Milk Vender.
It is six months since the American administration in Havana began, and in that time many important changes have been made and many more are well under way; and the new ideas that are eventually destined to supplant the customs of the last century are fast taking a firm hold on the country. Even for those who have tried to follow this progress in detail in the newspapers it is not easy to realize the full extent of what has been accomplished, or of the steady hard work that is going on. Very few bear in mind the fact that a comparatively large section of our regular army is engaged in it here and elsewhere in Cuba. Without the blare of trumpets and without the inspiring strains of music the same heroes that came home fever-stricken, wan, and worn from that terrible struggle before Santiago are again facing a more subtle danger and fighting none the less hard and all in the same cause, but now there are no flaring headlines in our daily press, no bulletins to tell of the fight, because it is only against an unseen foe and there is no noise—but the hard work is there. Regiment after regiment of the volunteers goes home, but these men who "serve for pay" are sent down to the island again before they have rid themselves of the fever contracted while standing knee-deep in water in the trenches around Santiago. Now, it is hard work all day long under a burning tropical sun and many nights of weary patrol in the pest-hole of all creation—plain hard work to start a republic on the list of nations, to teach a people how to govern themselves who have before known nothing but the lash. All honor is due to these men who are doing this work; and our people are too prone to forget it, simply because the actual results are not immediately and always in evidence.
I saw the Eighth United States Infantry, just plain regulars from nowhere, before El Caney, and again I saw them in Havana patrolling the streets night and day, with two nights a week in bed. The regiment had by no means recovered from the Santiago campaign, and every day some one would be taken with that bone-racking fever that burns the life slowly out unless checked by a transfer to a Northern clime. But with it all there was no complaining, and they were soldiers in these times as well as in the field. Every private seemed to have the success of the commanding general at heart, and every officer watched with pride the daily improvement in the capital city.
The Lieutenant-Governor's Palace.
Two of the largest sewers of the city empty into the harbor at this point.
The staff shares the danger with the line, and their work is the same steady, uninteresting grind. The engineers face death just as surely constructing sewers as they do digging trenches during an advance, the aides whether carrying despatches to a brigade on the firing line or reporting on some infested quarter in the city, and the surgeons whether attending the wounded at the front or Yellow Jack in some charity hospital. There is no glory for them if they succeed in this fight against death and disease, and they will get no thanks, for it is simply their duty.
Poultry Vender.
The work has been going steadily on and is now well in hand, but it will be a long time before we shall be able to turn the island over to the Cuban people, and we cannot withdraw our forces until every detail of the new government has been thoroughly tested. A generation of education seems to be the only solution of the Cuban problem that confronts the American people, that they may keep the promise made to the civilized world to establish a stable form of government for an excitable little nation that does not know its own mind, and that is so divided that internal strife is always inevitable. Not merely an education of letters is needed, but an education in cleanliness, in religion, and in respect for superior knowledge of affairs; and it is that education that the American army officer has been giving since the first day of January, in the face of obstacles thrown in the way by the very people who will eventually reap the benefits of his labors. That the American people should for any other object than personal gain want to cleanse their city, organize their government, and teach them how to rule themselves, does not seem possible to them, and it is on account of this distrust that the work of establishing order is made difficult and at many times disagreeable.