Spanish troops, Spain has lost control of every foot of Cuba not surrounded by an actual intrenchment and protected by a fortified picket line.

She holds possession with her armies of the fortified seaboard towns, not because the insurgents could not capture many of them, but because they are under the virtual protection of Spanish warships, with which the revolutionists cannot cope.

The revolutionists are in absolute and almost peaceful possession of nearly one half of the island, including the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Puerto Principe. In those provinces they have an established form of government, levy and collect taxes, maintain armies, and generally levy a tax or tribute upon the principal plantations in the other provinces, and, as is commonly believed, upon the entire railway system of the island.

In the four so-called Spanish provinces there is neither cultivation nor railway operation except under strong Spanish military protection or by consent of the revolutionists in consideration of tribute paid.

Under the inhuman policy of Weyler not less than 400,000 self-supporting, simple, peaceable, defenceless country people were driven from their homes in the agricultural portions of the Spanish provinces to the cities and imprisoned upon the barren waste outside the residence portions of these cities and within the lines of intrenchment established a little way beyond. Their humble homes were burned, their fields laid waste, their implements of husbandry destroyed, their live stock and food supplies for the most part confiscated. Most of these people were old men, women, and children. They were thus placed in hopeless imprisonment, without shelter or food. There was no work for them in the cities to which

they were driven. They were left there with nothing to depend upon except the scanty charity of the inhabitants of the cities and with slow starvation their inevitable fate.

It is conceded upon the best ascertainable authority, and those who have had access to the public records do not hesitate to state, that upward of 210,000 of these people have already perished, all from starvation or from diseases incident to starvation.

The government of Spain has never contributed one dollar to house, shelter, feed, or provide medical attention for these its own citizens. Such a spectacle exceeds the scenes of the Inferno as painted by Dante.

There has been no amelioration of the situation except through the charity of the people of the United States. There has been no diminution in the death rate among these reconcentrados except as the death supply is constantly diminished. There can be no relief and no hope except through the continued charity of the American people until peace shall be fully restored in the island and until a humane government shall return these people to their homes and provide for them anew the means with which to begin again the cultivation of the soil.

Spain cannot put an end to the existing condition. She cannot conquer the insurgents. She cannot re-establish her sovereignty over any considerable portion of the interior of the island. The revolutionists, while able to maintain themselves, cannot drive the Spanish army from the fortified seacoast towns.

The situation, then, is not war as we understand it, but a chaos of devastation and depopulation of undefined duration, whose end no man can see.

I will cite but a few facts that came under my personal

observation, all tending to fully substantiate the absolute truth of the foregoing propositions. I could detail incidents by the hour and by the day, but the senator from Vermont has absolutely covered the case. I have no desire to deal in horrors. If I had my way, I would shield the American public even from the photographic reproductions of the awful scenes that I viewed in all their original ghastliness.

Spain has sent to Cuba more than 225,000 soldiers to subdue the island, whose entire male population capable of bearing arms did not exceed at the beginning that number. These soldiers were mostly boys, conscripts from the Spanish hills. They are well armed, but otherwise seem to be absolutely unprovided for. They have been without tents and practically without any of the necessary supplies and equipment for service in the field. They have been put in barracks, in warehouses, and old buildings in the cities where all sanitary surroundings have been of the worst possible character. They have seen but little discipline, and I could not ascertain that such a thing as a drill had taken place in the island.

There are less than 60,000 now available for duty. The balance are dead or sick in hospitals, or have been sent back to Spain as incapacitated for further service. It is currently stated that there are now 37,000 sick in hospital. I do not believe that the entire Spanish army in Cuba could stand an engagement in the open field against 20,000 well-disciplined American soldiers.

As an instance of the discipline among them I cite the fact that I bought the machete of a Spanish soldier on duty at the wharf in Matanzas, on his offer, for $3 in Spanish silver. He also seemed desirious of selling me his only remaining arm, a revolver.

The Spanish soldiers have not been paid for some months, and in my judgment they, of all the people on the earth, will most gladly welcome any result which would permit them to return to their homes in Spain.

The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never saw, and please God I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Matanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them.

There was almost no begging by the reconcentrados themselves. The streets of the cities are full of beggars of all ages and all conditions, but they are almost wholly of the residents of the cities and largely of the professional-beggar class. The reconcentrados-men, women, and children-stand silent, famishing with hunger. Their only appeal comes from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls.

The present autonomist governor of Matanzas (who speaks excellent English) was inaugurated in November last. His records disclose that at the city of Matanzas there were 1,200 deaths in November, 1,200 in December, 700 in January, and 500 in February-3,600 in four months, and those four months under the administration of a governor whom I believe to be a truly humane man. He stated to me that on the day of his inauguration, which I think was the 12th of last November, to his personal knowledge fifteen persons died in the public square in front of the executive mansion. Think of it, oh, my countrymen! Fifteen human beings dying from starvation in the public square, in the shade of the palm-trees,

and amid the beautiful flowers, in sight of the open windows of the executive mansion!

The governor of Matanzas told us that for the most part the people of the city of Matanzas had done all they could for the reconcentrados; and after studying the situation over I believe his statement is true. He said the condition of affairs in the island had destroyed the trade, the commerce, and the business of the city; that most of the people who had the means assisted the reconcentrados with food just as long as they could, but he said to us that there were thousands of the people living in fine houses on marble floors who were in deep need themselves and who did not know from one day to the other where their food supply was coming from.

The ability of the people of Matanzas to aid is practically exhausted. The governor told us that he had expended all of his salary and all that he could possibly afford of his private means in relief work. He is willing that the reconcentrados shall repass the picket line and go back to seek work in the interior of the island. He expresses his willingness to give them passes for that purpose, but they are no longer physically able to take advantage of that offer. They have no homes to return to; their fields have grown up to weeds; they have no oxen, no implements of husbandry with which to begin anew the cultivation of the soil. Their only hope is to remain where they are, to live as long as they can on an insufficient charity, and then die. What is true at Matanzas is true at all the other cities where these reconcentrados have been gathered.

The government of Spain has not and will not appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding these