From  all  that  I  could  see  and  hear  in  Cuba,
I  felt  thoroughly  convinced  that  American  inter-
vention   had   amply  justified   itself,

Retrained  ^^^  *^^*  *^^^  noble  island,  after
all  its  miseries  and  distractions,
was  now  in  a  fair  way  to  become  as  prosperous
and  happy  as,  by  its  natural  advantages,  it  is
entitled  to  be.  The  splendid  work  of  cleansing
and  sanitation  which  the  Americans  have  done
in  Havana  I  more  fully  appreciated  after  a  brief
inspection  of  a  couple  of  unsanitated  Spanish-
American  towns — Cartagena  and  Barranquilla.
But  cleaning-up  and  road-making,  and  the
organization  of  public   services,  are   not  all  that


THE    AMERICAN    IN    CUBA        249

the  Americans  are  doing.  In  the  Cuban  guide-
book it  was  significant  to  note  the  number  of
places  which  owed  their  fame  to  having  been
the  scene  of  this  or  that  massacre  or  military
execution.  It  would  be  premature,  perhaps,  to
say  that  all  that  sort  of  thing  is  past  and  done
with ;  but  there  will  certainly  not  be  much  more
of  it ;  the  United  States  will  see  to  that.  I  am
bound  to  confess  that  here,  in  my  opinion,  the
Republic  has  *'  taken  up  the  white  man's  burden  "
very  efficiently  and  in  a  very  true  sense.
The  sense  of  prosperity  was  very  strongly
borne  in  upon  me  in  Vedado,  a  suburb  of  Havana,
whither  I  went  to  call  upon  an  American  gentle-
man, resident  for  many  years  in  Cuba,  to  whom
I  had  an  introduction.  Vedado  is  a  great  sun-
baked stretch  of  ground  between  the  low  hills
and  the  sea  to  the  west  of  Havana,  where  hand-
some bungalow-villas  are  rising  in  great  numbers.
