enormously productive and,
furthermore, Cuba contained important deposits of iron ore.

Spain had only a feeble grip on her possessions. For years the natives
of Cuba and of the Philippines had been in revolt against the Spanish
power. At times the revolt was covert. Again it blazed in the open.

The situation in Cuba was rendered particularly critical because of the
methods used by the Spanish authorities in dealing with the rebellious
natives. The Spaniards were simply doing what any empire does to
suppress rebellion and enforce obedience, but the brutalities of
imperialism, as practiced in Cuba by the Spaniards, gave the American
interventionists their opportunity. Day after day the newspapers carried
front page stories of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. Day after day the
ground was prepared for open intervention in the interests of the
oppressed Cubans. There was more than grim humor in the instructions
which a great newspaper publisher is reported to have sent his
cartoonist in Cuba,--"You provide the pictures; we'll furnish the war."

The conflict was precipitated by the blowing up of the United States
battleship _Maine_ as she lay in the harbor of Havana (February 15,
1898). It has not been settled to this day whether the _Maine_ was blown
up from without or within. At the time it was assumed that the ship was
blown up by the Spanish, although "there was no evidence whatever that
any one connected with the exercise of Spanish authority in Cuba had had
so much as guilty knowledge of the plans made to destroy the _Maine_"
(p. 270), and although "toward the last it had begun to look as if the
Spanish Government were ready, rather than let the war feeling in the
United States put things beyond all possibility of a peaceful solution,
to make very substantial concessions to the Cuban insurgents and bring
the troubles of the Island to an end" (p. 273-4).[35]

Congress, in a joint resolution passed April 20, 1898, declared that
"the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free
and independent.... The United States hereby disclaims any intention to
exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island except
for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that
is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to
its people."

The war itself was of no great moment. There was little fighting on
land, and the naval battles resulted in overwhelming victories for