for an extensive road system, to be carried out as rapidly as the financial resources permitted.  Not unlike similar proceedings in this country, in river and harbor work and public buildings, politics came into the matter and, like our own under similar circumstances, each Congressman insisted that some of such work as could immediately be undertaken, some of the money that could be immediately spent, should benefit his particular district.  The result was that what was done by the Cubans was somewhat scattered, short stretches built here and there, new bridges built when there might or might not be a usable road to them.  The Cuban plan involved, for its completion, a period of years and a large appropriation.  It called for comparatively small yearly appropriations for many roads, for more than four hundred different projects.  Then came the Second Intervention, in 1906, with what has seemed to many of us an utterly unwise and unwarranted expenditure for the completion of certain selected projects included in the Cuban plan.  It may be granted that the roads were needed, some of them very much needed, but there are thousands of miles of unconstructed but much needed roads in the United States.  Yet, in this country, Federal, State, county, and town treasuries are not drained to their last dollar, and their credit strained, to build those roads.  From the drain on its financial resources, the island will recover, but the misfortune appears in the setting of a standard for Federal expenditure, in its total for all purposes amounting to about $40,000,000 a year, far beyond the reasonable or proper bearing power of the island.  But the work was done, the money spent, and the Cubans were committed to more work and to further expenditure.  I find no data showing with exactness the mileage completed by the Magoon government, which came to an end in January, 1909, but a Cuban official report made at the end of 1910 shows that the combined activities of the respective administrations, Spanish, American, and Cuban, had given the island, at that time, practically a thousand miles of improved highway, distributed throughout the island.

To see the real Cuba, one must get into the country.  Havana is the principal city, and for many it is the most interesting place on the island, but it is no more Cuba than Paris is France or than New York is the United States.  The real Cuba is rural; the real Cuban is a countryman, a man of the soil.  If he is rich, he desires to measure his possessions in caballerias of 33-1/3 acres; if poor, in hectareas of 2-1/2 acres.  I do not recall any Cuban cartoon representing the Cuban people that was not a picture of the peasant, the guajiro.  Cuba, as a political organism, is shown as a quite charming senorita, but el pueblo Cubano, the Cuban people, are shown as the man of the fields.  With the present equipment of railroads, trolley lines, automobile busses, and highways, little excursions