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Latest News from the Seat of War: Havana

It is reported from Havana that Gen. Weyler has made efforts to induce five thousand of the Havana volunteers to hold a section of the trocha and allow a like number of regulars to be freed for field service. There has been no more delicate and dangerous operation undertaken than this. The volunteers are independent in an important sense. They keep their guns day and night in their hands, and they are not subjected to the direct orders of the captain-general, except with well understood and carefully guarded limitations. Perhaps the volunteers may flinch from going to the field, even to the extent of managing the trenches. They may very much prefer their twice-a-day parade in Havana with music and clean dry clothes, to muddy ditches and the chance of hearing the wild tramping of horses and the war-cry "machete, machete;" and they may ask such an incisive question as this. "Why not place us as guards of the forts of Havana?"-especially those on the hills that were constructed to command the town rather than to defend it.

The captain-general should refuse. Why? Because in the present juncture he would not dare to place the keys of the capital city in any hands but those of the chosen regulars of Spain. Such a slip would promote the issue that must be met some day, but that it is Spanish policy to defer. The attempt to use the volunteers on the trocha may, however, precipitate the time for balancing the books. When it becomes perfectly known in Cuba, Havana in particular, that the cause of Spain is hopeless-and that the continuance of the war means the total bankruptcy of the business men-the obliteration of the money-making along with the end of sugar making and the devastation of the tobacco fields, there will be a true crisis. And whether the Spaniards fight or wait, dig or march, they do not succeed in accomplishing results that change the disastrous conditions of the Island.