THE NEW PLEDGE OF PEACE 225 The desultory warfarecontinued in the interior, but Blanco was not very active against the rebels. His hopes were in the direction of negotiation with the chiefs of a new convention like that which had ended the Ten Years' War. It was while things were in this state that the Maine arrived at Havana and the Vizcaya started for New York. This exchange of courtesies was taken to bea new pledgeof peace.

the Press and on the platform, and illustrated by pathetic photographs of the starving people, so that throughout the States there wasa strong wave of indignation against what was represented as the traditional cruelty of Spain. As for her promises of reform, it was declared that they were mere words. Nothing, it was said, wasbeing done to save the perishing people in the island. If theUnited States were not going seSor sagasta.

to take the whole matter in hand by turning the Spaniards out of Cuba and introducing a better system at once, the least that could be done was to send relief to the Reconcentrados. and to send American agents to administer it, for the .Spaniard could not be trusted. He would rob the wretchedpeople instead ofseeding them.

Marshal Blanco reported to his Government that the rebellion was on the wane. Numbers of the Cubans,be said,had declared themselves perfectly satisfied with thepromisedlocalgovernment system, and he hoped tohold theelections for the Cuban Assembly early in the new yeai.

Thefirst cloudarosefroma very small incident. A private letter from Sefior Dupuy de Lome, the Special Ambassador at Washington, in which he bitterly attacked theAmerican Government, was intercepted by the Cuban Junta and published in the Press. Cuban sympathisers . d that it was a new proofof the insincerity and double-dealingof Spain. Sagasta promptly disavowed Dupuy de Lome's sentiments, and recalled the ambassador, who had already sent in his resignation. SenorLuis Polo deBernabe, the on of a previous ambassador, who had, as a young man, resided at Washington, and who iersonally popular in America, was named 15