| Show RAPE OP CUBA There Will Be a Stern Reckoning With Those Responsible Let there be no misunderstanding concerning Cuba 1C the United Stnt sIs s-Is going to sacrifice its honor upon the altar of sordid greed let it at least do so with eyes wide open and with a full realization of the present purport and the future menace oC Its act There should he hereafter no whimpering that we didnt know It was loaded Tho signs of the times are so plain that the veriest stark staring fool of a wayfarer can understand them This then Is the condition which confronts usThe The United States stands morally pledged by Presidential declaration and by Congressional enactment to grant liberal commercial concessions to Cuba Such concessions arc absolutely necessary to the Industrial prosperity und to the ollllcal trniuullly of Cuba The granting oC them desired by the President by the majority of Congress and by the overwhelming majority of the American people Is I forbidden by a stubborn and factious minority In Congress acting presumably at the be host of and certainly In the Interest of the allied sugar trust and beetsugar ring These selfish allies oppose the granting oC such concessions not because be-cause It would injure their business and lessen their Immediate profils for they admit and boast that It would not do so No their opposition Is Inspired In-spired by a greedy desire for enormous future gains to be had through a veritable rape of the Island of Cuba They propose these sugar monopolists do to withhold conccssionu from Cuba until tlie Island Is ruined until plantations planta-tions and refineries arc abandoned timid their owners bankrupt Then they will purchase all such properties at the merost fraction of their real value Finally they will In one way or another an-other drag Cuba into this Union as a State for they expect that the ruined Cubans will either be glad to accept annexation as their only hoptf for Industrial In-dustrial salvation or will revolt again as they did against Spanish commercial oppression and thus compel the United Slates to go in forcibly and lake control con-trol of the Island That Is I the scheme of the allied sugar trusts first to ruin Cuba und them lo steal the island It thorns to matter nothing to them that thus our Nations honor would be irretrlovnbly besmirched be-smirched that a people confiding in and dependent upon us would be be trayed and ruined that we should be pilL In peril of another tedious and costly war and that another pockot borough State with alien instItutions and difficult social and racial problems would be pllchforkcd into this Union to help govern the Nation All they seem to see and care for Is the oppor tunity of looting Cuba and of getting PossessIon of her sugar plantation and factories for a song It Is now past the eleventh hour Rut even yet there Is I tlrne to balk the consummation of such Iniquity = 1C It is 1 not bulked there will one day bo a stern reckoning with those responsible and with those responsible re-sponsible for the failure to balk the scheme as well an those responsible for Its conception and execution and that day of reckoning may not be far off New York Tribune June Ii5 1002 I |
