revolution would not down. Martinez Campos, the "Pacificator" of
the first revolution, was this time unable to protect the plains.
In 1896 he was replaced by General Weyler, who undertook a new
system. He started to corral the insurgents by a chain of
blockhouses and barbed wire fences from ocean to sea--the first
completely guarded cross-country line since the frontier walls of
the Roman Empire in Europe and the Great Wall of China in Asia.
He then proceeded to starve out the insurgents by destroying all
the food in the areas to which they were confined. As the
revolutionists lived largely on the pillage of plantations in
their neighborhood, this policy involved the destruction of the
crops of the loyal as well as of the disloyal, of Americans as
well as of Cubans. The population of the devastated plantations
was gathered into reconcentrado camps where, penned promiscuously
into small reservations, they were entirely dependent upon a
Government which was poor in supplies and as careless of
sanitation as it was of humanity. The camps became pest-holes,
spreading contagion to all regions having intercourse with Cuba,
and in vain the interned victims were crying aloud for succor.

This new policy of disregard for property and life deeply
involved American interests and sensibilities. The State
Department maintained that Spain was responsible for the
destruction of American property by insurgents. This Spain
denied, for, while she never officially recognized the insurgents
as belligerents, the insurrection had passed beyond her control.
This was, indeed, the position which the Spanish Treaty Claims
Commission subsequently took in ruling that to establish a claim
it would be necessary to show that the destruction of property
was the consequence of negligence upon the part of Spanish