The Spanish statesmen are evidently growing desperate about Cuba. It
is gravely stated that they have decided to .raise a loan of £40,000,000 sterling for the expenses of the war, and that in the early winter they will forward forty thousand more conscripts, thus raising the nominal strength of the army in the island to one hundred and sixty-five thousand men, a force equal to the whole adult male population now in insurrection. Meanwhile the cultivation of sugar is suspended, and the output of tobacco has stink to such a point that, merely to prevent Havana from being ruined by the stoppage of all the cigar manufactories, the export of raw tobacco has been forbidden by decree. No such failure of an army to do its work has been reported in modern times ; and we confess that no explanation as yet offered seems to us in the least to fit the facts. Even incompetence in the Generals will not explain the situation. There must be unwillingness to act somewhere in the garrison, but where it is nobody either in Spain, Cuba, or New York even pretends to know. The officers do their work fairly well at home, the men are among the bravest of mankind, and the stores of military material are enormous, yet it is gravely stated that the only plan of campaign is to stretch a cordon of troops right across the island, so as to prevent the insurgents massing together,— precisely the movement which a competent General would be expected to encourage. Is it possible that the muster-rolls of Spanish regiments are all falsified, or that the men die in some hitherto unknown proportion P
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