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The Crisis in Cuba: Spanish

The vital parts of the country were not assailed or menaced. Sugar making, tobacco growing, cutting and curing were carried on as usual, with the exception of districts whose losses did not affect the general result. The presence of the Spanish army increased the stir in the streets and shops, the hotels and theatres of Havana. The crops brought in money year after year, and only in the infected provinces were plantation profits reduced and the course of living seriously unsettled. In the years of the wearisome skirmishing in the east end, labor was employed in the richest parts of the country. Disorders were localized.

This war is another affair. The military forces engaged are three times as large on both sides as they were when they reached their maximum, before Campos succeeded in arranging the truce of Zanjon. The policy of Gomez has been this time to force conclusions, and the way he reduces Spanish resources is obvious. First, the armies of the Spaniards are, with the volunteers and the guerilla bands, nearly two hundred thousand, and they cannot live off the country as it has been swept with fire, despoiled of labor and deprived of domestic animals. The food supplies must come from abroad, and are found especially in Spain and the United States, and expenses, it is thus accountable, are greatly in excess of all former periods. It is also the rigid order of the Spanish authorities that the soldiers shall, for their own sake, be restrained from indulgence in the tempting fruit of Cuba. The diet of beans, rice and pork may be less palatable, but is much more wholesome.