The plan is that Spain shall send vessels
to attack our Atlantic seaboard, and Japan shall simultaneously make war
on the Pacific coast.
Inquiries at the Japanese embassy only elicited a denial of the report.
The Japanese insist that it is absurd to think of an alliance between
Japan and Spain, because there is an unfriendly feeling between the two
countries on account of the war in the Philippine Islands. Spain, as you
may remember, accused Japan of assisting the rebels in Manila with the
hope of securing the Philippines for herself.
Inquiries were also made of the Secretary of State, but the department
denied the truth of the rumors as firmly as the Japanese had done.
We should not be too sure that these rumors are false on this account,
for Ambassadors and diplomatists are frequently obliged, for state
reasons, to deny facts which they know to be perfectly true.
There has been considerable excitement in Havana on account of the
arrest of some fifty of the most prominent merchants in the city.
The charge made against them was that they had been shipping goods into
the interior of the island without a license, as required by a recent
rule of Weyler's.
The true cause of their arrest was that a number of packages containing
medicine and ammunition were found on board one of the trains leaving
Havana. Weyler declared that these packages were intended for the Cuban
rebels, and had the merchants arrested.
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