BLANCO IN CUBA.

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saved. The necessity for a change in the condition of the reconcentrados is recognized by the Spanish government." Spanish Relief Illusory.-As a counter to the American Government's revolting expose of the policy of reconcentration, the Spanish cabinet, early in April, 1898, voted three million pesetas-upward of $600,000-for the starving reconcentrados. Consul-general Lee, when questioned by the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate on April 12, 1898, had this to say: "I do not believe $600,000, in supplies, will be given to those people, and the soldiers left to starve. They will divide it up here and there; a piece taken off here, and a piece taken off there. I do not believe they have appropriated anything of the kind.

The condition of the reconcentrados out in the country is just as bad as in General Weyler's day. It has been relieved a good deal by supplies from the United States, but that has ceased now.

"General Blanco published a proclamation rescinding General Weyler's bando, as they call it there, but it has had no practical effect. In the first place, these people have no place to go; the houses have been burned down; there is nothing but the bare land there, and it would take them two months before they could raise the first crop. In the next place, they are afraid to go out from the lines of the towns, because the roving bands of Spanish guerillas, as they are called, would kill them. So they stick right in the edges of the town, just like they did, with nothing to eat except what they can get from charity. The Spanish have nothing to give."

BLANCO IN CUBA.

Spanish Politics.-The so-called Liberal Party of Spain, under the leadership of Sagasta (the same who, as Prime Minister, once sent word to President Grant there was not gold enough in the world to buy Cuba), was, to all appearances, gradually undermining the Conservative

Ministry of Canovas, and had become outspoken in its condemnation of General Weyler's severe and futile measures, when, on August 6, 1897, Canovas was assassinated by an obscure anarchistic crank. The Queen Regent immediately designated General Azcarraga, the Minister of War, to serve as head of the cabinet, and for several weeks things went on much as before. Then came the expected "ministerial crisis," the outcome of which was a new cabinet, under Sagasta, pledged to afford Cuba autonomy-home rule-and at the same time to prosecute the war there with increased vigor. Early in October Weyler, a Conservative, placed his resignation in the hands of the new ministry, and a few days later was recalled, one reason for this step, according to a semiofficial account, being "the deplorable condition of the sick and wounded soldiers arriving from Cuba." Before sailing for Spain, Weyler accepted an almost riotous ovation from the volunteers of Havana, the ultra-Spanish element of the city, and responded in a speech full of absurd self-glorification. To what extent his twenty months in Cuba had swelled his private fortune cannot be stated, but it is known to have been quite considerable. Sagasta was a man of less commanding intellect than Canovas, but an adroit politician, and a master hand at the worn-out Spanish game of make-believe and delay. He promised the Washington government many nice things, and really did try to get the Cubans to accept his scheme of autonomy. But the Cuban patriots would have none of it, and, what was no less fatal to it, neither would the Spanish out-and-outers, the Weylerites. However, some twoscore of American prisoners in Cuba were released. Some of them had been in prison seventeen months, and never brought to trial. The Queen Regent graciously forgave their crimes anyhow, at President McKinley's request, which brought many congratulations to the White House and the Department of State.

BLANCO IN CUBA,

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Blanco's Administration.-Weyler's successor was not Marshal Campos, as many had predicted it would be, but General Ramon Blanco, late Governor-general of the Phillipine Islands, where he had coped successfully with a determined rebellion. In politics he was a Liberal, and in traits of personal character very different from his predecessor. He reached Havana October 31, 1897. He seems to have made an honest effort to carry out the milder policy which, under the pressure of American opinion, had been decided on at Madrid. Before reaching Cuba he had stated, in an interview: "My policy will never include concentration. I fight the enemy, not women and children. One of the first things I shall do will be to greatly extend the zones of cultivation, and to allow the reconcentrados to go out of the towns and till the soil." For the difference at this point between promise and fulfillment General Blanco must not be held alone to blame. The situation has largely overmastered him throughout. The amnesty proclamation, which the Governor-general issued on the eighth of November, fell flat; the insurgents paid no attention to it. Few were the estates, either, on which he was able to start the mills to grinding sugar-cane once more.

Equally inconclusive were his efforts in the field. In its military aspect the war had relapsed into a dogged struggle amid the central provinces, and around the garrisoned points in the two eastern ones. General Pando, in the east, organized the principal expeditions of the winter, and exhausted his ill-rationed columns in gaining petty victories of no lasting value. One cannot help admiring the constancy of the suffering and neglected Spanish soldiery, whose pay in April, 1898, was nine months in arrears for the men, and four months for the officers.

Failure of Autonomy.-It was not without difficulty that Blanco manned the several posts of government when, in

November, 1897, he launched the new autonomous administration, on which Sagasta had built such hopes. The real leaders of public opinion held aloof. Many of them denounced autonomy as a weak concession that endangered the whole fabric of Spanish supremacy. The autonomous office-holders-the Colonial Government, as highsounding cablegrams phrase it-are mere puppets, with no influence, except as upheld by Spanish bayonets.

As to the Cuban leaders, nothing could be more clear-cut than their stern avowal, a hundred times repeated, to consider no proposal along the lines of home rule under Spanish domination. "Independence or death!" has been their impassioned cry at every step. That it must be independence or nothing, should they have a voice in the settlement, presented diplomacy with a knotty and singularly unwelcome problem. And yet whose right to a voice in the settlement had been better earned? With a terrible emphasis, Gomez issued his warning, even before Blanco had ensconced himself in the palace at Havana, that any person attempting to bring offers of autonomy to his camps would be seized as a spy and shot; and in one case at least the summary order was carried out. Was this savagery, or was it the acme of patriotism?

THE CUBAN REPUBLIC.

Civil Government Organized.-Marti's death (see page 19) delayed the civil organization of the revolutionists, but on September 13, 1895, their first Constituent Assembly met at Camaguey, with twenty members representing all six provinces. It declared Cuba independent, and adopted a constitution for the new government, whose supreme power was vested in a Government Council, to be composed of the President of the Republic, the Vice-president and four Secretaries-those of war, interior, foreign affairs and agriculture-with a sub-secretary for each of these four departments.

THE CUBAN REPUBLIC.

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It next elected and installed the officers of government. Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, chosen President, was the ex-Marquis of Santa Lucia, who formally renounced his title of nobility when he joined the revolution in 1868, and lost his estates by confiscation. Bartolome Masso, of

Manzanillo, was elected Vice-president, and Dr. Thomas Estrada Palma, minister plenipotentiary and diplomatic agent abroad, with headquarters in the United States. Gomez was confirmed as General-in-chief of the army, and Maceo as second in command.

Quesada's Statements.-Senor Gonzales de Quesada, charge d' affairs of the Cuban Republic at Washington, is a graduate of the University of New York, and in training thoroughly American. In a recent statement he said: "The civil authorities of the Republic have continued to exercise their functions throughout the territory controlled by the Republic of Cuba, which is about three fourths of the island. There is a Civil Governor in every province, who has his subordinates and employes. The provinces are divided into prefectures, under the supervision of the Secretary of the Interior. The duties of the Prefects are various and are subject to special laws. That these prefectures are in working operation the official telegrams of the Spanish press afford innumerable proof. Documents on file before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations prove that the civil government legislated as to commerce, government workshops, manufactories, coast inspectors, post-offices; that stamps have been issued, public schools established, civil marriages provided for; that the public treasury is well organized, taxes being collected, and amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars; and that President Cisneros and, afterward, President Masso have issued state papers."

Masso's Administration.-The second Constituent Assembly, which met at the end of the constitutional two years, numbered twenty-four members, elected by ballot on the