Cuba in War Time | Page 7

handle it properly, and it is not an unusual sight to see him rest the butt
on the ground and pull the trigger while the gun is in that position.
On the whole, the Spanish soldiers during this war in Cuba have
contributed little to the information of those who are interested in
military science. The tactics which the officers follow are those which
were found effective at the battle of Waterloo, and in the Peninsular
campaign. When attacked from an ambush a Spanish column forms at
once into a hollow square, with the cavalry in the centre, and the firing
is done in platoons. They know nothing of "open order," or of firing in
skirmish line. If the Cubans were only a little better marksmen than
their enemies they should, with such a target as a square furnishes them,
kill about ten men where they now wound one.
With the war conducted under the conditions described here, there does
not seem to be much promise of its coming to any immediate end
unless some power will interfere. The Spaniards will probably continue

to remain inside their forts, and the officers will continue to pay
themselves well out of the rebellion.
And, on the other hand, the insurgents who call themselves rich when
they have three cartridges, as opposed to the one hundred and fifty
cartridges that every Spanish soldier carries, will probably very wisely
continue to refuse to force the issue in any one battle.
[Illustration: *Fire and sword in Cuba]

The Fate Of The Pacificos
As is already well known in the United States, General Weyler issued
an order some months ago commanding the country people living in
the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and Matanzas to betake
themselves with their belongings to the fortified towns. His object in
doing this was to prevent the pacificos from giving help to the
insurgents, and from sheltering them and the wounded in their huts. So
flying columns of guerrillas and Spanish soldiers were sent to burn
these huts, and to drive the inhabitants into the suburbs of the cities.
When I arrived in Cuba sufficient time had passed for me to note the
effects of this order, and to study the results as they are to be found in
the provinces of Havana, Matanzas and Santa Clara, the order having
been extended to embrace the latter province.
It looked then as though General Weyler was reaping what he had sown,
and was face to face with a problem of his own creating. As far as a
visitor could judge, the results of this famous order seemed to furnish a
better argument to those who think the United States should interfere in
behalf of Cuba, than did the fact that men were being killed there, and
that both sides were devastating the island and wrecking property worth
millions of dollars.
The order, apart from being unprecedented in warfare, proved an
exceedingly short-sighted one, and acted almost immediately after the
manner of a boomerang. The able-bodied men of each family who had

remained loyal or at least neutral, so long as they were permitted to live
undisturbed on their few acres, were not content to exist on the charity
of a city, and they swarmed over to the insurgent ranks by the hundreds,
and it was only the old and infirm and the women and children who
went into the towns, where they at once became a burden on the
Spanish residents, who were already distressed by the lack of trade and
the high prices asked for food.
The order failed also in its original object of embarrassing the
insurgents, for they are used to living out of doors and to finding food
for themselves, and the destruction of the huts where they had been
made welcome was not a great loss to men who, in a few minutes, with
the aid of a machete, can construct a shelter from a palm tree.
So the order failed to distress those against whom it was aimed, but
brought swift and terrible suffering to those who were and are
absolutely innocent of any intent against the government, as well as to
the adherents of the government.
It is easy to imagine what happened when hundreds of people, in some
towns thousands, were herded together on the bare ground, with no
food, with no knowledge of sanitation, with no covering for their heads
but palm leaves, with no privacy for the women and young girls, with
no thought but as to how they could live until to-morrow.
It is true that in the country, also, these people had no covering for their
huts but palm leaves, but those huts were made stoutly to endure. When
a man built one of them he was building his