that if such a proposal had been made during the negotiations that resulted in the conclusion of the Protocol it would have terminated them, unless it had been withdrawn.

"In confirmation of the position that the Spanish Commission is now precluded from proposing the assumption by the United States of the so-called Cuban debt, the American Commissioners, besides invoking the unconditional stipulation of the protocol, are able to point to the fact that the Spanish Government, in the correspondence that resulted in the conclusion of that instrument, took the precaution, in replying to the demand of the United States for the relinquishment by Spain of all claim of sovereignty over Cuba, and her immediate evacuation of the island, to refer to the duty which in her opinion rested upon the United States, under the circumstances, to provide for the protection of life and property in the island until it should have reached the stage of self-government. In his note of August 7, 1898, the Duke of Almodovar, replying to the demand of the United States, said:

"The necessity of withdrawing from the territory of Cuba being imperative, the nation assuming Spain's place must, as long as this territory shall not have fully reached the condition required to take rank among other sovereign powers, provide for rules which will insure order and protect against all risks the Spanish residents, as well as the Cuban natives still loyal to the mother country."

"If to this reservation, which the American Commissioners have declared their readiness to recognize in the treaty, the Spanish Government had desired to add another on the subject of the Cuban debt, the opportunity then existed and should have been seized. Indeed, the insertion of a few words in the reservation actually made would have rendered it applicable to the so-called Cuban debt as well as to the protection of life and property.

"A labored argument is made in the memorandum submitted by the Spanish Commissioners to prove that the Government of the United States in declining to take upon itself the so-called Cuban debt is acting in violation of all principles of international law and assumes an attitude hitherto unknown in the history of civilized nations. Cases supposed to be apposite are cited, showing the assumption of national debts where one sovereignty is absorbed by another, or a division of national indebtedness where a nation is deprived of an integral part of its domain, either by cession, or the attainment of independence by a colony theretofore charged with raising a part of the national revenue. Elsewhere we have pointed out the differences manifestly existing between the cases cited and the one in hand. The United States may well rest its case upon this point upon the plain terms of the protocol, which, as the memorandum submitted by the Spanish Commissioners well says, contains the agreement between the parties

'for no other was formulated between the two parties,' and which is executed when Spain relinquishes all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba. If the question were still open the United States might well challenge the fullest inquiry into the equity of this demand.

"It is urged in the Spanish Commissioners' memorandum that the United States, erroneously believing in the justice of the cause of Cuban independence, made it its own, and took up arms in its behalf. 'The United States,' so declares the Spanish memorandum, 'made a demand on Spain, and afterwards declared war on her, that Cuba might become free and independent.' The causes of the demand of the United States for the termination of Spanish sovereignty in Cuba are amply shown in the history of the events which preceded it. For many years the United States patiently endured a condition of affairs in Cuba which gravely affected the interests of the nation. As early as 1875 President Grant called attention to all its dread horrors and the consequent injuries to the interests of the United States and other nations, and also to the fact that the agency of others, either by mediation or by intervention, seemed to be the only alternative which must sooner or later be invoked for the termination of the strife. During that Administration, notwithstanding that it was clearly intimated to Spain that the United States could no longer endure the situation-which had become intolerable-no unfriendly action was taken, and for ten years it suffered all the inconvenience and deprivation, destruction of trade and injury to its citizens incident to the struggle, which was ended by the peace of Zanjon, only to break out again and to be waged with every feature of horror and desolation and profitless strife which had characterized the former struggle.

"President Cleveland, in his annual message of 1896, was constrained to say to the Congress of the United States: When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurrection has become manifest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle for its reestablishment has degenerated into a strife which means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject-matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge. Throughout President Cleveland's Administration this situation was patiently endured, at great loss and expense to the United States, which then and at all times was diligent in maintaining the highest obligations of neutrality, through the vigilance of its Navy and its executive and judicial departments.

"The present Chief Executive of the United States, in his first annual message, in 1897, again called attention to the disastrous effects upon our interests of the warfare still being waged in Cuba. The patient

waiting of the people of the United States for the termination of these conditions culminated in the message of April 2, 1898, of the President to Congress, in which he said: The long trial has proved that the object for which Spain has waged the war can not be attained. The fire of insurrection may flame or may smolder with varying seasons, but it has not been and it is plain that it can not be extinguished by present methods. The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests which give us the right and the duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop.' Acting upon this message the Congress of the United States, in the resolution approved by the President April 20, 1898, which has been so often referred to in the memorandum submitted by the Spanish Commissioners, based its demand that the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba, and withdraw its forces from Cuba. and Cuban waters, upon conditions in Cuba (so near the United States) which were declared to be such that they could no longer be endured.

"It is not necessary to recite the record of the events which followed that demand, well known to the members of this Commission, and which are now a part of the history of the world. It is true that the enforced relinquishment of Spanish sovereignty will result in the freedom and independence of the island of Cuba and not in the aggrandizement of the United States. This résumé of events which led to the United States taking up arms is not made to wound the susceptibilities of the Spanish nation, or its distinguished representatives upon this Commission, but, in view of the truth of history and the statements made in the memorandum submitted by the Spanish Commissioners, less could not be said by the representatives of the United States. Not having taken up arms for its own advancement, having refrained from acquiring sovereignty over Cuba, the United States now seeks to attain a peace consistent with its ends and purposes in waging war. In asking, as a victorious nation, for some measure of reparation, it has not emulated the examples of other nations and demanded reparation in money for the many millions spent and the sufferings, privations and losses endured by its people. Its relations to Cuba have been those of a people suffering without reward or the hope thereof.

The American Commissioners therefore feel that they are fully justified both in law and in morals in refusing to take upon themselves in addition to the burdens already incurred the obligation of discharg ing the so-called colonial debts of Spain-debts, as heretofore shown, chiefly incurred in opposing the object for the attainment of which the resolution of intervention was adopted by the Congress and sanctioned by the President of the United States. If it could be admitted, as is

argued in the memorandum submitted by the Spanish Commissioners, that the United States in this relation stands as the agent of the Cuban people, the duty to resist the assumption of these heavy obligations would be equally imperative. The decrees of the Spanish Government itself show that these debts were incurred in the fruitless endeavors of that Government to suppress the aspirations of the Cuban people for greater liberty and freer government."

Memorandum of American Peace Commission, Paris, Oct. 27, 1898, S. Doc. 62, 55 Cong. 3 sess., part 2, pp. 100-107.

gument.

"The American Commission affirms that Spain conClosing Spanish ar- tracted (it does not say that it used the debt previously contracted) the greatest part of the Cuban debt in an effort, first to conquer the Cuban insurgents, and then to oppose the United States, and then discoursing upon the same theme, it says, 'that it has not been denied that a part of these loans was directly used to wage war against the United States.' To make such statements it is indispensable to suppose that the dates of the creation of those debts are not known. One debt was contracted under the authority of the Decree of May 10, 1886, that is to say, eight years after the re-establishment of the peace in Cuba, and nine years before the fresh disturbances of the same in that island through suggestions and by means which now are known to the world. The second issue was authorized by Royal Decree of September 27, 1890, that is to say, twelve years after Cuba had found herself in a condition of perfect peace, and at the pinnacle of her prosperity, and five years before the work of her desolation began, through the new rebellion which more or less spontaneously broke out there. And the two Decrees explain also what were the reasons why the said issues were authorized, and what were the expenses to be met by them, the payment of deficiencies in previous and subsequent appropriation bills in the island being prominent among them. It is well known that these deficiencies were due to the great reduction of taxes made in Cuba by the mother country. "Will it ever be said that Spain, through some supernatural gift of divination, foresaw in 1886 and 1890 that in 1895 an insurrection was again to break out in Cuba, and that in 1898 the United States were to lend it their armed protection? Under no other hypothesis the correctness of the phrases of the American memorandum relating to this point could ever be admitted.

"And so far as the expenses incurred by Spain owing to the war with the United States are concerned, without doubt the American Commission is unaware of the fact that on the 20th of April of the present year, when the hostilities began, the Spanish Government was still engaged in operations of credit, in the shape of bonds, with the direct guarantee of the customhouses of the Peninsula, to the amount

of 1,000 millions of pesetas, as decided in 1896 and 1897, and in other operations to the amount of 223 millions of pesetas, as authorized on the 2nd of April, 1898, with the special guarantee of the stamp and tobacco revenues in the Peninsula, as well as the revenues called de consumo in Spain, and that, in order to meet the expenses of the war with the United States, a Royal Decree had been issued on the 31st of May in the present year, authorizing the creation of a 4 per cent perpetual domestic debt, to the amount of 1,000 millions of pesetas, out of which 806,785,000 were immediately negotiated. Upon acquaintance with these facts, it is to be supposed that the American Commission will not be willing to insist upon the statement so groundlessly made in its memorandum, as it will then understand that the expenses of the war with the United States have nothing to do with the Cuban colonial mortgage debt.

"The American Commission advocates once more in its memorandum the strange theory that the Spanish colonies are not bound to pay the debt contracted by the mother country to put down the rebellions, whether of few or of many, of their inhabitants. But this time, it reaches the extreme of putting such a singular doctrine under the shelter of common sense, by affirming that a doctrine to the contrary would be a threat to liberty and civilization.

"Ah! if the colonists, and the citizens of the Great Republic would have alleged, in justification of a rebellion, or should allege in the future, in an identical case, an emergency from which that powerful nation is certainly not exempted, a theory of that kind,-would the American Government have ever accepted it? Will it ever accept it in the future?-What is condemned not by common, but by moral sense, is the attempt to put all rebellion against legitimate authority under the shelter of liberty and civilization. Was Spain, or was she not, the legitimate sovereign of Cuba when the first insurrection broke out, and during the whole term of the second? Has anyone ever dared to deny, or to doubt even, the sovereignty of Spain over that island at the time to which we are now referring? Were not the United States themselves, and their Government, those who day after day urged Spain to put down the rebellion, without excluding the use of arms, and reestablish as promptly as possible the peace in her colony? And if Spain complied with such demands, who, the United States included, can deny the legitimate character of the expenses which, by virtue of that compliance, she necessarily incurred?

"A doctrine of this nature, which the Spanish Commission, through considerations of respect, observed thus far by it, and which it has the duty to observe, does not deservedly characterize as it certainly would be by all the constituted Powers of the earth, can not be advocated in the face of men, except from the standpoint that the authority of Spain was illegitimate, and that her sovereignty was only an arbitrary act of