The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true.

They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never before saw, and please God

I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the

suburbs of Matanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in

their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no

voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them....

 

Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger. Their only appeal

comes from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window

into their agonizing souls.

 

The government of Spain has not appropriated and will not appropriate one dollar

to save these people. They are now being attended and nursed and administered to

by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding

these citizens of Spain; we are nursing their sick; we are saving such as can be

saved, and yet there are those who still say it is right for us to send food,

but we must keep hands off. I say that the time has come when muskets ought to

go with the food.

 

We asked the governor if he knew of any relief for these people except through

the charity of the United States. He did not. We asked him, "When do you think

the time will come that these people can be placed in a position of

self-support?" He replied to us, with deep feeling, "Only the good God or the

great government of the United States will answer that question." I hope and

believe that the good God by the great government of the United States will