force, demands that this all |
important means of communication, a |
heritage of all peoples, be administered |
and regulated in their common behalf |
A step in this direction was taken when I
the international convention of 1884 for
the protection of submarine cables was
signed, and the day is, trust, not far /
distant when this medium for the trans |
mission of thought from land to Land |