CONGRESS. (CUBA.) 



155 



enumerating the evil effects of the war in Cuba, set- 

 ting forth the duty of interference, and asking for 

 I inwer to compel the restoration of order and the 

 establishment of good government: 



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 ex- 

 pedient, it becomes my duty to now 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 

 lius 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 dis- 

 turbance 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. 



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 tinequaled in the history of the island 

 and rarely paralleled as to the numbers of the com- 

 batants and the bitterness of the contest by any 

 revolution of modern times where a dependent peo- 

 ple striving to be free have been opposed by the 

 power of the sovereign state. 



Our people have beheld a once prosperous com- 

 munity reduced to comparative want, its lucrative 

 commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional pro- 

 ductiveness 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 preven- 

 tion 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 expres- 

 sion 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 all 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 anyway that might tend to an honorable adjust- 

 ment of the contest between Spain and her revolted 

 colony, on the basis of some effective scheme of self- 



government for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty 

 of Spain. It failed through the refusal of the Span- 

 ish 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 insurgents to the mother country, and then only 

 on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant". 

 The war continued unabated. The resistance of the 

 insurgents was in no wise diminished. 



The efforts of Spain were increased, both by Ihe 

 dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition 

 to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman 

 phase happily unprecedented in the modern history 

 of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devas- 

 tation and concentration, inaugurated by the cap- 

 tain general's bando of Oct. 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 the land 

 and render it unfit for human habitation or support 

 was commanded by one or the other of the contend- 

 ing parties and executed by all the powers at their 

 disposal. 



By the time the present Administration took 

 office a year ago, reconcentration, so called, had 

 been made effective over the better part of the four 

 central and western provinces Santa Clara, Matan- 

 zas, Havana, and Pinar del Rio. 



The agricultural population to the estimated num- 

 ber of 300,000 or more was herded within the towns 

 and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the 

 means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, 

 left poorly clad, and exposed to the most unsani- 

 tary conditions. As the scarcity of food increased 

 with the devastation of the depopulated areas of 

 production, destitution and want became misery 

 and starvation. Month by month the death rate 

 increased in an alarming ratio. By March, 1897, 

 according to conservative estimates from official 

 Spanish sources, the mortality among the recon- 

 centrados, from starvation and the diseases thereto 

 incident, exceeded 50 per cent, of their total num- 

 ber. 



No practical relief was accorded to the destitute. 

 The overburdened towns, already suffering from 

 the general dearth, could give no aid. So-called 

 "zones of cultivation" established within the im- 

 mediate areas of effective military control about 

 the cities and fortified camps proved illusory as a 

 remedy for the suffering. The unfortunates, being 

 for the most part women and children, with aged 

 and helpless men. enfeebled by disease and hunger, 

 could not have tilled the soil without tools, seed, or 

 shelter for their own support or for the supply of 

 the cities. Reconcentration, adopted avowedly as 

 a war measure in order to cut off the resources of 

 the insurgents, worked its predestined result. As 

 1 said in my message of last December, it was not 

 civilized warfare; it was extermination. The only 

 peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and 

 the grave. 



Meanwhile the military situation in the island 

 had undergone a noticeable change. The extraor- 

 dinary activity that characterized the second year 

 of the war, when the insurgents invaded even the 

 thitherto unharmed fields of Pinar del Rio and 

 carried havoc and destruction up to the walls of 

 the city of Havana itself, had relapsed into a dogged 

 struggle in the central and eastern provinces. The 



