The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1898-04-14

i'll February, 1895, this country has
seen the fertile domain at our thresh-
old ravished by fire and sword in the
course of a struggle unequaled in the
history of the island and rarely para
lelled as to the number of combat
ants and the bitterness of the contest
by any revolution of modern times.
where dependent people, striving
to be free, have been opposed by the
power of the sovereign State.
Our people have beheld a once pros
porous community reduced to com
pararIVe want, its lucrative com
merce virtually paralyzed, its excep-
tlonal productiveness diminished, its
fields laid waste, its mills in ruin, and
its people perishing by tens of thou
sands from hunger and destitution.
We have found ourselves constrained,
in the observance of that strict neu-
trality which our laws enioin and
which the la.g Of nations oDmmands,
to police our own waters and watch
our own seapOrts in prevention of any
unlawful act in aid of the Cu5ans.
Our trade has suffered, the capital
invested by our citizens in Cuba has
been largely lost and the temper and
fOrbearance of our people have been
sOrely tried as to beget a perilous un-
rest among our own citizens, which
has inevitably found its expression
from time to time in the national Leg
islature, so that issues wholly eXter-
nal to our own body polite engross
attention and stand in the way of the
close devotion to domestic advance
ment that becomes a self-contained
commonwealth whose primal maxim
has been the avoidance of all foreign
entanglements. All this must needs
awaken, and has, indeed, aroused, the
utmost concern on the part of this
Government, as well during my pre-
decessor's term as in my own.
In April, 1896, the evils from which
our country suffered through the
Cuban war became so onerous
that my pre- d eces or made
an effort to bring about a peace
through the meditation with this
Government in any way that might
tend to an honorable adjustment of
the contest between Spain and her
revloted colony on the basis of some
effective scheme of self government
for Cuba under the flag and sover-
eighty of Spain.
1t failed, through the refusal of the
Spanish Government then in power
to consider any form of meditation,
or, indeed, any plan of settlement
which did not begin with the actual
submission of the insurgents to the
mother country, and then only on
such terms as Spain herself might see
lit to grant.
The war continued unabated. The
resistance of the insurgents was in
no wise diminished. The efforts of
Spain were increased, both by the
dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and
by the addition to the horrors of the
strife of new and inhuman phase
happily unprecedented in the modern
history of civilized Christian peoples.
The policy of devastation and con-
centration, inaugurated by the Cap
tain-General's Bando of October 81
1896, in the Province of Pinar del Rio,
was thence extended to embrace all
of the island to which the power of
the Spanish arms was able to reach
by occupation or by military opera
tiOns.
The peasantry, including all dwell
ing in the open agricultural interior,
were urlNen lnUO Une garrison towns
or isolated places held by the troops.
The raising and movement of provis-
ions of all kinds were interdicted.
The fields were laid waste, dwellings
unroofed and fired, mills DESTROYED.
and, in short, everything that could
desolate the land and render it unfit
for human habitation or support was
commanded by one or the other of
the contending parties and executed
by all the powers at their disposal.
BY the time the present Administra-
ton took office, year ago, reconcen-
tration, so-called, had been made
effective over the better part of the
four central and western provinces
Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana and
Pinar del Rio.
The agricultural population, to the