spatch of a single soldier more from the Peninsula was infinitely more
likely to have caused an insurrection than that of which our Ministers
were afraid--at the moment, also, when our troops were in want of the
merest necessaries, the arrears of pay being the chief cause of their
debilitated condition, and when a great part of the Spanish residents in
Cuba, under the name of 'Reformers,' 'Autonomists,' etc., had made
common cause with the insurgents, while they were enriching themselves
to a fabulous extent by contracts for supplies and transports. In these
circumstances it was folly to accept a struggle with an immensely rich
country, possessing a population four times that of ours, and but a
pistol shot from the seat of action." The Government of Spain was
perfectly aware that the troops in Cuba were already quite insufficient
even to cope with the insurgents, that the people at home were already
murmuring bitterly at the cost of the war, and that it was impossible to
send out a contingent of any practical value. Sickness of all kinds,
enteric, anaemia, and all the evils of under-fed and badly found troops,
were rapidly consuming the forces in Cuba, "and yet the Government took
no thought of who was to man the guns whose gunners were drifting daily
into the hospital and the cemetery.... The national debt was increasing
in a fabulous manner, and recourse was had to the mediaeval remedy of
debasing the currency, while even at that moment the troops had more
than a year's pay in arrear, and absolute penury was augmenting their
other sufferings."

[1] _La Escuadra del Almirante Cervera_, por Victor M.
Concas Palan.

This was the moment which the responsible Ministers of the Crown thought
propitious to throw down the gauntlet to the overwhelming power of
America rather than to face what the writer terms the "cabbage-headed
riff-raff of the Plaza de la Cevada" of Madrid. Again and again was the
absolute inefficiency of the fleet pointed out to them. Even the few
ships there were, all of them vastly inferior to those of the United
States' navy, were without their proper armament; they might have been
of some service in defence of the coast of Spain, but in aggressive
warfare they were useless. Allowing somewhat for the natural indignation
of one of those who was sacrificed, who saw his beloved commander and
his comrades-in-arms sent like sheep to the slaughter, and all for an
idea,--and that a perfectly stupid and