al government of the island; a purpose of which they had
made no secret. They were therefore guilty of sedition and treason, and
were subject to trial by court martial and to capital punishment upon
conviction of their crime. They were thus tried, and some were condemned
to death and others to long terms of imprisonment; but the extreme
sentence was never executed upon one of them, while many of the prison
sentences were shortened and some of the men were pardoned outright.
This generous action of President Menocal's was performed through the
same spirit of magnanimity that moved Estrada Palma to like clemency,
years before; and it was as ill requited. Some of the men whom he had
thus saved from the gallows or the firing squad promptly resumed
criminal conspiracies against him; while the Liberal party as a whole
demanded that the pardoned officers should be at once reinstated in the
army with full rank and back pay for the time which they had spent in
insurrection and in prison, and railed against President Menocal for not
granting that additional act of grace!

The government of the United States is naturally always on the side of
law and order among its neighbors, and while it of course scrupulously
refrains from meddling in their affairs unless under intolerable
provocation, as in the case of Cuba in 1898, it has always given and
doubtless will always give its sympathy and moral support to those who
are striving for peace and progress and the security of life and
property. Toward Cuba its attitude is more marked than toward other
states, because of the special relations which exist between the two
countries. We have seen how it intervened in Cuban affairs for what it
supposed to be the restoration of tranquillity in 1906. While
unfortunately its influence was on that occasion made to appear as
though given to the revolutionary rather than the legitimate side, its
intent was unmistakable. In spite of the advantage which they took of
its intervention at that time, the Liberal leaders in Cuba have since
felt much aggrieved at it for standing in the way of their designs on
more than one occasion when they wished to revolt against constitutional
order.

The United States did not intervene in 1917. It was not, as President
Menocal confidently assured it, necessary for it to do so. But it is
pleasant to recall that it stood ready to do so, and there is of course
no possible doubt as to what the purport of its intervention