to effect
their safety and happiness."

We fought for these principles, in our own interests, a century and a
quarter ago; in the interests of others, we are fighting for them
to-day.

A question which has been universally asked is this: Can the Cubans, if
they obtain freedom, govern themselves, or will not a free Cuba become a
second Hayti with all the horrors of that island?

To this our reply is: Most emphatically Cuba will be able to govern
herself; not in the beginning, perhaps, where mistakes must of
necessity be made, but most certainly in the end.

The Cuban leaders are men of high intelligence and lofty purposes, and
they know what reforms must be instituted. Some one has said that "love
of liberty is the surest guarantee of representative government."

Surely these men have shown their love of liberty in the fullest degree
and have proved themselves in every way fitted for self-government.

The Cubans, strange as the statement may seem to those who have studied
the matter only in a cursory way, are not a people who love trouble.
Though revolution after revolution has occurred in the island, the
Cubans have never taken up arms until every peaceful means of redress
had been resorted to.

It has been feared that the negro element would be a disturbing
influence, but we can see little or no reason for this dread. The same
thing was said of the emancipation of the slaves in our own South, but
certainly, taken altogether, the behavior of the colored race in the
United States, since the Civil War, has been most praiseworthy.

A Frenchman, Baron Antomarchi, who is naturally unprejudiced, says:

"When the time for the settlement of the Cuban question shall have come
it will be an affair of give and take between the whites and the
negroes, and if the negro does not succeed in convincing the white man
that he is entitled to a full measure of civil authority, a measure
which by reason of his numerical strength he will have a right, under a
republican government, to exact, then we may have to stand by while Cuba
engages in an internal struggle important enough to cripple or, to say
the least, seriously hinder, her development. Should the war come to an
end and should Cuba be free to develop the riches of the land for which
she is now battling, an American protectorate would prevent all dangers
of race conflict. The United States would be under a moral obligation to
avert disorder. Aside from all considerations of