But this was a ruse, a sum chiefly on paper. General Lee, and his testimony is incontrovertible, says:
"I do not believe six hundred thousand dollars, in supplies, will be given to those people, and the soldiers left to starve. They will divide it up here and there; a piece taken off here and a piece taken off there. I do not believe they have appropriated anything of the kind. The condition of the reconcentrados out in the country is just as bad as in General Weyler's day. It has been relieved a good deal by supplies from the United States, but that has ceased now.
"General Blanco published a proclamation, rescinding General Weyler's bando, as they call it there, but it has had no practical effect. In the first place, these people have no place to go; the houses have been burned down; there is nothing but the bare land there, and it would take them two months before they could raise the first crop. In the next place, they are afraid to go out from the lines of the towns, because the roving bands of the Spanish guerillas, as they are called, would kill them. So they stick right in the edges of the town, just like they did, with nothing to eat except what they can get from charity. The Spanish have nothing to give."
The government and people of Spain now became very much afraid of the attitude of the United States. They knew that something had to be done, so to speak, to throw a sop to Cerberus. Therefore Sagasta, the premier of Spain, conceived the idea of granting to Cuba a species of autonomy. But, with the usual Spanish diplomacy, it was not autonomy at all. It purposed to be home rule, but every article gave a loop-hole for Spain not to fulfill her obligations.
It was a false and absurd proposition, intended to deceive, but too flimsy in its fabric to deceive any one. It was rotten clean through, and was opposed by everyone except the framers of the autonomistic papers, General Blanco, his staff and a few others, who hoped, but hoped in vain, great things from the proclamation.
The Cuban leaders, who at one time would have hailed with joy such a concession, if they had been assured that the provisions would have been followed out loyally and without fraud, now rejected the autonomistic proposition with scorn and loathing.
Their battle cry was now, and they were determined it ever should be: "Independence or death!"
It was too late. There was no possibility now of home rule under Spanish domination.
Gomez even went so far as to declare that any one who should attempt to bring to his camp any offer of autonomy would be seized as a spy and shot.
General Lee, speaking of the proposed autonomy, says: