and for all upon the Cuban situation. I shall endeavor to be
honest, conservative, and just. I have no purpose to stir the
public passion to any action not necessary and imperative to
meet the duties and necessities of American responsibility,
Christian humanity, and national honor. I would shirk this task
if I could, but I dare not. I cannot satisfy my conscience
except by speaking, and speaking now.

I went to Cuba firmly believing that the condition of affairs
there had been greatly exaggerated by the press, and my own
efforts were directed in the first instance to the attempted
exposure of these supposed exaggerations. There has undoubtedly
been much sensationalism in the journalism of the time, but as
to the condition of affairs in Cuba, there has been no
exaggeration, because exaggeration has been impossible.

Under the inhuman policy of Weyler not less than four hundred
thousand self-supporting, simple, peaceable, defenseless country
people were driven from their homes in the agricultural portions
of the Spanish provinces to the cities, and imprisoned upon the
barren waste outside the residence portions of these cities and
within the lines of intrenchment established a little way
beyond. Their humble homes were burned, their fields laid waste,
their implements of husbandry destroyed, their live stock and
food supplies for the most part confiscated. Most of the people
were old men, women, and children. They were thus placed in
hopeless imprisonment, without shelter or food. There was no
work for them in the cities to which they were driven. They were
left with nothing to depend upon except the scanty charity of
the inhabitants of the cities and with slow starvation their