They tell us, Sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.  But, when shall we be stronger?  Will it be the next week, or the next year?  Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?  Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?  Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?  Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.  Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.  Besides, Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone.  There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.  The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.  Besides, Sir, we have no election.  If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest.  There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery.  Our chains are forged!  Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston!  The war is inevitable—­and let it come!  I repeat it, Sir, let it come!—­It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter.  Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—­but there is no peace.  The war is actually begun!  The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!  Our brethren are already in the field.  Why stand we here, idle?  Is life so dear, is peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, Almighty God!  I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.

—­Patrick Henry.

The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true.  They can all be duplicated by the thousands.  I never before saw, and please God, I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Matanzas.  I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in their despairing eyes.  Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them....  Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger.  Their only appeal comes from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls.

The Government of Spain has not appropriated and will not appropriate one dollar to save these people.  They are now being attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the United States.  Think of the spectacle!  We are feeding the citizens of Spain; we are nursing their sick; we are saving such as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say it is right for us to send food, but we must keep hands off.  I say that the time has come when muskets ought to go with the food....