0,000 troops in Cuba and to garrison every place that she
retained.

[Illustration: ALASKA, THE PHILIPPINES, AND THE SEAT OF THE SPANISH WAR]

Through 1895 and 1896 the war dragged on with no prospect of victory for
the authorities and with growing interest on the part of the United
States. Public sympathy was with the Cubans, and news from the front was
so much desired that enterprising papers sent their correspondents to
the scene of action. The reports of these, almost without exception,
magnified the character and promise of the native leaders and attacked
the policy of the Spanish forces of repression.

The insurgents began, in 1895, a policy of terror, destroying the cane
in the fields of loyalists and burning their sugar mills. To protect the
loyalists and repress the rebels the Queen Regent sent General Valeriano
Weyler to the island in 1896, with orders to end the war. Weyler replied
to devastation with concentration. Unable to separate the loyal natives
from the disloyal, or to prevent the latter from aiding the rebels, he
gathered the suspected population into huge concentration camps,
fortified his towns and villages with sentinels and barbed-wire fences,
and endeavored to depopulate the area outside his lines. American public
opinion, unused for a generation to the sight of war, was shocked by the
suffering in the camps and was aroused in moral protest. Sympathy with
the insurgents grew in 1896 and 1897, as exaggerated tales of hardship
and brutality were circulated by the "yellow" newspapers. The evidence
was one-sided and incomplete, and often dishonest, but it was effective
in steering a rising public opinion toward ultimate intervention.

The nearness of the contest brought the trouble to the United States
Government through the enforcement of the neutrality laws. There was no
public war, and Spain was thus unable to seize or examine American
vessels until they entered actual Cuban waters. It was easy to run the
Spanish blockade and take supplies to the rebel forces, which was a
permissible trade. It was easy, too, to organize and send out
filibustering parties, which were highly illegal, and which the United
States tried to stop. Out of seventy-one known attempts, the United
States broke up thirty-three, while other Powers, including Spain,
caught only eleven. Enough landed to be a material aid to the natives
and to embitter Spain in her criticism of the United States. Cleveland
issued proclamations