--the jingo journalism of the world. We all experienced the
growing sense of the unsuitability of war to our modern ideals during
the earlier months of this year while matters were reaching the acute
stage between Spain and the United States. The best Press in this
country reflected the common sentiment, that the whole proceeding is
savage, barbarous, inhuman, and therefore utterly unworthy of rational
men. I believe it is this growing horror of legalised carnage which
prevented the late President of the United States' ill-judged message
leading to any rupture between our two countries. It was felt that
Englishmen and Americans deliberately setting about the destruction of
each other's property and taking one another's lives would amount to a
scandal positively unthinkable--a fratricidal horror to be prevented at
all and any costs. I am not sure that the same opinion was so
universal on the other side, though undoubtedly it existed amongst the
best men of the country.

America has at present two difficulties to contend with. First, she is
a _young_ nation, and young people are fond of trying experiments.
And, next, they are burdened, perhaps I should say cursed, with the
most violent, anti-cosmopolitan Press anywhere existent. A set of
fire-eaters appear to control the New York section, of it, and in the
judgment of many sober-minded Americans, with some of whom I have
myself spoken, the late war was wholly due to their ceaseless,
incessant clamour, and that, given a few months' patience, the Cuban
people might have by plebiscite been able to settle their own destiny.
The starving peasants concentrated in the towns were the alleged object
of the hurry. Long months passed before any succour reached them. If
they were veritably starving, surely every man of them must have died
long before an American army of liberation could have been effectually
landed for their relief. The sympathies of this country were not with
Spain, for it is by her misrule, her acknowledged misgovernment of her
colonists, that all the mischief has been brought about. One regrets
to have to say it, but Spain has been strangled in the coils of her own
superstition, and progress for her ceased to be when she elected to
live by the light of ideals and principles which are henceforth
impossible. It is the frantic endeavour of France and Italy to escape
Spain's doom which explains their incessant strife between Church and
State. The enlighte