them through the window as they sat at a table in the light of a
candle. They then hacked the bodies with machetes. It was in
recognition of this victory that the banquet was tendered to Cerreros
by admiring friends.

[Illustration: Amateur Surgery in Cuba]

Civilized nations recognize but three methods of dealing with prisoners
captured in war. They are either paroled or exchanged or put in prison;
that is what was done with them in our rebellion. It is not allowable
to shoot prisoners; at least it is not generally done when they are
seated unconscious of danger at a table. It may be said, however, that,
as these two men were in arms against the government, they were only
suffering the punishment of their crime, and that this is not a good
instance of an atrocity. There are, however, unfortunately, many other
instances in which the victims were non-combatants and their death
simply murder. But it is extremely difficult to tell convincingly of
these cases, without giving names, and the giving of names might lead
to more deaths in Sagua. It is also difficult to convince the reader of
murders for which there seems to have been no possible object.

And yet Cerreros and other guerrillas are murdering men and boys in the
fields around Sagua as wantonly and as calmly as a gardener cuts down
weeds. The stories of these butcheries were told to me by Englishmen
and Americans who could look from their verandas over miles of fields
that belonged to them, but who could not venture with safety two
hundred yards from their doorsteps. They were virtually prisoners in
their own homes, and every spot of ground within sight of their windows
marked where one of their laborers had been cut down, sometimes when he
was going to the next _central_ on an errand, or to carry the