The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-07-24

Those newspapers which have been ex-
tolling the Cuban insurgents as intelligent
patriots fighting for freedom and popular
government very promptly ask for sus-
pension of judgment until they have an OPP
portunity to do better than they have AS
there is but one opinion as to their conduct
about Santiago, all that they can do is to-
ask that the men whom they have cham
pioned shall have another chance. Every
body desires that the insurgents shall have
every opportunity.
The mistake has been that many people
lave allowed themselves to be deceived re-
garding the character of the insurgents.
Even when they insist that the Cubans shall
be recognized as men of patriotic impulse
because they have made guerrilla warfare
upon Spain, it is folly to claim that they
will do better than other ignorant people
who have experienced nothing from rulers
but cruel exactions. Some of the leaders
are men of intelligence, but it would be
unwise to forget that they are of the same
race whose more or less intelligent leaders
in South and Central America have been
more frequently connected with revolutions
than with efforts to establish governments
based upon law and rational liberty. Those
leaders in Cuba may prove an exception.
In this country people who come here
ignorant of popular government learn some
thing of the rudiments of it by contact and
experience. In Cuba oppression and govern
ment are synonymous terms and the liber-
ty of which the natives have vague ideas is
nothing but license. How should the ma
tives Of Cuba. few of whom can read or
know anything of the world outside that
outraged island, know what government
means? The Cuban soldiers desired to loot
the houses Of the residents Of Santiago be-
cause power is associated with violence.
The white leadership in politics in the
South has for thirty years kept the entire
white population a solid party to oppose
negro domination in political affairs, solely
upon the claim that the colored and mixed
races are incapable of self-government, yet
the same men in Congress who have dis
franchised, by one device and another, the
colored people in several Southern States
have maintained that the colored and mixed
people of Cuba can be intrusted with self
government. IL the COlOISu llcll anu LH0
men who are half or more Anglo-Saxon
blood, who for generations have been more
or less familiar with orderly government,
and many of whom can read. are not suffi-
GENTLY educated to be intrusted with the
ballot, how totally unfitted must be the
majority of the ignorant and mixed races
of Cuba to set up and maintain popular
government. 1t seemed impossible few
months ago to impress the fact of the
general unftness of the people of Cuba for
Independent popular government. At that
time enthusiasm in behalf of Cuban indie
pendence swept the land, and bodies of
young men representing institutions of
learning marched the streets waving Cuban
flags. Probably the reports concerning the
Cuban soldiers at Santiago have sobered
many thousands who were Cuban worship
ers few months ago. Now that they have
come to their senses on this subject they
will discover, as the war goes on, that a
people could scarcely be less prepared to
maintain popular and stable government
than the Inhabitants of Cuba as a whole