THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 220 fact, a heroic one— is a young manof the name ofJose Amohedo,whose father and motherhave died attending to the suffering poor, and who himself has givenup eight houses that belonged to himas dwelling-placesfor the Reconcentrados, all the contents of a grocery store that he possessed, and who is actually as destitute as they are,but alwaysattendingto those whosuffer."

Finally, Consul Barker reports from the once prosperous district of Santa Clara,in the centre of the island:— ground were cut down at close quarters. One was youngFrancisco Gomez, the son of the old rebel leader. When the Cubans returned to the abandoned field they found his body with the head split in two, only a shred of skin at the nose holding it together. Maceo lay where the bulletshad struck him down. TheSpaniards had not recognisedhim,and thebody wasburied side by side with that of young Gomez in a spot of which faithful friends kept the secret till the war was over. Maceo was the bravest andbest soldier the Cuban insurrection had produced. An attempt was made to attribute his death to treachery. It was said he had been lured into an ambush by the Spaniards. But there was no truth in the story.

Help for the rebels from abroad was arriving less frequently, and in the winter of 1896-97 the concentration system had temporarily disorganised the resources of the insurrection in the island. President Cleveland stillsethis face against intervention in Cuba. His successor, who would assume office in the spring, was supposed to hold more sympathetic views towardsFree Cuba,but so long as Cleveland was at the White House he held back the war party. On December 7th,1896— the very day on which Maceo was kiiled— the Cuban cause received another check in the President's last message to Congress. Referringtotheresolution of the Senate, he said that the proposal to recognise the insurgents as belligerents was " untimely and impracticable," but added that the Government had given a friendly intimation to Spain thatif autonomy were grantedtoCuba, the United States would use its good offices to secure the success of the measure. The President annexed to his message a report from Mr. Olney,his Secretary of State, which further explained the reasons against recognising the Cubans as belligerents:— "So far as our information goes," he said, "not only is thereno effectivelocal government by the insurgents in the territory they overrun, but there is not even a tangible pretence to establish an administration anywhere. The machinery for exercising the legitimate rights andpowersofsovereignty and the corresponding obligations which a de facto sovereignty entails areconspicuously lacking."

Thus, when i8q6 closed, the prospects of Cuba Libre were anything but inviting. Yet the dawnof a new era was close at hand. The next year brought withit changes which made the freedom of the island inevitable.

" The number of persons in actual want exceeds any estimateIhave sent to the Department. The distress is simply heartrending. Whole families, without clothing to hide their nakedness, sleeping on the ground, without beddingof any kind, without food, save such as we have been ableto reach with provisions sent by our noble people; and the most distressing feature is thatfully fifty percent, areill,without medicalattention or medicine."

Granting that much of this poverty and suffering was the outcome of the state of war, and eventhat the rebels themselves by destroying the sugar plantations were responsible for some of the existingmisery, it is clear that the most of it wasdirectly due to the wayin which theConcentrationOrderwasexecuted,andthelack of due care for those who were forced to obeyit.

It was, however, only gradually that men, either in America or in Europe, realised that this wasthe result of Weyler's system. At first he seemed to be obtaining a certain amount of success. Marti, the best organiser in the rebel ranks, wassurprised andkilledwhile on the wayr to the coast, where he intended to embark for New York as theenvoy of the Cuban Republic. Maceo, the dashing guerilla leader, was killed in a skirmish at Punta Brava in the province of Havana. The insurrection had been reduced to averylow ebb in the neighbourhood of the capital, and Maceo, who was then in the Pinar del Rio district, resolved to pass the Mariel trochaandreorganisetherebellionroundHavana. He took withhim only a party of twelveofficers and four servants. They got round thenorthern endof the trochaby embarking inaflat-bottomed boatonthe Bay ofMariel onDecember 4th,1896. Hethen joined oneof the rebel bands,and was moving nearPunta Brava three days later when he was attackedby a detachment of the Spanish regiment of San Quentin. Early in the fight a volley fired at close quarters killed Maceo and several of his comrades. A stampede followed, and some of the officers who stoodtheir