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Latest News from the Seat of War

Monotony of Military Situations--The Trocha as a Delusion--Fighting General Pando Goes Home--Strange Paralysis of Spanish Forces--How it Pays to keep Full Prisons--Corrupt Sluggards--Weyler and the Front, and Sharp-shooters-The Battle of Cacarajicara--The Island becoming a Cinder Path--The Massacre of Horses--Battle of Manzanillo--The Fever--One Good Work Going On--American Responsibility Considered.

The journey of the author to Cuba, undertaken while General Campos was on the way from the scene of his failure to Spain and General Weyler was getting under way for the scene of his failure, Cuba, was to find and report the truth; and the presumption was that the different commanders would produce remarkable events and influential changes.

This was in January, in the midst of the campaigning season, and now it is May, at the beginning of the rainy season, when it is excessively expensive in the health and strength and equipment of the troops to keep the field engaging in active work; and it is the accustomed anticipations of those who have had experience of Cuban military enterprise, that the military situation will not be seriously molested for six months. It was not vividly remembered by those who expected a new captain-general to produce immediate revolutionary results, that the causes of the disorder, the character of the people, the comparative resources of the peninsula of Spain and the Island of Cuba, would continue the elements of the conditions of the strife. The quarrel and the people are the same and habits grow stronger than the will, in men and nations. After giving the state of the Island the closest attention of which a careful and diligent observer was capable, and seeking to subject to critical analysis that which was in the air as well as the newspapers, and there was a good deal more news atmospheric than was printed, the conviction came that the dreary struggle would be protracted until the wealth of the Island was wasted, the people utterly impoverished, the country absolutely ruined, unless there should arise from the tumultuous upheavals of the situation changes that would permit the separation of Spain and Cuba on terms that would not be dishonorable or humiliating to either, and the hopeful logic of it all was the amicable annexation of Cuba as a state to the United States. Nothing phenomenal has happened owing to the individualities of the Weyler administration. Martinez Campos was so slow when he took command and so roughly handled at Bayamo, and General Suarez Valdes was so distinctly defeated by Gomez, that General Pando was sent over with 30,000 men; and then the insurgents were not checked, but seemed to be reinforced as fast as the Spaniards. Weyler brought reinforcements, and 10,000 good troops speedily followed, but the Island absorbed them without a symptom of result, and the aggressive forces of Spain have seemed rather to relax and recede than become alert and advance, and while there are at least 130,000 regular troops on the rolls of service in Cuba, there is nothing new to show for them. If there cannot be two armies of 50,000 men each massed for strenuous and sweeping operations--leaving the 30,000 additional Spanish regulars and the 60,000 volunteers to do garrison duty--it may be considered a settled question there is no more hope for the military than for the political situation of the Spaniards in the Island.