ington. The United States has never seen a real war on land with modern equipment.

Because the United States was victor in '79 and 1812 and the "North and the South" participated in a man to manslaughter from 1861 to '65, and again in 1898 were victors over an already half conquered and more or less decadent army of starving and shoeless Spanish boy soldiers, four thousand miles from their base of supplies, it does not follow that foreign conditions of transport, armaments, military science and alliances have not completely altered in two decades. They certainly have since Yorktown and Gettysburg.

It is a case of stumbling along on the doubtful military glories of the past, of the days of "Indians" and the days of the smooth bore, without realizing (outside military circles) that today battles are won by the ton weight of metal placed on a given spot in the shortest space of time.

The history of the world shows the decline of one nation after another, when the nation became opulent and arrogant. The United States has become both. It does not realize the latter and gloats over the former. So that invariable law of predestined descent will move toward it as surely as there are, armed to the teeth, nations to the East, West and South.

In 1898 war was declared by the United States against Spain as the outcome of the insurgent condition of Cuba. At this time General Weyler, the Spanish CaptainGeneral of the Island, had, by severe military methods. about accomplished its pacification. His methods were about the same as those adopted by the English in Afghanistan, Egypt, and South Africa, or those methods adopted by the French and Germans in North and Southwest Africa respectively.

The hysterical press of the country, after the accident to the United States battleship "Maine," forced President McKinley's hand, opposed as he was personally to war, and the Congress, in response to the attitude of the Press which quickly moulded public opinion, declared war in April, 1898.

The press allegations were that in the preceeding February the Spanish blew up the "Maine" whilst at anchor in the harbor of Havana. It may be said that these premature statements misled public opinion and were in a large measure (little was said of the commercialists at the doors of the Senate Chamber) the cause of the declaration of war which followed a few weeks after, even more so than the then existing condition of relations with Spain or any misplaced hysterical sympathy with the Cuban insurrectionists. America never participated in a more unjust or unnecessary war.

The very cause of the inflamed condition of public opinion was the loss of the ship. Today the active cause of the Maine's loss is a matter of conjecture and conjectural it must remain in the minds of the most bigoted. The most forceful arguments only went to show that the allegations were based upon hearsay and no proof was ever forthcoming against the Spanish.

In 1905 many people became participants in the purchase of the battleship Maine, then at the bottom of Havana harbor. The purchasers arranged with Mr. E. Corthell, the late state engineer of the State of New York, to submit plans to raise it. Mr. Corthell submitted plans and preparations to that end commenced.

The purchase of the ship came about in this way: The Cuban government demanded of the United States government that it remove the ship from Havana harbor, as it was and had been for eight years, an obstruction

and menace to navigation. The demand passed from the treasury department to the state department. Mr. John Hay, then Secretary of State, replied to the Cuban gov ernment in words to the effect that the United States government relinquished all claims in respect to the ship to the Cuban government, as it was in their waters and harbor and if they wished it removed, there was no objection on the part of the United States government, to the Cuban government taking possession of and removing it. Whereupon the Cuban Government promptly sold the wreck, under this relinquishment, to Messrs. DeWyckoff, Petzold & Company for cash, coupled with a contract that the purchasers should raise it in accordance with the reply from the Department of State, and over the signature of the Secretary of State of the United States.

When the sale became public, there was a great deal of speculative comment as to the cause of the ship's foundering being revealed; this together with a wail of sentimental public disapproval, resulted in Mr. Hay's letter of relinquishment being deemed invalid by Mr. Roosevelt, who stated that Congress would have to pass on Mr. Hay's decision. As a consequence of this decision, the purchasers lost the ship and never recovered their purchase price from the Cuban government. The "Maine" was subsequently floated by the United States government at public expense, towed into deep water outside Havana and sunk in the Florida strait.

Immediately following the wreck of the "Maine" the disordered condition of the public mind was expressed in slogans relative to it, such as "Lest we forget," "Remember the Maine," etc. Not one thought was given to the possible cause, of the disaster.

The early reports of the divers submitted to the inves

tigating committee stated that they (the divers) found and walked upon specified plates of the ship partially buried in the mud, in the vicinity of and outside of the wreck. A careful reading of these reports indicate that these plates were blown out or from the ship.

Let it be borne in mind that the "Maine" was notorious for its bad ventilation, and that it was coaled with a quality of soft or bituminous coal known to contain a very high percentage of volatile carbon. The wing bunkers were in the vicinity of the storage of ten inch shells. Assume that a man entered these bunkers with a naked light, which is now against regulations, or lighted a match, the possibility of an explosion of coal gas remains, which might account for the first explosion, and the second, in the shell room, is to be accounted for by communication from the first. Under these conditions the plates would be blown out.

The public never gave Spain the benefit of this possibility, nor for the rescue of the American sailors by the crew of the Spanish man-of-war then at anchor a few fathoms away. The press drove the people, the Congress and the Senate, war mad.

The Spanish people and officers of the Spanish army and navy, were hurt and staggered at the accusation, and the Cubans gloated over the disaster and the result it effected.

Years after the war, high Spanish officials begged the men of Spain to abstain from shaving for one day, and to contribute the amount saved by that abstention to a fund to be devoted to an endeavor to prove their innocence of complicity in the ship's destruction. But the United States government made its utilization impossible by pandering to the sentimentality of the electorate, by first refusing to permit outside interests to raise the

vessel, and secondly by sinking it in three thousand feet of water immediately after floating it at great cost to the government. The noble and "large thing," to have done, as Mr. Wilson puts it, would have been to invite an international commission of naval officers, including Spanish, to examine the ship on flotation, and to have determined forever the cause of the disaster, at that international Supreme Court of unbiased naval efficiency in session. At least such a procedure would have been eminently satisfactory to the world and especially so to the honor of Spain.