Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1898 — REPLY IS AN INSULT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

REPLY IS AN INSULT.

Spain Will Not Tolerate Interference in Cuba. DONS WOULD PROVOKE WAR, Make Insolent Proposition to Settle the » Maine Affair. DIPLOMACY COMES TO AN END. Negotiations Closed and Time for Action at Hand. Efforts of the United States for Hon* orable Peace Are Answered Only with Insolent Defiance and Evasion of the Heal Issues-f pain Seeks to Justify Her Course, and Declares the American Demands Are Intolerable —No Hope that War Will Be Longer Averted.

Washington correspondence: It seems apparent that the administration has been lenient in its dealings with Spain. President McKinley sought to bring Spain and Cuba to some amicable ar-rangement which would satisfy both, and not be too humiliating to the Spanish government, but Sagasta temporized and deceived until at last tj?e President had to lay down the definite proposition that the independence of Cuba was the only satisfactory solution to the American jeo. pie and the United States Congress. Sagasta sought for further delay, but, when he could not secure that, his ministry sent a reply which is an insult to the President. The reply of Sagasta, when stripped of its diplomatic verbiage, informs the United States that it should to its

own business and not meddle with the affairs of Spain. Spain Will not submit to dictation from this government in the affairs of Cuba. She will leave Cuban affairs to the Cuban Parliament and she will consider the question of amnesty when the insurgents ask for it. The Spanish note answering the demands was telegraphed from Madrid to the powers, together with a copy of the American demands. In this note Sagasta sweeps away all his diplomatic pretensions of desiring the the United States in settling the Cuban questioll~*rLdinsolently tells the President to keep his, Silt_ of other people’s business. Tins reply from Thfl“ Sagasta ministry was rather stunning, but it was no surprise to the members of the cabinet who have for some time urged determined action and expressed distrust of Spain’s pretensious of a desire to end the war and settle the Cuban question in a way to satisfy the American people. Sagasta also added insult to presumption and offered to arbitrate the question of the Maine. This was more than the President could endure with patience. He had made no demand upon Spain, but had sent to Sagasta the findings of our court of inquiry, and left to his own sense of honor the offer of a way for treatment of this question without that of war. But Sagastals only reply is'that he will submit this question to arbitration. It.seems apparent at this writing that Sagasta is ready to end all the differences between this government and Spain with war, and hopes to provoke war by insult. The President is done with diplomatic consideration of these questions. Congress, the war-making power, will deal with it. President McKinley will not unite with Spain in an effort to relieve distress in Cuba. Spain’s appropriation of $600,000 to feed the starving Cubans at this late day is regarded here as only a bluff, with no intention of spending a dollar for that purpose. Sagasta realizes that this government will intervene in Cuban affairs, drive Spain from the island, and then relieve the starving people. The only question to embarrass the administration in its program of intervention is a request that is said to have come from the insurgents, that this government simply recognize Cuban independence and leave to the insurgents the business of driving Spain out of the island. The Cuban situation has now become such that this government cannot stop at simply a recognition of independence without making that independence secure. It cannot recognize the Cubans as independent and then leave them to starve as they have been starving for the last year. And, since Sagasta has failed to realize the President’s hope that Spain would offer some honorable way of taking the Maine question out of the situation, there was no way of meeting it except by allowing Congress to take it up with the Cuban question. All the evidence points directly to Spanish treachery in that disaster. Congress so views it.

SENOR SAGASTA.