The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-12

fair inference to draw from existing, conditions that it is not possible for the governor general to relieve the present situation with the means at his disposal.
 Autonomy Not Wanted.
 December 13 came the following: The contest for and against autonomy is most unequal. For it, there are five or six of the head officers at the palace and twenty or thirty other persons in the city. Against it, first, are the in surgents, with or without arms, and the Cuban non-combatants. Second, the great mass of the Spaniards bear ing or not bearing arms. The latter desiring, if there must be a change, annexation to the United States. h. deed, there is the greatest apathy con- cerning autonomy in any form. No one asks what it will be or when or how it will come. I do not see how it could be even put into operation by force, because as long as the insur gents decline to accept so long, the Spaniards say, the war must continue. December IA General Lee sent anoth- CT communication, saying that the number of reconcentrados in Habana province will reach 150,000, and the death rate from starvation alone would be over 50 per cent. For the re- lief of these people he says $12,500 in silver has been set aside, ''so that if every dollar appropriated reaches them the distribution will average seventeen cents to a person which, of course will be rapidly exhausted and as I can of pn hninp forded, it is easy to perceive what lit tie practical relief has taken place in the condition of these poor people,
 Feeling .sinst Autonomy.
 December 2Sth General Lee makes the first .communi. alton about the new scheme of autonomy. He says that he has been informed that the authorities are engaged in forming an autonomis- tic cabinet and arranging for the mem- bers to take the required oath on Jan. 1, and "also for an election thirty days thereafter. My present infor" mation is that most of the Spanfards will refrain from voting and nearly all the CuBans. The feeling in Havana, and ! hear in other parts of the island, is strong against it, the Cu- bans desiring an independent republic and the Spaniards preferring annexa- ton to the United States rather than autonomy. On the night of the 24th instant there seems to have been a concerted plan over the island to tes- tify the disapprobation of the people to the proposed autonomist plan of the Spanish government" He goes on to describe how it culminated about < o'clock on the morning of the 18th, when mob assembled in the principal square with cries Of "death to autono- my and "Viva Weyler." He says the men in the mob had stones in their pockets and some of them were armed with weapons. 'They made demon stration, too, against the office of the Diario de La Marina, a paper published in this town favoring autonomy; but were dispersed by the military police and soldiers
 The same day General Lee acknowl- edged the receipt of President McKin- 1ey's proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to make charitable contributions for the relief of the distress in Cuba.
 Other telegrams followed during the next day.
 Spanish Brutality.
 On January Sth, General Lee makes the following report:
 "Sirs-I have the honor to state, as a matter of public interest that the .'reconcentrado order of General Weyler, formerly governor general of this island, transformed about 4000C self-supporting people, principally wo- men and children, into a multitude to be sustained by the contributions of others, or die of starvation or of levers resulting from low physical condition by being massed in large bodies with out change of clothing and without food. Their homes were burned their fields and plantations destroyed an6 their live stock driven away or killed T estimate that probably 200, 900 of the rural population in the province oi Pinar del Rio, Habana, Matanzas and Santa Clara, have died of starvation or from resultant causes, and the > deaths of whole families almost simul- taneously, or within few days of each other and of mothers praying for theii children to be relieved of their horri. ble sufferings by death, are not the least of the many pitiable scenes which were ever present. In the provinces o1 Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba ' where the reconcentrados order could not be enforced, the great mass of the people are self-sustaining. daily average of ten cents worth O food to 100000 people would be an ex. penditure of s2O,0O0 per day and ot course the most humane efforts upor the part of our citizens cannot hope tC accomplish such a gigantic relief and z great portion of those epople will have to be abandoned to their fate.
 Deaths.
 General Lee enclosed in this letter al editorial from the Diario de la Marina which vigorously denounced the "sedi tious tumult'' of the day before and victory for Gomez and the enemies O. Spain. On the same day he also sen to the department statistics about tn, mortality in Santa Clara showing tha while there were 5,584 deaths in tha town in the seven previous years tt 1897, which included 1,417 in one yea from epidemic of yellow fever, ther, were in 1897, owing to the concentra tion order, 69S1 deaths out of a tota population of 14,000. The death rat increased monthly from IS in January the month before the concentration or der went into effect, nutil December