CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 



EARLY in 1898 agitation for war with Spain, which 

 had been simmering for some time, began to grow 

 insistent. In New York a group of wealthy men were 

 said to be financing the so-called "Cuban Junta" 

 and promoting filibuster expeditions and interior 

 disturbances in Cuba. Thus the local situation, Atrocities 

 already wretched at the best, was further aggravated in Cuba 

 from the outside. Meanwhile the impotent Spanish 

 Government had left to General Weyler, a coarse 

 and brutal militarist of a type now more familiar, 

 the responsibility of putting down insurrections. 

 Weyler's force being inadequate, he adopted the 

 reconcentrado plan of dealing with the people; that 

 is, gathering them in great camps necessarily un- 

 sanitary and so inimical to health upon which 

 our "yellow press" made the most of atrocities, 

 actual and invented, to inflame the American 

 people. 



At this juncture, General Stewart L. Woodford A special 

 went to Spain as special envoy instructed to secure envoy 

 a rational settlement of the Cuban situation. This 

 he succeeded in arranging, as I shall later explain, 

 in spite of the fact that Spain was well aware of 

 the existence in America of strong financial interests 

 working for the annexation of the island. Indeed, 

 a well-known capitalist of New York once told me 

 boastingly that he brought on the Spanish-American 

 War by personally furnishing the Junta with money 

 for the insurgents! 



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