impossible to keep the windows up, and whenever the door is opened
sparks and cinders sweep into the car. One morning, just this side of
Jovellanos, all the sugar cane on the right side of the track was
wrapped in white smoke for miles so that nothing could be distinguished
from that side of the car, and we seemed to be moving through the white
steam of a Russian bath.

The Spaniards are no more to blame for this than are the insurgents;
each destroy property and burn the cane. When an insurgent column finds
a field planted with potatoes, it takes as much of the crop as it can
carry away and chops up the remainder with machetes, to prevent it from
falling into the hands of the Spaniards. If the Spaniards pass first,
they act in exactly the same way.

Cane is not completely destroyed if it is burned, for if it is at once
cut down just above the roots, it will grow again. When peace is
declared it will not be the soil that will be found wanting, nor the
sun. It will be the lack of money and the loss of credit that will keep
the sugar planters from sowing and grinding. And the loss of machinery
in the _centrals_, which is worth in single instances hundreds of
thousands of dollars, and in the aggregate many millions, cannot be
replaced by men, who, even when their machinery was intact, were on the
brink of ruin.

Unless the United States government interferes on account of some one
of its citizens in Cuba, and war is declared with Spain, there is no
saying how long the present revolution may continue. For the Spaniards
themselves are acting in a way which makes many people suspect that
they are not making an effort to bring it to an end. The sincerity of
the Spaniards in Spain is beyond question; the personal sacrifices they