Yesterday I received your telegram, in cipher, which I translate as
follows:
I have done the best I could with force at my disposal. Yesterday I
telegraphed you, in cipher, as follows:
Madrid, February 8, 1898.
Secretary Sherman, Washington:
Note of Spanish Government February 1 in answer to mine December
20. Expresses satisfaction with our declaration as to new
colonial policy. This satisfaction in great part neutralized by
our censures against predecessors of present Government and
still more by our confounding in same judgment the incredible
misconduct of Cuban insurrectionists with conduct of regular
army which, during three years, has demonstrated its discipline
in obedient execution of orders. Present Spanish Government can
not receive without protest severe criticisms formulated against
their predecessors in power. Recriminations directed at home in
political contests must not be judged in foreign countries in
the same way, nor can foreign cabinet use them as the basis for
argument nor as the foundation of opinion in its diplomatic
relations, these being internal acts completely beyond the
judgment or consideration of foreigners. Present ministers in
proclaiming their doctrines can not admit that they were
formulating accusations against their predecessors, who,
whatever their opinions, were inspired by the purest patriotism.
Spanish note of August 25 ought to have made clear to Washington
Cabinet that Spanish troops have never given any cause for
censure which could dim the luster of their history.
The idea which has slipped into the American note that Spain can
reasonably count upon the United States maintaining present
attitude only until an undetermined future shall prove whether
indispensable conditions of peace have been realized is less
justifiable and less explicable. Spanish Government does not
admit the right of neighboring country to limit duration of
struggle. Aspirations for peace and friendly observations are
justified. Foreign intrusions and interferences are never and in
no way justified. These might lead to the intervention which
every country that respects itself must repel with force. Takes
for guide and example the instructions by Secretary Seward to
Minister Dayton at Paris, April 22, 1861. Quotes and adopts the
words of Secretary Seward and expresses conviction of Spanish
Government that the United States, where such words have been
written, can not fix time for termination of Cuban insurrection.
Can not conceive that the United States can change its former
offers of good offices into insinuations of change of conduct
when colonial policy of present ministry is being carried out
with good results.
Spain having fulfilled, with scrupulous sincerity, those
obligations which the most suspicious prejudice could suggest,
no pretext remains for now discussing the duration of a conflict
of exclusively internal character, even were the progress in
subduing insurrection not so evident and hopes of early
pacification not so well founded. The singular consideration
with which the Spanish Government constantly receives the
opinions of the United States is not sufficient to induce it to
accept the theory of our note in regard to international duties
in the case of intestine rebellions. Opposes at length the ideas
set forth by Secretary Fish. Quotes from Calvo, Montesquier, and
Jiose. Spanish Government does not analyze terms of our act of
1818, but uses that act as suggestion of means that can now be
employed by the United States. Suggests new proclamation and
severe application of existing regulations or their extension as
was done by act of 1838.
Argues that there is no appearance of reason that could justify
the recognition of belligerency.
[Page 658]
Conclusions of Geneva arbitration were mentioned solely for
analogy. Such duties as neutrality imposes friendship should
suggest. Spanish Government recognize with sincere pleasure the
vigilance exercised during recent months along the extensive
American coasts and effective organization of naval forces,
hindering illegal aid to revolting Cubans from Florida. These
facts demonstrate the power of the Government of the United
States to enforce the obligations of international
friendship.
Can not observe with indifference continued operation in New York
of an organization, composed in its majority of American
citizens, who are not imbued with their recently acquired
nationality, who abuse the laws of their new country and
prejudice the cordial relations subsisting between the United
States and Spain. Friendly nations do not tolerate organizations
in their midst whose only mission consists in trying to violate
the integrity of one of them. Spanish people and Spanish
Government will resolutely maintain their legitimate and
traditional sovereignty in Cuba. Hope that the United States
will maintain benevolent attitude of expectation, and will
cooperate by means already indicated, and others analogous
thereto within its own frontiers, to the work of peace, justice,
and autonomy. Thus the United States will dishearten completely
the turbulent elements which still maintain the rebellion, and
which only hope for success in ultimate conflict between our two
respective countries. Cuba has its life and future united to
Spain, and to conspire against their perpetual union reveals
designs of destruction and involves inadmissible pretension.
Peace necessary for Cuba, and advantageous to the United States,
can be found only in the formula of colonial self-government and
Spanish sovereignty.
The Government of the United States knows this and can contribute
powerfully by working in harmony with what has been expressed.
The United States will certainly do this, because in the United
States justice is a religion, and because in the Republic of
North America we respect the desire of the people to organize
themselves as best suits them. The Cuban people have perfect
right that nobody shall obstruct them or lend aid to a turbulent
minority. Before autonomy was granted it might have been
erroneously believed that this minority represented the common
feeling of the masses. There is no such excuse now. The valuable
elements of the island now desire peace under as broad autonomy
as they can wish. The moral and material aid of revolutionary
organizations working freely in the United States should cease
absolutely and at once.
Quotes my note that peace in Cuba is not sudden creation to be
built in a single night, but an enduring edifice to be founded
on equity.
Woodford.
To enable you to judge of the accuracy of my synopsis, I inclose copy of
the Spanish note. It is written out in long hand, as the only clerk who
can transcribe the note in Spanish on the typewriter is ill. The copy
sent was kindly written out by the naval and military attachés of the
legation.
I am having additional copies of the full translation of the entire
Spanish note prepared and hope to forward them to-morrow.
I withhold comment on the Spanish note until I can think the situation
over more carefully.
[Inclosure—Translation.]
Señor Gullon to
Mr. Woodford.
Ministry of
State,
The
Palace, February 1,
1898.
Your Excellency and Dear Sir: In your
excellency’s kind and well-weighed note dated December 20 last, to
which I now have the honor to reply, there are many and very diverse
statements, causing great and special gratification to H. M.’s
Government, remarkable for their clearness and expressiveness. Among
them the following deserve
[Page 659]
special mention: Those recognizing the value and efficacy of the new
principles applied to the colonial policy; those admitting the
importance and conclusiveness of the information received at
Washington from the peninsula and Cuba, tending to prove the
sincerity of Spain’s desire and exertions for the improvement of
conditions and circumstances in that island; and the explicit terms
in which your excellency is pleased to say that the prosperity of
the cities and the country there is being prompted by the renewal,
under the best auspices, of the suspended agricultural and
industrial operations. The satisfaction, however, derived from these
and other similar statements, giving eloquent expression to the
recognition of the irreproachable (correct) procedure of Spain, is,
to a great extent, destroyed or diminished by the blame cast upon
the predecessors of the present Government, and still more so by the
fact that the numerous and incredible excesses committed by the
Cuban insurgents are confounded in the same category, with the
conduct of the regular army, which for nearly three years has been
giving proof of its valor and discipline in the defense of
indisputable rights and in the obedient fulfillment of orders and
plans emanating from other departments.
Whatever may be the political views of the men constituting the
present Government of Spain, they can not, without protest, permit
the severe condemnation passed upon those who preceded them in
power, as they think that the struggles of parties, or even the
recriminations which parties may launch at each other in their
constantly recurring daily disputes, should not be judged in the
same manner from a distance, nor can they consent to a foreign
cabinet’s making use of them as a basis for its arguments or as a
foundation for its views in its diplomatic relations, as they are,
on the contrary, domestic matters entirely foreign to the judgment
or decision of other nations.
When the present ministers advocated their own doctrines in
opposition to those of their antagonists; when, in the sessions of
Parliament, they opposed the colonial policy and the procedure of
other parties and recommended to their fellow-citizens as more
conducive to their good their own views, principles, and purposes,
they never meant to make, nor can they now admit that they did make,
any accusations concerning the good intentions and purposes of their
predecessors, who, whatever might be their plans and methods, were
certainly actuated by the most zealous patriotism.
As regards the conduct of our army, the note of August 25, 1897, must
have made it evident to the candid judgment of the Washington
Cabinet that the Spanish troops have never given occasion for
reproaches tarnishing, either in a greater or less degree, the
brilliant splendor of their history, and that if any acts, judged
from a distance and separately, have given rise to complaints and
lamentations on the part of some sensitive and humanitarian spirits,
they have proved, when investigated subsequently with proper
coolness, to have been the inevitable consequence of war and a
comparatively well-restricted object lesson of the calamities and
disasters which have always accompanied war in all ages and in all
countries, not excepting the United States, as was shown by
references of strict historical accuracy in the document to which I
have just alluded.
Another idea which is repugnant to the pleasing and conciliatory
views to which I have previously alluded, is the one which slips out
in your excellency’s note to which I am replying, when you say that
Spain
[Page 660]
can only reasonably
expect the United States to maintain its present attitude until it
is proved by facts, within a more or less determined period, whether
what your excellency calls the indispensable requisites to a peace
both just to the mother country and the Great Antilla, and fair to
the North American Republic, have been attained. The more
deliberate, the more explicit, and the more positive the
declarations with which your excellency asserts the
disinterestedness and impartiality of your Government, the more
positive and emphatic your declaration that the United States
desires only the reign of peace, and the more expressive and earnest
the congratulations with which you admit that the Spanish Government
has drawn the plans and laid the foundations of a noble structure in
Cuba, so much the less justifiable and so much the less intelligible
is the hint to which I have referred.
The Spanish Government assuredly did not admit that reasons of
proximity or damages caused by war to neighboring countries might
give such countries a right to limit to a longer or shorter period
the duration of a struggle disastrous to all, but much more so to
the nations in whose midst it breaks out or is maintained, as your
excellency voluntarily admits. My note of October 23, referring to
this point in general terms, proved perfectly clear that, in view of
the varied and close relations between modern nations, a disturbance
arising in any of them may justify the adjoining nations in
expressing their anxiety for peace and in offering friendly
suggestions, but never and under no circumstances foreign intrusion
or interference. Such interference would lead to an intervention
which an nation possessing any self respect would have to repel by
force, even if it were necessary to exhaust, in the defense of the
integrity of its territory and of its independence, all, absolutely
all, the resources at its disposal.
Spain would act upon these honorable principles—the only ones
consistent with the national dignity—just as the United States nobly
acted upon them when, in 1861, it feared that an attempt would be
made to exert an influence by foreign intervention in the domestic
struggle which it was then carrying on. The instructions to that
effect sent by Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, to Mr. Dayton,
the minister in Paris, on the 22d April, 1861, will serve as a
guide, and will constitute a notable example for all countries
which, like Spain, value their honor above all else, even to (the
execution of) the declared purpose to “struggle with the whole
world” rather than yield to pressure from without. (Presidents’
Messages and Documents, 1861–62, page 200.) When I say that the
Government of Spain appropriates, on this occasion, Mr. Seward’s
lofty views, it will be sufficiently clear how deeply rooted in (the
minds of) the ministry of which I form a part is the conviction that
the United States, where such words have been written, will not fix
a period for the termination of the present Cuban insurrection.
If such a limitation of the legitimate and immutable national
sovereignty could not be permitted at any time, it must be expected
less than ever when a fortunate concurrence of circumstances has
enabled the present cabinet of Madrid, while voluntarily fulfilling
its engagements and carrying out, when in power, the colonial policy
which it advocated when in opposition, to execute the wishes of the
loyal inhabitants of Cuba, and to comply with those suggestions
which the United States Government has offered repeatedly and
officially as the expression of its desire or as its advice as a
friend. Under these circumstances,
[Page 661]
and when the genuineness and excellence of the
radical reforms granted to Cuba, which reforms have constituted, as
it were, a new and most equitable body of law, the maximum of powers
and initiatives to which a free colony, the mistress of its own
fate, can aspire, are candidly recognized; when, in the face of
innumerable difficulties, these radical reforms have been carried
into effect, and when an autonomous government of its own is to-day
performing its functions in the Great Antilla; when the advantages
of this immense change begin to make themselves felt, it is
certainly not the time for the United States Government to
substitute for its former offers of its good offices hints of a
change of conduct in the event of more or less remote contingencies,
and to base this notification of its change not only upon the
contingency of a material success, a success as independent of right
as of the conduct of the party advocating the right, but upon its
own estimate of the success itself, an estimate made in accordance
with the opinion of any one who, at a given time, may wish to decide
upon it without any other guide (rules) than his own will, and
without any more impartiality than is imposed upon him by his
observations or surroundings.
[At a time] when the expressive congratulations of the Washington
Cabinet have been earned by our innovations; when the civil struggle
in the island of Cuba is adapting itself to the most modern and
humane conditions and character consistent with an active state of
war, as your excellency fully and nobly admits; when, in short, even
[all] the obligations of a moral order that the most jealous
prejudice can require have been fulfilled by Spain with the most
scrupulous fidelity and of her own accord, there remains no reason
or pretext for now discussing the duration of that struggle, which
is of an exclusively domestic nature, nor for making the conduct of
friendly nations dependent upon such duration, even if the progress
made in overcoming the insurrection were not so evident, and if the
hopes of a speedy pacification were not so well founded.
The remarkable consideration with which H. M.’s Government constantly
entertains the views and doctrines of the United States Government
does not suffice to induce it to accept, now or at any future
period, the theory which Y. E. is pleased to propound with regard to
international duties in the case of intestine rebellions, in
repetition of the views expressed years ago by the illustrious
Secretary of State, Mr. Fish. The Spanish Government can not consent
to attach so little weight to international friendship as to render
that relation between nations almost entirely destitute of mutual
obligations, the duties which it imposes being regarded, in every
case, as very inferior to those which are derived from
neutrality.
This Government is of opinion, on the contrary, basing its views upon
considerations of eternal ethics, that a true friend, both in the
private order of private relations and in the public order of
international relations, has more conventionalities to observe and
more duties to fulfill than a neutral or indifferent person; and
that the friendship which is founded upon international law obliges
all States, to use the words of the famous South American publicist,
Calvo, not only to prevent their own subjects from causing injury to
a friendly country, but to exert themselves to prevent any plots,
machinations, or combinations of any kind tending to disturb the
security of those States with which they maintain relations of
peace, friendship, and good
[Page 662]
harmony from being planned in their territory. “International law
does not merely oblige States to prevent their subjects from doing
anything to the detriment of the dignity or interests of friendly
nations or governments; it imposes upon them, in addition, the
strict duty of opposing, within their own territory, all plots,
machinations, or combinations of a character to disturb the security
of countries with which they maintain relations of peace,
friendship, and good harmony.” (§ 1298, Vol. III, p. 156.) This is
the meaning of international friendship as defined by Montesquieu,
when he said that nations ought to do each other as much good as
possible in peace and as little harm as possible in war. (Spirit of
Laws, Vol. I, p. 3.) And it is the meaning given by Fiore in the
following words: “Every State should refrain from ordering or
authorizing, in its own territory, acts of any kind tending,
directly or indirectly, to injure other States, even when it is not
obliged to do so by laws or treaties.” (Chapter II, § 598.)
It is upon this view of international friendship that the Spanish
Government bases its opinions with regard to the extension of the
obligations arising or derived from such friendship in the
intercourse of civilized nations, and hence the request which it has
addressed to the Washington Cabinet on numerous occasions, to
prevent, with a firm hand, the departure of filibustering
expeditions against Cuba, and to dissolve or prosecute the junta
which is sitting publicly in New York, and which is the active and
permanent center of attacks upon the Spanish nation, and which, from
the territory of the Union, is organizing and maintaining
hostilities against a country which is living in perfect peace with
the United States.
H. M.’s Government could not, nor should it, analyze the language of
the law of 1818, as it regards it as a law of a domestic or
municipal character, the scope of which it appertains to the Federal
Government alone to determine. All that it permitted itself to do,
in the name of the friendship declared by the treaty of 1795, and
which has been confirmed by practical demonstration through many
years and many tests, was to suggest the means of rendering real and
effectual those obligations which are derived from true friendship,
such as the Spanish Government understands it, either by the
publication of a proclamation of the same nature and as emphatic as
those which illustrious predecessors of the illustrious President,
Mr. McKinley, thought themselves called upon to publish under
similar circumstances, or by the severe application of the
regulations in force, or by their amendment or enlargement, as
occurred in the act of March 10, 1838.
Nor could H. M.’s Government refer to the duties of neutrality, as it
maintains with the same vigor as ever its well-founded assertion
that there is no reason, nor even a semblance of reason, to justify
a recognition of beligerency in the Cuban insurrection. All its
remarks have been directed to the duties imposed by neighborhood and
international friendship, and when it has mentioned the decision of
the Geneva arbitration, it did so merely as a comparison; for, if
diligence must be used in the discharge of the duties of neutrality,
as was decided there, no less diligence should be required in the
discharge of the duties of friendship; and if defects in the laws
can not be offered as an excuse in the case of the former, it would
be unreasonable to admit them in the case of the latter.
[Page 663]
The undersigned and the Government of which he forms part take
sincere pleasure in recognizing the fact, as they do with genuine
gratitude, that the watchfulness exercised during the last few
months along the extended coasts of America has been more effectual
than formerly in preventing the departure of filibustering
expeditions. He is also pleased to find a reason for gratitude to
the Federal Government in the skillful organization which it has
given to its naval forces, in order to prevent illegal aid being
sent to the Cuban rebels from the coast of Florida. Both facts prove
the power and the means at the disposal of the North American
Government for the fulfillment, with due energy and promptness, of
the obligations of international friendship.
We can not, however, notice with indifference, that there continues
to be acting in New York an organization composed chiefly of
naturalized North Americans who, notwithstanding, do not wish to
imbibe (imbibe the spirit of) their recently acquired nationality
nor the atmosphere of honor and friendship in which their Government
breathes; who violate the laws of their new country and abuse the
liberty granted them there by conspiring against the country in
which they were born, thereby creating a state of hostility which
disturbs the intimate and cordial relations which have so long been
maintained between Spain and the United States. The principles upon
which eternal law reposes, as much or more than law itself, demand
the prompt suppression (disappearance) of that public center of
conspiracy, from which every oversight is watched and every legal
subterfuge is made use of to violate the so-called neutrality laws
of the Republic of North America, for friendly nations have seldom
or never been seen to tolerate in their midst organizations whose
chief object, or, rather, whose only mission consists in plotting
against the integrity of the territory of another friendly
nation.
The Spanish people and Government, relying upon their rights, and
with the firm resolution to maintain their legitimate and
traditional sovereignty in the island of Cuba at every hazard,
without sparing their exertions or limiting their perseverance, hope
that the United States will not only continue to observe the kindly
expectancy to which your excellency refers, but that she will also
cooperate by the means already mentioned and other similar ones
within her own borders in the work of peace, justice, and autonomy
which Spain is now carrying out with so much self-denial and
perseverance, and that the United States will thus prove by more and
more open and effectual acts the friendship which actuates her
relations (to Spain), by which course she will completely discourage
the seditious and restless elements which are still sustaining the
rebellion in the Great Antilla, and which are only awaiting the
result of a possible collision between our two respective countries,
which are called by self-interest and affection to be on good terms
and to assist each other in the noble enterprises of peace, and not
to wound and destroy each other in the cruel struggles of war.
The island of Cuba, as Mr. Olney freely admitted in an official note,
has its life and its future bound to those of its mother country,
Spain, and the act of conspiring against the perpetual union of the
Pearl of the Antilles and the historical discoverer of the American
continent not only reveals destructive purposes, but also involves a
hopeless attempt. Cuba free, autonomous, ruled by a government of
her own and by the laws which she makes for herself, subject to the
immutable sovereignty of Spain, and forming an integral part of
Spain, presents the only solution
[Page 664]
of pending problems that is just to the colony
and the mother country, the denouement longed for by the great
majority of their respective inhabitants and the most equitable for
other States. It is only in this formula of colonial self-government
and Spanish sovereignty that peace, which is so necessary to the
Peninsula and to Cuba and so advantageous to the United States, can
be found. The Government of the Union knows this and can contribute
powerfully to the attainment of the end in view by acting in
accordance with what I have had the honor to say to your excellency.
It will certainly do this, because justice is revered in the United
States, and because the North American Republic, in conformity with
its traditional principles of respect for the wish of countries to
organize themselves as may best suit them, must finally admit, by
acts and by declarations, that the Cuban people have a per feet
right not to be disturbed by any one, and not to have any power,
near or distant, oppose their honorable and peaceful wishes, by
lending aid to a turbulent minority who subordinate the interests of
the immense majority of their countrymen to their own selfish
purposes.
So long as the Spanish Antilles did not enjoy the right to govern
themselves autonomically it might have been thought, though wrong,
that this minority represented the general views of the masses, and
in the case of such a hypothetical error there would be some excuse,
if not justification, for a certain amount of tolerance; but now,
when the state of affairs has been cleared up, and when it has been
made evident by the introduction of autonomy that the most estimable
inhabitants of the island desire peace under this system, which is
as liberal as they could wish, this moral and physical compulsion,
exerted by revolutionary organizations which are laboring freely in
the United States for an absurd, unattainable separation, contrary
to right and to the interests of all, ought to cease entirely and
without loss of time. Its continuation would be a violation of the
liberty which is the very essence of the social and political system
of North America.
It is impossible to see in the noble work of peace which has been
nobly and generously undertaken in Cuba, as your excellency very
truly remarks, a sudden creation which can arise in a single night;
it must be regarded as a lasting and noble structure, which, to use
your excellency’s eloquent words, would be founded upon the rock of
justice, not upon the moving sands of self-interest, and which, for
its more rapid development, requires the cooperation of friends and
the most scrupulous respect of foreigners.
I avail myself, etc.,
