months, sleeping the entire time under canvas, and carrying all its
impedimenta with it on pack mules. It had seldom, if ever, been near a
town, and the men wore the same clothes, or what was left of them, with
which they had started for a week's campaign. Had the Spaniards
followed such a plan of attack as that when the revolution began,
instead of building mud forts and devastating the country, they might
not only have suppressed the revolution, but the country would have
been of some value when the war ended. As it is to-day, it will take
ten years or more to bring it back to a condition of productiveness.

The wholesale devastation of the island was an idea of General
Weyler's. If the captain of a vessel, in order to put down a mutiny on
board, scuttled the ship and sent everybody to the bottom, his plan of
action would be as successful as General Weyler's has proved to be.
After he had obtained complete control of the cities he decided to lay
waste the country and starve the revolutionists into submission. So he
ordered all pacificos, as the non-belligerents are called, into the
towns and burned their houses, and issued orders to have all fields
where potatoes or corn were planted dug up and these food products
destroyed.

These pacificos are now gathered inside of a dead line, drawn one
hundred and fifty yards around the towns, or wherever there is a fort.
Some of them have settled around the forts that guard a bridge, others
around the forts that guard a sugar plantation; wherever there are
forts there are pacificos.

In a word, the situation in Cuba is something like this: The Spaniards
hold the towns, from which their troops daily make predatory raids,
invariably returning in time for dinner at night. Around each town is a