During the six months which have passed since the date of that message the condition of the insurgents has not improved, and the insurrection itself, although not subdued, exhibits no signs of advance, but seems to be confined to an irregular system of hostilities, carried on by small and illy armed bands of men, roaming without concentration through the woods and the sparsely populated regions of the island, attacking from ambush convoys and small bands of troops, burning plantations and the estates of those not sympathizing with their cause.

But if the insurrection has not gained ground, it is equally true that Spain has not suppressed it.  Climate, disease, and the occasional bullet have worked destruction among the soldiers of Spain; and although the Spanish authorities have possession of every seaport and every town on the island, they have not been able to subdue the hostile feeling which has driven a considerable number of the native inhabitants of the island to armed resistance against Spain, and still leads them to endure the dangers and the privations of a roaming life of guerrilla warfare.

On either side the contest has been conducted, and is still carried on, with a lamentable disregard of human life and of the rules and practices which modern civilization has prescribed in mitigation of the necessary horrors of war.  The torch of Spaniard and of Cuban is alike busy in carrying devastation over fertile regions; murderous and revengeful decrees are issued and executed by both parties.  Count Valmaseda and Colonel Boet, on the part of Spain, have each startled humanity and aroused the indignation of the civilized world by the execution, each, of a score of prisoners at a time, while General Quesada, the Cuban chief, coolly and with apparent unconsciousness of aught else than a proper act, has admitted the slaughter, by his own deliberate order, in one day, of upward of 650 prisoners of war.

A summary trial, with few, if any, escapes from conviction, followed by immediate execution, is the fate of those arrested on either side on suspicion of infidelity to the cause of the party making the arrest.

Whatever may be the sympathies of the people or of the Government of the United States for the cause or objects for which a part of the people of Cuba are understood to have put themselves in armed resistance to the Government of Spain, there can be no just sympathy in a conflict carried on by both parties alike in such barbarous violation of the rules of civilized nations and with such continued outrage upon the plainest principles of humanity.

We can not discriminate in our censure of their mode of conducting their contest between the Spaniards and the Cubans.  Each commit the same atrocities and outrage alike the established rules of war.

The properties of many of our citizens have been destroyed or embargoed, the lives of several have been sacrificed, and the liberty of others has been restrained.  In every case that has come to the knowledge of the Government an early and earnest demand for reparation and indemnity has been made, and most emphatic remonstrance has been presented against the manner in which the strife is conducted and against the reckless disregard of human life, the wanton destruction of material wealth, and the cruel disregard of the established rules of civilized warfare.