rk at midnight you can reach Tampa on the second
day. From Tampa we cross in another day to Havana. There you can visit
the Americans imprisoned in Morro and Cabanas, and in the streets you
can see the starving pacificos. From Havana I shall take you by rail to
Jucaro, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Cienfuegos. You will not be able
to see the insurgents in the fields--it is not necessary that you
should--but you can visit one of the sugar plantations and some of the
insurgent chiefs will run the forts by night and come in to talk with
you. I will show you burning fields and houses, and starving men and
women by the thousands, and men and women dying of fevers. You can see
Cuban prisoners shot by a firing squad and you can note how these rebels
meet death. You can see all this in three weeks and be back in New York
in a month, as any one can see it who wishes to learn the truth. Why,
English members of Parliament go all the way to India and British
Columbia to inform themselves about those countries, they travel
thousands of miles, but only one member of either of our houses of
Congress has taken the trouble to cross these eighty miles of water that
lie between us and Cuba. You can either go quietly and incognito, as
it were, or you can advertise the fact of your going, which would be
better. And from the moment you start the interest in your visit will
grow and increase until there will be no topic discussed in any of our
papers except yourself, and what you are doing and what you mean to do.

"By the time you return the people will be waiting, ready and eager to
hear whatever you may have to say. Your word will be the last word for
them. It is not as though you were some demagogue seeking notoriety, or
a hotel piazza correspondent at Key West or Jacksonville. You are the
only statesman we have, the only orator Americans will listen to, and I
tell you that when you come before them and bring home to them as
only you can the horrors of this war, you will be the only man in this
country. You will be the Patrick Henry of Cuba; you can go down to
history as the man who added the most beautiful island in the seas to
the territory of the United States, who saved thousands of innocent
children and women, and who dared to do what no other politician has
dared to do--to go and see for himself and to come back and speak the
truth. It only means a month out of your life, a month's trouble and
discomfort, but with no risk. What is a mont