EFFECTS OF THE WAR IN CUBA 405 of the island will not profit much by being governed on the methods that prevail in certain southern states of the American Union. Yet consideringthe conduct of the insurgent leaders, their methods of warfare, their incapacity to restrain their followers from acts of the most hideouscruelty, it wouldhavebeen amisfortune to the world if the Government of the United States hadlistened to the clamour of those who endeavoured to pledge the country to the establishment of an independent Cuba. It one side or the other, " the effects of slavery are discernible throughout the island,and cannot be eradicated untilat least one generationafter the abolition of the system has passed away. For many years Cuba, in common with other West India Islands, enjoyed the monopoly of supplying a large part of the world with sugar, and the profits accruing were enormous. By the sugar industry families of great wealth and influence werebuilt up. For a time the civilisation of Cuba wasin many respects far in advance THE FRUIT MARKET, HAVANA would have become in a few years another San Domingo.

The recent history of Cuba reveals very Strongly the essential weakness of a country that has been developed under the slave system. Finally abolished only thirteen years ago, Cuban slaver)- had, while it existed, ruined not so much the negroes as the wealthy white or creole families of the island who were their owners.

The result is that there is no native educated ruling class with sufficient public spirit and statesmanlike capacity to provide the rulei o) theland To quote the words of an American writer who by long residence knows Cuba well and has never taken any part in its politics on of the United States. The dwellings, both in the cities and on the sugar estates,were in many instances palatial, the furnishings and fittings gorgeous in the extreme, and the use of silver for all domestic utensils was quite common. Thus there existedin the island what might be termed a barbaric civilisation, as compared with what is known as a more domestic civilisationin this country. The line between the rich and the poor was sharply drawn. The disaffected and restless citizens of the island to-day are, to a great extent, the descendants of those rich families who, by reason of their profligacy, indolence, and neglect, have become almost extinct as a power in the land. There are. how-