ct--as
though they wished to furnish the war correspondents with a chance for
descriptive writing. With the horrors of war as horrible as they are
without any aid from these contrasts, their presence always seemed not
only sinful but bad art; as unnecessary as turning a red light on the
dying gladiator.

There are so many places which are scenes set apart for battles--places
that look as though Nature had condemned them for just such sacrifices.
Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of veldt, is one of
these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, and, in Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The
photographs have made all of us familiar with the vast, desolate
approaches to Port Arthur. These are among the waste places of the
earth--barren, deserted, fit meeting grounds only for men whose object in
life for the moment is to kill men. Were you shown over one of these
places, and told, "A battle was fought here," you would answer, "Why, of
course!"

But down in Cuba, outside of Santiago, where the United States army
fought its solitary and modest battle with Spain, you might many times
pass by San Juan Hill and think of it, if you thought of it at all, as
only a pretty site for a bungalow, as a place obviously intended for
orchards and gardens.

On July 1st, twelve years ago, when the American army came upon it out of
the jungle the place wore a partial disguise. It still was an irregular
ridge of smiling, sunny hills with fat, comfortable curves, and in some
places a steep, straight front. But above the steepest, highest front
frowned an aggressive block-house, and on all the slopes and along the
sky-line were rows of yellow trenches, and at the base a cruel cat's
cradle of barbed wire. It was like the face of a pretty woman behind the
bars of a visor. I find that on the day of the fight twelve years ago I
cabled my paper that San Juan Hill reminded the Americans of "a sunny
orchard in New England." That was how it may have looked when the
regulars were climbing up the steep front to capture the block-house, and
when the cavalry and Rough Riders, having taken Kettle Hill, were running
down its opposite slope, past the lake, to take that crest of San Juan
Hill which lies to the right of the block-house. It may then have looked
like a sunny New England orchard, but before night fell the intrenching
tools had lent those sunny slopes "a fierce and terrible aspect." And
after that, hour after hour, and day after day, we saw