that the notorious "Cuban
Volunteers" had been recruited in the Ten Years' war, men who, though
living in Cuba and enriching themselves from her resources, were "more
Spanish than Spain." They corresponded with the Tories of the American
Revolution, and not merely the Tories who sat in their chairs and railed
against the Revolution, but rather those who took up arms in the
British cause, and who allied themselves with the Red Indians with
tomahawk and scalping knife. The animus of these Spaniards in Cuba was
not, generally speaking, love of Spain, nor yet hatred of the Cubans,
but rather greed of gain. They were not patriotic, but simply sordid.
With Cuba under Spanish domination, they were enabled to amass great
wealth, and they wanted such conditions and such opportunities of
enrichment continued. That was not an exalted attitude, and it was
naturally odious to the Cuban patriots who were serving without pay and
sacrificing their all for the independence of the island and for the
attainment of a degree of material prosperity as well as of civic and
spiritual enfranchisement immeasurably beyond the sordid conceptions of
these selfish time-servers.

The attitude of another important though less numerous and less
demonstrative class, the manufacturers of sugar and tobacco, varied
greatly according to the individual. Some were Spaniards; and they, like
the merchants, were inflexibly opposed to the revolution, for similar
reasons. Some were Autonomists, and they inclined toward compromise.
They did not want their lands to be ravaged and their cane fields and
buildings to be burned in war; not because they would hesitate at any
necessary sacrifice for the welfare of Cuba but because they regarded
such sacrifices as unnecessary. Some were members of the Cuban
Independence party, and they cordially and eagerly supported the
revolution; saying: "Let our fields and buildings be burned. If it is
necessary in order to free the island that our property shall be ruined,
let it be ruined!"

This patriotic attitude of some of the great property-owners, who had
most to lose through the ravages of war but who were ready to risk all,
was finely displayed in the very midst of the conflict. There were in
the Province of Santa Clara two very wealthy Cuban women, sisters. They
were Marta Abreu, who became the wife of the Vice-President of the Cuban
Republic, and who died in France, and Rosalie Abreu, whose home is
preeminently the "show