The citizen., 1910-09-23

!usu1y americas attitude in the Cuban mix-up
Weyler was the best hated man in Cuba when
the government of his nation finally recalled him.
This book will cause him to be cursed the length
and breadth of the peninsula
1 wrote it,, he says, Ito give all the facts
ABOUT my conduct as general in chief conduct
admired not only by army cficers high and
low, who wrote me nnumerable letters but
by privates, who, on their return to the penin-
sua, spoke of me with an enthusiastic fer
Vor for which | can never thank them enough.
Various reasons prevented me from doing years
ago twhen l could not have freed my mind
from certain bias) work which I can now
do in perfect peace of mind thanks to the
time that has passed. and which has soothed
the irritation due to the injustice l suffered at
the hands of some men.
Furthermore l did not wish to sadden Senior
Sagasta by reteing the story of our colonial
disasters; neither did feel any pleasure in CEN
suring the illustrious Gen. Martinez Campos my
predecessor in Cuba, however uncharitably he
acted toward me after his return to the capital"
A perusal of the book fails to prove that Wey-
Ter kept his promise to treat the subject with
perfect moderation the generals blood is still
boiling, and with some Justification for atrocious
as his conduct in many instances it could
not very well be criticized in Spain by the Span
ish government
Had Weyler been, endowed with the literary
genius of Marriott Las Cazes, he could have
made much stronger case against Spain and
presented his own actions in much more favor
able light. Unfortunately his knowledge of the
writer's craft is as deficient as his fund of infor-
nation touching political economy. general his
tory national anad international politics is
meager.
Weyler is not diplomat; the slippery land
of nuances and innuendos is to him terra incog-
nita primitive brute with rudimentary ethics,
though unflinchingly frank and straightforward,
he never ventures an assertion which cannot be
supported by documents; he never pays any at
tention to hearsay but quotes peoples letters in
extenso
fascinating type, after all, for the observer
blessed with the sense of history; just imagine
what Weyler would have developed into If he
had not been born some 500 years too late; clad
in STEEL he had been riding caparisoned mount,
or if he had been allowed to range over Europe
during the Thirty Years war!
General Weyler's style is very trying; even
his proclamations vainly modelled after Napoleon
rs oratorical gems, rarely sound the note that
makes a people or an army vibrate. His rela-
tions of the Cuban campaign with all the facts,
figures, names recorded in haphazard fashion
day by day, is we'll nigh unreadabe.
But the documents he publishes in support of
his thesis (some of them of confidential char
acter and which must have been secured through
"diplomatic means) make 1t well worth while
wading through an otherwise dull, shapeless and
indigestible piece of writing.
First of all we are made to realize how hope
less the plight of the Spanish commanders had
become in the island when Weyler took the situ-
alton in hand; the many generals who preceded
him had been losing ground from day to day;
their cables to the Spanish government gave
information of a pessmistic character of which
the public and the press were seldom apprised;
their confidential correspondence betrayed heart
rending facts; more than once poor Gen. Marti-
nez Campos had humbly confessed himself beat
en-, while the cabinet led the Spanish nation to
believe that the war practically over.
Weyer himself, when placed in command OF
the Cuban army, was not even given what he was
entitled to, an honest account of the situation.
when l landed in Cuba" he writes, 81 did
not even suspect the terrible conditions that pre-
vailed in the island. | did not know anything