“I am not urging that,” Arkwright interrupted anxiously; “the Cubans themselves do not agree as to that, and in any event it is an afterthought. Our object now should be to prevent further bloodshed. If you see a man beating a boy to death, you first save the boy’s life and decide afterward where he is to go to school. If there were any one else, senator,” Arkwright continued earnestly, “I would not trouble you. But we all know your strength in this country. You are independent and fearless, and men of both parties listen to you. Surely, God has given you this great gift of oratory, if you will forgive my speaking so, to use only in a great cause. A grand organ in a cathedral is placed there to lift men’s thoughts to high resolves and purposes, not to make people dance. A street organ can do that. Now, here is a cause worthy of your great talents, worthy of a Daniel Webster, of a Henry Clay.”
The senator frowned at the fire and shook his head doubtfully.
“If they knew what I was down there for,” he asked, “wouldn’t they put me in prison too?”
Arkwright laughed incredulously.
“Certainly not,” he said; “you would go there as a private citizen, as a tourist to look on and observe. Spain is not seeking complications of that sort. She has troubles enough without imprisoning United States senators.”
“Yes; but these fevers now,” persisted Stanton, “they’re no respecter of persons, I imagine. A United States senator is not above smallpox or cholera.”
Arkwright shook his head impatiently and sighed.
“It is difficult to make it clear to one who has not been there,” he said. “These people and soldiers are dying of fever because they are forced to live like pigs, and they are already sick with starvation. A healthy man like yourself would be in no more danger than you would be in walking through the wards of a New York hospital.”
Senator Stanton turned in his armchair, and held up his hand impressively.
“If I were to tell them the things you have told me,” he said warningly, “if I were to say I have seen such things—American property in flames, American interests ruined, and that five times as many women and children have died of fever and starvation in three months in Cuba as the Sultan has massacred in Armenia in three years—it would mean war with Spain.”