ford to diminish the number of armored
vessels on this spot, now become the determining centre of the
conflict. The possibility of the situation was twofold. Either the
enemy might succeed in an effort at evasion, a chance which required
us to maintain a distinctly superior force of battleships in order to
allow the occasional absence of one or two for coaling or repairs,
besides as many lighter cruisers as could be mustered for purposes of
lookout, or, by merely remaining quietly at anchor, protected from
attack by the lines of torpedoes, he might protract a situation which
tended not only to wear out our ships, but also to keep them there
into the hurricane season,--a risk which was not, perhaps, adequately
realized by the people of the United States.

It is desirable at this point to present certain other elements of the
naval situation which weightily affected naval action at the moment,
and which, also, were probably overlooked by the nation at large, for
they give a concrete illustration of conditions which ought to
influence our national policy, as regards the navy, in the present and
immediate future. We had to economize our ships because they were too
few. There was no reserve. The Navy Department had throughout, and
especially at this period, to keep in mind, not merely the exigencies
at Santiago, but the fact that we had not a battleship in the home
ports that could in six months be made ready to replace one lost or
seriously disabled, as the _Massachusetts_, for instance, not long
afterwards was, by running on an obstruction in New York Bay. Surprise
approaching disdain was expressed, both before and after the
destruction of Cervera's squadron, that the battle fleet was not sent
into Santiago either to grapple the enemy's ships there, or to support
the operations of the army, in the same way, for instance, that
Farragut crossed the torpedo lines at Mobile. The reply--and, in the
writer's judgment, the more than adequate reason--was that the country
could not at that time, under the political conditions which then
obtained, afford to risk the loss or disablement of a single
battleship, unless the enterprise in which it was hazarded carried a
reasonable probability of equal or greater loss to the enemy, leaving
us, therefore, as strong as before relatively to the naval power which
in the course of events might yet be arrayed against us. If we lost
ten thousand men, the country could replace them; if we lost a