is duty; and the East Indian fleet of
Spain vanished, smashed, burned and sunken by a thunderbolt! The theory
of war countenanced by the impetuous and demanded by the presumptuous,
was that our aggressive forces must attack Havana. In and around that
city were an enormous garrison, abundant military stores, forty miles
of trenches defended by sixty thousand men; and far more to be dreaded
the deadly climate, the overwhelming rains, the deep rank soil soaked
under the tropical sun and the dense vegetation, and still more the
pestilence--the ghastly Yellow Fever, and scarcely less poisonous and
fatal pernicious malarial fevers, and dysenteries that exhausted as
fast as fever consumed. Fortunately, it was decided that the place
to attack Havana was Santiago, and there the regular army, with the
exception of the regiments sent to the Philippines, was ordered and in
due time reinforced by volunteers, safely embarked and disembarked, to
become the winners on bloody fields and receive the surrender of the
Spanish garrisons of the city and province of Santiago. The vaunted
fleet of Cervera, having attempted flight, perished--the wrecks of
his fine ships strewing the southern coast of Cuba, where they remain
as memorials, like and unlike the distorted iron that was the Maine,
in the harbor of Havana, and as the shattered and charred remnants of
the fleet of Montejo, at Manila, still cumber the waters of the bay off
Cavite, telling the story of the glory of our victorious heroes there.

The responsibility of the Chief Magistrate of the United States in
the late war was remarkable. Everything of moment was referred to
him from the Cabinet officers of the Government, and he gave all the
closest attention, making, after conscientious consideration, the
decisions that determined the course of action taken. This was true
in unusual measure of the Treasury, State, War and Navy Departments.

It is well the President resisted while he could the "rush line"
in Congress, that strove headlong for war, and strenuously urged
in the time gained essential preparations, and that he pressed the
war the day it was declared with a hurry message to Admiral Dewey,
who won his immortal victory on the other side of the world within
a week of his orders by cable to "destroy" the squadron of the enemy
that might be found somewhere on the west coast of Luzon.

Nearer home there was a harder task. The Spanish army in Cuba was
much more formidable on the