owing to various diseases induced by starvation and exposure, and yet quinine, the most necessary medicine, sold for ten times its price in the United States. In some towns cats were selling for the suspiciously high price of thirty cents apiece. The officers and crew of the United States warship Montgomery were followed through the streets of Matanzas and Santiago by crowds of starving people. It is the conservative opinion of the compilers of the Census of Cuba in 1899 for the War Department, that the population of Cuba was depleted by the three years of warfare to the number of two hundred thousand persons. It was the condition of the population of Cuba, more than any other cause, which led to the final intervention of the United States. If the charge of undue hastiness of judgment in the Cuban affair can with justice be brought against the yellow journals and the jingoes in Congress, there is no basis for such a charge against the executive administration of the United States. President Cleveland, less than ten months after the commencement of the rebellion, called the attention of Congress to the Cuban situation in his message of December, 1895. He adverted to the "flagrant condition of hostilities", which did not, however, give him a pretext for intervention, but simply for the earnest hope "that the devastation of armed conflict may speedily be stayed and order and quiet restored to the distracted island." It was the plain duty of the United States to enforce obedience to her neutrality laws and to "observe in good faith the recognized obligations of international relationship." Yet this cautious public expression of the president's policy did not mean that he was unwilling to assist in the pacification of Cuba. In April, 1896, Secretary Olney, for the administration, sent a letter to the resident Spanish minister at Washington reviewing the progress of the Cuban rebellion. Spain's hopes of an early conquest, he said, "have been completely disappointed"; the insurgent army had doubled or trebled in number; the annual product of the island had fallen from eighty or a hundred millions to about twenty millions, and the indications pointed to worse conditions in the near future. While the American people, for humanitarian and economic reasons, were deeply interested in the cessation of these conditions, they did not consider intervention at once. But "that the United States can not contemplate with complacency another ten years of Cuban insurrection may certainly be taken for granted." Mr. Olney then expressed the willingness of the United States to coöperate with Spain for the immediate pacification of the island. Exactly two months from the date of this letter, a reply was received to it from the Spanish government. De Lome said the success of the insurgents was an event "which can not and shall not be." Although Spain wished and even longed for a speedy pacification of the island and was willing to adopt useful reforms therein, yet neither pacification nor reform could come until the submission of the armed rebels to the mother country had become an accomplished fact. Such views, although expressed in courteous language, were of course a flat refusal to accept the president's offer. Cleveland's message of December, 1896, coming after this refusal, and after the continued failure of the Spanish armies, naturally expressed a less tolerant spirit than the preceding message. Spain was charged with adopting the policy of the insurgents for the wholesale annihilation of property. The insurgents were said to roam at will over two-thirds of the island, although not possessing a permanent government other than that of their military officers. The conditions in Cuba had called forth a vehement demand in the United States for some sort of positive intervention. In spite of this, the president thought that no other great nation would have exercised the same restraint and patient endurance which the United States had shown. He suggested that Spain grant genuine autonomy to Cuba, and offered, on the part of the United States, to guarantee the execution of the plan for the adoption of an autonomous government. If some plan for pacification were not adopted and executed "the hitherto expectant attitude of the United States" will not be indefinitely maintained; for the country may be placed in such an unprecedented situation "as will fix a limit to our patient waiting for Spain to end the contest", and in which "our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge." Thus did Cleveland forecast the future duty of the country. Early in McKinley's administration a similar tone was adopted. The instructions given to the new minister to Spain, General Stewart L. Woodford, show the same feeling that the period of forbearance was fast drawing to a close. It was in July, 1897, that these instructions were given, and their keynote is found in the sentence, "It may not be reasonably asked or expected that a policy of mere inaction can be safely prolonged." The question, it was alleged, had passed beyond the recognition of the belligerent rights of the Cubans to that of intervention; and to justify intervention an onlooking nation need only wait a reasonable time. "Assuredly", continue the instructions, "Spain cannot expect this Government to sit idle, letting vast interests suffer, our political elements disturbed, and the country perpetually embroiled, while no progress is being made in the settlement of the Cuban problem." At the outset, therefore, the new administration simply took up the question where it had been left by Cleveland and Olney. Woodford was, however, received in Madrid as the exponent of a new and more aggressive attitude upon the part of the United States. This was shown by the efforts of ministers of other European powers resident in Madrid to elicit from Woodford a statement of the purpose of his mission and the plans of his country respecting Cuba. To representatives of France, Great Britain and Russia, within a short time of his arrival, he repeated in substance the terms of his instructions, laying stress upon the absence of any desire upon the part of the United States to annex or to establish a protectorate over Cuba, but also emphasizing the impossibility |