Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1901 — CUBA’S ACTION IS REJECTED. [ARTICLE]

CUBA’S ACTION IS REJECTED.

President and Cabinet Decide It Is Not Snbitantial Compliance. At the cabinet meeting Friday, following conferences of Secretary Root with Senators Spooner and Platt, it was decided to send back to the constitutional convention at Havana the constitution and its appendix, with a notification that the United States cannot accept it in its present form. The Cubans, says a Washington correspondent, must strike out of their appendix a good deal of Unnecessary matter which now appears in it. They must add, too, a distinct and satisfactory definition of -what the future relations between the island and the paramount power are to be, in compliance with the President’s proclamation and the terms declared by Congress in the Platt amendment to the army bill. In their acceptance of the Platt amendment the Cubans add an appendix, in which they presume to set forth the interpretation of the Platt resolutions given their delegates in Washington by Secretary Root. They even go so far as to attach Secretary Root’s name to this interpretation, thus making him and through him, morally at least, the American government, responsible for that definition. ' President McKinley and the members of his cabinet hold that the executive has authority from Congress to accept the Cuban constitution and withdraw our troops as soon as the conditions imposed by the Platt amendment have been “substantially” met. The acceptance does not need to be literal. Some little divergence from the phraseology is permissible. If the Cubans, says our correspondent, ean and will get together and strike out a lot of their redundant language, including their idea of what Secretary Root said to their delegates in Washington, the President will call it a bargain, withdraw our military control and permit the Cubans to go ahead with the organization of their government.