The whole matter of Cuba under Spanish rule is a disgrace to the age we live in. But (call it spread-eagleism if you like) the United States now has the affair in hand. It can and will right this wrong, and so effectively that there will be no possibility of its recurrence. CHAPTER XI. TWO METHODS OF WARFARE: THE SPANISH AND THE CUBAN. Now let us turn to the one crime, so-called, that has been alleged against the Cubans. We refer to the burning of the sugar crops. That this has been done on each and every occasion, no one will deny. At first glance, it seems an act of vandalism. But is it so? Let us examine carefully into the causes and reasons for it. The Spaniards claim that it is a notable example of the reckless and uncivilized methods of the insurgents. On the contrary, it is a policy which was carefully planned and systematically carried out by Gomez and the other Cuban leaders. In a proclamation by Gomez, he ordered his lieutenants to burn the sugar plantations, but he did not tell them to destroy the mills, because he did not wish, in case of his succeeding in his purpose of liberating Cuba, to lay the producers flat upon their backs, from which position they could never, or, only with the utmost difficulty, arise. The destruction of the sugar cane was a necessity of war. It must be remembered that from the sugar crop Spain has received her largest revenue from Cuba, and to cut off this source of revenue is to cripple Spain and take away from her a large sum of money with which she might otherwise wage warfare. To show that the damage wrought is by no means irreparable, we cannot do better than quote Baron Antomarchi, a Frenchman who lived for a long time in Cuba, was there during the early part of the present insurrection, and knows of what he is speaking: "Since the suppression of slavery, and as a result of the high price of labor the work of sugar making had been modified. In former times a sugar planter considered his plantation his most necessary possession. After the process of manufacture was modified, it was his sugar mill upon which he depended; his plantation was less important. So in burning the sugar crop, Gomez did not strike a death-blow at the producer. It is a well known fact that when the cane growth is cut by fire and the fields are burnt close to the ground, the yield of the following season is increased and improved; so we see that Gomez did not ruin the country when he burned the plantations. True, the fields have been burned, but they will spring up with a more vigorous luxuriance after the rest which was one of the conditions imposed upon the first agricultural community of which we have any reliable record, and if the mills which Gomez has left intact are not destroyed by some authority equally potent, when the country is reorganized, the sugar industry may flourish to a degree undreamed of before the Cuban war for liberty."