To-day, the Island of Cuba the “Ever-Faithful Island,” the “Pearl of the Antilles,” is a flourishing Republic with a world commerce. And during the World War, the red, white, and blue, single-bestarred Flag of Cuba, waved over a brave Cuban Army, the ally of the United States.
But as to Theodore Roosevelt’s part in liberating the Island, while he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President McKinley, we will let one of his biographers tell about it:—
THE COLONEL OF THE ROUGH RIDERS
In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests, which give us the right and the duty to speak and act, the war in Cuba must stop.
President McKinley
Roosevelt had always felt the danger to the United States of maintaining a despicable or an inadequate Navy, and from the moment he entered the Navy Department, he set about pushing the construction of the unfinished vessels and of improving the quality of the personnel.
He was impelled to do this, not merely by his instinct to bring whatever he undertook up to the highest standard, but also because he had a premonition that a crisis was at hand, which might call the Country, at an instant’s notice, to protect itself with all the power it had.
Roosevelt was impressed by the insurrection in Cuba, which kept that Island in perpetual disorder. The cruel means, especially reconcentration and starvation, by which the Spaniards tried to put down the Cubans, stirred the sympathy of the Americans, and the number of those who believed that the United States ought to interfere in behalf of humanity, grew from month to month.
During his first year in office, Assistant Secretary Roosevelt busied himself with all the details of preparation. And all the while he watched the horizon towards Cuba, where the signs grew angrier and angrier.
But the young Secretary had to act with circumspection. President McKinley, desiring to keep the peace up to the very end, would not countenance any move which might seem to the Spaniards either a threat or an insult.