It has been a common custom with them to disfigure, mangle and commit nameless indignities upon the dead.
When Nestor Aranguren, who you will remember was one of the bravest of the Cuban leaders, the "Marion," the "Swamp Fox" of the insurrection, was killed, his body, covered with honorable wounds was taken to Havana, and paraded before the citizens, subject to their jeers and curses.
When another insurgent leader, Castillo, was killed, the same frightful spectacle was witnessed.
Indeed, it has been the rule among the Spaniards whenever the body of a so-called rebel leader fell into their hands, to drag his nude and mutilated body, tied at the end of a horse's tail, throughout the nearest town, and the excuse for this was—what? That the body might be fully identified.
Among the Cubans, there is only one instance related where they retaliated in kind. And this was when it is said that they sent a Spanish soldier back to Havana with his tongue cut out. But even this story, the only act of brutality alleged against them is not well authenticated, resting as it does entirely upon Spanish evidence. And we know well how much credence can be given to that evidence.
To come down to more recent occurrences.
When it was first reported that the bodies of our marines killed at Guantanamo were subjected to unmentionable mutilations by the Spaniards, we could not believe it. It was said that the condition of the bodies was caused by shots fired from the Mauser rifle. But the Mauser rifle inflicts a clean cut hole. It could not possibly have been responsible for the horrible condition of the bodies. It is impossible for us to explain further in print. Remember or look up what was done by the Apaches in some of our Indian wars, and then from your knowledge, or the knowledge gained by research, fill up the hiatus.
And the Spaniards cannot claim in this latter instance, if indeed they can in any other, that these barbarities were committed by irregular and irresponsible troops. It is beyond question that by far the greater portion of the troops employed against Colonel Huntington (we are referring now to the affair at Guantanamo) belonged to the regular army, under the command of General Linares.
The New York Herald, in an editorial on the subject, remarks most justly and forcibly: "What sort of a degraded spectacle, then, does Spain present, going whining through Europe in search of intercession or intervention, with such a damnable record against her, made in the very first engagement of troops?
"We can hear good old John Bull sputter out his righteous indignation, but will his Holiness the Pope recognize such degenerate child? Can the punctilious Francis Joseph of Austria afford to condone crimes like these? Will the Emperor William or the Czar of Russia lift his voice in behalf of such fiends? Can our sister republic, France, sympathize with the monsters who disgrace the very name of soldier?