male citizen of Cuba libre, you would utterly and bitterly insult him
by the intimation that a man of his dignity ought ever to bathe, put
on clean clothes, or even wash his hands. He is not merely dirty, he
is filthy. He is infested with things that crawl and creep, often
visibly, over his half-naked body, and he is so accustomed to it that
he does not even scratch.

Next you observe the intense pride of this Cuban libre. It is
manifested the very first time you suggest anything like manual
labor--he is incapable of any other--even for such purposes as camp
sanitation, carrying rations, or for any other purpose. His manly
chest swells with pride and he exclaims in accents of wounded dignity,
"Yo soy soldado!" Still his pride does not by any chance get him
knowingly under fire. At El Poso some of him did get under fire from
artillery, accidentally, and it took a strong provost guard to keep
him there. If he ever got under fire again there was no officer on the
firing-line who knew it.

He is a treacherous, lying cowardly, thieving, worthless, half-breed
mongrel; born of a mongrel spawn of Europe, crossed upon the fetiches
of darkest Africa and aboriginal America. He is no more capable of
self-government than the Hottentots that roam the wilds of Africa or
the Bushmen of Australia. He can not be trusted like the Indian, will
not work like a negro, and will not fight like a Spaniard; but he will
lie like a Castilian with polished suavity, and he will stab you in
the dark or in the back with all the dexterity of a renegade graduate
of Carlisle.

Providence has reserved a fairer future for this noble country than to
be possessed by this horde of tatterdemalions. Under the impetus of