"Since the suppression of slavery, and as a result of the high price of
labor the work of sugar making had been modified. In former times a
sugar planter considered his plantation his most necessary possession.
After the process of manufacture was modified, it was his sugar mill
upon which he depended; his plantation was less important. So in burning
the sugar crop, Gomez did not strike a death-blow at the producer. It is
a well known fact that when the cane growth is cut by fire and the
fields are burnt close to the ground, the yield of the following season
is increased and improved; so we see that Gomez did not ruin the country
when he burned the plantations. True, the fields have been burned, but
they will spring up with a more vigorous luxuriance after the rest which
was one of the conditions imposed upon the first agricultural community
of which we have any reliable record, and if the mills which Gomez has
left intact are not destroyed by some authority equally potent, when the
country is reorganized, the sugar industry may flourish to a degree
undreamed of before the Cuban war for liberty."

Besides depriving Spain of her revenue, Gomez had another though a
lesser reason, for burning the sugar cane. He knew that those who were
thrown out of employment would flock to his standard, and his forces
thereby be greatly augmented.

On the whole, we do not see that the criticism and blame which have been
given to the insurgents for destroying the crops and for the time being
laying waste the land, are deserved. It was a measure of war, and one,
which it seems to us, under the circumstances, was thoroughly justified.

Now let us contrast, for a moment, the different methods of the
Spaniards and the Cubans in waging warfare.

In the first place, we do not mean to affirm that the insurgents have
not committed actions, which, in the light of civilization, are
indefensible, but they are few and far between, and they were forced
upon them. After all the horrors to which they were subjected, they
would have been less than human if they had not retaliated.

The Cubans, both in the Ten Years' War and in the present one, have been
merciful to those of the enemy who fell into their hands. The latter
have been almost invariably treated with kindness and allowed to go free
and unmolested.

But the Spaniards never reciprocated. It has been their invariable
policy not to exchange prisoners, a notable instance of this being their