om Marianao to Guanajay, out of many stately
country residences, only one was left standing. Villages were destroyed and
hamlets were wrecked. On one of his expeditions in December, 1896, Maceo
was killed near Punta Brava, within fifteen miles of Havana. Gomez planned
this westward sweep, from Oriente, six hundred miles away, but to Antonio
Maceo belongs a large part of the credit for its execution. The weakness of
the Ten Years' War was that it did not extend beyond the thinly populated
region of the east; Gomez and Maceo carried their war to the very gates of
the Spanish strongholds. There were occasional conflicts that might well be
called battles, but much of it was carried on by the Cubans by sudden and
unexpected dashes into Spanish camps or moving columns, brief but sometimes
bloody encounters from which the attacking force melted away after
inflicting such damage as it could. Guerrilla warfare is not perhaps a
respectable method of fighting. It involves much of what is commonly
regarded as outlawry, of pillage and of plunder, of destruction and
devastation. These results become respectable only when attained through
conventional processes, and are in some way supposed to be ennobled by
those processes. But they sometimes become the only means by which the weak
can meet the strong. Such they seemed to be in the Cuban revolt against
the Spaniards, when Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo made guerrilla warfare
almost a military science. Gomez formulated his plan of campaign, but, with
the means at his disposal, its successful execution was possible only by
the methods adopted. At all events, it succeeded. The Cubans were not
strong enough to drive Spain out of the island by force of arms, but they
showed themselves unconquerable by the Spanish troops. They had once
carried on a war for ten years in a limited area; by the methods adopted,
they could repeat that experience practically throughout the island. They
could at least keep insurrection alive until Spain should yield to their
terms, or until the United States should be compelled to intervene. No
great movements, but constant irritation, and the suspension of all
industry, was the policy adopted and pursued for the year 1897.

But there was another side to it all, a different line of activity.
Immediately after his arrival on the island, on April 11, 1895, Marti
had issued a call for the selection of representatives to form a civil
government. He was killed before t