The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1902-06-28
The Rape of Cuba.
From the New York Tribune, Rep.

From the New YORK IrlDune, hep.
Let there be no misunderstanding con-
corning Cuba. IF the United States is
going to sacrifice its honor upon the altar
of sordid greed, let it at least do so with
eyes wide open and with full realization
of the present purport and the future men
ace of its act. There should be hereafter
no whimpering that we ''didn't know it
was loaded. The signs of the times are
SO plain that the variest stark, staring fool
of a wayfarer can have no excuse for not
reading and understanding them. This,
then, is the condition which confronts us :
The United States stands morally
pledged, by Presidential declaration and
by Congressional enactment, to grant lib
eral commercial concessions to Cuba. Such
concessions are absolutely necessary to the
industrial prosperity and to the political
tranquility of Cuba. The granting of
them, desired by the President, by the
majority of Congress and by the over
whelming majority of the American peo
pie, is forbidden by Stubborn and fac
tious minority in Congress, acting presum-
ably at the behest of, and certainly in the
interest of, the allied Sugar Trust and
Beet Sugar Ring. These selfish allies OPP
pose the granting of such concessions not
because it would injure their business and
lessen their immediate profts-for they
admit and boast that it would not Go so.
No; their opposition is inspired by greedy
desire for enormous future gains, to be
had through veritable rape of the island
of Cuba. They propose, these sugar mon
opolists do, to withhold concessions from
Cuba until the island is ruined-until
plantations and refneries are abandoned
and their owners bankrupt, Then they
will purchase all such properties at the
merest fraction Of their real value. Final
", they will in one way or another drag
Cuba into this Union as State; for they
expect that the ruined Cubans will either
be glad to accept annexation as their only
hope for industrial salvation or will revolt
again, as they did against Spanish com
mercial oppression, and thus compel the
United States to go in forcibly and take
control of the island.
That is the scheme of the allied Sugar
Trusts, first to ruin Cuba and then to steal
the island. Ii seems to matter nothing to
them that thus our nation honor would
be irretrievably besmirched, that people
confding in and dependent upon us would
be betrayed and ruined, that we should be
put in peril of another tedious and costly
war, and that another pocket borough
State, with alien institutions and difficult
social and racial problems, would be pitch
forked into this Union to help govern the
nation. All they seem to see or care for
is the opportunity of looting Cuba, and of
getting possession of her sugar plantations
and factories for song. 1t is now past
the eleventh hour. But even yet there
is time to balk the contamination of such
iniquity. IF it is not baked there will
one day be stern reckoning with those
responsible, and with those responsible
for the failure to balk the scheme as well
as with those responsible for its conception
and execution; and that day of reckoning
may not be far off.