Liberty, therefore, has been won and paid for. By the very nature of things there can be no forcible annexation to the nation representing the absolute liberties of the people. If Cuba becomes part of the United States, it will be because the Cubans, having won their liberty, shall so decree. Intelligent Cubans understand this perfectly well and none better than the author referred to above. After reviewing the state of public opinion in Spain late in 1896 and the sentiments predominating in Cuba among the native population in regard to the mutual relations with the mother country, Mr. Figueras analyses the present situation, and considers that public opinion in Cuba is divided into three classes. Those wanting: 1. Immediate and absolute independence. 2. Independence under American protectorate. 3. Annexation, more or less immediate. He allows independence to be the ideal of all peoples, but considers Cuban independence to be still in embryo, and compares the sudden liberation of the island from Spanish dominion to a premature birth, brought on by American intervention and subject to the dangers attending its early advent at an unexpected time. The author contends that to form a nation it is important that the inhabitants shall have some common interests, usually apparent in countries where one element predominates. He finds that in Cuba there are three races equally strong: the autochthonic or white Cuban (pure white), the Cuban with unmistakable and acknowledged signs of black descent, and the white Spaniard; the first of which by its number, the second by its greater acclimation, and the third by its wealth preserve the balance. The fact that these people do not live in different provinces but in the same places makes this adjustment all the more noticeable. Sometimes in one house you will see a patriarchal Spanish father with conservative ideas in the same room with his son of high-flown, Robespierre-like ideas, convinced that a country progresses more in a year of revolution than in a century of peaceful campaigning; while in a dark corner the negro servant, a slave only yesterday, to-day free and taking an interest by no means meagre in the revolutionary legend, curses his colour but does not fail to realise how better fitted he is for rough work than his white neighbours. "And in the present situation which, pray, of these elements," the author asks, "is victorious? Which has conquered and is ready to take under its protecting ægis the other two? Is it perchance the revolutionary party that has had its work crowned with success and that can therefore force its criterion of independence on all the inhabitants? Facts answer this question negatively and it would be sheer madness to constitute one nation out of such heterogeneous elements."