One more Cuban writer demands attention, prior to the War of Independence; though there were indeed many others of merit whose names might well be recalled if a bibliography of the island were to be compiled. Rafael Merchan was born in 1844, and was thus a mere youth when the Ten Years' War began to be planned; yet we must reckon him to have been perhaps the foremost patriotic journalist of that struggle. It was he who suggested the name "Laborers" which was at first commonly applied to the Cuban revolutionists. It will be recalled that in Cuba affairs were directed by a "Labor Committee," that in the United States societies of "Cuban Laborers" were formed in many cities, and that periodicals called _El Laborante_ were published. Proscribed and sentenced to death by the Spanish authorities, he found asylum in New York, and there edited the Cuban revolutionary journal, _La Revolucion_. Thence a few years later he went to Bogota, Colombia, to engage in business and also to continue his literary career. It was his good fortune to be able to resume his patriotic writings in 1890, when the War of Independence began to loom upon the horizon, and to write in 1895 and later several pamphlets in support of that struggle, some of which had much influence in both America and Great Britain. He lived to see the Cuban Republic securely established, and to go abroad as its Minister to France and Spain in 1902. His service was brief, however, because of ill health, which soon brought him home to die. It would be pleasant, and not lacking in profit, to dwell at greater length upon these and other intellectual leaders of the Cuban people. What we have said is, however, sufficient to show how greatly and how masterfully the intellectual side of Cuban life was developed during the century of political stress and fitful military strife which served as the stormy prelude to Cuba's achievement of her independent rank among the nations of the world. It was a development admirably comparable with any ever recorded of any other people, and one which splendidly vindicated the claim of the Cuban people to worth as a sovereign nation. Moreover, it was an unmistakable earnest of approaching independence. While for a century Cuba was purely a Spanish colony, her intellectual life was embryotic and inert. During the two centuries while she was more or less an object of international contention, she showed little activity. But in her fourth century, the era of revolution and of aspirations for independence, she showed the stuff that was in her sons and daughters. Her soldiers were valiant in battle. Her statesmen were wise in council. Her scholars and literati commanded distinguished attention in the most brilliant intellectual era of human history, and demonstrated that the Cuba that was about to be would be in the culture of the higher life a worthy member of the community of nations. THE END OF VOLUME THREE * * * * *