sible solution was in the complete separation of
the two countries, and the complete independence of Cuba.

We must not wonder, however, at the circumstance that this was not
universally recognized at first, but that year after year some of the
wisest and best of Cuban patriots strove merely for reforms in
government under continued and perpetual union with the Spanish crown,
and that they even deprecated and opposed all efforts at independence.
We must not wonder, even, that so late as the War of Independence some
of the foremost Cuban statesmen, who yielded precedence to none in
purity of purpose and in sincere devotion to what they regarded as the
best interests of the island, were willing and even proud to be known as
Autonomists and to essay the impossible task of trying to make an
Autonomist government successful. The Cubans of to-day, with vision
cleared of the red glare of war and of the mists of misapprehension,
doubtless understand what the conditions were at that time and
appreciate the motives, however mistaken they proved to me, of the
Autonomists. American readers, with less vision and comprehension of
Cuban affairs, should equally understand the matter when they are
reminded that the Cuban Autonomists were merely following the example of
some of the men whom Americans most delight to honor.

For precisely the same conditions prevailed, only to a much wider
extent, in the Thirteen Colonies at the beginning of the American
Revolution, when Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Jay were
American Autonomists, inexorably opposed to independence. Lexington,
Concord and Bunker Hill were fought not for independence but for
autonomy under the British Crown and in perpetual union with the British
Empire. When the First Continental Congress met in the spring of 1774
there was no word, at least, of independence. On the contrary,
according to some of the very foremost members of that historic body,
the idea of independence, at least in the Middle and Southern colonies,
was "as unpopular as the Stamp Act itself." Not only did that Congress
complete its course without saying a word for independence, but it
adopted an address to the people of Great Britain declaring that the
reports which had got abroad that the Colonies wanted independence were
"mere calumnies," and that nothing was desired but equality of rights
with their fellow subjects in the British Isles. The Second Colonial
Congress met after Lexington and C