tain the idea of so rash an enterprise as an attack upon the City. His purpose was to make a spectacular demonstration for the sake of its moral effect and to concentrate the attention of the Spanish commanders upon himself in order that Maceo might push on to Pinar del Rio with less opposition. In both respects he was eminently successful.

Maceo traversed the entire length of Pinar del Rio, and that Province, in which rebellion had never before reared its head, was soon in open revolt from end to end. During January and February, Maceo ranged through Pinar del Rio and the southern portion of Habana, constantly engaged with one or another of the many detachments that were sent against him. For a brief space he transferred his operations to Matanzas, but returned to Pinar del Rio and for eight months withstood the numerous strong bodies of troops which General Weyler threw against him. Toward the close of the year 1896, Maceo began a march eastward and was killed in a chance encounter with a small force of Spanish soldiers.

In the execution of the plan for the invasion of the western portion of Cuba, which was conceived by Gomez, Antonio Maceo performed a

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splendid service for the insurgent cause. though inferior in intellect to his chief and some other rebel leaders, Maceo was the most capable captain of them all, and his prestige among friends and foes was greater than that of any of his associates.

When General Campos returned to Habana, at the close of the year 1895, it was to find popular discontent and political conspiracy directed against him. Already discouraged by the failure of his military campaign, and of his effort to break up the insurrection by conciliation, the disaffection at the capital completely disheartened the old soldier, who had conscientiously endeavored to do his duty according to his lights. He tendered his resignation, and the home Government appointed General Weyler, Marquis of Tenerife, to succeed him.

This man, who amply earned his sobriquet of "Butcher," was the unwitting instrument of Cuba's freedom. His atrocious barbarities, rather than the destruction of the Maine, were the cause of the United States declaring war against Spain. Although, at the outset, it appeared as though his succession to Campos was a dire blow to the insurgents, the event proved it to be a blessing in disguise. The retiring

General believed that Spain should grant to the Cubans the most liberal administrative and political reforms, even to the extent of autonomy. It is possible that he might have brought the authorities at Madrid to his way of thinking and, in that case, quite probable that the rebellion would have been brought to a peaceful termination.

Weyler lost no time in instituting his concentration system. It was a measure in which he and Canovas, the premier of Spain, had great faith as a means of subduing the insurrection, but it utterly failed in its object and had a result of which its originators little dreamed. They excused it on the ground of military necessity, but it contravened the principles of civilized warfare in important particulars. It involved making prisoners of peaceful noncombatants, and went farther in neglecting to afford them the treatment which the least humane nation concedes to military captives. Indeed its brutality was such as savages would rarely be guilty of.

The people of the country districts, men, women, and children, were segregated within certain restricted bounds, sometimes defined by stockades, or trenches, and always guarded by

troops. Sometimes they were permitted to enter neighboring towns, but, even in such cases, their movements were limited by military circumspection.

If this measure had gone no farther it might have been condoned. The British, in the Boer War, resorted to such an expedient, but they made their detention camps as comfortable as possible, they fed and clothed the inmates sufficiently, and afforded them medical attention. Weyler's wretched reconcentrados were simply herded together and left to their own resources. They were reduced to begging of a people only one degree less impoverished than themselves. The townsman who gave a tortilla to a starving pacifico was usually depriving his own family. Disease, unchecked, ran riot in the concentration camps.

The mortality was fearful and those who survived were unfitted for years, the men to work, the women to bear healthy children. Cuba has not yet passed from the effects of Weyler's barbaric measure.

After General Weyler's arrival, Spain continued to send steady reënforcements to Cuba to fill the ranks thinned by disease. He never had fewer than one hundred thousand men