It is understood that any obligations assumed in this treaty by the United States with respect to Cuba are limited to the time of its occupancy thereof; but it will upon the termination of such occupancy advise any Government established in the island to assume the same obligations.
ARTICLE XVII
The present treaty shall be ratified by the President of the United States, by and with the consent of the Senate thereof, and by Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain; and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington within six months from the date hereof, or earlier if possible.
In faith whereof we, the respective plenipotentiaries, have signed this treaty, and have hereunto affixed our seals.
Done in duplicate at Paris the tenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight.
In pursuance of these terms the evacuation of Porto Rico, Cuba and of the Philippine Islands was carried to a successful end, under the supervision of the Evacuation Commissioners appointed by Spain.
After the peace treaty had been ratified by the American Senate and signed by President McKinley, on February 10, it received the signature of the Queen Regent on March 17, the Cortes having been prorogued.
In a Red Book on the peace treaty issued by the Government later in the year, Senor Rios thus explained Spain’s predicaments:
“The prostration and bloodless indifference of the public mind constantly alluded to in the press, the want of well meditated exposition of a high plane in the discussion and defense of Spain, especially those which related to the colonial debts, perhaps the most important which she had to assert in the conference; the multiplicity of opinions constantly manifested during these negotiations on the other points to be determined in the treaty; the eagerness apparent from the first day on the part of this press that the Philippine Archipelago should be abandoned, its preservation being considered incompatible with the national interests; the incessant excitation of another part of the press for this Commission to promptly terminate in any way whatever its labors, giving way at once to the exigencies of the Federal Government, and many other things which converted the Spanish press into a subject for the preferred attention of the American Commissioners, weakened the moral influence of this Commission and the force of its demands and of the reasons on which it founded them. Would to God that they may not also have strengthened the spirit of the American Commission to uphold and amplify its exactions!
“The Spanish Commission, considering the narrow limits in which it could move and which had been irrevocably fixed for Spain in the preliminaries of peace signed at Washington on August 12 last, during these negotiations constantly drew inspiration for its acts in the purpose to save from the ruin of the colonial empire of Spain such remnants as were possible, however lacking in importance these remnants might be, and, above all, in its unconquerable resolve to never consent that the honor and the dignity of the fatherland should become stained.