People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1897 — GROWING MOVEMENT. [ARTICLE]

GROWING MOVEMENT.

MEN ALL OVER THE COUNTRY ENLISTING TO AID CUBA. The Enlisting of Men Causing 3.lucb Comment and Discussion Among Stato_ Department Officials In Washington—Compared by Some to the Coxey Movement While tho members of the senate and house are endeavoring to kill off the Spaniards with resolutions and by wagging their jaws a movement that, seems to be growing tremendously in the west .is attracting more attention at thd department of state than anything that is being said or done at the capitol. “Oh, it will be nothing mor© than another Coxey affair, and will probably amount to Jess than that,” said an official of the state department to me, and with that he was desirous to dismiss ' the whole subject. Tho matter referred to especially was the report that Colonel John McAndrews, the middle of the road Populist candidate for attorney general of Colorado in the recent campaign, is raising an army that ho will march to tho coast, gathering recruits by the way, and will embark for Cuba to wrest tho island from the Spaniards, despite the interference of the government and the statement of the officials of the Cuban junta that arms and ammunition and not men are wanted for the Cuban cause. “But,” said I, “suppose this movement really grows to formidable proportions, what are you going to de about it? The country feels intensely ■on this question, and no one can tell where a craze initiated in this way might end. ”

“It would be a problem in statecraft,” was the response, “for which there is no precedent, and, to tell the truth, I don’t see what this government could do about it, Such an army would be too great for arrest by the ordinary legal processes, and to call the regular military power into action would possibly excite antagonism which might have serious consequences.. To tell the truth, we, as well as the war department, are watching, and have been for some time, these sporadic movements in various parts of the country to assemble a Cuban army and have been inclined to attach little importance to them until now. But the popular feeling is such that we "would not be . surprised if one of the most curious demonstrations the world has ever known should he made within a short time. There is an undercurrent that has not been estimated at its true Value even by the press. While it savors of Coxeyjsm, it has a much more substantial basis. One might- liken it to. the sort of enthusiasm which led Byron and other young men of the day to enlist in the cause of the Greeks. I hope it will .be discussed in the press as little as possible, for such crazes grow upon notoriety. ” “We are living in a time of strange psychological phenomena,” saida member of congress to whom the above conversation was repeated, “and it really might be a healthy thing for the United States to become involved with some other country and so divert the minds of a certain class from brooding over things which they imagine are out of joint in our affairs.” One could give a mass of astonishing comment of this kind if it were worth the while.—Washington Cor. Pittsburg Dispatch. ,