Note 10 — Chapter VIII · The Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation

In suing to President McKinley for peace on July 22d, previous, the Prime Minister of Spain had justified all the atrocities committed and permitted by his government in Cuba during the thirty years’ struggle for independence there which preceded the Spanish-American War by saying that what Spain had done had been prompted only by a “desire to spare the great island from the dangers of premature independence.”10