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Rh in power in Madrid has made it necessary for the political life of that party to resist in every form every attempt upon the part of the Cubans to secure their liberties, and to resist all attempts of other countries to intervene in the interest of peace, progress, and humanity. Whatever else may be said of Spain and her decadence, the fact stands bravely forth that she has made a magnificent struggle to preserve this rich colonial possession. Over 200,000 soldiers (a greater number than the combined armies of Generals Grant and Lee in the war of 1861-65 in this country) have been transported, at immense expense, over 3,000 miles from her shores—the largest number of organized troops that has ever been transported so great a distance from their homes and firesides. These troops have been badly handled, and therefore have not made much of a record in strategy and tactics or for efficient service on the island of Cuba. They were principally located in the coast cities and in the larger interior towns, while the insurrectionists have been holding to a great degree the rest of the island.

The inefficiency of the Spanish soldier is due not to a want of personal courage, but because he is not properly drilled, disciplined, or organized into a fighting machine. In Cuba he has to struggle as best he can with but little or no pay—while badly clothed and fed—and is sent into the field to stand the sunshine and the storm without giving him proper protection from either. He then becomes an easy captive to climatic causes, and instead of a robust soldier crammed with fire and fight, we find a half-sick, listless man, to whom it is an effort to raise and aim a rifle.

Gomez, the leader of the rebels, whatever else may be said about him, has fought this war in the only way he could win it, and never for one moment during the three years of strife has he departed a hair's breadth from the policy first inaugurated. He proposed to combat Spain's purse more than her soldiers; to play a waiting game and exhaust the failing financial resources of Spain. He did not propose to fight if it could be avoided, because he could not well afford to lose a man or a cartridge, being dependent for both upon the very uncertain and devious methods of filibusterism. His army, scattered over an island some 800 miles long by an average breadth of sixty miles, if all concentrated upon a single point, would number about 35, 000 men; but being entirely devoid of bases of supplies and deficient in transportation and food for men or horses, to concentrate would be to starve, and to fight pitched battles against overwhelming numbers would result in the loss of the battle and the loss of his cause. He is a grim, resolute, honest, conscientious, grizzled old veteran, now seventy-five years old, who has thoroughly understood the tactics necessary to employ in order to waste the resources of his enemy and to prolong the war until such time as Spain would abandon the struggle as hopeless, or until it should become manifest to the United States that the contest had degenerated into a hopeless conflict.

General Weyler, the Spanish commander first charged with suppressing the insurrection, seemed to have had an idea that if he could build trochas, or ditches, across the island from north to south, and from sea to