War in Cuba could not help affecting in a very intimate way the people of the United States. They bought much the greater part of the chief Cuban crops, sugar and tobacco. American capital had been invested in the island, particularly in plantations. For years Cubans of liberal tendencies had sent their sons to be educated in the United States, very many of whom had been naturalized before returning home. Cuba was but ninety miles from Florida, and much of our coastwise shipping passed in sight of the island. The people of the United States were aroused to sympathy and to a desire to be of assistance when they saw that the Cubans, so near geographically and so bound to them by many commercial ties, were engaged against a foreign monarchy in a struggle for freedom and a republican form of government. Ethan Allen headed a Cuban committee in New York and by his historic name associated the new revolution with the memory of the American struggle for freedom. The Cuban flag was displayed in the United States, Cuban bonds were sold, and volunteers and arms were sent to the aid of the insurgents. Owing to the nature of the country and the character of the people, a Cuban revolution had its peculiarities. The island is a very long and rugged mountain chain surrounded by fertile, cultivated plains. The insurgents from their mountain refuges spied out the land, pounced upon unprotected spots, burned crops and sugar mills, and were off before troops could arrive. The portion of the population in revolt at any particular time was rarely large. Many were insurgents one week and peaceful citizens the next. The fact that the majority of the population sympathized with the insurgents enabled the latter to melt into the landscape without leaving a sign. A provisional government hurried on mule-back from place to place. The Spanish Government, contrary to custom, acted at this time with some energy: it put two hundred thousand soldiers into the island; it raised large levies of loyal Cubans; it was almost always victorious; yet the revolution would not down. Martinez Campos, the "Pacificator" of the first revolution, was this time unable to protect the plains. In 1896 he was replaced by General Weyler, who undertook a new system. He started to corral the insurgents by a chain of blockhouses and barbed wire fences from ocean to sea--the first completely guarded cross-country line since the frontier walls of the Roman Empire in Europe and the Great Wall of China in Asia. He then proceeded to starve out the insurgents by destroying all the food in the areas to which they were confined. As the revolutionists lived largely on the pillage of plantations in their neighborhood, this policy involved the destruction of the crops of the loyal as well as of the disloyal, of Americans as well as of Cubans. The population of the devastated plantations was gathered into reconcentrado camps where, penned promiscuously into small reservations, they were entirely