200 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



more appropriate to the boards of the Savoy 

 Theatre. The recent history of the island has 

 sufficiently demonstrated that the present Govern- 

 ment cannot indefinitely endure, and, with so con- 

 siderable a commercial stake in the country, 

 America could not, while indifferent to the trifling 

 disturbances not long ago put down by the President, 

 afford to see the blaze of a protracted civil war 

 within a night's steam of Key West. The first 

 really serious revolution will be the signal for a 

 political change on the atlas that might, but for 

 appearances, have followed directly after the sur- 

 render beneath the great tree outside Santiag-o. 

 It would have hurt the pride of Spain less to 

 renounce her rights in favour of the nation that 

 really wrested them from her, and to force her to 

 make way for her former subjects was a needless 

 refinement of cruelty, the more so as such an 

 arrangement cannot possibly be permanent. 



Cuba is as good as American to-day, and the 

 island will benefit in every way when the change 

 of ownership is acknowledged in name as well. 

 But that Jamaica should be drawn into the Union 

 is highly improbable. There are, it is true. 

 Englishmen in the island (and still more English- 

 men at home with pecuniary interests in the 

 island) who fervently desire such a transfer, and 

 before too bitterly condemning their want of 

 patriotism we shall do well to realise the extent to 

 which they may have been goaded into this attitude 

 by the contrast between British apathyand American 

 enterprise. Under the British flag American 

 capital has free play and a fair field without favour. 

 The money invested in the island by the United 



