INTRODUCTION.

BY

GEN. STEWART L. WOODFORD, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Spain.

I

T is an honor which I deeply appreciate to be asked to write these introductory words to such a noteworthy collection of papers as this volume contains.

The island of Cuba suffered during many years from unrest, disorder and civil war. For about half the time between 1868 and 1898 it was the theatre of struggles which wasted its resources and destroyed nearly one quarter of its population. So continuous had been these struggles and so dreadful their results that in our last Presidential canvass both our great political parties practically pledged themselves to such action by our Government as should restore order and compel peace in Cuba. Spain was three thousand miles distant and Cuba was less than one hundred miles from our coast. The burden and the duty of humanity were upon us, and our people of all sections and all parties recognized this duty and accepted this burden.

In March, 1897, President McKinley was inaugurated. As soon as the more pressing needs of internal administration and revenue legislation had been met, he addressed himself to the settlement of the Cuban question. He recognized that it was, in the largest and broadest sense, a national question and was not to be considered and solved upon partisan considerations or through party agencies alone. He retained at Havana as Consul-General a distinguished Democrat, appointed to

that pivotal post by President Cleveland. This was Fitzhugh Lee, who had been a gallant soldier of the Confederacy during our own Civil War and after that war a Governor of Virginia. He sent as Minister to Madrid a citizen of New York, who had served in the Union Army and who was in his personal politics a Republican. The new American Minister started for his post on the 28th of July, 1897. Shortly after his arrival at London, he learned of the assassination of the Spanish Prime Minister, Señor Canovas. There were short delays at London and Paris, and on the 1st of September the American representative reached San Sebastian, where the Queen Regent of Spain was holding her summer Court. His formal presentation to Her Majesty soon followed, and his negotiations with the Spanish Government in relation to Cuba were promptly begun. Those negotiations, whether oral or written, were, from the beginning to the end, straightforward, open and direct and were conducted on the lines of what has come to be known as the "New American Diplomacy." At the outset the American Minister authorized the Spanish Government to publish freely and fully whatever communication he should make to them.

The instructions of the President were firm, yet friendly, and were sincerely in behalf of justice and peace. Those instructions the American Minister sought to carry out to the best of his ability. When war at last came, it was because war was inevitable. a strong and wise man could do for peace, with justice to Cuba and with due regard to the great American interests in that island. At the beginning the President sought the establishment of those conditions in Cuba which should make permanent peace possible and tendered to Spain the good offices of the United States for securing this result. That offer was unfortunately never accepted.

The President had done all that