arous of
conflicts. So it was in this case. That Cuba might be made desolate,
unable to pay anything toward the price of its own subjection, the
insurgents relentlessly destroyed standing crops, burned great fields
of standing sugar cane, destroyed mills, dynamited railroads, tore up
roads, and demolished aqueducts. That the peaceful inhabitants--the
pacificos--might not give aid or comfort to the revolutionists,
General Weyler caused them to be driven from their farms and herded in
the towns still under Spanish rule. There they stayed, in squalid huts
or under thatched sheds, AND STARVED. Systematically, with devilish
ingenuity, Spain planned to crush Cuba, not by fighting the
revolutionists, but by starving women and children, old men and
peaceful farm hands. It is estimated, and conservatively, that more
than 500,000 people had been starved to death before the United States
interfered.

Indeed, it was upon the hapless pacificos that the horrors of war
chiefly descended. They were ruined, but that was the least. Their
property, the honor of their women, and their lives were held to be
the legitimate spoil of any Spanish soldier, and the tacit
legalization of loot, rapine, and murder was taken full advantage of.
More inhuman even than the regular soldiery were the guerrillas,
licensed free companions, who roamed the island ever in search of
spoil. The deeds of these wretches beggar description, and so foul was
the repute of their corps that prisoners from their number taken by
the Cubans were instantly put to death. It is just to say here that
the testimony of Americans who served with Gomez and Maceo proves that
those leaders enforced humane and orderly conduct upon their
followers. The death penalty was more than once imposed upon useful
and brave soldiers, who had been guilty of outrage. Nothing could more
vividly indicate the moral difference between the Cuban and the
Spaniard than the contrast between their methods of prosecuting the
war. Though outlawed, the Revolutionists observed with scrupulous
exactness the rules of civilized warfare, while the Spaniards murdered
helpless prisoners, even killing the wounded in their beds, had
recourse to torture and to nameless mutilation, in order to wreak
their hatred, and let loose a swarm of bandits and ruffians to prey
upon the defenseless people of the island.

Out of warfare such as this, waged on an island only a few hours' sail
from our coast, and in which were he