says in his book: "The
Real Condition of Cuba To-day."

"In the western provinces, we find between three and four hundred
thousand people penned up in starvation stations and a prey to all kinds
of epidemic diseases. They are without means and without food, and with
only the shelter that the dried palm-leaves of their hastily erected
bohios afford, and in the rainy season that is now upon them, there is
no shelter at all. They have less clothing than the Patagonian savages,
and, half naked, they sleep upon the ground, exposed to the noxious
vapors which these low-lying swamp-lands emit. They have no prospect
before them but to die, or, what is more cruel, to see those of their
own flesh and blood dying about them, and to be powerless to succor and
to save. About these starvation stations the savage sentries pace up and
down with ready rifle and bared machete, to shoot down and to cut up any
one who dares to cross the line. And yet, who are these men who are shot
down in the night like midnight marauders? And why is it they seek, with
all the desperate courage of despair, to cross that line where death is
always awaiting their coming, and almost invariably overtakes them? They
are attempting nothing that history will preserve upon its imperishable
tablets, or even this passing generation remember. No, they are simply
attempting to get beyond the starvation lines, to dig their potatoes and
yams, to bring home again to the hovel in which their families are
housed with death and hunger all about them. And they do their simple
duty, not blinded as to the danger, or without warning as to their
probable fate, for hardly an hour of their interminable day passes
without their hearing the sharp click of the trigger and the hoarse cry
of the sentry which precede the murderous volley; and every morning,
through the narrow, filthy lanes upon which the huts have been erected
the guerillas, drive along the pack-mules bearing the mutilated bodies
of those who have been punished cruelly for the crime of seeking food to
keep their children from starvation. This colossal crime, with all the
refinement of slow torture, is so barbarous, so bloodthirsty and yet so
exquisite, that the human mind refuses to believe it, and revolts at the
suggestion that it was conceived, planned and plotted by a man. And yet
this crime, this murder of thousands of innocent men, women and
children, is now being daily committed in Cuba, at our very doors and
we