n, U. S. N., Commanding Fleet before
Havana._

ADMIRAL: But for the introduction kindly proffered by our mutual
acquaintance Captain Harrington, I should scarcely presume to
address you. He will have made known to you the subject which I
desire to bring to your gracious consideration.

Papers forwarded by direction of our government will have shown the
charge intrusted to me, viz., to get food to the starving people of
Cuba. I have with me a cargo of fourteen hundred tons, under the
flag of the Red Cross, the one international emblem of neutrality
and humanity known to civilization. Spain knows and regards it.

Fourteen months ago the entire Spanish government at Madrid cabled
me permission to take and distribute food to the suffering people
in Cuba. This official permission was broadly published. If read by
our people, no response was made and no action taken until two
months ago, when, under the humane and gracious call of our honored
President, I did go and distribute food, unmolested anywhere on the
island, until arrangements were made by our government for all
American citizens to leave Cuba. Persons must now be dying there by
hundreds, if not thousands, daily, for want of the food we are
shutting out. Will not the world hold us accountable? Will history
write us blameless? Will it not be said of us that we completed the
scheme of extermination commenced by Weyler?

Fortunately, I know the Spanish authorities in Cuba,
Captain-General Blanco and his assistants. We parted with perfect
friendliness. They do not regard me as an American merely, but as
the national representative of an international treaty to which
they themselves are signatory and under which they act. I believe
they would receive and confer with me if such a thing were made
possible.

I should like to ask Spanish permission and protection to land and
distribute food now on the _State of Texas_. Could I be permitted
to ask to see them under flag of truce? If we make the effort and
are refused, the blame rests with them; if we fail to make it, it
rests with us. I hold it good statesmanship at least to divide the
responsibility. I am told that some days must elapse before our
troops can be in position to reach and feed these starving people.
Our food and our forces ar