Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1896 — SPAIN WEAKENS. [ARTICLE]

SPAIN WEAKENS.

According Correspondent Who Writes from Cuba. According to a correspondent who writes from Cuba there are many reasons to suspect that the Govcfumeut is losing confidence in its ability to srtppress the Cuban insurgents. Several Spanish generals have congregated in Havana; the Government is actively pressing volunteers into service as pickets at points about the city and suburbs; and there has even been a proposition to build a barbed wire fence, a 15-foot trench and an 8-foot stone wall about the "city. Certainly the Spanish ollicials must be beginning to see the seriousness of the situation. There is much grumbling among the Spanish soldiers, for they have been paid nothing since early in March. Open mutiny would hardly surprise anyone cognizant of the facts. The Havana civil governor recently ordered that public readers in the factories be suppressed, and aj n result many of the cigarmakers are quietly slipping out of the city and joining the rerolutioitists. Anarchy, too, threatens in other towns, where starving men, women mid clitldren till the streets. Everywhere the people are discontented and grtimblltig and the Government is losing ground, tor it wouldn't take much to cause them to stampede to th- ranks ot the Cuban patriots.