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CHAPTER II

CUBA-FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER

I CAME back to Cuba after an absence of ten years, enchained by the hospitality of the American navy. We of the little cruiser Tacoma made a pleasant voyage from San Juan, in Porto Rico, along the northern coast of Santo Domingo and Hayti, and it was especially pleasant when we got behind the line of northern reefs and the great rolling waves from the Western ocean had to stop bullying the 'prentice boys from the inland states and the captain's guest. We caught a glimpse, as we went by, of Samana Bay, which Grant coveted so ardently, and we had a sight of the lee shore of old Cape Francis, where Barney and many another of our revolutionary naval heroes led apparently the roystering lives of gentlemen adventurers when their ungrateful country, having no further need of their services, left them to shift for themselves.

Mole St. Nicholas we saw, or imagined we saw, in the soft, tropical haze, and then Cape Maisi rose out of the sea. There was no mistaking this familiar Caribbean landmark.

We had been steaming through a solitary sea without a ship or a sail, when, suddenly, we came into the broad way of the Windward Passage. Fruit steamers came up out of the Jamaican horizon, all flying our flag and saluting our captain's ensign. It was like getting home again. But to the captain and to me the

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sea was dotted with many ships which only he and I could see. We were on the line now of the voyage which our armada made to Cuba in '98. In it Captain Hood held his first command and I was an humble campfollower. To us the sea was studded with phantom ships and peopled with an army which will never assemble again because it has passed into history. After our ship's crew, in honour of the place, had celebrated the monthly general muster, the captain and I began to pick out landmarks and drop buoys on our scribbling pads for the benefit of future historians. Was it not here that the captain of the transport Gussie, always to the front, had asked permission of the Commander-inchief to water his thirsty mules (the commoner liquid having given out) with a shandygaff of soda water and lemonade? Was it not there that the little midshipmite, ten days out of Annapolis, explained his position to General Shafter to avoid any future misunderstanding? He was signal-boy on board, and as far as he could make out, according to the regulations, his was an independent command, and he could only receive orders from the Commander-in-chief of everything afloat, but favours he would gladly do for the Major-General. Curiously enough the incident that came back to me with the greatest force and power upon re-visiting these stirring scenes, was the memory of a midnight talk with Admiral Sampson on board his flagship, the New York. Like most silent, word-sparing men, how impressively and how eloquently he could talk when the spirit moved him, and he thought it worth while! Some idle words of mine about Japan broke down our great commander's barriers of reserve, his own memories of the Empire of the Rising Sun rushed their floodgates, and for several

hours he dismissed apparently all thought of Spain and Cuba from his mind, the blue prints were ignored, and the man who was carrying forty men-of-war in his head, apparently for the time devoted his whole force and being to expressing the admiration with which the Japanese had inspired him, in equal measure for their warlike and their civic virtues.

We must be inherently a peaceful people. Here we are, ensconced in Guantanamo Bay for ten years, and we have not raised a finger to fortify what the Russians or the Japanese, or any other predatory people, would immediately convert into a great naval station and citadel, and proudly christen "Mistress of the Caribbean." Here all the West Indian conquerors have come and builded themselves a safe repair; here flit about the ghosts of Morgan and of Sir Olive Leigh, Cortez, Quevado, and a host of others; here in safety from the storms they awaited the coming of the plate ships and the golden argosies; here the men of Devon careened and caulked their sloops of war and prepared to singe the King of Spain's beard or to loot his most precious possessions. From here, in a later day, more careful of appearances and consequently armed with the King's warrant, Admiral Vernon sailed for Porto Bello and later for Cartagena with the loyal North American as deck-passenger. Here we, too, came in the dawn of the war of '98, following the precedent of the sea rulers unbroken throughout three centuries; here Sampson came to coal his ships, and here he sent M'Calla and his marines on land to raise the flag to the breeze and form our first camp on shore.

By a treaty arrangement with the Cubans the soil

which the marines won with their blood is now in our possession, and here, as many fear, are being assembled the ships and the men and the stores that will one day lead to and make easy the conquest of the Caribbean. But let Milk Street dismiss its fears; we have been in this nursery of war for ten years and have risen pacifically superior to the genius of the place. The few cannon which the Spaniards left have been distributed in museums at home, and apparently no new ones have come to take their place. To-day Guantanamo, the Vladivostok of the American Mediterranean, is only defended by its high and ancient renown, by an unarmoured receiving-ship, with rubber plants and other trees growing out of its deck, that looks as if it had come, not for a career of conquest, but to stick fast in the mud for all time.

It is true that before we had become accustomed to the weight of the new responsibilities which the Spanish war shouldered upon us, and perhaps careless of them, some defensive plans were made and drawn up and blue-printed, and wise-looking men came with strange machines for measuring water and the land, and brought voluminous books for the recording of the same; they came and camped a long time behind the stockade and fought mosquitoes where the marines had fought Spaniards, but they were peaceful men at heart, and they wiped out the last traces of Guantanamo's former warlike state by filling up the historic rifle-pits of the marines because, forsooth, they were excellent breedingplaces for mosquitoes!

out.

And the carefully drawn-up plans were never carried In default of a Congressional appropriation, it is said; certain only it is, however, that they were never

carried out. And of the other defensive measures recommended as imperatively necessary by the strategists only one has been executed, and that is a little dredging; but as we have only dredged in that small fraction of the harbour which is openly and directly exposed to the fire of ships outside, this dredging can hardly be regarded as a defensive measure.

Our failure to carry out the plans or the purpose for which this great naval station was obtained is said to be owing to a disagreement between naval and army authorities as to its availability. The General Staff of the army is strongly in favour of Panama as a naval and military base.

Governor Magoon, who presided over our second intervention in Cuban affairs, was a large man, about the size of his immediate predecessor, President Taft, and about ten times the size of little Weyler, whom I often saw seated in his place, but not in his chair, years ago. The Governor was not an impulsive man, and he had not a Latin trait in his composition. His maner and general make-up was the direct antithesis of all that Cubans had hitherto esteemed and admired in their viceroys, and yet the provisional governor was very popular among many classes of the strange, unruly community over which he presided. Of that there can be no doubt. I was deeply impressed with the Governor's sincerity and with his singleness of purpose. He took the greatest interest in the efforts which I made to get at the workings of the administration over which he presided, and in furthering my work placed me under obligation which I thought best to repay by telling him of the charges that were brought against him and his administration by anonymous Cubans as I met them on trains and in

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