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The Orders and Administration of Weyler: Island--the

Conceding the vigor of the orders of the captain-general, and the intimate knowledge they show of the state of the Island, as well as his keen general intelligence, we have to announce that the failure of his administration was early declared by events that were unavoidable.

He was forced to reply to the sugar makers, who called and begged to know when they could grind cane. Of course he was confident, as ever Campos was, that he could soon accomplish great results, and, at least, speedily restore order in part of the Island. It was his policy first to find the army, for he said Campos had attempted to get along without a chief-of-staff, and had not kept books, so there were many troops missing. This had caused the rumor to go far that 15,000 Spanish soldiers had disappeared. "Aha!" said some Cubans, "they have come over to us;" and "Aha!" said others, "they are dead, or they are fraud soldiers put on the roll to steal with!" But Campos had not kept books, and Weyler found the missing men. There were also reinforcements sent to arrive in time to support him, and it was his policy to press the insurgents to the utmost. He did not spare orders to rush the troops into action, and thought for a time his ideas were being carried out hopefully. He pointed out on his maps where his columns had the main forces of the rebels surrounded, and later he had them "more surrounded." He had them moving east, and he was overtaking them. "See here," said he, pointing to the centre of the province of Pinar del Rio, south-west of Havana, "they were, and, here," sweeping his hand along the map eastward far as southeast Matanzas, "they are; and they must go further." They were bound for the woods of Santa Clara, he said.

This was his state of mind, and apparently the military situation, when the sugar planters called and wanted to know what they could depend upon. It was an all-important question. If the Spanish government could not protect the sugar interest, the Island ceased to be of value, and was no longer, in a commercial sense, worth holding. It was not a question of the direct taxation on sugar, but of the trade of the Island--the shipment of nearly one million tons of sugar, to pay for the imports on which the duties were laid amounting to eighteen million dollars a year. The captain-general hesitated, but pressed for a business reply, and feeling some of the confidence he desired to inspire, he ventured to say, he could promise that by the 15th of March they might count upon it that cane grinding would be safe in the three western provinces, and he hoped also in a part of Santa Clara! This was very satisfactory, and published, produced surprise and cheerfulness. Why, of course, if that was all there was of the rebellion, it would soon be over! The captain-general, to do him justice, had to hedge a little. He said the sugar men were too enthusiastic; he was not quite certain, but he was greatly and confidently expectant that he would have three provinces, and, possibly, part of another, in order by the middle of March. The promise, however, that sugar should be ground safely all over the west end by March 15th was fixed in the public mind, and regarded as a test of the comparative power of the contending forces to manifest themselves in the open country. The Spaniards were assaulting the insurgents, who were large bodies of marauders roving about, using incendiarism and the terrorism of robbery and murder to compel the secret service of the country people--who would be good Spaniards if it were not that they were in fear, and caused by panic to be criminals. All that was required was a strong head and heart and hand, such a Weyler possessed, and the legitimate authorities would soon regain their accustomed and ancient sway!

On the other hand, the rebels had to say that they actually held all the Island but the seaside towns under the guns of ships of war, and the garrisoned places; and all the garrisoned towns were substantially besieged. The sugar and tobacco interests were for the time destroyed, and would not be allowed to revive while they were sources of Spanish revenue. Now this was not a matter of contention between the official bulletins and the Tampa and Key West grapevine dispatches, over the results of skirmishes here and there in "the woods." This was a large matter and something positive. It was business. There was a time fixed in which something palpable was to be done. Whichever way the fortunes of the miserable war should decide the answer to be, there could be no doubt as to the material and determining fact. There was exultation among the insurgents that their enemy had invited so conspicuous a trial of strength, at a time and place and in a way, too, that gave them advantages. At this moment the armies of Gomez and Maceo had passed the fanciful line of the Spaniards and were going east, and the friendly intelligence from their columns was that they could not get Cubans to fight a great battle, and were sorely troubled by the care of wounded men, and had upon the whole to get away from the hotly contested places and go into retirement in the fastnesses of the forests and swamps and mountains, to see what the rainy season would do for them! There was the regular report that Gomez was broken down and thinking of trying to escape from the Island to his home in San Domingo, and that the Maceos were his rearguard. They were to be regarded as fortunate to have crossed "the trochu!"

The first act of desperate warfare was the hanging of a Spanish planter near Havana, who had been guilty of carrying on farming operations without concern as to the insurgent policy. He was killed, and his cane burnt, and it was proclaimed the act of a small band of desperados left behind for acts of assassination, arson, and robbery to keep up a sham of warfare and frighten the timid. The work of destruction was carried on, however, and when the fateful 15th of March had passed it was demonstrated that sugar making was at an end. There was not a district in the Island in which it was safe to "grind." In the first and foremost event in magnitude of the administration the captain-general had failed to keep his word; and the strong Weyler, like the weak Campos, had been unable to fix lines of limitation on the surging sea of rebellion. Wherever the captain-general had drawn a mark and said "thus far and no further," the waves had rolled over the forbidden territory. It was soon seen that the Maceos had not retired from the west end. Gomez might be "Oriented," but Maceo was not, and then the question arose whether the daring rebels would not be caught and crushed by the superior Spanish forces; and that is constantly threatened.

Again the Spanish columns were used to form a fence of steel across the Island, and once more the rebels rode about the country at their pleasure. Again the burning cane fields reddened the southern sky as beheld from Havana. Again there were merciless burnings in all the provinces where military protection had been promised, and the priceless tobacco plantations of the west end were utterly ruined. And still the Maceos were enabled to elude the regular troops, and strike at villages and towns, gaining supplies; and the broader the swath of destruction the greater the number of recruits for the army of independence. The captain-general at one time said he wanted no more men from Spain--had enough to carry out his policy; and he had, of course, if this was a war of numbers, a clash of military organizations of the modern kind. But it is a war of skirmishers, precisely the sort of war in which Spaniards and their tropical children have always distingushed themselves, and the rebels are resisting the army in the jungles of Cuba, and in the broad plantations, too, by their remarkable mobility, as the Seminole Indians in the everglades of Florida baffled our regulars. The captain-general, after a further study of the situation, concluded he wanted a few more batallions of cavalry, and they will not be able to cope with the veteran insurgents, while Maceo, receiving, we presume, the cartridges landed from the Bermuda in strange security from the Spanish cruisers, suddenly changed his tactics and had startling success in aggressive movements just at the time and place where his blows inflict the greatest possible damage to the Spanish cause, but in doing so he may have held Spaniards in too light esteem, for there is an unusual tone of confidence in the cables that he is hard pressed.