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The Spanish War Policy

The Way the Present War Opened and how it Progressed-Personal Characteristics of Prominent Figures-Campos, Weyler, Gomez the Maceos and Garcia-The War Shifted to the West End-The Prize of the Victor Praised in Proze and Poetry. GENERAL MARTINEZ CAMPOS had great celebrity for his success in closing the war of 1868-1878 by the convention known as the Treaty of Zanjon. He is conspicuous in the gallery of the captain-generals that is an attraction in the Spanish palace at Havana, and there his figure is slender and his attitude alert as he was twenty years ago. He was the first man thought of in Spain when the rebellion broke out in Cuba in February, 1895, to put it down; but he found it a much more serious affair than he had before encountered, and he so far recognized the belligerency of the Cuban insurrectionists as to attempt carrying on war in a civilized way. The struggle gradually assumed far greater proportions than he had imagined possible, and his enemies charged that his tenderness in dealing with rebels was the great fault that filled insurgent ranks. That, however, was a gross injustice to a competent soldier. There is a great deal of intense politics in Havana, and soon all the politicians except a few moderates were against him. Then he was recalled, and his successor, General Weyler, is believed by all Cubans to have been indebted for the appointment to his reputation for severity. Now Campos does not deserve his good name for benignity, nor Weyler the fulness of his fame for brutality and barbarism. They have had a greater task assigned them than is under-stood, for the Spaniards have not realized that they have lost Cuba and that all the captain-generals henceforth are foredoomed failures. The failure of Weyler must be swifter than that of Campos.