Cuba Part 21

To this our reply is: Most emphatically Cuba will be able to govern herself; not in the beginning, perhaps, where mistakes must of necessity be made, but most certainly in the end.

The Cuban leaders are men of high intelligence and lofty purposes, and they know what reforms must be inst.i.tuted. Some one has said that "love of liberty is the surest guarantee of representative government."

Surely these men have shown their love of liberty in the fullest degree and have proved themselves in every way fitted for self-government.

The Cubans, strange as the statement may seem to those who have studied the matter only in a cursory way, are not a people who love trouble.

Though revolution after revolution has occurred in the island, the Cubans have never taken up arms until every peaceful means of redress had been resorted to.

It has been feared that the negro element would be a disturbing influence, but we can see little or no reason for this dread. The same thing was said of the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves in our own South, but certainly, taken altogether, the behavior of the colored race in the United States, since the Civil War, has been most praiseworthy.

A Frenchman, Baron Antomarchi, who is naturally unprejudiced, says:

"When the time for the settlement of the Cuban question shall have come it will be an affair of give and take between the whites and the negroes, and if the negro does not succeed in convincing the white man that he is ent.i.tled to a full measure of civil authority, a measure which by reason of his numerical strength he will have a right, under a republican government, to exact, then we may have to stand by while Cuba engages in an internal struggle important enough to cripple or, to say the least, seriously hinder, her development. Should the war come to an end and should Cuba be free to develop the riches of the land for which she is now battling, an American protectorate would prevent all dangers of race conflict. The United States would be under a moral obligation to avert disorder. Aside from all considerations of a commercial character there would be the obligation resulting from an adherence to consistency of conduct. The stand taken by the American legislators, or some of them, to say nothing of the stand taken by the American people, would make this latter obligation even still more binding.

Not until her machetes shall have been returned to their original use can Cuba develop the riches bestowed upon her by Nature. After the dawn of peace, when her sons are free to settle down to the tranquil life of the untrammeled husbandman, there will be no hunted exiles in the long gra.s.s of her savannas. When Cuba has attained the quiet calm that her younger generation has never known, she will show the world that it was not for idle brigands that Maceo died. In the shadow of the feathered cocoa palms in the deep shade of the drooping heavy leaves where Gilard dreamed of liberty, great cities shall one day loom in the misty, tropic twilight, and peace shall brood over the land that now, seamed with the graves of Cuba's heroes, awaits the murdered bodies of Cuban victims.

Not until that day has come will it be known how strong to endure torment and sorrow, how brave in time of danger, were the men who won the day for Cuban independence."

It is absolutely certain that all the natural and political ties that have bound "the Ever Faithful Isle" to the mother country have been so completely severed that it is utterly impossible they should ever be united again.

The unique banner of Cuba, with its blue and white stripes and a single star upon a red triangle, has cost more blood and treasure than any revolutionary flag known to history.

When this war is over, and Spain has learned her lesson, severe but well-deserved, and we hope salutary, then shall that flag take its place among the honored ones of other nations; then will the Cubans show their ability to prize and cherish the liberty for which the blood of their heroes has been spilled; then, under the protectorate of the United States, but as an independent republic, will Cuba, in the words of our own General Lee, emerge from the dark shadows of the past, and stand side by side with those countries who have their place in the sunlight of peace, progress and prosperity.

Oh! Cuba Libre! as Longfellow said of our own Union, so do all Americans, who are now fighting with you shoulder to shoulder, say to you:

"Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee--are all with thee!"

(THE END.)