I have no purpose to stir the public passion to any action not necessary and

imperative to meet the duties and necessities of American responsibility,

Christian humanity, and national honor. I would shirk this task if I could, but

I dare not. I cannot satisfy my conscience except by speaking, and speaking now.

 

I went to Cuba firmly believing that the condition of affairs there had been

greatly exaggerated by the press, and my own efforts were directed in the first

instance to the attempted exposure of these supposed exaggerations. There has

undoubtedly been much sensationalism in the journalism of the time, but as to

the condition of affairs in Cuba, there has been no exaggeration, because

exaggeration has been impossible.

 

Under the inhuman policy of Weyler not less than four hundred thousand

self-supporting, simple, peaceable, defenseless country people were driven from

their homes in the agricultural portions of the Spanish provinces to the cities,

and imprisoned upon the barren waste outside the residence portions of these

cities and within the lines of intrenchment established a little way beyond.

Their humble homes were burned, their fields laid waste, their implements of

husbandry destroyed, their live stock and food supplies for the most part

confiscated. Most of the people were old men, women, and children. They were

thus placed in hopeless imprisonment, without shelter or food. There was no work

for them in the cities to which they were driven. They were left with nothing to

depend upon except the scanty charity of the inhabitants of the cities and with

slow starvation their inevitable fate....