New York Tribune

October 12, 1870, page 2

 

CUBAN PROSPECTS.

VIEWS OF THE CUBAN GENERAL-IN-CHIEF
To the Editor of the Tribune.
    Sir: In, your issue of this date, in the course of an article upon "Cuba --The Struggle and the Prospect" poet"--it is asserted at "the party of liberation" in the Island, is "growing smaller in numbers and weaker in resources," and lately, has been "confined to less territory than formerly." Now with no other interest in the matter than to have your readers know the truth in regard to the "Cuban struggle and the actual, prospect," I beg to assure you that there are, to-day, more armed patriots in Cuba than at any previous time since the war began. Of some resources the patriots may have less than formerly; but in the more material war resource, ammunition, they are stronger. Of territory they have lost nothing substantial to the issue or the occupation of which
(upon a false military system) does not serve to disperse the Spanish force and weaken them to some extent.

    At the time I left Cuba only 7,500 rifle and guns of all sorts bad been landed upon the island, and with about 500 captured from the enemy, and 1,000 shot guns and other firearms, in the hands of the people, when the war began, or, at the most, 9,000 rifles, carbines, and shot guns, constituted the armament of the patriot force, and limits or determines the number of that force!

    But since that time several thousand arms have gone to the island and into the hands of the Cubans, adding that number to this armed party of liberation, and this I can assure you. Moreover, considerable amounts of ammunition and sulphur have been received; so that in the matter of ammunition the condition of the patriots is far better than it was 12 months ago; for when Puello opened the campaign against me, on Christmas day, I had only 10 rounds of ammunition available. And let me ask if, really, the Spaniards have so effectually weakened the strength of the revolutionary party, how did it happen that the Captain-General had to call for heavy reenforcements, which if sent, however, will scarcely make the Spanish army so strong as it was a year ago! No, Sir; the "1iberating party" is stronger, not weaker; and all my letters from the island assure me that the determination of the people to be free is also stronger than ever!

    In the same article allusion is made to reports that Prim and Serrano have, at last, seen the absolute necessity for an immediate solution of the Cuban question that will rid Spain of the intestine trouble there in some other fashion than that hitherto relied on. Also the hope is indulged that the new Captain-General has been appointed with that ulterior view. In the first place, the antecedents of Cordova show him to be a representative Spanish savage. Certainly one not likely to be milder than even "the implacable and impracticable De Rodas." But be that as it may, any one who will read the dispatches of the State Department ought to doubt that even were Prim and Serrano, aided by Cordova, to desire and seek to settle the Cuban question in any other way than by crushing utterly the native Cuban people, they could not achieve it! No fact is made more palpable in those dispatches than that there is an imperium in imperio--the Spanish volunteers--in Cuba, which does in all things absolutely as it choses, utterly disregarding the orders and wishes and views of the Home Government, whensoever they conflict with its own or its fancied interests. The fundamental principle upon which this organization is established is to keep the political power of the Island in its own hands. As Mr. ex-Cousul Plumb says distinctly in his dispatches to the State Department, "They have no idea of submitting to, or being ruled by , the Cuban portion of the population." (Sec Mr. Plumb's letter of Oct. 21. 1869.) That is to say: These Volunteers have no idea of any state of affairs in which the great majority of the population of the Island will rule it, which of course must be the basis of any proper settlement of the question, or assuredly would result from any cession of the Island to the United States.

    This Volunteer party, it will be remembered, deposed Gen. Dulce; and if De Rodas has has been "Impracticable" toward the Home Government, it was simply because he recognized their power as paramount to that of Prim and Serrano. To attempt to disarm this party, Consul Plumb tells us "might inaugurate another civil war," and he evidently seeks to show it would! But yet, as you will see, it is not at least, the side of the Cubans to which he leans! Any reliance, therefore, upon a course on the part of Spain which shall end the bloody struggle in Cuba, short of the reduction of the people back to even a worse bondage
than ever before, surely must be vain, and negotiations looking to that object will all end in nothing except harm to the poor Cuban people, were they to dream, of trusting to so illusory a hope. Happily, they do not; and happy, too, will it be for them if they do not find another hope, equally illusory, that they may yet see a state of impartial neutrality in the war between them and Spain; that they, will yet see the American people recognize the plain fact that there is such a war, in which, "according to
the records of the American State Department, the Spaniards have been forced to put in the field over 10, 000 men , and to blockade the Island with. 80 ships of war; and finally that they will yet see themselves permitted to get and transport from the ports of'the United States all that their cruel Spanish enemies are suffered to do.
                                                                                                                            Respectfully,
                                                                                                                            THOMAS JORDAN
                                                                                                                            New York, Oct. 11, 1870.