love of independence aside, it is better for them to die in the field
than to risk the other alternative; a lingering life in an African
penal settlement or the fusillade against the east wall of Cabanas
prison. In an island with a soil so rich and productive as is that of
Cuba there will always be roots and fruits for the insurgents to live
upon, and with the cattle that they have hidden away in the laurel or
on the mountains they can keep their troops in rations for an
indefinite period. What they most need now are cartridges and rifles.
Of men they have already more than they can arm.

People in the United States frequently express impatience at the small
amount of fighting which takes place in this struggle for liberty, and
it is true that the lists of killed show that the death rate in battle
is inconsiderable. Indeed, when compared with the number of men and
women who die daily of small-pox and fever and those who are butchered
on the plantations, the proportion of killed in battle is probably
about one to fifteen.

I have no statistics to prove these figures, but, judging from the
hospital reports and from what the consuls tell of the many murders of
pacificos, I judge that that proportion would be rather under than
above the truth. George Bronson Rae, the _Herald_ correspondent,
who was for nine months with Maceo and Gomez, and who saw eighty fights
and was twice wounded, told me that the largest number of insurgents he
had seen killed in one battle was thirteen.

Another correspondent said that a Spanish officer had told him that he
had killed forty insurgents out of four hundred who had attacked his
column. "But how do you know you killed that many?" the correspondent
asked. "You say you were never nearer than half a mile to them, and