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Personals.

'86. Edwin Minor is principal of the Sohaba Indian School and Industrial Garden near San Jacinto, California.

'89. A. M. Bogle is teaching in the Kansas City, Kansas, High school.

'92. T. B. Hanna is pursuing a special course in the University of Kansas.

'92. Professor Gurney Binford, of the Friends' school, Tokio, Japan, made a pleasant visit to us the other day. The Endeavor society announced a stereoptican lecture from him on Monday evening, April 10. It was most enjoyable from beginning to end and many present would have been delighted to attend another on the following evening. Mr. Binford is rapidly regaining his strength and hopes to be able to resume his work in Tokio soon.

'93. Grace Tolman is completing her third year in the

Woman's Medical College at Philadelphia. Her address is 1530 N. Twentieth street.

'94. Ambrose White is principal of the Linwood schools. '94. M. Alice Spradlin after teaching for several years in the girls' school at Arcadia, Darjuling, India, became interested in the Spanish-American war and was appointed as nurse to the Twentieth Kansas Regiment, which has been having some thrilling experiences at Manila. The newspaper reports speak enthusiastically of her courage and her devotion to the needs of the wounded.

'96. Bertha Stachling is principal of the Hillsdale schools, and reports a pleasant year.

'97. Clara Elizabeth Lindamood became Mrs. Chas. Bayless on April 5. She will be at home in May at 1444 Puente de Alvarado, City of Mexico.

'99. C. C. Chapman, principal at Alma, expects to return for a short time before the year closes.

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TEACHERS' HELPS AND BOOKS.

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H. O. PALEN, Manager.

Vol. XI.

EMPORIA, KANSAS, MAY, 1899.

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The fairest of Spain's island possessions, Cuba was likewise one of the earliest locations for a Spanish colony. Columbus lived long enough to see a permanent settlement planted upon the island and Las Casas in his accounts of the inhuman treatment to which the Indians of the West Indies were subjected, gave to the world a reasonable portrayal of the policy of oppression or extermination which everywhere distinguished ths Spaniards as colonial rulers.

From the first, Cuba groaned under the Spanish colonial policy, a policy which always meant the enrichment of the home government or of native-born Spanish officials at the expense and suffering of the colonists.

For a century the island was the base from which expeditions of conquering Spaniards over-ran surrounding tropical America. For another century it was from her harbors that fleets laden with the spoils of conquests in the New World sailed for the homeland and then followed a long period during which she witnessed the efforts of French and English navies for supremacy in the West Indian seas. English speaking people

of the North American continent became interested in Cuba in an especial way when, in 1762, toward the close of the French and Indian War, Havana fell into English hands after efforts of unparalleled bravery and hardship upon the part of the English soldiers and sailors. Spain's estimate of the value of the island's control may be readily inferred from the alacrity with which in 1763 she exchanged the Floridas for Havana. Despite the selfishness and cruelty of Spanish rule it was not until the opening years of the present century that elements of friction and rebellion appeared. Indeed it would seem that the malevolence of the Spanish colonial policy, baffled by the successful insurrections of Spain's continental posessions in the New World, did not concentrate itself upon Cuba until at the end of the first quarter of the century the Pearl of the

No. 8

Antilles remained the only considerable American colony subject to Spanish rule. In 1825 the Captain-General of the island was invested "with the whole extent of power granted to the Governors of besieged towns." This was martial law control and from the day of its inauguration until the island was wrested last year from Spanish hands, was virtually the only control that Cuba knew. From time to time, in response to the more or less successful efforts of desperate insurrectionists Spain promised measures of reform, but all promises were made apparently only to be broken and the iron hand never relaxed its grasp.

From the time of Thomas Jefferson's administration the United States has been keenly alive to the consequences of the island's misgovernment in the hands of Spain and has perforce been compelled to consider the possibility of its ownership falling into her own or other hands as a legitimate consequence of such misgovernment. Indeed, Jefferson, as early as 1807, penned these words: "Napoleon will give his consent without difficulty to our receiving the Floridas, and with some difficulty possibly Cuba." In 1823 Monroe referred to Cuba as a possible addition to the United States, and shortly afterward John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay advocated its annexation as indispensable to the integrity of the Union.

In 1845 the Spanish government rejected with scorn the proposition of the United States to purchase the island for one hundred million dollars, declaring that she would rather "see it sunk in the sea." "To part with Cuba would be to part with national honor" was her answer to another proposition a little later.

The United States, in 1852, refused to agree to join England and France in guaranteeing Cuba to Spain because its ownership "might be essential to our own safety."

The Ostend Manifesto of 1854 was an open advocacy for the conquest of the island on the ground that this country could "never enjoy repose, nor possess reliable security, as long as Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries."

The year 1826 witnessed Cuba's first revolt. The uprising was crushed and its two leaders were executed. Shortly after occurred the "Conspiracy of the Black Eagle," another attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke. Like the first effort, it too was unsuccessful and the parties engaging in it were imprisoned, banished or executed.

In 1844 another iusurrection occurred, with a story similar to the former struggles, and in 1850 the Lopez expedition from New Orleans landed on the island, the first of a series of illstarred filibustering movements participated in by American sympathizers of the Cuban patriots. Three hundred men comprised the expedition and they were carried by the steamer Pampero. W. S. Crittenden, a graduate of West Point and a hero of the Mexican War, though still almost a youth, was second in command. Having landed, the party separated into two divisions, one remaining at the seacoast under Crittenden's charge, the other, the main body, under Lopez, pressing on into the interior.

Both divisions were captured. Crittenden and fifty of his men were shot,-the brave American refusing to kneel with his back to the firing party in accordance with the Spanish usage, but standing with his face toward his executioners. Lopez was garroted, forty-nine of his command were shot and one hun

dred six of them sent to Spain in chains-the first large consignment of political prisoners from Cuba. The Lopez incident created intense excitement in the United States, particularly because of interest in the heroic and promising Crittenden.

In 1855, as a result of further insurrectionary efforts, Ramon Pinto was put to death and many other patriots were driven from the island. A period of quiet now ensued during which time the Cubans endeavored by fullest obedience and by peaceful methods to obtain some slight measure of justice and self-government. Every effort failed and conditions grew

worse.

In 1869 the insurrection under Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, "The Ten Years' War" as it was known, broke out. It was during the progress of the "Ten Years' War" that the "Virginius" massacre occurred. On October 7, 1873, Captain Joseph Fry, commanding the Virginius, a ship built in England for blockade running during the Civil War in the United States, took aboard his vessel a large consignment of war material to be delivered to the rebel forces in Cuba. The Virginius was overtaken by the Spanish gunboat Tornado and her captain and crew carried to the port of Santiago de Cuba.

Captain Fry and some fifty of his officers and crew were summarily tried and shot on November 7, just a month after the ship had sailed from Port au Prince. Ninety-three additional men were under sentence of death and were saved from that fate only by the interposition of Captain Sir Lampton Lorraine, of the British steamer Niobe, who had brought his ship at full speed from Jamaica and who with his guns trained upon the city made a peremptory demand upon the Spanish authorities that the massacre should stop.

For a time it seemed that the administration of President Grant would be forced into war with Spain as a result of the feeling stirred up in the United States when the news of the Virginius massacre became generally known. The good sense of the American people at last woke to the fact that Captain Fry and his crew had engaged in an unlawful enterprise, and that while their fate was greatly to be deplored it was not to be avenged. The influence of the barbarities characterizing the war brought about an ultimatum from President Grant to the Spanish government looking toward the annexation of the island by America unless the war should speedily be brought to a close. Spain at once responded by promises to the revolutionists of the most liberal concessions, and the war ended by the treaty of Zanjon.

Had Spain honestly kept the pledges she made in this treaty there had been an end of Cuban insurrections. But as Henry Cabot Lodge says: "Spain unhesitatingly violated the agreement. With a cynical disregard of good faith, her promise of amnesty was only partially kept, and she imprisoned or executed many who had been engaged in the insurgent cause, while the promised reforms were either totally neglected or carried out by some mockery which had neither reality nor value."

Bloodshed and oppression, increased abuses of an already almost intolerable government, at last resulted in the opening of the recent Cuban revolt, when in February, 1895, Jose Marti landed in Eastern Cuba.

A year later General Martinez Campos, with a record of failure against the inroads of the insurgents, was compelled to resign the Govenor-Generalship and was succeeded by Valeriano Weyler.

Weyler's "concentration" policy followed as a war measure, and before the end of 1897 all Cuba controlled by Spanish forces contained thousands of starving non-combatants, dying under conditions so pitiable and so horrifying that President

McKinley had not dared to transmit to Congress, in spite of the latter's repeated demands, the consular reports which pictured the situation.

At the opening of 1898 our government had received permission from Spain to feed the starving "reconcentrados" and tons of food supplies raised by the charity of the American people were being hurried by train and ship load to Cuba. The movement excited Spanish suspicion and jealousy. The question of the safety of Americans in Havana was such as to cause uneasiness and President McKinley decided to send the battleship Maine to that port. On January 5 she anchored in Havana harbor, received by the Spanish authorities as the representative of a friendly power. On the evening of February 15 the Maine was blown up and totally destroyed with the loss of two hundred fifty-four of her officers and crew.

For forty days the American people awaited in grim silence the report of a Board of Inquiry appointed to investigate the cause of the disaster, Congress, however, appropriating without a dissenting vote $50,000,000 for national defense.

The vital part of the finding of the Board of Inquiry was that the disaster could have been caused "only by the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship," and "was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on the part of any of the officers or members of the crew of the vessel."

The report was transmitted to Congress by the President without comment. Congress, backed by an overwhelming majority of the American people, soon determined upon two things, that there must be atonement for the Maine and that the war and the destruction of the reconcentrados must cease even if it meant the end of Spanish rule in Cuba.

On April 11 a long-looked for message from the President, delayed by the need of getting American citizens out of Havana before the storm broke, was presented in both houses of Congress. On the seventh Mr. McKinley had had occasion to answer the representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia and Italy who in the name of their respective governments, had presented "a pressing appeal to the feelings of humanity and moderation of the President and of the American people, in their existing differences with Spain." He said: "The government of the United States appreciates the humanitarian and disinterested character of the communication now made on behalf of the powers named, and for its part is confident that equal appreciation will be shown for its own earnest and unselfish endeavors to fulfil a duty to humanity by ending a situation the indefinite prolongation of which has become insufferable."

When the message following this declared that "In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization and in behalf of endangered American interests which give us the right and duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop," and asked Congress to "empower the president to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba **** and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes," the world knew that the issue was fully joined and that Spain must yield to the demands of America or appeal to the arbitrament of war.

Four days after the President's message was received Congress passed "resolutions asserting (1) that the people of Cuba are and of a right ought to be free and independent; (2) that it is the duty of the United States to demand the withdrawal of Spain from the island; (3) that the President is authorized to compel Spain's withdrawal; and (4) that the United States has no intention to absorb Cuba, but it is determined 'to leave the government and control of the island to its people.'"

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