The efforts of Spain were increased, both by the despatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase, happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples.  The policy of devastation and concentration by the Captain-General’s bando of October, 1896, in the province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military operations.  The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops.  The raising and moving of provisions of all kinds were interdicted.  The fields were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in short, everything that could desolate the land and render it unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or the other of the contending parties and executed by all the powers at their disposal.

By the time the present administration took office a year ago, reconcentration—­so-called—­had been made effective over the better part of the four central and western provinces, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana and Piuar del Rio.  The agricultural population, to the estimated number of 300,000, or more, was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions.  As the scarcity of food increased with the devastation of the depopulated areas of production, destitution and want became misery and starvation.

Terrible increase in the death rate.

Month by month the death rate increased in an alarming ratio.  By March, 1897, according to conservative estimate from official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados, from starvation and the diseases thereto incident, exceeded 50 per centum of their total number.  No practical relief was accorded to the destitute.  The overburdened towns, already suffering from the general dearth, could give no aid.

In this state of affairs my administration found itself confronted with the grave problem of its duty.  My message of last December reviewed the situation, and narrated the steps taken with a view to relieving its acuteness and opening the way to some form of honorable settlement.  The assassination of the Prime Minister, Canovas, led to a change of government in Spain.  The former administration, pledged to subjugation without concession, gave place to that of a more liberal party, committed long in advance to a policy of reform involving the wider principle of home rule for Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The overtures of this government made through its new Envoy, General Woodford, and looking to an immediate and effective amelioration of the condition of the island, although not accepted to the extent of admitted mediation in any shape, were met by assurances that home rule, in an advanced phase, would be forthwith offered to Cuba, without waiting for the war to end, and that more humane methods should henceforth prevail in the conduct of hostilities.