THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 214 have to withdraw to rest the men, getthe sick and wounded into hospital, and renew the supply of food and cartridges. In the more open country a band, if hard pressed, would break up,and the Spanish officers would perhaps be asking for information from negroes quietly working in the fields, who the day before had been guerillas in arms for Cuba, and who next week would take to their rifles again. Nay, in this strange war the tool that served for peaceful work was also oneof themost ordinary weaponsof civil war. For cutting the cane the labourer uses a heavy tool, half knife,half billhook, the machete; and when a rebel band surprised and closed with a Spanish patrol, it was the machete that didthe deadliest work.

with one hand, he might be ablewith theother to offer some measure of conciliation, and so detach the more moderate men from the revolutionary cause. But his promise that submission would be followed by reform convinced no one. It was not that men doubted his personal honesty. They said that the Convention of Zanjon had never beenfaithfully executed, because the will of the Marshal had been overruled by. the reactionary party. He hadpromised,but the Spanish Government had not kept the engagements he had made. It would be the same again. Even now he had to complain that the utterances of the extreme advocatesof repression,both at Havana and at Madrid, made it impossible for him to win over the Cubans. And the final result of this mixed policy of half-hearted repression and grudging concession was that nothing serious was accomplished. The cool season was passing by, and the rebels were stronger and more active than ever. They had proclaimed the Republic of Cuba, and announced the election of its first president. If the insurrection was to be crushed, something serious must be done, and at once. A sterner hand than that of the "pacificator " must be set to the work. With the new year of1896 there was a popular outcry inSpain for the recall of Martinez Campos. It was discussed in the Council of Ministers on January 16th, and two days later it was announced that the Marshal was to come home and Lieutenant-General Weyler was to take his place The attacks madeon the villagesand country towns by the rebels were usually attempts not to obtain possession of, but ,to destroy, them. This was especially the case in the west of Cuba, where the people were slow to take up arms. In the darkness a dropping fire would be opened from the bush on the blockhouses round the place; then there would be a dash between two of them, the torch would be set to the straw roofs, and the flame would leap from house to house, while the inmates rushed out half-naked, trying to save themselves and their children. As a rule, the rebels would retire without any attempt to rush the blockhouses, and the ruined villagers or townsfolk would have to take refuge in the nearest large garrisoned town. Thousands were thus driven into the towns by this terrible system of warfare long before Weyler's concentration order was heard of, and but for the charity of the townsfolk they would have starved.

Weyler came ofaGerman family, longsettled in Spain. He had a high reputation as a soldier, and had fought in every campaign in which the Spanish armyhad been engaged since he received his first commission. Part of his soldiering had been done in Cuba. His latest commandhad been in Catalonia, where he had made short work of a dangerous Anarchist conspiracy. There were grim tales of tortures inflicted by his ordersin the fortressof Monjuic in order toobtain evidence for the court-martial and to break up the plot. Whether the stories were true or not, the mere fact that Weyler was supposed to be quitecapable of using suchcruel methods shows whata character he had earned for merciless severity in dealing with rebellion. But it is only fair to the Spanish people to remember that to them this Cuban revolt seemedto belittle better than a negro rebellion, marked at its outset with murderous outrages against the partisans of Spain,and involvingin Once only Martinez Campos attempted a march into the interior of the rugged eastern province. He fell into an ambuscade, and retired with heavy losses, narrowly escaping death himself in the wild fighting in the bush. The Cubans counted his retreat a great victory for their cause;but,like all the other victories that they announced, it had no permanent result. Warfare of this kind might easily go on for half a century. But then the merefact of the rebellion lasting inany form wasenough for its leaders. The longer they could keep their flag flying the more hope was there of foreign intervention and eventualsuccess.

Marshal Martinez Campos, when he inaugurated his policy of mainly defensive warfare, sloped that, while he held the rebels in check