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A census of the island taken to-day, as compared with one taken three years ago, I feel confident would show that two- thirds of the residents are missing, and the Spanish army would make no better showing." On December 14 Mr. Hyatt wrote: "The order of reconcentration practically has been wiped out, and, so far as the Spanish government is concerned, men go about nearly as they please.
After Weyler's infamous order of reconcentration went into effect the Red Cross society was not long in realizing that it had work to do among the suffering people of Cuba. An appeal was made to the public, and an expedition was dispatched to the island, with Miss Barton at its head.
When General Weyler promulgated his policy of reconcentration he hypocritically claimed that it was intended to protect the noncombatant peasantry of the island, but his sole object was to compel them to put themselves wholly in the power of the Spanish officials.
With the opening of the second year of the struggle, General Weyler arrived in Havana as governor and captain-general, and immediately inaugurated his famous "Reconcentration" policy. The inhabitants of the island were directed by proclamation to assemble within a week in the towns occupied by Spanish troops under penalty, if they refused, of being treated as rebels.
The effects on agricultural pursuits will be disappointing, because the great majority of those who would or should take up the work joined the insurgent forces when compelled to leave their homes, and the portion which came within the lines of reconcentration are women, children, old and sickly people, most of whom seem to have little interest in the problem of life.
Conservative estimates from Spanish sources placed the deaths among these distressed people at over 40 per cent from the time General Weyler's decree of reconcentration was enforced.
The other fact which impressed Roosevelt was the insurrection in Cuba which kept that island in perpetual disorder. The cruel means, especially reconcentration and starvation, by which the Spaniards tried to put down the Cubans stirred the sympathy of the Americans, and the number of those who believed that the United States ought to interfere in behalf of humanity grew from month to month.
Besides this, the instant revocation of the order of reconcentration was asked, so that the sufferers, returning to their homes and aided by united American and Spanish effort, might be put in a way to support themselves and, by orderly resumption of the well-nigh destroyed productive energies of the island, contribute to the restoration of its tranquillity and well-being.
Besides this, the instant revocation of the order of reconcentration was asked, so that the sufferers, returning to their homes and aided by united American and Spanish effort, might be put in a way to support themselves and, by orderly resumption of the well-nigh destroyed productive energies of the island, contribute to the restoration of its tranquillity and well-being.
General J. F. Bell was put in charge there, and he found a humane and satisfactory solution of the existing difficulties in reconcentration not the kind of reconcentration which made the Spaniards hated in Cuba, but a measure of a wholly different sort. This measure and its results have been concisely described by Taylor, as follows:
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