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The Cuban volunteers are a home-guard, but the purse of the Cubans is open. Spain is not loath to dip into it, and taxation for carrying on the government and the war has become very onerous dreadfully so, in fact, though I believe that the Cubans do not realize it so fully as strangers do.
Before we left Cuba, however, we made one last excursion across the island, and to the Isla de Pinos the Isle of Pines off the southern coast. A volante took us to the railway-station. The volante is the vehicle which the Cubans specially affect; it is like a Hansom cab, but the wheels are much taller, six and a half feet high, and the black driver sits postillion-wise upon the horse.
Within fifteen miles or so of the city, are places like Calvario, Bejucal, and Managua, all reached by good highways through interesting and typical country, and all well illustrating the real life of the real Cubans.
General Wheeler, guided by the Cubans, reconnoitred this trail on the 23rd of June, and with the position of the enemy fully explained to him, returned to Siboney and informed General Young and Colonel Wood that on the following morning he would attack the Spanish position at Guasimas.
Leonard Wood was left in as Governor for two or three years, and evolved order out of chaos, raising the administration of the island to a level, moral and material, which it had never before achieved. We also by treaty gave the Cubans substantial advantages in our markets. Then we left the island, turning the government over to its own people.
After him came the officials and invited guests in carriages; then came the Cossacks, the Cubans, the German cavalry, the United States cavalry, the Mexicans, and representatives of twenty-five countries.
It is all about who is the stronger, Huerta or some other bandit, and about the necessity of order for the sake of financial interests. Nobody recalls our action in giving Cuba to the Cubans or our pledge to the people of the Philippine Islands. But there is reference to the influence of Standard Oil in the American policy.
"The cessation of firing about noon on the 3d practically terminated the battle of Santiago. "A few Cubans assisted in the attack at El Caney, and fought valiantly, but their numbers were too small to materially change the strength, as indicated above.
Most of these people had very little food, except the fruit then ripe on the mango-trees, and so had to be fed by our Army and by the Red Cross Society. Ever since General Shafter's army had landed, it had been feeding the hungry Cubans in the country around Santiago people who were nearly starved on account of their long war with Spain.
It is pledged in advance to the declaration that all the effort in the world can not suffice to maintain peace in Cuba by the bayonet; that vague promises of reform after subjugation afford no solution of the insular problem; that with a substitution of commanders must come a change of the past system of warfare for one in harmony with a new policy, which shall no longer aim to drive the Cubans to the "horrible alternative of taking to the thicket or succumbing in misery;" that reforms must be instituted in accordance with the needs and circumstances of the time, and that these reforms, while designed to give full autonomy to the colony and to create a virtual entity and self-controlled administration, shall yet conserve and affirm the sovereignty of Spain by a just distribution of powers and burdens upon a basis of mutual interest untainted by methods of selfish expediency.
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