Excerpt from Cuba and the Intervention During these visits, my chief aim and object was to watch the situation from the Cuban rather than from the American point of view. Unlike so many who visited the island I did not limit my observations to the view presented from the windows of the Palace in Havana. That, through official reports and through the major portion of the news reports, I could have had almost as well in Washington or in New York as in Havana. Nor did I accept oflicial statements as necessarily accurate. And final. I sought con tact with Cubans to obtain their opinions, and met many Spaniards from whom I obtained other Opinions. Many in both groups, to which I may add a third, that of the many officers of our Regular Army stationed in administrative positions throughout the island, were and still are among my personal friends. I count myself fortunate in that I secured from many in these different groups a personal trust and confidence which led them to talk with me with entire freedom and honesty. My correspondence for the publications which I represented, and others to which I was an occasional contributor, was at all times unhampered and unrestricted by any editorial or managerial policy. I was free to tell what I saw and to make my own comments on it. In the preparation of this book I have paid no further attention to that published correspondence than has been desirable and neces sary to refresh my memory regarding Special incidents or events, and to obtain special figures. The volume is not in any way a compilation of that correspondence, but, with the possible excep tion of an occasional paragraph, consists entirely of newly written matter, all experiences of the time being weighed in the scales of later developments. Yet I have seen little or nothing to alter materially the opinions and convictions formed during the im mediate time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.