Cuba in War Time | Page 3

armored
car is a flat car loaded with ties, girders and rails, which are used to
repair bridges or those portions of the track that may have been blown
up by the insurgents. Wherever a track crosses a bridge there are two
forts, one at each end of the bridge, and also at almost every cross-road.
When the train passes one of these forts, two soldiers appear in the door
and stand at salute to show, probably, that they are awake, and at every
station there are two or more forts, while the stations themselves are
usually protected by ramparts of ties and steel rails. There is no

situation where it is so distinctly evident that those who are not with
you are against you, for you are either inside of one circle of forts or
passing under guard by rail to another circle, or you are with the
insurgents. There is no alternative. If you walk fifty yards away from
the circle you are, in the eyes of the Spaniards, as much in "the field" as
though you were two hundred miles away on the mountains.
[Illustration: A Spanish Soldier]
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 months,
sleeping the entire time under canvas, and carrying all its impedimenta
with it on pack mules. It had seldom, if ever, been near a town, and the
men wore the same clothes, or what was left of them, with which they
had started for a week's campaign. Had the Spaniards followed such a
plan of attack as that when the revolution began, instead of building
mud forts and devastating the country, they might not only have
suppressed the revolution, but the country would have been of some
value when the war ended. As it is to-day, it will take ten years or more
to bring it back to a condition of productiveness.
The wholesale devastation of the island was an idea of General
Weyler's. If the captain of a vessel, in order to put down a mutiny on
board, scuttled the ship and sent everybody to the bottom, his plan of
action would be as successful as General Weyler's has proved to be.
After he had obtained complete control of the cities he decided to lay
waste the country and starve the revolutionists into submission. So he
ordered all pacíficos, as the non-belligerents are called, into the towns
and burned their houses, and issued orders to have all fields where
potatoes or corn were planted dug up and these food products
destroyed.
These pacificos are now gathered inside of a dead line, drawn one
hundred and fifty yards around the towns, or wherever there is a fort.
Some of them have settled around the forts that guard a bridge, others
around the forts that guard a sugar plantation; wherever there