Year: 1869

| OF Our Government.


The war in Cuba gathers intensity and cha
racter There appears to be more formality
In the military operations of the patriots, and
the reports of Spanish victories come with
less frequency and less bombast from Havana.
Our special telegram yesterday advised us OF
the landing of a small expedition near the port
Of Gibara, and that fighting of a serious cha
racter has taken place in the jurisdiction OF
Cienfuegos and Trinidad, in which the Span
| iards do not claim to have obtained their usu-
ally asserted triumph, with utter annihilation
to their enemy. These are pregnant signs.
The expedition reported to have landed is
probably one Of two which have left this coun-
| try recently.


| The first of these was under the direction OF
! General Jordan, who was chief of staff to Cen
eral Beauregard during the siege of Charleston,
and left here about three weeks ago. 1t COM
prised an assorted cargo of munitions Of war,
with good proportion of small arms and ar
tillery, and carried something less than two
hundred and fifty men. Its destination was
Port Padre, on the northern shore Of the
island, about ten leagues west of Gibara,
thirty leagues east of Nuevitas, which is the
base of present Spanish operations in the
| Central Department, and thirty leagues distant
from Guaimaro, the present residence of Presi-
dent Cespedes. The other expedition was
small one, organized at Key West by a number
of students of the Havana University, and
which was ready to leave Nassau on the even
ing of the 10th instant, on the steamer Sal
vador. It comprised small cargo of arms
and ammunition, with about one hundred and
thirty young Cubans. Whichever Of these
two expeditions be the one that has landed in
| Cuba Its material of war will be q welcome
supply to the patriot forces.


| The reports Of serious fighting in the
| jurisdiction of Cienfuegos and Trini-
dad Is the more remarkable in view
of the fact that the Spanish Minister at
| Washington, o few weeks since, formally an
nounced to Secretary Fish that the revolution
was effectually suppressed in that region and
would soon be extinguished throughout the
island. This locality is the extreme western
limit of the revolutionary movement to-day,
and is contiguous to the Western Department
of the island, where the Spaniards claim to
have twenty thousand organized, disciplined
and enthusiastic volunteers under arms. Any
portion of these who are willing to take the
field could be thrown in thirty hours by
rail and steamer into Cienfuegos. The fact
that few ill-armed country bands should
again be able to give the government trouble
in this region would seem to prove either that
they were not as eHectually put down as the
| Spanish officials recently claimed they were,
or that the thousands of mad volunteers in
Havana are not so ready to take the field as
they proclaim themselves to be.


| 1t seems to us, as calm observers of the con-
fict, that while the proceedings of the Cubans
are exhibiting more signs of organization and.
of operations customary In regular warfare
the efforts of the Spaniards exhibit less vigor
and resource than they did at first. In their
stress they are placing greater reliance on the
action Of our government to deprive the
Cubans of the material of war. Thus we see
the strange anomaly that, while the Spanish
officers are pushing undisturbed the construc-
ton of thirty gunboats In our shipyards, the
|
armed cutter to watch one little steamer In
| New York harbor because the Spanish officials
suspect that she is preparing to 60 to Cuba.
The ground for this action Is the asserted re-
quirements of the neutrality laws.


It will be well If the cold-blooded and COW
ardly Secretary Of the State Department at
Washington does not involve the administra-
1 l. -
obloquy from our own people and subject it
to the contempt of every Cabinet in the civil
lied world. The idea that seems to animate
him is that the so-called neutrality laws of this
country really bind the government of the
United States to an alliance offensive and de-
fensive with Spain to preserve the outrageous
tyranny she exercises In Cuba, and that, too,
at the very time when the Spanish people have,
by a glorious revolution, overthrown 1t at
home. In this policy Secretary Fish goes as
far beyond the true policy which should
animate the government and the true feeling
of the people Of the United States, as he did


when he so timorously stated that he wished to
wait and see what England said about Senator


Summers speech before he wrote the instruc-


tions of our new Minister to London.


The neutrality laws, properly interpreted,


aim to restrain enthusiasts from getting up
expeditions in our midst to introduce war in


the peaceful dominons Of our neighbors but


when domestic tyranny has forced on entire
| people to overthrow despostim and estab-


lish o living and free government by the side


of the shrinking form of misrule, no past diplo-


matte courtesies can ever be interpreted by q


live or great statesman rs obligating him to


be false 10 the true interests Of his own coun-


try and to the freedom-loving impulses Of all
mankind. Compared with q Canning, q Ca
your, Bismarck. or q Louis Napoleon, Secre-