OUR NAVY IN THE WAR WITH SPAIN CHAPTER I THE DEMAND FOR INTERVENTION EFFORTS TO SUBJUGATE THE INSURGENT CUBANS THAT HAd deGENERATED INTO A PITILESS WAR OF EXTERMINATION WHEREIN EVEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE DELIBERATELY STARVED TO DEATH—WHERE INTERVENTION WAS A DUTY AND NONINTERVENTION NOT ONLY CRUEL BUT DASTARDLY. THE student who is looking for the origin of our war with Spain must go back as far as 1814, the very year in which the Spanish bestowed upon the island of Cuba the appellation of "the ever faithful." Spain had been overrun by the armies of Napoleon, and a Napoleon had been placed upon her throne, but Cuba had proved faithful to the Spanish régime, and when the Spanish line once more entered the Madrid. palace there was as sincere rejoicing in Cuba as in any district of Spain. Cuba was at this time in an especially prosperous condition. The cultivation of sugar and tobacco had but recently been introduced. A valuable class of citizens had come to her the industrious French who fled from the negro revolutionists of Santo Domingo. The tremendous crops raised on virgin soil by slave-labor were sold at I enormous prices. The Spanish Government looked at the prosperity of the colonists with the eyes of greed only. "In spite of the highsounding title of 'Faithful Cuba,' bestowed on her generous island sons, Spain subtly reverted to her old methods, and used their country as a conquered El Dorado, the quickly developed resources of which she was determined to turn to her selfish account, regardless of possible consequences. The Cubans, however, who had learned many things since the opening of the century, soon showed a distinct disinclination to submit to this process." Nor was it misrule alone that roused the antagonism of the Cubans, for though they were all of Spanish descent--and so far as the social leaders were concerned, of unmixed blood-they were treated as inferiors by the Spanish officials, who came out to wring fortunes from the island, and what was infinitely worse, the Cuban ladies were contemptuously called pelareas, or "croppies," a term originating in their fashion of wearing cropped or short hair. The Spanish repaid Cuban loyalty not only with increased taxation, but they added personal insult and contempt to financial injury. ウ The Spanish system, first shown in its perfidy in 1814, reached a climax of cruelty under Governor-General Weyler, known as "the Butcher," who landed at Havana on February |