"Ignoring such people now is easy; later they will defy our country and be its eternal enemies, with the civilized world in sympathy with them. The Spaniards, other foreigners, and home-staying Cuban politicians are the people who now get a hearing, but wait and listen for what is to come! Our people will appear to the real Cubans as their despoilers and oppressors, instead of liberators.
"I am in favor of annexation, and the sooner the better, but the Cuban patriots must first form a government, provisional or otherwise, and consent to annexation. This at first would have been easy, even now possible, to be brought about, but we are fast drifting away from annexation or a peaceful solution of the great and scandalous Cuban problem confronting us.
"The Cuban people are not to be despised; they are a mixed race it is true, but they have talked of and fought for freedom too many years not to know something of the sweet fruits of individual liberty. They are polite and affable, but yet suspicious, as all people are who have been oppressed. It is said they may be resentful of the real or imaginary wrongs they have suffered from the Spaniards. Grant this. Who would not, with their homes as open graveyards strewn with the dead of their families, etc.? It is not best or safe to believe all the tales told of Gomez and his followers by the Spaniards or city Cubans.
"However, I do not believe that a reorganization, with the insurgents fairly recognized, would be as bad as these interested people claim, or would be half so bloody as any organized civil government will prove to be with them left out. Woe to the Spaniard in the island if war again breaks out here! Gomez is at the head of the Cuban military forces, but there are others, generally good men, who are recognized heads of the Cuban insurgent civil power. These are the people who will have to be dealt with, or they will deal with whatever power may be set up.
"The Cuban is not so ignorant as is often claimed. Generally all classes can read and write. Now they have no redress for wrongs against person or property. (They have no civil courts; only a little remaining semblance of Spanish authority in a few places.)
"With a simple form of civil government they could soon have this, and they could be schooled in the primary principles of civil government, such as self-reliance, knowledge of their just rights, duty to others, and others' duty to them. Cubans have more need of justices of the peace than of justices of a Supreme Court. The people want and need quick redress against trespassers, and in the collection of debts, etc.
"A simple code of laws, primitive in character, but comprehensive and easily understood, yet adequate to bring speedy relief, is what is now most needed. Such laws could be passed by a provisional legislative body. Light taxes for a few years should be assessed. Good land laws with a reasonable law of limitations should be made. Land titles then soon would be settled. The established government should take up and lease, pending the adjustment of titles, all tillable and unoccupied land. Much of this land, even the best of it (which would be cheap at two hundred dollars per acre), would escheat for the want of living owners or descendants. The escheated lands would make a large revenue for the State. Much of the land in cultivation is capable of netting each year, with only fair cultivation in tobacco, etc., one thousand dollars per acre. These lands have had, and soon should have again, a value of from two to five hundred and often one thousand dollars per acre.
"Cuba (under Spanish semi-barbaric rule for four hundred years) could be transformed from a graveyard of open graves, the feeding- ground and paradise of vultures, to the richest and most ideally beautiful and most enchanting spot on the face of the earth, with a prosperous population on a high plane of civilization. Even the tropical diseases in Havana and other coast cities would disappear before modern methods of sanitation. In general, outside of a few cities, the island is healthful, notwithstanding the contaminating effect of the pestilential cities. Yellow fever, smallpox, and a few infectious diseases exist here continually, but they soon would disappear.
"The property owners, in spite of high taxes, have lived in this island in 'barbaric luxury,' partaking somewhat of splendor. This will be the case again, and much intensified, when touched by a civilization that regards the rights of man.
"The ease and comfort possible in such a place as this are too great to be appreciated by such plain hard-working persons as you and I. But——