s who presented themselves before
him. Colonel Jose Ramon Villalon was also active in the Junta; and he
has since been Secretary of Public Works at Havana under President Mario
G. Menocal. Nor must Ponce de Leon, a publisher and bookseller, of No.
32 Broadway, New York, be forgotten. His office was frequently the
meeting place of the conspirators, if so we may call the patriots, and
he and his two sons--one a physician, the other in charge of the
archives of the Cuban government--were among the most earnest and
efficient workers for the cause of independence.

[Illustration: JOSE RAMON VILLALON

Jose Ramon Villalon, Secretary of Public Works, was born at Santiago in
1864. He was sent to Barcelona to be educated and later studied at the
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., where he graduated as civil engineer
in 1899. On the outbreak of the war he accompanied General Antonio Maceo
on his famous raid in Pinar del Rio province, and was present at the
engagements of Artemisa, Ceja del Negro, Montezuelo, attaining the rank
of lieutenant-colonel of engineers. While serving under Maceo he
designed and constructed the first field dynamite gun, now in the
National Museum in Havana. After the war he was made Secretary of Public
Works under the military government of General Leonard Wood. Col.
Villalon is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the
American Institute of Mining Engineers, the Academy of Sciences
(Havana), and the Cuban Society of Engineers.]

The ideal of Marti and these associates was unequivocally that of Cuban
independence. They had no thought of accepting or even considering mere
autonomy under Spanish sovereignty, or any promises of reforms in the
insular government. They might not have been inexorably opposed to
annexation to the United States, had opportunity for that been offered.
They might have accepted it, in fact, for the sake of getting entirely
away from Spain; for that would at least have meant independence from
Spain. But as a matter of fact, annexation was not considered. It was
never discussed. It formed no part of the programme, not even as an
alternative.

Although a poet and a seer, Marti was one of the most practical of men.
He realized with Cicero that "endless money forms the sinews of war."
One of his first cares, therefore, was to finance the revolution. To
that end he made a direct appeal to Cuban workmen--and women,
too--wherever he could get into contact with them, to giv