Cuba Part 13

We refer to the burning of the sugar crops.

That this has been done on each and every occasion, no one will deny. At first glance, it seems an act of vandalism. But is it so? Let us examine carefully into the causes and reasons for it.

The Spaniards claim that it is a notable example of the reckless and uncivilized methods of the insurgents. On the contrary, it is a policy which was carefully planned and systematically carried out by Gomez and the other Cuban leaders.

In a proclamation by Gomez, he ordered his lieutenants to burn the sugar plantations, but he did not tell them to destroy the mills, because he did not wish, in case of his succeeding in his purpose of liberating Cuba, to lay the producers flat upon their backs, from which position they could never, or, only with the utmost difficulty, arise.

The destruction of the sugar cane was a necessity of war. It must be remembered that from the sugar crop Spain has received her largest revenue from Cuba, and to cut off this source of revenue is to cripple Spain and take away from her a large sum of money with which she might otherwise wage warfare.

To show that the damage wrought is by no means irreparable, we cannot do better than quote Baron Antomarchi, a Frenchman who lived for a long time in Cuba, was there during the early part of the present insurrection, and knows of what he is speaking:

"Since the suppression of slavery, and as a result of the high price of labor the work of sugar making had been modified. In former times a sugar planter considered his plantation his most necessary possession.

After the process of manufacture was modified, it was his sugar mill upon which he depended; his plantation was less important. So in burning the sugar crop, Gomez did not strike a death-blow at the producer. It is a well known fact that when the cane growth is cut by fire and the fields are burnt close to the ground, the yield of the following season is increased and improved; so we see that Gomez did not ruin the country when he burned the plantations. True, the fields have been burned, but they will spring up with a more vigorous luxuriance after the rest which was one of the conditions imposed upon the first agricultural community of which we have any reliable record, and if the mills which Gomez has left intact are not destroyed by some authority equally potent, when the country is reorganized, the sugar industry may flourish to a degree undreamed of before the Cuban war for liberty."

Besides depriving Spain of her revenue, Gomez had another though a lesser reason, for burning the sugar cane. He knew that those who were thrown out of employment would flock to his standard, and his forces thereby be greatly augmented.

On the whole, we do not see that the criticism and blame which have been given to the insurgents for destroying the crops and for the time being laying waste the land, are deserved. It was a measure of war, and one, which it seems to us, under the circ.u.mstances, was thoroughly justified.

Now let us contrast, for a moment, the different methods of the Spaniards and the Cubans in waging warfare.

In the first place, we do not mean to affirm that the insurgents have not committed actions, which, in the light of civilization, are indefensible, but they are few and far between, and they were forced upon them. After all the horrors to which they were subjected, they would have been less than human if they had not retaliated.

The Cubans, both in the Ten Years' War and in the present one, have been merciful to those of the enemy who fell into their hands. The latter have been almost invariably treated with kindness and allowed to go free and unmolested.

But the Spaniards never reciprocated. It has been their invariable policy not to exchange prisoners, a notable instance of this being their recent refusal to exchange the gallant Hobson and his comrades. To be sure, according to international law they are not compelled to do this, but it is doubtful if there is another civilized nation (by the way, it is an undeserved compliment to intimate that Spain is civilized), which would have acted as the country which boasts of its chivalry has done.

Just here, let us say that those acts of cruelty which have been committed by the Cuban army have been very far from receiving the sanction of their leaders. On the contrary, they have been done in violation of the explicit orders of those leaders; and whenever the offenders have been discovered, they have been hanged as bandits to the limb of the nearest tree.

The hatred and barbarity which the Spaniards have without exception, evinced toward the Cubans have done much to alienate the latter, have been the chief causes why peace could not be maintained, and have made only one outcome possible--the freedom and independence of the island.

We have already seen the humanity with which Gomez, Maceo and the other Cuban chiefs treated the wounded of the enemy who chanced to fall into their hands.

But how was it on the other side? How did the Spaniards behave toward the insurgent wounded? When not killed at once and their sufferings ended immediately, they were cast into loathsome dungeons, with insufficient food and with no medical attendance whatever.

Now to a charge which has more than once been brought against Spain, which has been brought against her recently, which her government has indignantly denied, but which both in the past and the present has been proved beyond any question of a doubt.

The charge refers to an action which, with the exception of Spain, has never been committed but by the most savage tribes, the Indians of North America and the inhabitants of darkest Africa. We do not think that even the Turks were ever accused of such an atrocious, unspeakable act.

We mean the mutilation of the dead bodies (often in a horrible, obscene way) left upon the battlefield.

It is with regret and loathing that we approach the subject. But facts must be spoken.

There has been scarcely a combat between the Spaniards and the Cubans, in all the revolutions which have occurred, where the former have not been guilty of the revolting practice of the mutilation of dead bodies.

Indeed the most savage of tribes have never gone further in the demoniac wreaking of vengeance upon the fallen bodies of the enemy than the Spaniards have.

It has been a common custom with them to disfigure, mangle and commit nameless indignities upon the dead.

When Nestor Aranguren, who you will remember was one of the bravest of the Cuban leaders, the "Marion," the "Swamp Fox" of the insurrection, was killed, his body, covered with honorable wounds was taken to Havana, and paraded before the citizens, subject to their jeers and curses.

When another insurgent leader, Castillo, was killed, the same frightful spectacle was witnessed.

Indeed, it has been the rule among the Spaniards whenever the body of a so-called rebel leader fell into their hands, to drag his nude and mutilated body, tied at the end of a horse's tail, throughout the nearest town, and the excuse for this was--what? That the body might be fully identified.

Among the Cubans, there is only one instance related where they retaliated in kind. And this was when it is said that they sent a Spanish soldier back to Havana with his tongue cut out. But even this story, the only act of brutality alleged against them is not well authenticated, resting as it does entirely upon Spanish evidence. And we know well how much credence can be given to that evidence.

To come down to more recent occurrences.

When it was first reported that the bodies of our marines killed at Guantanamo were subjected to unmentionable mutilations by the Spaniards, we could not believe it. It was said that the condition of the bodies was caused by shots fired from the Mauser rifle. But the Mauser rifle inflicts a clean cut hole. It could not possibly have been responsible for the horrible condition of the bodies. It is impossible for us to explain further in print. Remember or look up what was done by the Apaches in some of our Indian wars, and then from your knowledge, or the knowledge gained by research, fill up the hiatus.

And the Spaniards cannot claim in this latter instance, if indeed they can in any other, that these barbarities were committed by irregular and irresponsible troops. It is beyond question that by far the greater portion of the troops employed against Colonel Huntington (we are referring now to the affair at Guantanamo) belonged to the regular army, under the command of General Linares.

The New York Herald, in an editorial on the subject, remarks most justly and forcibly: "What sort of a degraded spectacle, then, does Spain present, going whining through Europe in search of intercession or intervention, with such a d.a.m.nable record against her, made in the very first engagement of troops?

"We can hear good old John Bull sputter out his righteous indignation, but will his Holiness the Pope recognize such degenerate child? Can the punctilious Francis Joseph of Austria afford to condone crimes like these? Will the Emperor William or the Czar of Russia lift his voice in behalf of such fiends? Can our sister republic, France, sympathize with the monsters who disgrace the very name of soldier?

"Not so! All Europe will join with our own government, now thoroughly aroused to the indignities put upon it, and voice the stern edict of humanity and civilization:

"Spain has now placed herself without the pale of the nations. Let her meet the retribution she so justly deserves."

Senor Estrado Palma, the representative of Cuba in the United States, has declared in a manifesto that the Cubans threw themselves into the struggle advisedly and deliberately, that they knew what they had to face and decided unflinchingly to persevere until they should free themselves from the Spanish government. Experience has taught them that they have nothing to envy in the Spaniards; that in fact, they feel themselves superior to them, and can expect from Spain no improvement, no better education.

Slavery is ended in Cuba, and the white and the colored live together in perfect harmony, fighting side by side, to obtain political liberty.

Senor Palma, by the way, a.s.serts, with how much authority we are unable to state, that the colored population in Cuba is superior to that of the United States. He says that they are industrious, intelligent and lovers of learning; also, that, during the last fifteen years, they have attained remarkable intellectual development.

There are certain utterances of Senor Palma in this manifesto which deserve to be quoted in full, so pregnant are they with truth, and so full of food for thought to the average American citizen, whether he agrees with them or not. Senor Palma says:

"We Cubans have a thousandfold more reason in our endeavor to free ourselves from the Spanish yoke than had the people of the thirteen colonies, when, in 1775, they rose in arms against the British government. The people of these colonies were in full enjoyment of all the rights of man; they had liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, liberty of the press, the right of public meeting and the right of free locomotion. They elected those who governed them, they made their own laws, and, in fact, enjoyed the blessings of self-government. They were not under the sway of a captain-general with arbitrary powers, who, at his will could imprison them, deport them to penal colonies, or order their execution even without the semblance of a court-martial. They did not have to pay a permanent army and navy in order that they might be kept in subjection, nor to feed a swarm of hungry employees yearly sent over from the metropolis to prey upon the country. They were never subjected to a stupid and crushing customs tariff which compelled them to go to home markets for millions of merchandise annually which they could buy much cheaper elsewhere; they were never compelled to cover a budget of twenty-six or thirty millions a year without the consent of the taxpayers and for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the army and navy of the oppressor, to pay the salaries of thousands of worthless European employees, the whole interest on a debt not incurred by the colony, and other expenditures from which the island received no benefit whatever; for, out of all those millions, only the paltry sum of seven hundred thousand dollars was apparently applied for works of internal improvement, and one-half of which invariably went into the pockets of Spanish employees.

"If the right of the thirteen British colonies to rise in arms in order to acquire their independence has never been questioned because of the attempt of the mother country to tax them by a duty upon tea, or by the Stamp Act, will there be a single citizen in this great republic of the United States, whether he be a public or private man, who will doubt the justice, the necessity in which the Cuban people find themselves of fighting to-day and to-morrow and always, until they shall have overthrown Spanish oppression and tyranny in their country, and formed themselves into a free and independent republic?"

Now, honestly, all prejudice aside, this is not a bad brief for the plaintiff, is it?

There is one more doc.u.ment to which we desire to call your attention.

And that is, a letter written to Professor Starr Jordan, of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University of San Francisco, by a Havanese gentleman of undoubted integrity and of Spanish origin.

Professor Jordan declares that this letter seems to show that "the rebellion is not a mere bandit outbreak of negroes and jailbirds, but the effort of the whole people to throw off the yoke of a government they find intolerable."

The letter states, among other things, that the insurrection was begun and is kept up by Cuban people; that the Spanish government has made colossal and unheard-of efforts to put it down, but has not succeeded in diminishing it; on the contrary, the insurrection has spread from one extreme of the island to the other; that the flower of the Cuban youth is in the army of the insurrection, in whose ranks are many physicians, lawyers, druggists, professors, artists, business men, engineers and men of that ilk.

Professor Jordan's correspondent declares that this fact can be proved by the excellent consular service of the United States.

He admits that destruction has been carried on by both sides, but affirms that the insurgents began by destroying their own property, in order to deprive the troops of the government of shelter and sustenance.

He further declares that the insurgents will continue in their course until they fulfill their purpose, carrying all before them by fire and blood.

He concludes as follows: