"The ranks of the government would find themselves constantly thinned by desertion, by the climate, by death, which from all quarters would spring up among them in a thousand forms. Cut short of means to pay and maintain their army, dependent on recruits from Spain to fill up their vacancies without an inch of friendly ground on which to plant their feet, or an individual on whom to rely with security, war in the field would be for them one of extermination; while, if they shut themselves within the defences of their fortresses, hunger and want would soon compel them to abandon them, if they were not carried by force of arms. The example of the whole continent of Spanish America, under circumstances more favorable for them, when they had Cuba as their arsenal, the benefit of her coffers, and native aid in those countries themselves, ought to serve them as a lesson not to undertake an exterminating and fratricidal struggle, which could not fail to be attended with the same or worse results. "We, on the other hand, besides our own resources, have in the neighboring States of the Union, and in all the republics of America, the encampments of our troops, the depots of our supplies, and the arsenals of our arms. All the sons of this vast New World, whose bosom shelters the island of Cuba, and who have had, like us, to shake off by force the yoke of tyranny, will enthusiastically applaud our resolve, will fly by hundreds to place themselves beneath the flag of liberty in our ranks, and there trained to experienced valor will aid us in annihilating, once and for always, the last badge of ignominy that still disgraces the free and independent soil of America. "If we have hitherto hoped, with patience and resignation, that justice and their own interests would change the mind of our tyrants; if we have trusted to external efforts to bring the mother country to a negotiation which should avoid the disasters of war, we are resolved to prove by deeds that inaction and endurance have not been the results of impotence and cowardice. Let the government undeceive itself in regard to the power of its bayonets and the efficiency of all the means it has invented to oppress and watch us. In the face of its very authorities--in the sight of the spies at our side--on the day when we have resolved to demand back our rights, the cry of liberty and independence will rise from the Cape of San Antonio to the Point of Maysi.