President McKinley has issued in a short letter to a
sup- porter what is really an important political manifesto. He declares that not only is he not a candidate for a third term, but that if nominated he will not accept the nomination'. That clears the political air. Every prominent man in the Union hopes to be President, and is therefore anxious to daMage Mr. McKinley's chance of a third term, and there- fore also hostile to the policy of expansion which is his dis- tinctive claim. This kind of opposition will now be with- drawn, and the President becomes for the next three years free to pursue his own plans, which are clearly " expansion and - reciprocity." His decision on the first of these points must have been communicated to the Cuban delegates ill a rather determined form, for the Havana Convention has accepted the terms dictated from Washington by sixteen votes to eleven. These terms estab- lish a protectorate of • Cuba, which gives up her right -to independent action iu foreign affairs. This surrender was strongly resisted by the old independence party, which maintained that Cuba might be a State like other States, as well as Chili or Venezuela. but they were defeated.
