ThE WAR. T HE War, which is developing alike the devoted
courage and the bewildering inefficiency of the Spanish'people—that "fatigued people," as their Colonial Minister calls them—develops also the efficiency and audacity of their Transatlantic foes. The despatches from Commodore Dewey had hardly been received when America woke to her new position, the newspaper talk about exchanging the Philippines suddenly stopped> Washington remembered that her power was seated 00 both the great oceans of the world, and orders were flashed to St. Francisco to despatch to Manilla an army of occupation. Transport was at once collected, the Pacific being now clear for transit ; munitions, steel plates, a great naval architect, and a supply of artificers were sent to the Pacific port by rail, and within seven days more a fleet with three thousand armed and drilled Americans on board will be steaming for the Philippines, where Commodore Dewey, with his squadron safely riding in the great harbour of Manilla, patiently awaits them. Once arrived, say on June 15th, Manilla—where the garrison appears scarcely able to cope with the Tagal insurgents, who have three centuries of misgovernment to avenge—will be compelled to surrender and admit a garrison of American troops, whowill compel Spaniards and Tagals alike to maintain order. An American Governor of the Philippines, General Merritt, has already been selected, and for the present, at all events, the islands will be held, as we suggested last week, as Territories in the military occupation of the Republic. Their fate will remain undetermined until the close of the war, but in no case will they be restored to Spain. We do not ourselves doubt that America will keep them as prize of war, but if they are offered to Great Britain it will be for our statesmen to decide whether the weary Titan is not already overloaded. With the English-speaking peoples agreed upon their policy threats from the Continent do not matter much.
Precisely the same symptoms of character in the two peoples are being exhibited in the Atlantic. The Spanish Ministry, who see quite clearly that her colonies are now only a burden to Spain, have apparently resolved upon the policy which a fortnight since we ventured to predict they would pursue. They are trying to save their Atlantic fleet. They trust, it would seem, that the garrison of Cuba will be able to defend the island, that battle and fever will wear the American troops away, and that at last, weary of war, of loss by deaths, and of expenditure, the Government at Washington will grant them good terms. This would be a sound policy if they were sure of their own people, if they could protract the war for years, or if they could rely upon armed assistance from the Continental Powers. We suspect they are certain of none of these things, and are influenced mainly, like any Spaniard in a street of Madrid, by an invincible ignorance of the energy and the resources of their tremendous opponent. What does it matter to the United States if victory costs them half a million of men, or five hundred millions of Debt ? Taxes on liquor and tobacco will pay for every- thing, and as for lives, throughout the American Civil War the more sanguinary a battle the more eagerly brigades of half-drilled but perfectly armed volunteers presented themselves in front. Only France could defend Cuba, for we shall not ; and if France were rash enough for such an adventure, America would endure her declara- tion of war with tranquillity, and within eighteen months would have produced a fleet before which even that of France must perforce recede. Look at the spectacle now presented. The Americans, who have awaited quietly the arrival of the Spanish fleet, perceiving, shrewd men as they are, that to land troops with enemies still on the water is rash policy, no sooner hear a report that the Spanish fleet has retired on Cadiz than they decide on the most energetic action. Admiral Sampson's squadron will attack, and presumably take, Porto Rico, the Spaniards performing prodigies of valour but never sinking their adversaries ; and Cuba will be " rushed " by an army of sixty thousand men. Of these, it is true, only ten or fifteen thousand will be regular troops ; but have the Spanish Generals any satisfactory evidence that their compulsorily raised recruits are better soldiers than the American volunteers ? It may be seriously doubted. Genius, of course, and military genius more especially, is of no country, and the Spaniards in Cuba may throw up a Napoleon; but apart from that contin- gency, the picked young men of the States, chosen by voluntary selection, should be better soldiers than the conscripted lads of Spain, who in thousands of cases were shipped with the smallest tincture of military training. They are no more veteran troops than the Americans. As for fever, of which the prophets make so much, the volunteers are half of them from the swampy riverain territories of the South, and why should they dread the miasma of Cuba any more than their own ? The Spaniards, so far as we can form an opinion, will die in heaps, as bravely as the crew of the ' San Juan de Ulloa ' died— that is, as bravely as any men have ever died anywhere— but they will be defeated. American artillery is no better than Spanish, but it is never misdirected. The worst part of the whole affair for Spain is that, as we have said, the Spanish Government cannot rely upon its own people. Already greatly irritated by the failure to defend the Philippines, they will, we should fear, con- sider the impotence of the Atlantic fleet a final proof of the incompetence of their Government. Nations are never satisfied to wait wearily till a waiting policy succeeds, particularly if waiting involves taxation to the bone. There will be risings in every corner of Spain, gravely increased in seriousness by the bitterness of the hundred thousand families which will consider, quite naturally, though unfairly, that their children, the soldiers now in Cuba, have been deserted by the mother-country. It will be necessary to strengthen the Executive, if only for the restoration of order, which when a Latin people is excited goes so rapidly to pieces, and we max, we think, rely on it that the Army, now the only organism in Spain retaining full vitality, will in- sist upon a military dictatorship. Already, indeed, a Committee or Junta of Generals has been formed in Madrid, ostensibly to protect military interests, but really to take care that when the hour arrives the regiments should not fire upon one another, but that the Army shall act as a whole. About the direction in which it will act there is much uncertainty, but it seems clear that any military dictatorship must maintain order, that it must have some foothold other than its own will—even Prim did not venture to proclaim himself King of Spain—and that it must continue the war, the bad management of which will be the excuse for the pronunciantiento. We- stin incline, therefore, to the belief that the Queen-Regent will retire, that the new Regent will be a soldier—possibly a man at present little known out of Spain—and that he will issue his decrees in the name of the child-King. There will, however, be no peace ; and we are bound to add that the symptoms of a discontent which may produce a more radical convulsion begin to multiply. In Spain, as in Italy, there are evidences of almost inexplicable economic trouble. To use an inaccurate but intelligible simile, a wave of pauperism is passing over the land. Such a trouble is natural in Barcelona, which was main- tained by its monopoly of Cuban trade, and has lost it ; but there is bitter suffering, actual want of the means of healthy existence in many other cities, and at least some of the agricultural provinces. No man except the Osmanli bears hunger patiently; and the man of the Mediterranean States, conscious of fertile land and of a certain richness in the Nature round him, grows furious under the pain, which he attributes either to the neglect or the malice of his superiors. Under this impulse the people when they rise fight hard, they direct their attacks against the well- to-do, and they are hardly to be appeased till they have shed blood. In fact, though we suppose the Army can and will maintain order, the social revolution in Spain, the demand, that is, that property be in some measure at least redistributed, may have commenced. We shall see, but of this much we feel almost assured, that a much more despotic regime of some kind will be introduced, that it will continue the war, and that its watchwords, even if it is Republican, will be " stubbornness " and "fresh alliances." Those who expect the overthrow of the Government are doubtless right ; those who look for- the downfall of the dynasty as well as of the Government may be right ; but those who look for peace as a result of either event reckon, we believe, without the Spanish people- and its second executive agent, the Spanish Army.
Previous page
