a piece taken off
there. I do not believe they have appropriated anything of the kind. The
condition of the reconcentrados out in the country is just as bad as in
General Weyler's day. It has been relieved a good deal by supplies from
the United States, but that has ceased now.

"General Blanco published a proclamation, rescinding General Weyler's
bando, as they call it there, but it has had no practical effect. In the
first place, these people have no place to go; the houses have been
burned down; there is nothing but the bare land there, and it would take
them two months before they could raise the first crop. In the next
place, they are afraid to go out from the lines of the towns, because
the roving bands of the Spanish guerillas, as they are called, would
kill them. So they stick right in the edges of the town, just like they
did, with nothing to eat except what they can get from charity. The
Spanish have nothing to give."

The government and people of Spain now became very much afraid of the
attitude of the United States. They knew that something had to be done,
so to speak, to throw a sop to Cerberus. Therefore Sagasta, the premier
of Spain, conceived the idea of granting to Cuba a species of autonomy.
But, with the usual Spanish diplomacy, it was not autonomy at all. It
purposed to be home rule, but every article gave a loop-hole for Spain
not to fulfill her obligations.

It was a false and absurd proposition, intended to deceive, but too
flimsy in its fabric to deceive any one. It was rotten clean through,
and was opposed by everyone except the framers of the autonomistic
papers, General Blanco, his staff and a few others, who hoped, but hoped
in vain, great things from the proclamation.

The Cuban leaders, who at one time would have hailed with joy such a
concession, if they had been assured that the provisions would have been
followed out loyally and without fraud, now rejected the autonomistic
proposition with scorn and loathing.

Their battle cry was now, and they were determined it ever should be:
"Independence or death!"

It was too late. There was no possibility now of home rule under Spanish
domination.

Gomez even went so far as to declare that any one who should attempt to
bring to his camp any offer of autonomy would be seized as a spy and
shot.

General Lee, speaking of the proposed autonomy, says:

"Blanco's autonomistic government was doomed to failure from its
inception. The Spanish s