The Presidential nominees of the two parties, in November, 1906, on the part of the Conservatives, were Estrada Palma, the President of Cuba, and on the part of the Liberals, José Miguel Gomez, ex-leader of the Moderados of the Province of Santa Clara. The Liberals, a few days before the election, feeling apparently that it would go against them, began the old tactics so prevalent in some South American republics, and practised by Maso's followers in 1901, of proclaiming proposed election frauds on the part of their opponents, then in control of the government, and predicting all manner of illegal practices and intimidation. At ten o'clock on the morning of election day, telegrams, announcements, and orders from Liberal leaders were posted at all voting places in the various cities and country districts, directing members of that party to keep away from the polls, on the ground that the election frauds which had been arranged by the Conservatives could not possibly be overcome, and that the correct thing to do was to refuse to vote, as a protest against the government in power. These were obviously issued with a view of discrediting in advance an election which the Liberals could not hope to win. The Conservatives, of course, voted, and, as might be expected under those circumstances, the Palma government succeeded itself, with a few changes in the Cabinet, and everything seemed to promise well for the future. Within a year, however, threats of coming trouble, whispers of discontent, and reports of incipient uprisings could be heard in the cafés and public resorts throughout the island, and the agents of the secret service warned President Palma that a serious crisis was impending. This the President refused to credit, staging that there could be no possible reason for a revolution. The island was prosperous, work was plentiful for all who cared to labor; there were no conditions present to justify a revolution or uprising, and suspicions of anything of the kind must therefore be unjustified. In spite of President Palma's confidence, however, the plotting went on almost openly. His confidence in the people was known to all the Liberals, and they took advantage of it. The first real outbreak occurred before the slightest preparation had been made to deal with it. One night in the month of July, 1905, a group of thirty armed men suddenly appeared at the barracks of the Rural Guards, shot a dozen of them to death as they lay sleeping on their cots, seized their arms, ammunition and horses, and fled into the country, shouting the cry of "Revolution against the Palma government!" General Alejandro Rodriguez, a tried veteran of the War of Independence, and chief of the Rural Guards, gave an immediate order that they should be captured, dead or alive, and before ten o'clock the next morning nearly all of them had been taken and confined in the jails of Havana, where afterwards they were tried and convicted. These men in