on had been established. The amendment to
the Joint Resolution of April 20, 1898, disclaimed "any disposition or
intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said
Island except for the pacification thereof," etc. The island was pacified.
The amendment asserted, further, the determination of the United States,
pacification having been accomplished, "to leave the government and control
of the island to its people." There was no pledge of any prolonged course
of education in principles and methods of self-government. Nor did such
education play any appreciable part in the experience of the American
military government. The work of the interventors had been done in
accordance with the specifications, and the Cubans were increasingly
restless under a control that many of them, with no little reason, declared
to be as autocratic as any ever exercised by Spain. Transfer and departure
seemed to be the politic if not the only course, and we transferred and
departed.

That these people, entirely without experience or training in
self-government, should make mistakes was quite as inevitable as it is that
a child in learning to walk will tumble down and bump its little nose. In
addition to the inevitable mistakes, there have been occasional instances
of deplorable misconduct on the part of individuals and of political
parties. For neither mistakes nor misconduct can we criticize or condemn
them without a similar criticism or condemnation of various experiences in
our own history. We should, at least, regard them with charity. There are,
moreover, incidents in the two experiences of American control of the
island that, at least, border on the unwise and the discreditable. The only
issue yet developed in Cuba is between good government and bad politics.
The first President started admirably along the line of the former, and
ended in a wretched tangle of the latter, though not at all by his own
choice or direction. Official pre-eminence and a "government job" make
quite the same appeal to the Cubans that they do to many thousands
of Americans. So do raids on the national treasury, and profitable
concessions. We see these motes in Cuban eyes somewhat more clearly than
we see the beams in our own eyes. A necessarily slow process of political
education is going on among the people, but in the meantime the
situation has afforded opportunity for exploitation by an assortment
of self-constituted political leaders who have