A FORECAST OF THE WAR.
OUR deep sympathy with Americans, both as kinsfolk and as the first nation which has risked a great war to stop a great oppression, does not blind us to the fact that they are undertaking a task which may prove harder than they expect, and especially may involve more time. A very powerful dog cannot always kill a badger, because he cannot always draw him. The general notion here is that the American and Spanish Fleets will meet off Cuba ; that the American will defeat the Spaniard at sea ; and that then the American Army, incessantly recruited from the mainland, will crush the Spanish Army and set up an independent Government in Cuba. Spain, thus beaten, will retreat with dignity, and the short war will end in an enfranchisement of the Spanish colonies from an administration which crushes them to the dust. We pray that it may be so ; but we have a suspicion that Spain, which produces many able men, has hit upon a plan of defence which will give the United States much more trouble than this. Our impression is, writing as observers and not as experts in war, that the statesmen of Madrid rely greatly on time, and intend to make of the whole war a succession of slow campaigns. They will not, we think, defend Cuba at all by sea, or attack the ports of the Republic, but will recall their Fleet to European waters, and leave the Americans to conquer Cuba, if they can, by a land war. They have at least a hundred thousand men in the island ; they will drag the American soldiers away from their base ; and they will then, possibly after trying one great engagement, in which they will be defeated by the energy of the American riflemen, defend Cuba as the insurgents have done, by a guerilla war. They have large stocks of cartridges, they can live on very little, and it is not certain that they will not have help from the native population, which, bitterly hostile as it is to Spain, probably retains much of the Spanish-American bitterness of feeling towards the aggressive, energetic, and heretical North American. The Catholic Church, it must not be forgotten, will be bitterly opposed to American influence, and the Cubans may be as Catholic as all other Spaniards. It may well take six months to occupy Cuba with suffi- cient troops to crush out all resistance and produce in- dustrial order, and during all that time the expenditure in the Union will be enormous, the loss of life consider- able—the Spaniards are relying on the aid of Yellow Jack—and the fever of excitement as injurious as an outburst of epidemic disease. The conquest of Cuba will not necessarily mean peace, for it is the peculiarity of the Spanish position that the loss of her colonies will to her be a great gain. The dram on her life-blood will stop. The Army, relieved from colonial work, will be an indefinitely more popular institution, and may, if Spain still possesses an organising General, become an indefinitely stronger one. With the service of the Debt suspended, and the taxes collected as they are collected in every country when the people favour the collection, there should be money enough to fortify the ports, and keep third-class ironclads afloat round the coast ; and if, thus defended, Spain proves as stubborn as she did in 1808, what is America to do next ? She will no doubt, with her energy and her resources, develop a fleet of swift fighting ships, which will speedily reduce Spanish privateering to a nullity, and sweep all Spanish mercantile vessels off the seas ; but will those losses be sufficient to make Spain other than haughtily sullen ? The sale of her produce cannot be stopped, for it will go through France and Portugal ; and for the most valuable portion of it the cost of transport to Bordeaux or Lisbon can hardly be a ruinous impost. Agriculture will not be interfered with, and Spain is still in most of her provinces an agricultural country, while her peasantry, who will feel the war least, supply the Army with recruits and the Cortes with Deputies. We can imagine all classes of Spaniards taken with a fit of patriotic obstinacy and resolved not to accept a peace ; and in that case Washington will be called upon for what will be, even to the marvellous, resources of the United States, a very serious effort. She must establish at least one great coal depot in Europe, where she as yet possesses no station, and must create a fleet capable of overawing Cadiz and Barcelona, and of establishing an " effective blockade" of the whole coast of Spain, a work which would strain even the means at the disposal of the British Admiralty. That is a work which will take some time, a very large supply of money, and great adroitness as well as courage, for, reluctant as the Con- tinent is to face America, no such blockade could be established without all the Powers interested in the Mediterranean growing restless and excited. The diffi- culty will be increased by the very weakness of Spain. If Great Britain were blockaded, or France, the great cities would soon compel statesmen to listen to terms of peace ; but Spain has not developed into a modern industrial country, and while her people have bread, and onions, and oil, and wine, they may be entirely indifferent to the fate of the mercantile classes, whose numbers, except in Catalonia, are comparatively imperceptible. We English all reason too much as if the whole world were industrial. The strength of America would, no doubt, prevail at last, or Europe, weary of the disturbance, might intervene ; but if the Spaniards were stubborn, a condition of war might last for many months, perhaps even for two years. The creation of fleets is a very slow business, and the essence of the Spanish plan, if we have discerned it rightly, is to compel America, to operate, with a fleet only, three thousand miles from her base, in presence of nations which regard her with an acute dislike. Nothing has struck us in the events of the last few months so much as the explosion of distaste for the Union throughout the Continental States, including, to our amazement, even Italy. This is attributed, we perceive, mainly to economic fears, such as Count Goluchowski recently expressed in his speech about the " Transma,rine peril," but we suspect that a good many influences, that of the Monarchies, that of the Church, and that of the aristocracy, help both to generate the feeling and to give it potency and volume.
We have said nothing of the chance of anarchy in Spain because we incline to believe, from Spanish history, that while the Queen-Regent and her son fight on they will be sustained ; and nothing of the possibility of terminating the war by a successful invasion. We suppose the latter possibility is not out of the range of calculation, for the authorities in Washington undoubtedly intended a very few years ago to invade Chili ; but it would be an astonishing break with all American traditions. They would be inter- fering in Europe with a vengeance, and would, we believe, be drawn in within that compressing circle of European diplomacy from which they so anxiously keep themselves free. The Western Hemisphere may be one world, and the Eastern another, but if the two worlds collide neither can say that the motions of the other are exclusively its own business. Besides, the invasion of Spain is impeded by the old difficulty, the absence in Spain of homogeneity. If America could seize Cadiz, force Spain to try to drive her out, and perpetually repel that attempt, she might bleed Spain to death or to submission, as England and France bled Russia ; but suppose Spain left the invaders severely alone, and invited them to come into the hills and face a guerilla war. It would take years even for America to conquer Spain completely, even if Europe remained looking on with sympathy or indifference, which would not be the case. We cannot believe that an invasion of Spain is worth any grave man's consideration, and if that cannot occur Spain may hold out for an unexpected time. The war may be short, of course, if the rulers of Spain are what is ordinarily considered sensible ; but suppose, instead of being sensible, they are simply stubborn.
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