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The Forces Now Engaged in Cuba: Spanish
One reason for the betterment of the sanitary condition of the Spanish army is the vigorous enforcement of regulations forbidding the excessive indulgence in fruit, which was the habit of the men newly arrived. This, with their exposure on muddy roads and grounds, in the hot and rainy season, caused the pestilence to be so fatal.
This is very important, especially from the Cuban point of view, as they depend a good deal on the "friendly fever," as they grimly call it, saying it is a strong ally of the cause of liberty. In the manifesto of the Cuban revolutionary party to the United States, signed by Enrique Jos Varona, we read of the ten years' war, "Blood ran in torrents. Public wealth disappeared in a bottomless abyss. Two hundred thousand Spaniards perished. Whole districts of Cuba were left almost without male population." The whole number of men lost, and the amount of money spent are overstated; but all excesses of estimate removed, the aggregates are appalling, and show how ruinous the misgovernment of Cuba is, both to the peninsula of the home country and the Island that fights to be free.
In the calculations that the thoughtful will make in the contemplation of the figures, it should be noted and studied that the war that broke out in 1895 is far more expensive in money and destructive of life than that which closed in 1878. The losses of this war as compared with that are three times as great. This proportion stands, if applied to the extent of the country wasted, the sugar and tobacco fields burned and trampled, and the combatants engaged on both sides. With this in mind, the rate at which the Spaniards and Cubans are rushing in the strife of mutual destruction to ruin becomes frightfully evident.
THE CUBANS GOOD HORSEMEN.
The strength of the Cuban insurgents, the secret of the surprising fight they have made, surrounded as they are by the Spanish fleets and armies, is in their horses and swords. Many thousands are as good horsemen as the world has seen--equal to the Cossacks or the cowboys--and the Spaniards, when mounted, are no match for them, for the Spanish peasantry do not live on horseback. The insurgents have a few thousand good rifles and are well provided with pistols, but they have never had a fair supply of cartridges. The best modern arms are but clubs unless the ammunition is expressly manufactured for them. This, and the fact that the Cubans cannot take care of their wounded except by carrying them to hiding places, is the explanation of the often elusive policy of rebel commanders in the field. The stroke of business that it is the joy of the Cubans to perform, is to harrass and develop the Spaniards with a skirmish fire, picking off the officers by sharp-shooting, and, if a favorable opportunity offers, to ride in, sword in hand--and the sword is the dreadful machete, a weapon capitally drawn by the artist. On a horse, with this tremendous knife uplifted, the Cuban rebel is at his best, and there never was cavalry more formidable. It is this horseback and machete method of fighting that the mulatto brothers, the Maceos, prefer and that has made them terrors as well as heroes.
AMBUSCADES FREQUENT AND EFFECTIVE.
The nature of the warfare between many columns of Spaniards and squadrons of insurgents, cavalry and companies of footmen is such that there are numerous incidents of ambuscade skirmishes that are games of hide-and-seek, and of deadly encounters hand to hand, and also of long-range firing, when the Spaniards have the advantage, through abundant cartridges, of making the most smoke and having the greatest obscurity in which to prepare picturesque reports. The insurgents have become experts in barricades and devices of rough fortifications for their protection, which may be forgiven them as fighting men, for there never was a war not utterly savage in which the wounded were so illcared for.
WOMEN IN THE CUBAN FORCES.
There has been so much that is imaginary in regard to the Cuban war made to serve as true to fact, that some of the really queer things occuring are not respectfully received. At first no one believed, who had not seen them, that there were women in the Cuban army; but there is no doubt about it. They are not at all miscalled Amazons, for they are warlike women and do not shun fighting, the difficulty in employing them being that they are insanely brave. When they ride into battle they become exalted and are dangerous creatures. Those who first joined the forces on the field were the wives of men belonging in the army, and their purpose was rather to be protected than to become heroines and avengers. It shows the state of the Island that the women find the army the safest place for them. With the men saved from the plantations and the murderous bandits infesting the roads and committing every lamentable outrage upon the helpless--some of the high-spirited Cuban women followed their husbands, and the example has been followed and some, instead of consenting to be protected, have taken up the fashion of fighting.