Cuba: Its Past, Present, and Future

by A. D. Hall

Besides over forty thousand in the United States, there are a large number in the islands under British control, as well as throughout the West Indies and in the South American republics.

It is perfectly natural that these exiles should feel the deepest interest in their native land, and although Spain has complained frequently of being menaced from beyond her borders, what else could she expect after the way in which she treated these exiled sons of hers? Besides she has had no just cause for grievance, as the right for foreign countries to furnish asylums to political offenders has been recognized from time immemorial, and, unless some overt act be committed, there can be no responsibility on the part of such foreign countries.

Enough perhaps has been said to show that the Cubans had every reason to once again rise in revolt, but in order that there may be no doubt as to the justice of their cause, let us recapitulate:

Spain has invariably drawn from the island all that could be squeezed out of it.

In spite of her protests she has never done anything for Cuba, all her aim being to replenish her own exhausted treasury and to enrich the functionaries of the Spanish government.

While Cuba is a producing country, she has been refused the right to dispose of her produce to other countries except at ruinous rates, in spite of the fact that Spain herself could not begin to consume all that Cuba had to offer. The market of the island, by the way, from the very nature of things, is the United States, and not Spain.

The rules which limit importation have been most rigid. For instance, American flour cannot enter Cuba free of duty, while it enters as a free product into Spain.

Spain has governed Cuba with a most arbitrary hand. The island has had nothing whatever to say as to the management of its own affairs.

The Cubans have purposely been kept in a state of ignorance, the system of education amounting practically to nothing.

The Spaniards have never kept one promise made, but after each promise have increased their oppression and tyranny.