No tribute could be too high to render to these devoted women, who were always ready to make personal sacrifices of time, of strength, of money, of work, for the cause of humanity. Amid all its historic fiestas and pageants, Havana has seen no fairer or more inspiring spectacle than that of the Red Cross women, Senora Menocal at their head, marching in stately procession through her streets to manifest their devotion to the cause and to arouse others to equal earnestness. The magnitude of the sums raised by the women of Cuba for the war loans and for the Red Cross, and for Cuban hospital units at the front, and the amount of bandages and other hospital supplies and clothing prepared by them for the armies "over there," made proud items in Cuban statistics of the Great War. Thitherto Cuba had often been engaged in war, but it was always in what may be termed selfish war, for her own defence against an alien enemy or for her own liberation from oppressors who, at first kin, had become alien. Now for the first time it was her privilege to engage in a greater struggle than any before, and one which was for her own interests only to the extent to which those interests were involved with and were practically identical with the interests of all civilized nations and of world-wide humanity. Said Thomas Jefferson on a memorable occasion, referring to the relations between America and Great Britain: "Nothing would more tend to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause." Thus we must reckon that affection and confidence between Cuba and the United States were greatly strengthened and confirmed by the fact that they were at least potentially and indeed to some degree actually fighting side by side in the same cause, and that cause not exclusively their own but that of the whole world. Nor was the event without a comparable effect upon Cuba's relations to the world at large. Her sympathies were broadened; her recognition by other powers was extended; and as once she had been a mere pawn in the international game, now she became a vital and potent factor in international affairs. CHAPTER XX "A revolution which comprehends the responsibilities incumbent upon the founders of nations." Those were almost the last words of José Marti, epigrammatically expressive of his purpose in fomenting the ultimate and triumphant revolution of 1895-1898, and of the purpose of those devoted men who caught the standard of liberty from his dying hand and through labors and perils and tragedies incommensurable bore it on to victory. How well that purpose has been served in these scarcely twenty years of the independent Republic of Cuba, how true to Marti's transcendent ideal his successors in Cuban leadership have been, the record which we have briefly rehearsed must tell. On the whole, the answer to the implied interrogatory is gratifying and reassuring.