The lines are so closely drawn that when you consider the tremendous
amount of time and labor expended in keeping up this blockade, you must
admire the Spaniards for doing it so well, but you would admire them
more, if, instead of stopping content with that they went further and
invaded the field. The forts are an excellent precaution; they prevent
sympathizers from joining the insurgents and from sending them food,
arms, medicine or messages. But the next step, after blockading the
cities, would appear to be to follow the insurgents into the field and
give them battle. This the Spaniards do not seem to consider important,
nor wish to do. Flying columns of regular troops and guerrillas are
sent out daily, but they always return each evening within the circle
of forts. If they meet a band of insurgents they give battle readily
enough, but they never pursue the enemy, and, instead of camping on the
ground and following him up the next morning, they retreat as soon as
the battle is over, to the town where they are stationed. When
occasionally objection is made to this by a superior officer, they give
as an explanation that they were afraid of being led into an ambush,
and that as an officer's first consideration must be for his men, they
decided that it was wiser not to follow the enemy into what might prove
a death-trap; or the officers say they could not abandon their wounded
while they pursued the rebels. Sometimes a force of one thousand men
will return with three men wounded, and will offer their condition as
an excuse for having failed to follow the enemy.

About five years ago troops of United States cavalry were sent into the
chapparal on the border of Mexico and Texas to drive the Garcia
revolutionists back into their own country. One troop, G, Third
Cavalry, was ordered out for seven days' service, but when I joined the
troop later as a correspondent, it had been in the field for three