of the United States:_

Official information from our consuls in Cuba establishes the fact that
a large number of American citizens in the island are in a state of
destitution, suffering for want of food and medicines. This applies
particularly to the rural districts of the central and eastern parts.

The agricultural classes have been forced from their farms into
the nearest towns, where they are without work or money. The local
authorities of the several towns, however kindly disposed, are unable to
relieve the needs of their own people and are altogether powerless to
help our citizens.

The latest report of Consul-General Lee estimates six to eight hundred
Americans are without means of support. I have assured him that
provision would be made at once to relieve them. To that end I recommend
that Congress make an appropriation of not less than $50,000, to be
immediately available, for use under the direction of the Secretary of
State.

It is desirable that a part of the sum which may be appropriated by
Congress should, in the discretion of the Secretary of State, also be
used for the transportation of American citizens who, desiring to return
to the United States, are without means to do so.

WILLIAM McKINLEY.

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _December 6, 1897_.

* * * * *

The most important problem with which this Government is now called upon
to deal pertaining to its foreign relations concerns its duty toward
Spain and the Cuban insurrection. Problems and conditions more or less
in common with those now existing have confronted this Government at
various times in the past. The story of Cuba for many years has been one
of unrest, growing discontent, an effort toward a larger enjoyment of
liberty and self-control, of organized resistance to the mother country,
of depression after distress and warfare, and of ineffectual settlement
to be followed by renewed revolt. For no enduring period since the
enfranchisement of the continental possessions of Spain in the Western
Continent has the condition of Cuba or the policy of Spain toward Cuba
not caused concern to the United States.

The prospect from time to time that the weakness of Spain's hold upon
the island and the political vicissitudes and embarrassments of the home
Government might lead to the transfer of Cuba to a continental power
called forth between 1823 and 1860 various emphatic declarations of
the p