So, in the consideration of this question, I hope it will be perfectly understood that the Committee on Foreign Relations, whose resolution I have the honor to advocate at this moment, have not been animated in the slightest degree by any sense of wrong or injustice intentionally done by the Spanish Government to the Government of the United States now or heretofore. There is nothing in our action that partakes in the least degree of retaliation. Our action is controlled, as far as we are able to shape it, entirely, as I have remarked, by the consideration of what is due to our own Government and our own people under a very peculiar relation that we hold to the government and people of Cuba.

In the consideration of this question the Committee on Foreign Relations have found themselves able to separate themselves entirely from all considerations except those which I have indicated as the basis of our action. When this Congress met, petitions and memorials from different persons and communities, from societies and legislatures of the States, flooded in upon the Senate and upon the House. They reached the table of the Senate and were referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations until they amounted to a great number.

The pressure of these various proceedings on the part of the people of the United States was very heavy upon both Houses, and doubtless upon the Executive also. The Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, not desirous of repressing or resisting these demands from the people of the United States, have still felt that the gravity of the occasion required them to give a very careful investigation to the whole question as far as we were in the possession of means to understand it. I must confess that the information which we possess on that subject is not perhaps official. It is in a large sense accurate; in my opinion, it is altogether credible. Yet it has been gathered from various sources, an important part of it from certain persons delegated by the government of the Republic of Cuba to visit the United States and to present to the Executive and to Congress a full statement of the actual situation in Cuba, both as to civil affairs and the military situation.

After patient examination of these various documents and comparing them with such information as we could gather from the statements in the public prints, to which credit was given by the press and the United States almost without dissent, the committee feel that they have reached a ground upon which they can stand firmly in presenting for the consideration of the Senate the action that is proposed in the resolution which has been presented to the Senate in behalf of the majority of the committee.

I think the demands of duty have been growing more serious upon the committee, as they have upon the Senate and upon the country, from day to day by a fuller and a better understanding of the actual situation as between Cuba and Spain. Surrounded as that island is by the Spanish navy and under the censorship exercised over all communications which have been permitted to come to the United States, it has only been occasionally that we have had the means of access to those private sources of information from which, after all, we can derive the truest view of the real situation in Cuba.

This embarrassment has retarded the committee in its action very properly; but we have not come before the Senate without being persuaded, fully persuaded, that we have quite sufficient

information of an authentic and reliable character upon which to base the report that we have made.

Before going into the argument of that report I wish to make some statements in regard to the law upon this question. I would begin, Mr. President, by defining what is a state of belligerency when it is recognized by one government in favor of another, and what are the consequences of it. When any insurrection has grown to the magnitude of a public civil war and has so impressed itself upon other nations of the world as to convince thein that they would be justified in recognizing the existence of a civil war, it then becomes the privilege and, in the Christian sense and in the sense of modern international law, the duty of civilized governments to recognize the state of belligerency as existing.

No nation can proceed against its own people in such a way as to hold them amenable to the pains and penalties of felony or piracy or ignominious punishment after those people, animated by a desire for liberty, have concentrated their efforts in the assemblage of large masses for the purpose of achieving liberty and independence, and have so far been able to concentrate and organize their power as to present important armies in the field of military exploit, such armies organized regularly under military law, divided into corps and other subordinate divisions of an army, reaching down to the company organization, and controlled by supreme military authority, as the ruling power and law of these collections of armed men are capable of conducting war and are entitled to the recognition that is accorded to regular armies in the laws of nations. When these things have attained to that degree, a man engaged in those ranks by enlistment changes his character from that of a felonious rebel or insurrectionist into the higher character of a soldier, and the civilized nations of the earth feel it incumbent upon them, in honor and in duty, to recognize that man as a soldier, entitled to the protection of the laws of civilized war. This is a direct purpose of the resolutions under discussion, and it has every sanction of justice and benevolence.

It must be remembered, Mr. President, that armies are composed, after all, not of officers alone, but of soldiery as well. They are led and commanded by officers, but the soldiers do the marching, bear the guns, do the fighting, fill the graves and the hospitals, and when they are captured fill the prisons.

It must also be remembered that governments de facto exist and are recognized the world over, and have been recognized for many ages, and that governments de facto, whether they are considered in the military or in the civil sense, while they have rule and supremacy in a certain area of country, have the right to demand the services of the people over whom they are instituted and to impose duties upon them to the extent of enlisting them in the armies, to the extent of taking their property for military purposes or government purposes, and even to the extent of commanding their allegiance and their support; and that the civilized nations of the earth extend to people thus put under the dominion of de facto power the correlative right of protection in their persons and property, without being held liable criminally for their acts of obedience to that government.

That is the same law, sir, that applies in civil and military establishments, and where any body of citizenship have collected together and armed and organized themselves into a military power, and they have dominion over a given area of country, the

people who are within the influence of that dominion are justified, under the laws of nations everywhere, in rendering obedience and even support to that power. When a man enlists in an army thus constituted, which has the power of supreme authority in his vicinity, and he puts upon himself the insignia of a soldier, and takes his arms and makes his enlistment and swears his allegiance to the flag that is over him, as he can be compelled to do by a power that he can not resist, that man's character, in the eye of the laws of nations, changes from the private rebel or insurrectionist into that of a soldier, and he has the right to the protection that the laws of civilized warfare give to soldiery. The world has too much need of the services of the soldier to permit that service to subject him to the penalties of infamous punishment when he is captured in open war.

What is the consequence of the position I have just been attempting to discuss, if it be true? It is, of course, that a Cuban taken in arms, under the existing state of affairs in that island, is not amenable to trial and execution, we will say, by drum-head courtmartial or by any summary proceeding, or any other proceeding. He can not be justly considered as being a felon—a man who has compromised his relations with his former Government to that extent that he is entitled only to bear the ignominy of a felonious conviction, with imprisonment for the remainder of his life, and his children doomed to follow him in wearing this stained garment of reputation.

This is the condition that Spain imposes upon native citizens who resist tyranny, in obedience to God, rather than endure it through fear of terrible personal sufferings. Driven to war by relentless oppression, the world is asked to deny them the rights that belong to armies in the field, because Spain chooses to denounce them as robbers.

If the Government of Spain could make up its mind to recognize the existence in Cuba of an insurrection, if they please to call it such, which has reached the proportions of a general civil war with organized armies, by that act they would place themselves in line with the opinion and conduct of other Christian powers and they would concede to the soldiery who might be in the Cuban army the rights of belligerency, just as was done during the period of the civil war in the United States. Neither party suffered from that course of civilized warfare. But Spain obstinately refuses to do this.

Is there any doubt, Mr. President, can there be any doubt, that the war in Cuba has attained to that magnitude in which it becomes the duty and the wisest policy of Spain to make this acknowledgment in behalf of the Cuban insurrectionists? There can be no doubt about it.

The President of the United States, in his last annual message to the Congress, describes this as a bloody war, a public war, no longer a mere insurrection, no longer a mob or an embroilment of citizens without organization, for the purpose of wreaking some revenge or for the purpose of displacing some officer who may be offensive to them in the civil or military government of Cuba; nothing of that kind. It is an open, public war, and the fact is so plain, so manifest, in the history of which we are perfectly cognizant, that the question does not admit of debate.

We, therefore, in the progress of our consideration of this question, can advance to that ground with absolute confidence that this is a public war, and that in this public war it is the duty of

Spain to make a concession in favor of the other belligerents to the effect that the people who are engaged in that army by regular enlistment are soldiers and shall have the treatment of soldiers. If Spain should do such a thing as that, Mr. President, that would be a recognition by the sovereign of the belligerent rights of these people who are fighting against her flag and fighting for their independence; and in that view there would be no occasion, certainly no necessity, for the Government of the United States or any other government to interfere for the purpose of securing to the soldiery in those armies the benefits, whatever they may be, of civilized warfare. Spain has not done this; Spain does not intend to do this. Spain fills to repletion her prison in Africa with persons captured out of the army of the rebels; she fills Morro Castle, Puerto Cabaños, and all other prisons of which she has the control with these victims caught from the other army, who are taken when caught and by a summary process are condemned to life servitude in these terrible prisons, if, indeed, they are permitted to live.

If we are ever called in question for making a humane declaration in favor of these victims, we shall be, fortunately, supported by an array of facts that will call forth the sympathies of all Christendom. As the action we propose is based on justice and our regard for human rights, our sympathy for the oppressed needs not to be justified at this time by a recital of all their wrongs and sufferings.

Spain inflicts upon them penalties under the name of law which their crimes would not deserve, even if they were individuals engaged separate and apart, or in little squads, in insurrection against the Government of Spain; but being soldiers, and having enlisted in a place and at a time and under circumstances and for purposes which recommend them to the fair and favorable consideration of mankind, it becomes the duty of the civilized governments of the world, so far as they are able to effect or accomplish anything in that direction, to say to Spain: "We recognize the belligerent rights of the people under arms in that country who call themselves citizens of the Republic of Cuba."

I trust that I have brought out in this way, in rather simple form, the real ground upon which the United States and every other country has the right to intervene to the extent, at least, that this resolution proposes. It is in behalf of mercy; it is in behalf of justice; in this particular case it is in behalf of liberty, and, more than that, it is in behalf of the kind of liberty which we enjoy; it is in behalf of that kind of liberty where the people themselves furnish the governing power and where they dispute the right of monarchy to govern them at will and pleasure. So there is everything in the situation of the case which is attractive to the American people to induce us to occupy that ground which is justified, not merely by our predilections or our sympathies, but that ground which is justified by the laws of warfare; modern, civilized war, as it is described in the books on international law. I therefore assume, Mr. President, without stopping to debate it particularly, that the Government of the United States has the right, and that it is our duty, and that it accords with our sentiments, and that it justly stirs the blood in our veins when we make this declaration and say to Spain: "You have long enough lacerated these people in your efforts to destroy them under the plea of quelling insurrection. Now they are entitled to belligerent rights, and we intend, so far as we are concerned, to give

them that recognition by expressing our opinion here that they are so entitled; and when we have made that recognition, we intend to be bound hereafter, just as we have been in the past, by our own laws and also by the laws of the nations of the earththe international law-to maintain perfect neutrality between these recognized belligerents, doing no favor to either that is not permitted by the laws of war, by international law, and denying to neither of them the privileges which they have the right to enjoy as belligerent powers.' That is our attitude.

I now come back to the first proposition with which I started out: Can Spain rightfully assume that in our taking that course on an occasion like this there is any menace against her or any act which is inimical to her dignity and power, her jurisdiction, or her sovereignty? No; and if she desires to take offense where none is intended, and none is really given, all that we can say is, 'You will have to take offense; but we had rather that you would take offense at our attitude as a Government than that the God of nations and the human family should take offense at our silence and our indifference in the presence of this wrong. We have got to choose an attitude here which you have forced upon us by your misgovernment in Cuba, or otherwise we shall not take that position which is becoming to a great Republic and an honest, upright, and courageous people; and, having taken that attitude without enmity toward you, if you choose to embroil us on that account, why, simply we can not help it. You embroil if you ever do so, because we do our plain duty, and no more." We must determine for ourselves whether it is just that we should accord, on our part, and under our laws, the rights of civilized warfare to a great body of people in Cuba who have resisted the whole power of Spain for more than a year and increase in numbers and military strength with every day that passes.

us,

I now come to the consideration of what would be our position when we recognize the belligerency of the Cuban Republic, for that is what I style it, that is what they style it themselves, and I think, before I get through with my argument, I shall show that they have ample reason for calling themselves, with proud satisfaction, the Republic of Cuba, for, if it be not now a republic in full development and in the majesty of power which it seems destined to enjoy some day, it may be another Moses in his basket among the bullrushes, and after a while it will come to light, and the world will rejoice in the presence of that new republic.

We have a number of remarkably stringent statutes upon our statute book for the protection of other countries surrounding us, by enforcing upon our people the doctrines of international law, which are called neutrality. One who reads our statute book and compares it with that of almost any other country in the world, I think, will be surprised at the stringency with which we guard against the interference of our people in any war which may take place in any country foreign to us. We have had on both sides of us nations which we have been compelled to protect by these statutes-Canada on the north, Mexico on the southwest, and more particularly Cuba on the south. This code of laws, strong and urgent and stringent as it is, was never suggested to the Congress of the United States by the enmity of our people toward any other nation in the world.

It is not our inherent trouble, it is not the drift of our people in the direction of maraud and robbery and interference with for