he man of reason, and of a sense of
justice, will not withhold from the people of that sorely chastened
nation admiration for their loyalty and the sacrifices they made in
their national cause.

But the Spanish people were cruelly betrayed by their own rulers. The
generals whom they sent to Cuba gave less thought to the suppression
of the insurrection than to filling their own pockets. Out of the
millions and millions of pesetas set aside by an already impoverished
people for the needs of war, a great part was stolen by generals and
by army contractors. The young conscripts, sent from Spain to a land
where the air is pestilential to the unacclimated, were clothed and
shod in shoddy; their food invited disease, and when they fell ill it
was found that the greed of the generals had consumed the funds that
should have provided sufficient hospital service. Comparatively few
fell before the bullets or machetes of the insurgents--for, as we
shall see, the revolutionists adopted the tactics of Fabius--but by
thousands they succumbed to fevers of every kind. Death without glory
was the hapless lot of the Spanish conscript.

The Patriot generals, Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, met this
situation with consummate skill. The military problem which confronted
them was one which chiefly demanded self-restraint. They were
lamentably destitute of arms and munitions of war. Cartridges were a
dearly prized acquisition, and it is worth noting, as an indication of
the venality which corrupted the Spanish army, that a considerable
share of the insurgent ammunition was obtained by direct traffic with
the Spanish soldiers. But in the main the Patriots were armed with
heterogeneous firearms and the machete--a heavy, sword-like knife,
used, in peace, for cutting cane. The latter at close quarters was a
formidable weapon, and the insurgents became singularly proficient in
its use; developing a style of machete play almost as exact and
scientific as the school of the rapier in ancient France.

This disparity in weapons, however, made it imperative that the
insurgents should avoid pitched battles with the invaders, who were
armed with Mauser rifles, that do deadly work at two miles' distance.
Accordingly, Gomez and Maceo confined themselves to harrying the
Spanish army of occupation on every side and destroying all vestiges
of Spanish authority outside the large towns. Warfare of this sort
inevitably develops into the most cruel, the most barb