Carpio says, 'passed here barefooted and bleeding, almost naked and
freezing. At every town, far from finding rest for their fatigue, they
are received with all sorts of insults; they are scoffed and provoked.
I am indignant at this total lack of humanitarian sentiment and
charity. I have two sons who are fighting against the Cuban insurgents;
but this does not prevent me from denouncing those who ill-treat their
prisoners. I have witnessed such outrages upon the unfortunate exiles
that I do not hesitate to say that nothing like it has ever occurred in
Africa.'"

I do not wish what I have said concerning the Florida correspondents to
be misunderstood as referring to those who are writing, and have
written from the island of Cuba. They suffer from the "fakirs" even
more than do the people of the United States who read the stories of
both, and who confound the sensation-mongers with those who go to find
the truth at the risk of their lives. For these latter do risk their
lives, daily and hourly, when they go into these conflicts looking for
the facts. I have not been in any conflict, so I can speak of these men
without fear of being misunderstood.

They are taking chances that no war correspondents ever took in any war
in any part of the world. For this is not a war--it is a state of
lawless butchery, and the rights of correspondents, of soldiers and of
non-combatants are not recognized. Archibald Forbes, and "Bull Run"
Russell and Frederick Villiers had great continental armies to protect
them; these men work alone with a continental army against them. They
risk capture at sea and death by the guns of a Spanish cruiser, and,
escaping that, they face when they reach the island the greater danger
of capture there and of being cut down by a guerrilla force and left to
die in a road, or of being put in a prison and left to die of fever, as