ready to go, as fast and as far as it can. With your power of action. sufficiently free you will win the fight on your own lines. I do not expect immediate reply, but will be glad to have an early acknowledgment of receipt."

Mr. Woodford, min. to Spain, to President McKinley, tel., April 10, 1898,
For. Rel. 1898, 747.

"The minister plenipotentiary of Spain has the honor to state to the honorable Secretary of State of the United States of America that Her Majesty the Queen Regent, acceding to the reiterated desires of His Holiness, and inspired by the sentiments of concord and peace which animate her, has given appropriate instructions to the general in chief of the army of Cuba, to the end that he shall concede an immediate suspension of hostilities for such time as he shall deem prudential, in order to prepare and facilitate people in that island.

"General Blanco has to-day published the corresponding bando, and reserves to himself to determine in another bando the duration and other details of its execution, with the sole aim that so transcendental a measure shall lead within the shortest possible time to the desired pacification of the Great Antilla.

"In deciding upon the duration thereof, the general in chief, inspired by the highest sentiments, far from raising difficulties or obstructions, is prepared to grant every possible facility.

"The government of Her Majesty, by this most important step, has set the crown to her extraordinary efforts to obtain the pacification of Cuba through the instrumentalities of reason and of right.

"The autonomic constitution, which gives to the inhabitants of the island of Cuba a political system at least as liberal as that which exists in the Dominion of Canada, will within a short time enter upon the stage of complete development, when, after the elections. have been held, the insular parliament will meet at Habana on the 4th of May next; and the franchise and liberties granted to the Cubans are such that no motive or pretext is left for claiming any fuller measure thereof.

"Nevertheless as the island of Cuba is represented in the Cortes of the Kingdom, a privilege which is not enjoyed by any other foreign autonomic colony, the Cuban senators and deputies in the Cortes may there present their aspirations if they desire more.

"No one knowing the liberal spirit of the majority in the recently elected Spanish Cortes and the patriotic attitude of the principal parties in opposition can doubt that the Cubans will obtain whatever changes they may justly desire, within the bounds of reason and of the national sovereignty, as is solemnly offered in the preamble of the royal decree of November 5, 1897, at which time the Government of

Her Majesty declared that it would not withdraw or permit the withdrawal of any colonial liberties, guaranties, and privileges.

"The abrogation of the decree of reconcentration and the assistance of every kind which the government of Her Majesty has granted and permitted to be extended to the reconcentrados have at last terminated a lamentable condition of things, which was the unavoidable consequence of the sanguinary strife provoked by a small minority of the sons of Cuba, and who have been mainly led and sustained by foreign influences.

"No impartial mind, having full knowledge of the facts, which have never on any occasion been perverted, as those relating to the Cuban question have been and are now perverted, can justly impute to Spain remissness in endeavoring to reach the means of pacification of the island nor illiberality in granting privileges, liberties, and franchises for the welfare and happiness of its inhabitants. The government of Her Majesty doubts not that this will be recognized by the United States government, even as it must recognize the manifest injustice with which a portion of the public opinion of this country claims to discover responsibilities on the part of Spain for the horrible catastrophe which took place on the calamitous night of the 15th of February last. Her Majesty the Queen Regent, her responsible government, the governor-general of Cuba, the insular government, and all the higher authorities of Habana displayed from the first moment the profound sorrow and the sentiments of horror which that measureless misfortune caused to them, as well as the sympathy which on that melancholy occasion linked them to the American government and people.

"Proof of this is found in the visits of Her Majesty's chargé d'affaires to the illustrious President of the United States, the visits made by the highest officers of the Spanish State to Mr. Woodford, the assistance unsparingly given to the victims, the funeral obsequies which were provided for them by the municipal council of Habana, and the notes addressed to the Department of State by this legation under date of February 16 and 17 and the 2d instant, bearing the respective numbers 12, 13, 14, and 23.

"The officers and crews of Her Majesty's war vessels lying near the Maine, heedless of the evident peril that menaced them, as is testified by the officers of that American ironclad, immediately lowered their boats, saving a large number of the wrecked ship's men, who alone owe their lives to the instant and efficient aid of the Spanish sailors. "It is singular that these well-known facts and impressive declarations seem to have been forgotten by public opinion, which instead lends credence to the most absurd and offensive conjectures.

H. Doc. 551-vol 6-14

"The government of Her Majesty would very greatly esteem the sense of justice and the courtesy of the United States government were an official statement to set the facts in their true light, for it would seem that they are ignored and the failure to appreciate them is potentially contributing to keep up an abnormal excitement in the minds of the people that imperils, causelessly and most irrationally, the friendly relations of the two countries.

"As for the question of fact which springs from the diversity of views between the reports of the Spanish and American boards, the government of Her Majesty, although not yet possessed of the official text of the two reports, has hastened to declare itself ready to submit to the judgment of impartial and disinterested experts, accepting in advance the decision of the arbitrators named by the two parties, which is obvious proof of the frankness and good faith which marks the course of Spain on this as on all occasions.

"The minister of Spain trusts that these statements, inspired by the earnest desire for peace and concord which animates the government of Her Majesty, will be appreciated at their just worth by the government of the United States."

66

Señor Polo de Bernabé, Spanish min., to Mr. Sherman, Sec. of State, April 10, 1898, For. Rel. 1898, 747.

See, also, Señor Polo to Mr. Dáy, April 11, 1898, enclosing a copy of General Blanco's proclamation, dated April 7, 1898, declaring a suspension of hostilities in Cuba. (For. Rel. 1898, 750.)

The Spanish minister to-day informed me that authority had been given General Blanco to proclaim suspension of hostilities, and thereupon invited, on General's behalf, indication of nature and scope of such proclamation. Spanish minister had been answered that the President must decline to make further suggestions than those heretofore made known through you and through Spanish minister here, but that in sending in his message to-morrow the President will acquaint Congress with this latest communication of the Spanish government and add any further information which Minister Polo may be in a position to furnish in regard to the nature and terms of General Blanco's action under the authorization so given him. The above is sent for your information. Your personal, No. 66, just received and fully noted."

Mr. Day, Assist. Sec. of State, to Mr. Woodford, min. to Spain, tel., April 10, 1898, Sunday, 6.30 p. m., For. Rel. 1898, 749.

President McKinley's special message, April 11, 1898.

(4) RESOLUTION OF INTERVENTION.

$ 909.

"Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which commands the President to give from time to time to the Congress information of the state of the Union and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, it becomes my duty now to address your body with regard to the grave crisis that has arisen in the relations of the United States to Spain by reason of the warfare that for more than three years has raged in the neighboring island of Cuba.

"I do so because of the intimate connection of the Cuban question with the state of our own Union and the grave relation the course which it is now incumbent upon the nation to adopt must needs bear to the traditional policy of our government if it is to accord with the precepts laid down by the founders' of the Republic and religiously observed by succeeding Administrations to the present day.

"The present revolution is but the successor of other similar insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a century, each of which, during its progress, has subjected the United States to great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and commerce, caused irritation, annoyance, and disturbance among our citizens, and, by the exercise of cruel, barbarous, and uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked the sensibilities and offended the humane sympathies of our people.

"Since the present revolution began, in February, 1895, this country has seen the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged by fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequaled in the history of the island and rarely paralleled as to the numbers of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution of modern times where a dependent people striving to be free have been opposed by the power of the sovereign state.

"Our people have beheld a once prosperous community reduced to comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thousands from hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves constrained, in the observance of that strict neutrality which our laws enjoin, and which the law of nations commands, to police our own waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans.

"Our trade has suffered; the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of our people have been so sorely tried as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens which has inevitably found its expression from time to time in the national legislature, so that issues wholly external to our own body politic engross attention and stand in the way of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes a selfcontained commonwealth whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of all foreign entanglements. All this must needs awaken, and has, indeed, aroused the utmost concern on the part of this government, as well during my predecessor's term as in my own.

"In April, 1896, the evils from which our country suffered through the Cuban war became so onerous that my predecessor made an effort to bring about a peace through the mediation of this Government in any way that might tend to an honorable adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolted colony, on the basis of some effective scheme of self-government for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty of Spain. It failed through the refusal of the Spanish government then in power to consider any form of mediation or, indeed, any plan of settlement which did not begin with the actual submission of the insurgents to the mother country, and then only on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant. The war continued unabated. The resistance of the insurgents was in no wise diminished.

"The efforts of Spain were increased, both by the dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation and concentration, inaugurated by the captain-general's bando of October 21, 1896, in the Province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military operations. The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops.

"The raising and movement of provisions of all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in short, everything that could desolate the land and render it unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or the other of the contending parties and executed by all the powers at their disposal.

"By the time the present administration took office a year ago, reconcentration so called-had been made effective over the better part of the four central and western provinces, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Habana, and Pinar del Rio.

"The agricultural population to the estimated number of 300,000 or more was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage,