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Characteristics of the Present Cuban War: Cameron

In reviewing the speeches in the Senate on Cuban affairs, by Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania and Mr. Call of Florida, there was an expression of a resentment in the journals of concord towards the public men of the United States, who presumed to espouse the cause of the revolutionists. The leading journal of Havana, the Diacio de la Mariana, treated its readers to a very abusive article relating to Senators Call and Cameron, under the caption "Blockheads." It had held Mr. Call as an invincible champion, but "there is always a match for every bully," and in the Senate there was "another adjuster of foreign lands in the person of Mr. Cameron, who is shod and clothed, and we don't know if he gets any money, which would be hard to collect, from the Cuban filibusters."

The Diacio, after some very personal observations, remarked: "We will have to call the attention of the North Americans to the formidable invasion that idiotic politics has made in their parliament, if only that they may put a stop to the shamefully ridiculous position in which the Yankee legislators and their similars are placed before the eyes of the people who have sound and good minds;" and the able editor closed the instructive effusion by saying: "Spain is quite serene, but energetically disposed not to consent, that this or any other strange government, violating the laws of nations, shall try to mix in a matter so much our own as this war of Cuba." The comic journals of Cuba are Spanish of course; while the insurgents have no method of getting into circulation even their state papers other than such as Anarchists possess in Russia. There may be secret printing places, but that which is hot for the Cuban cause is usually in manuscript. One of the favorite themes of the cartoonists who serve the official class in Cuba is "Uncle Sam," and he would not be recognized, except by the stars and stripes with which he is decorated. He does not seem to be in any way related to our Brother Jonathan. He is a lank, elderly gentleman of breezy postures, with ample hair and slender limbs and disheveled coat-tails, or he is a very fat person, closely resembling a pig, always with stars on his hat and stripes on his stomach. The Spanish idea imparts to "Uncle Sam" a tremendous mouth with ample digestion, a bulbous, disreputable nose, broken teeth and bad manners towards colored people of both sexes. "U. S." is either conducting himself with familiarity toward a black woman, or handing a torch to a black man, bidding him go and burn canefields or houses, and he is doing this with a diabolical leer.

This style of art is seen also in personifying insurrection in a brutal black man whose lips are excessive, imposing his attentions upon a slender, graceful figure--a young white woman who represents Cuba, and regards him with horror. A black man is always equipped with a knife with which he is assassinating a Cuban woman, or a big blacking brush with which he is supposed to be blotting Cuba from the map. This is of course an appeal to racial feeling, and indicates a degree of it one would not suspect from the ease of the black people on the promenades and in the various public functions of Havana life. The suggestion is of course that the rebellion in Cuba is going the way with that of Hayti, which resulted in the memorable desolation by fire and massacre. There seems to have been a time in the Island in the course of the present war when the crop of art was more extravagant than in the period when we gave it close examination, for there were several Uncle Samuels of more flagrant bad form and scandalous associations than any in recent issues of the Don Quixote--the old numbers being pasted on bulletin boards and hung up before shops to attract customers. Perhaps these were of the gentle times of Campos, of which so much is heard now that he is gone. The newspapers of Havana have had a most precarious and hazardous field of enterprise, and it is due them to say that as a rule they are conducted with ability and dignity and are decent and make the best of a troubled situation. They are large, well printed, and display fairly the intelligence that is permitted to get into print. Their office equipment is good, and they have neither the remarkable merits nor faults of those whose enterprises are carried on with the scorching energy characteristic of American journalism. The restrictions that exist in Cuba to sending Americanisms to America by telegraph have become tolerably familiar, and it may be interesting to illustrate the newspaper methods of the Spaniards to record an experience in offering news to a newspaper of Havana. Captain-General Marin occupied the great office, after the departure of Campos, until the arrival of Weyler, and was so polite as to talk with me very freely and express himself in an interesting way. He stated the case of Cuba as he understood it forcibly and handsomely, and my report of the interview was cabled to New York just as it was prepared. A Cuban journalist took a copy of it, and proposed to publish it in the paper to which he was attached, regarding it as a matter of particular interest. He was very glad, indeed, to get it, but it never appeared. Just as it was about to be given to the people of Havana, an unseen hand snatched it away, as if to yank it to oblivion.