egree of protection or supervision over Cuba. It had repeatedly
forbidden European powers to meddle with the island, and had for many
years guaranteed and protected Spain in her possession of it. It was
held to be only reasonable that a similar degree of interest should be
maintained in the island in its independent status. The second point was
that in the Treaty of Paris in 1898 the United States had incurred a
certain moral if not a legal responsibility for the future of Cuba. The
third was the much less specific yet by no means negligible
consideration that the United States had intervened in Cuba to put an
end to conditions which had become intolerably offensive to it, and it
was therefore equitably entitled to take all proper precautions against
a recurrence of such conditions.

In pursuance of the requirements of the call for the Convention, then,
immediately after the signing of the Constitution, a committee was
appointed to draft a project concerning relations with the United
States. It consisted of Diego Tamayo, Gonzalo de Quesada, Juan Gualberto
Gomez, Enrique Villuendas, and Manuel Ramon Silva. These gentlemen
conferred with General Wood, to learn the wishes of President McKinley,
and then drafted a scheme which they presented to the Convention and
which that body adopted on February 27. Unfortunately between the
President's wishes and the committee's project there were radical
differences. The President, through his Secretary of War, Elihu Root,
had on February 9 expressed with much circumstance and detail and a
wealth of argument the relationship which the United States government
regarded as essential. It amounted to this: That the Cuban government
should never make any treaty or engagement which would impair its
independence, nor make any special agreement with any foreign power
without the consent of the United States; that it should contract no
public debt in excess of the capacity of the ordinary revenues of the
island; that the United States should have the right of intervention for
the preservation of Cuban independence and the maintenance of a stable
government; that all the acts of the American Military Administration
should be validated; and that the United States should be permitted to
acquire and to hold naval stations in Cuba at certain points.

The Committee of the Convention reported that in its judgment some of
these conditions were unacceptable, inasmuch as they impaired the
independence o