“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” and every Cuban patriot who has fallen in this conquest of extermination has but added fuel to the fires of liberty, which are sweeping Spanish rule from the island, leaving the tyrants nothing but the ashes of their hopes.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Weyler’s reconcentration policy and its horrors.

The Object of the Plan—­Slaves of Spain—­The Massacre of the Innocents—­Deserted Fields and Farms—­A Fearful Mortality—­The Cubans the Oldest Americans of Caucasian Blood—­Women and Children Doomed to Die—­An Appeal for Help—­Our Manifest Duty.

When General Weyler promulgated his policy of reconcentration he hypocritically claimed that it was intended to protect the noncombatant peasantry of the island, but his sole object was to compel them to put themselves wholly in the power of the Spanish officials.  No one knew better than the “Butcher” that the Cuban peasant, no matter what he might publicly profess, was bound with all his heart to the cause of free Cuba, and that he never lost an opportunity to aid the insurgents by every means in his power.  And when he formulated the plan compelling them to abandon their homes in the rural districts, and to herd like sheep in the cities and towns which were still under his rule, it was to prevent them from giving aid and information to the rebels.  He must have known that the enforcement of this edict meant certain starvation to thousands of the inoffensive inhabitants, but no thought of the misery and injustice which he thus wrought upon them deterred him in his determination to crush the unhappy people, and keep them still the slaves of Spain.

The order found a very large proportion of the working classes absolutely destitute of money, and the men, knowing there was no work for them in the towns, hesitated about going with their families, while they did not dare to remain in their poor homes, where, at least, they could be sure of food.  The consequence was that thousands of homes were deserted.  The women and children were sent to the towns to look out for themselves as best they could, while the men joined the insurgent army.  In a number of cases wives refused to be separated from their husbands, and followed them into the ranks of the revolutionists, where they fought like the Amazons of old.  Some of them found a melancholy pleasure in nursing the sick and wounded, others fought side by side with the men, and the fear of death was not half as strong as the thoughts of the horrors which awaited them at their homes, or among the reconcentrados in the towns.  Marriages have been solemnized, and children have been born upon the fields of battle.  Spain is nursing a forlorn hope when she counts on subduing patriots like these.

Women and children doomed to die.