were making startling advancements in directions that surprised and alarmed the Spanish forces. Reliable reports from American citizens who visited the island, trustworthy dispatches through the Associated Press, information given by Cuban refugees, and the thrilling speeches made in the United States Senate by several senators who made personal investigations, on the ground of the condition that

existed in Cuba, all united to add fuel to the flame of American sympathy for the suffering and indignation against Spanish ferocity. These stirring days witnessed a picture of princely patience in the White House that must ever call forth the admiration of all rightthinking men. Having to contend against an excited constituency at home and a cold, tricky diplomacy abroad, President McKinley wrote his name in history as a sage statesman, a prudent patriot, a strong, sweet-spirited Christian man, self-mastered and ably mastering

Republican and Democratic
The excited and persistent

the minds of the leaders of both the parties who held conferences with him. cry for war by those who did not expect to go to the front, reminded one of the words of an American wit: "There are some men who are invincible in peace and invisible in war!" But the President, having been upon the battlefield, knew the horrors of war; and, under divine guidance, he was inflexible in his determination to resort to all honorable means looking to a peaceable settlement of this grave question before, as the responsible executive of this nation, he requested Congress to give him power to intervene in Cuba. His delay in communicating with Congress strained and tested the patience of some of his political friends, who thought that the destruction of the battleship "Maine " should brush aside all diplomatic negotiations, and that immediate steps should be taken to put an end to the Cuban trouble; but history will prove that the President acted with wise conservatism.

In transmitting to Congress the report of the United States Naval Court of Inquiry on the loss of the battleship "Maine," President McKinley presented all the testimony of the Court. In each house of Congress the President's communication was referred to the Foreign Committee and no further action was taken.

It was on April 11, 1898, that President McKinley sent the following message to Congress :

"To the Congress of the United States:

"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.

Cuba Ravaged by Fire and Sword and a Prosperous Community Reduced to Comparative Want.

"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 number of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by 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 self-contained commonwealth whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of 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 selfgovernment 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 in

surgents to the mother coun

PRESIDENT M'KINLEY,

(From a photograph taken immediately after he signed the $50,000,000 Naval Appropriation Bill).

try, and then only on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to

Weyler's Policy Added to the Horrors of Strife a New and Inhuman Phase. "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

Successor to Hon. John Sherman, Secretary of State.

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