Surely these men have shown their love of liberty in the fullest degree and have proved themselves in every way fitted for self-government. The Cubans, strange as the statement may seem to those who have studied the matter only in a cursory way, are not a people who love trouble. Though revolution after revolution has occurred in the island, the Cubans have never taken up arms until every peaceful means of redress had been resorted to. It has been feared that the negro element would be a disturbing influence, but we can see little or no reason for this dread. The same thing was said of the emancipation of the slaves in our own South, but certainly, taken altogether, the behavior of the colored race in the United States, since the Civil War, has been most praiseworthy. A Frenchman, Baron Antomarchi, who is naturally unprejudiced, says: "When the time for the settlement of the Cuban question shall have come it will be an affair of give and take between the whites and the negroes, and if the negro does not succeed in convincing the white man that he is entitled to a full measure of civil authority, a measure which by reason of his numerical strength he will have a right, under a republican government, to exact, then we may have to stand by while Cuba engages in an internal struggle important enough to cripple or, to say the least, seriously hinder, her development. Should the war come to an end and should Cuba be free to develop the riches of the land for which she is now battling, an American protectorate would prevent all dangers of race conflict. The United States would be under a moral obligation to avert disorder. Aside from all considerations of a commercial character there would be the obligation resulting from an adherence to consistency of conduct. The stand taken by the American legislators, or some of them, to say nothing of the stand taken by the American people, would make this latter obligation even still more binding. Not until her machetes shall have been returned to their original use can Cuba develop the riches bestowed upon her by Nature. After the dawn of peace, when her sons are free to settle down to the tranquil life of the untrammeled husbandman, there will be no hunted exiles in the long grass of her savannas. When Cuba has attained the quiet calm that her younger generation has never known, she will show the world that it was not for idle brigands that Maceo died. In the shadow of the feathered cocoa palms in the deep shade of the drooping heavy leaves where Gilard dreamed of liberty, great cities shall one day loom in the misty, tropic twilight, and peace shall brood over the land that now, seamed with the graves of Cuba's heroes, awaits the murdered bodies of Cuban victims. Not until that day has come will it be known how strong to endure torment and sorrow, how brave in time of danger, were the men who won the day for Cuban independence."