s of suffering
which he has occasioned which no human power can obliterate from his
memory."

CHAPTER XIII.

AMERICA'S CHARITY AND SPAIN'S DIPLOMACY.

The new governor-general of Cuba was Don Ramon Blanco, as to whose
character accounts differ. It is probable that while he is not the
high-minded, honorable gentleman that Campos was, he is far, very far
from being such an unmitigated beast as his predecessor.

Before he reached Cuba, which was the last of October, 1897, he stated
in an interview:

"My policy will never include concentration. I fight the enemy, not
women and children. One of the first things I shall do will be to allow
the reconcentrados to go out of the town and till the soil."

This sounds very just and right, but, as a matter of fact, the policy
enounced was never carried out, not even in minor particulars. The
persecution of the pacificos remained as bitter and relentless as ever.

Perhaps General Blanco is not entirely to blame for this, as the
pressure brought to bear against his expressed ideas both by the home
government and by the "peninsulars" in Havana, who had been in full
accord with the methods of the "Butcher," was so strong as scarcely to
be resisted.

Blanco issued an amnesty proclamation soon after his arrival in Havana,
but the insurgents paid little or no attention. Their experience in
such matters in the past had been too stern to be forgotten.

In the field, Blanco was also most unsuccessful, gaining nothing but
petty victories of no value whatever. The pay of the Spanish soldiers
was terribly in arrears, and their rations were of the most meagre
description. No wonder that they were disheartened, and in no condition
to fight.

In a word, Blanco absolutely failed, as completely as had his
predecessors, in quelling the rebellion.

The people of the United States were becoming more and more enraged at
the atrocities committed at their very door, and more and more anxious
that the Cubans should have the independence which they themselves had
achieved.

Moreover, there was a large number of Americans in the island who were
made to suffer from the policy of reconcentration. Citizens of the
United States, a large number of them being naturalized Americans, were
constantly being seized and imprisoned, on suspicion alone, no proof
whatever being advanced, of their furnishing aid and comfort to the
insurgents. They were placed in filthy cells, no communication with the