But if the insurrection has not gained ground, it is equally true that
Spain has not suppressed it. Climate, disease, and the occasional bullet
have worked destruction among the soldiers of Spain; and although the
Spanish authorities have possession of every seaport and every town on
the island, they have not been able to subdue the hostile feeling which
has driven a considerable number of the native inhabitants of the island
to armed resistance against Spain, and still leads them to endure the
dangers and the privations of a roaming life of guerrilla warfare.
On either side the contest has been conducted, and is still carried on,
with a lamentable disregard of human life and of the rules and practices
which modern civilization has prescribed in mitigation of the necessary
horrors of war. The torch of Spaniard and of Cuban is alike busy in
carrying devastation over fertile regions; murderous and revengeful
decrees are issued and executed by both parties. Count Valmaseda and
Colonel Boet, on the part of Spain, have each startled humanity and
aroused the indignation of the civilized world by the execution, each,
of a score of prisoners at a time, while General Quesada, the Cuban
chief, coolly and with apparent unconsciousness of aught else than a
proper act, has admitted the slaughter, by his own deliberate order,
in one day, of upward of 650 prisoners of war.
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