So-called "zones of cultivation" established within the immediate areas
of effective military control about the cities and fortified camps
proved illusory as a remedy for the suffering. The unfortunates, being
for the most part women and children, with aged and helpless men,
enfeebled by disease and hunger, could not have tilled the soil without
tools, seed, or shelter for their own support or for the supply of the
cities. Reconcentration, adopted avowedly as a war measure in order to
cut off the resources of the insurgents, worked its predestined result.
As I said in my message of last December, it was not civilized warfare;
it was extermination. The only peace it could beget was that of the
wilderness and the grave.

Meanwhile the military situation in the island had undergone a
noticeable change. The extraordinary activity that characterized the
second year of the war, when the insurgents invaded even the thitherto
unharmed fields of Pinar del Rio and carried havoc and destruction up
to the walls of the city of Havana itself, had relapsed into a dogged
struggle in the central and eastern provinces. The Spanish arms regained
a measure of control in Pinar del Rio and parts of Havana, but, under
the existing conditions of the rural country, without immediate
improvement of their productive situation. Even thus partially
restricted, the revolutionists held their own, and their conquest and
submission, put forward by Spain as the essential and sole basis of
peace, seemed as far distant as at the outset.

In this state of affairs my Administration found itself confronted with
the grave problem of its duty. My message of last December[4] reviewed
the situation and narrated the steps taken with a view to relieving its
acuteness and opening the way to some form of honorable settlement. The
assassination of the prime minister, Canovas, led to a change of