for non-intervention; some were for making Cuba a free country, some were for preserving it as a slaveholding land; some were for aiding it to become independent, some were for annexing it to the United States. There was no unity of policy, and therefore there was no assurance as to what the United States would do in any given emergency. Cubans did not know what they could depend upon. If they revolted, America might help them, and she might not. There can be no question that this uncertainty was a potent factor in restraining Cubans from radical action, and that it materially postponed the final crisis.

We shall see that more and more, however, the United States was forced by the logic of irresistible events into adopting a united and consistent policy toward Cuba, and that in the ultimate crisis that country was inextricably implicated with the Cuban cause. This was indeed a logical development. In each successive Cuban revolution, beginning with that of Lopez, the United States had been increasingly interested. Commercial and social relations between the two countries were strong and intimate. For nearly three quarters of a century the United States had maintained a quasi-protectorate over the island in behalf of Spain for the time being, but—though unconsciously—in behalf of Cuba itself for the greater time to come. The welfare of the United States had become involved in the disposition of the island in only a less degree than that of the Cuban people.

There can be no doubt that the United States was of very great service and assistance to the Cuban patriots in the War of Independence. Nobody has testified to that fact more earnestly or more comprehensively than the Cubans themselves. They realized it. They appreciated it. They were and are profoundly grateful for it. Their testimony to it is ample for all time. America is relieved of the need of vaunting herself upon it. It would, however, be of a great error and a great injustice to assume that the intervention of the United States in April, 1898, was indispensable to the achievement of Cuban independence, or indeed that it was the United States that set Cuba free from Spain. That would be as great a perversion of the truth of history as it would be to pretend that the United States went to war with Spain over the sinking of the Maine. For the United States to have done the latter would have been one of the monumental crimes of history; and of course it was not done. War was inevitable before the Maine went to Havana Harbor, and would have come just the same if the Maine had not gone thither; perhaps sooner than it did, perhaps not so soon. So Cuban independence would have been won by the Cubans themselves if the United States had not intervened. Possibly it would have come sooner than it did; probably it would not have come so soon. But it would have come. Nobody who has studied the condition of affairs as they then were in Cuba can reasonably doubt it. Nor should recognition of that fact lessen in any degree the propriety—indeed, the necessity—of the American intervention or the grateful appreciation thereof which Cubans feel.

To draw once more upon American history for an example which should convincingly appeal to Americans, the case may be likened to the intervention of France in the American Revolution. There is no American who does not remember that performance with sincere gratitude and with deep appreciation of the undoubtedly great aid which France rendered to the Thirteen Colonies. But I should doubt if there is a well informed American willing to concede that the French aid was indispensable, or that without it Washington and Greene would have been vanquished and the Revolution would have failed. American independence would have been achieved without French aid, though perhaps not so promptly and at greater cost.

An immense service, also, which the United States rendered Cuba in the War of Independence antedated the actual intervention, and consisted in the aid in men, money and supplies which went from the United States to Cuba. It is true that this aid was given largely by Cubans resident in the United States, though many Americans also gave much in money, and some were permitted by the Cubans to give themselves for service in the army. It is also true that much of it was done in surreptitious violation of the neutrality laws; a species of law-breaking at which many United States officials were inclined to wink, and which by common consent was to be regarded as culpable only when it was found out, and then the finding out was more to be regretted than the act itself was to be condemned! Such is the "unwritten law" of international relations in cases in which the technical requirements of the law run counter to generous and righteous human sympathies.

While, therefore, we must believe that even without American intervention in the actual war the Cubans would have won their independence, we may doubt whether such would have been the case if the United States had not all along been dose at hand, a resourceful and hospitable country, in which Cuban political exiles could find secure asylum, in which a Cuban Junta could plan revolution, in which funds to aid the patriot cause could be raised, and which, in brief, could partly in secret and partly in the open be used as a base of supplies and operations. It is to such aid that Cuba owes more than she does to the achievements of the American army and navy in 1898, admirable and useful as they were.

Comparably great, as we shall most notably see in the ensuing chapters, were the services of the United States to Cuba after the War of Independence. These were manifold. The first was diplomatic, in serving as an intermediary between Cuba and Spain, in making the treaty of peace, and in securing the Spanish withdrawal from the island. There is no doubt that all those things were done more smoothly, more satisfactorily and more expeditiously than they could have been had they been left to direct settlement between Cuba and Spain. The services of the United States during the last part of 1898 were more indispensable than those of the spring and summer of that year. Indeed, it might perhaps be claimed that the chief advantage in having the United States intervene was that it enabled her to play that important part in the making of peace and the post-bellum readjustment.

The second great service rendered by the United States was the rehabilitation of the island. This was a manifold undertaking. It comprised rehabilitation after many years of Spanish misrule and neglect, and rehabilitation after the ravages of three years of peculiarly destructive war. The civic maladies to be cured were thus both chronic and acute. Moreover, the work was political, and sanitary, and educational, and economic. Order was to be restored, law was to be administered, government was to be organized, pestilence was to be abated, schools were to be created, the whole work of civilization was to be performed. Splendid as was the work of Sampson's fleet at Santiago, still more beneficent was that of General Wood within the precincts of that city and throughout the Province of Oriente. Nobly memorable was the work of Shafter's army, but we shall read history to little avail if we do not give higher credit to the work of the Military Governor and his lieutenants.

A third service was in acting as guide, philosopher and friend in the great task of organizing and installing the native Cuban government which had been promised by the United States in the act of declaring war against Spain. That self-abnegatory pledge was a noble thing, and noble was the faithful fulfilment of it. I have heard of an eminent and enlightened Cuban who regarded that pledge with incredulity, saying, "It can never be fulfilled!" and who persisted in