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LIBERTY, THE STORY OF CUBA—Horatio S. Rubens—Brewer, Warren & Putnam ($2.50).
Young Lawyer Horatio Seymour Rubens, who in 1893 had a smooth, fat face, a wispy mustache and a confident manner for his 24 years, had not been merely a footballer at C. C. N. Y. He had also made friends with a Cuban classmate, one Gonzalo de Quesada. When Quesada introduced him to Jose Julian Marti, known as "the Master" to U. S.-exiled Cuban revolutionaries, young Rubens caught fire from Marti's fervor, swore he would get in there and fight for Cuban independence. This book is the disarmingly partisan record of how Cuba finally got quit of Spain. His own place in the epic Author Rubens keeps modestly choral: heroes of his tale are Poet Marti, Mulatto General Antonio Macéo, white-bearded, spectacled Máximo Gomez, Cuba herself.
Rubens soon proved his usefulness to the Cuban exiles as a lawyer and was made General Counsel and utility man to the "Cuban Junta." In 1895 Gómez and Marí'i landed in Cuba for the final struggle. Martí was soon killed in a skirmish, but Gómez joined forces with Macéo and spread revolt over the whole island. Meantime the Junta in the U. S. had the job of keeping the Cuban "army" supplied with guns and ammunition. Rubens became an expert organizer of filibustering expedi tions, an equally expert defense lawyer for arrested filibusters (never lost a case). Occasionally he made a voyage himself, but his usefulness was greater on shore. Raising money for the rebel Cubans was part of his job. Biggest single contribution ($30,000) he got from Tammany's Boss Croker. Propaganda was another part. He admits that Hearst and the yellow press were a great help in spreading Spanish atrocity stories, rousing U. S. sympathies for the revolting Cubans. The Junta's agents had to be organized but kept under cover: one of their men was made Pullman conductor on the Manhattan-Tampa run. As the popularity of the Cuban cause increased, Rubens was pestered with volunteers. He let the late Author Stephen Crane make a trip on the filibustering Commodore, which was wrecked. "When I met Crane again. . . . I asked him how one particularly self-important man behaved when all chance of saving the ship seemed gone. 'He reminded me of George Washington,' Crane said, 'first in war, first in peace—and first in the boat.'" On this experience Crane founded his famed story The Open Boat.
Though Rubens does not take the credit of getting the U. S. to declare war on Spain, he did his best to bring it about. When one of his agents got hold of a letter written by Spanish Minister de Lôme in which President McKinley was called "a pothouse politician, catering to the rabble," Rubens published the letter, forced de Lôme's resignation. Rubens thinks the Maine was blown up by the Spaniards, admits it was probably not "an official act," but suspects that the disgruntled Spanish General "Butcher" Weyler hoped it would happen.