had little weight with Mr. Cleveland, and none at all with Spain. Whatever was done by the administration in offering our good offices to secure the recognition of Cuban independence, there was no result, and the only part of the resolution which was scrupulously carried out was in observing neutrality, which was done by the President with a severity that bore heavily upon the Cuban side alone.

The administration was in fact opposed to any interference in Cuba, and the action of Congress left it free to follow its policy of holding rigidly aloof. Spain relied with entire confidence on the friendly attitude of Mr. Cleveland, and this confidence was not misplaced. But the unsettled question could not be put down in this fashion, or pushed into a corner. It kept on proclaiming its ugly existence. The war did not die out, as the opponents of Cuba confidently predicted that it would, in the course of a month. On the contrary, it continued; the insurgents were successful in their plan of campaign; they kept gaining ground and getting a more and more complete control of the interior of the island. On July 13, 1895, the battle of Bayamo was fought the only considerable action of the war, for Gomez avoided steadily all stricken fields. At Bayamo, however, they won a decisive victory, and Martinez Campos, who barely escaped, was forced to resign, and was recalled, six months later. The retirement of Martinez Campos was an important advantage to the Cuban cause, for he was the wisest and most humane of the Spanish Captain-Generals. He had settled the last revolt, and by diplomacy and good management there was always danger that he would divide the in

surgents again and bring about another compromise. He was, however, neither successful enough nor suificiently ferocious to satisfy Spain, and hence his removal. The man who succeeded him, if, as events. proved, equally unsuccessful in war, left nothing to be desired in the way of ferocity. Valeriano Weyler came to Cuba February 10, 1896, with an evil reputation for cruelty and corruption earned in the Philippines and in the suppression of the disorders at Barcelona, a reputation which he not only maintained, but enhanced in his new government. His military movements were farcical, consisting in marching columns out here and there from garrisoned posts, having an ineffective brush with the Cubans, and then and there withdrawing the troops, with as little effect as the proverbial King of France who marched up the hill. The insurgents continued their operations without serious check; they broke through the trochas, swarmed into Pinar del Rio, wandered at will about the country, and carried their raids even into the suburbs of Havana. Weyler, who seems never to have exposed himself to fire, but to have confined his operations in the field to building more trochas, made his few military progresses by sea, and preferred to stay in Havana, where he could amass a fortune by blackmailing the business interests, and levying heavy tribute on all the money appropriated to public uses by the bankrupt and broken treasury of Spain. If, however, Weyler was ineffective as a commander in the field and no lover of battle, he showed that he was energy itself in carrying out a campaign of another kind, which was intended to destroy the people of the island, and which had the great merit of be

ing attended with no risk to the person of the CaptainGeneral. A large portion of the Cuban population in the country were peasants taking no part in the war, and known as "pacificos." They were quiet people, as a rule, and gave no cause for offence, but it was well known that their sympathies were with the insurgents, and it was believed that they furnished both supplies and recruits to the rebel forces. Unable to suppress or defeat the armed insurgents, the Spanish government characteristically determined to destroy these helpless "pacificos." Accordingly an edict, suggested apparently by Weyler, was issued on October 21, 1896, which applied to Pinar del Rio, and was afterwards extended to all the island, and which ordered the army to concentrate all the pacificos, practically all the rural population, in the garrisoned towns. These wretched people were to be driven in this way from their little farms, which were their only means of support, and herded in the towns and in the suburbs of Havana, where they had nothing before them but starvation, or massacre at the hands of Spanish soldiers and guerrillas. Whether the idea of this infamous order originated in Havana or Madrid is not of much consequence. The QueenRegent, for whom some persons feel great sympathy, because she is an intelligent woman and the mother of a little boy, set her hand to the decree which sent thousands of women and children to a lingering death, and the whole government of Spain is just as responsible for all the ensuing atrocities as Weyler, who issued the concentration edict and carried it out with pitiless thoroughness and genuine pleasure in the task.

By March, 1896, Spain had sent 121,000 soldiers to