The victory was a notable one, especially as Weyler had cabled his government that Tunas was impregnable. Its fall gave rise to much harsh criticism and bitter feeling in Spain. Weyler was constantly proclaiming the "pacification" of certain provinces, statements that were most transparently absurd and false. He even immediately followed up his proclamations by the most severe and brutal measures in those very provinces. Finally even Madrid, to whom it would have mattered little if the policy had proved a success, became convinced that Weyler's savage procedure was a failure. The butcher had gained absolutely no advantage, but had simply been the cause of untold and undeserved suffering. The insurrection, taking it all for all, was just as strong, if not stronger, than it was the day Weyler arrived in Cuba. So, in October, 1897, he was withdrawn from his post, and summoned back to Spain. It is to be hoped that the world will never again witness such a shameful and shameless exhibition as was his administration. Before dismissing him from these pages, let us quote from Stephen Bonsal, with whose words no unprejudiced person can quarrel. Mr. Bonsal says: "Should they be wise, and they will have a moment of clairvoyance soon, or they will disappear as a nation, the Spaniards should seek to cast a mantle of oblivion and forgetfulness about the wretched name of Weyler and all the ignoble deeds that have characterized his rule. While it cannot be expected that the bishop will be displaced by the butcher, there is one whom Weyler will displace upon his unenviable pinnacle of prominence in the temple of infamy, and that is Alva. His name is destined to become in every tongue that is spoken by civilized people a synonym of bloody, relentless and pitiless war waged upon American soil, upon the long-disused methods of the Vandals and the Visigoths; and Alva, who had the cruel spirit of his age and a sincere fanaticism as his excuse, will step down and out into an oblivion which will doubtless be grateful to his shade, and most certainly so to those who bear his execrated name. "I could ask no more terrible punishment for him (Weyler) than many years of life to listen to the voices of despair he has heard ring out upon his path through Cuba; to hear again and ever the accusing voices which no human power can hush, and to review the scenes of suffering which he has occasioned which no human power can obliterate from his memory." CHAPTER XIII. AMERICA'S CHARITY AND SPAIN'S DIPLOMACY. The new governor-general of Cuba was Don Ramon Blanco, as to whose character accounts differ. It is probable that while he is not the high-minded, honorable gentleman that Campos was, he is far, very far from being such an unmitigated beast as his predecessor. Before he reached Cuba, which was the last of October, 1897, he stated in an interview: