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Sentries were on guard with ready rifles and bared machetes; every morning through the filthy reconcentrado quarter guerrillas drove pack-mules bearing the mutilated bodies of those who had dared during the night to seek food surreptitiously. Sometimes they dragged these ghastly reminders at the ends of ropes; this, indeed, was a favorite way with them.
The cruelties of the reconcentrado system of warfare had become apparent, and methods of relief were uppermost in the minds of all persons. These methods were twofold and might well be classed under two distinct heads: those who for mere pity's sake sought simple relief; those who with a further forecast sought the removal of a cause as well as its effect, and "Cuba Libre" was its muffled cry.
On January 8 General Lee makes the following report: "Sir 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 four hundred thousand self-supporting people, principally women and children, into a multitude to be sustained by the contributions of others, or die of starvation or of fevers resulting from a low physical condition and being massed in large bodies, without change of clothing and without food.
The tragedy of Guadaloupe, to the denouement of which I was an eyewitness, shows that the insurgents have learned the art of butchery as taught by the Spanish, and that a reconcentrado will sometimes betray the Samaritan who helps him. A faithful mule carried me into Guadaloupe at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the siesta hour. I had come from the coast many miles away, over the hills.
You'll be careful, boy, don't don't diet Phoebe too long!" The major eyed David anxiously across the light. "Heavens, I'm your reconcentrado! Major, I feel as if I'd been shut up down cellar in the cold without the breath of life for a year. It's only three days and thirteen hours and a half; but I'm all in. I go dead without her believe I'll telephone her now!"
Then, if satisfactory terms were not reached by the 1st of October, the President was to be recognized as arbiter between the Spaniards and the insurgents. On the 30th of March, Spain abrogated the reconcentrado policy in the "western provinces of Cuba," and on the following day offered to arbitrate the questions arising out of the sinking of the Maine.
Neither the man nor the boy ever wholly lost the nightmare memory of the next few days, for their search took them into every part of the reconcentrado districts. What they beheld aged them. Day after day, from dawn till dark, they wandered, peering into huts, staring into faces, asking questions until they were faint from fatigue and sick with disappointment.
With all due respect for Red Cross soup, and the most implicit confidence in Red Cross soup-kitchens, I inclined to the belief that I should fare better if I got my nourishment from the State of Texas even at the end of a string than if I went to the Cuban soup-kitchen and claimed food as a reconcentrado, a refugee, or a repentant prodigal son.
There did not seem to be any encouraging probability that I should be fed by Cuban ravens or nourished by manna from the blazing Cuban skies, and in the absence of some such miraculous interposition of Providence I should evidently have either to go with a tin cup to the Red Cross soup-kitchen and beg for a portion of soup on the ground that I was a destitute and starving reconcentrado, or else return to the pier where the State of Texas lay, hail somebody on deck, and ask to have food lowered to me over the ship's side.
American citizens were imprisoned, interned in reconcentrado camps, and otherwise maltreated. The nationality of American sufferers was in some cases disputed, and the necessity of dealing with each of these doubtful cases by the slow and roundabout method of complaint to Madrid, which referred matters back to Havana, which reported to Madrid, served but to add irritation to delay.
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