The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-27
THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN.

NSA4N bIIIAlIND NioANs
 The technical lessons of the last na-
 val battle will have, of course, to be fully worked out by the naval experts,
 but even the most superficial view
 shows one or two facts of great impor-
 tance. They are not new facts exactly, but old facts with new faces, and there
 fore we'll worth considering. The first
 thing that strikes one is the practical futility of passive courage, especially at sea. One might almost as well be
 coward as a man who runs headlong on
 his death, careless whether he loses his own life, but also careless whether he
 kills his enemy. If the Spaniards had
 been as cool and dashing as they were
 indifferent to death, they might not
 have beaten the Americans, but at least
 they would have done an immense deal
 of damage to the American fleet.
 Granted that Admiral Cervera had formed the resolve of breaking out of Santiago by daylight, how should he have acted? How, that is, could he
 have sold his ships and the lives of his
 men dearest? That surely should have
 been the question put to himself by the Spanish admiral.
 Al iS AiSiu bSOii PobS SouiNi oAiS oiAS'
 have been any other than something of
 this kind?-"I will order each of my ships as she gets clear of the neck of the bottle which forms the harbor of Santiago to choose one of the American ships, and to fly straight at her as savage dog flies at a man. My ship shall ram the American If she can, but if not, assail her as furiously as possi- ble. If the American ship gives way before the Spanish onslaught, the Spaniard can get out to sea and escape. If on the other hand, the American
 closes with her, then there will be a fierce fight, in which one or the other, or probably both, will go to the bot
 tom. This will probably happen, but
 meantime some of the Spanish ships will have had time to get into the open 1 sea. Once there, scatter and fly is to
 be the order." If Admiral Cervera had
 adopted these bold, or, if you like, mad,
 tactics, he would no doubt have lost | most of his ships, but then he would
 have probably sunk or damaged three
 or four of the American vessels, while
 one or two of his own would very like ly have got away scot-free. As it was, he lost all his ships and did no damage to the Americans. He secured this
 really astonishing result by, instead of
 flying at the threats of the Americans, attempting to run along the shore with
 the American fleet between him and the
 open sea. As he and his ships ran, the
 Americans poured upon them a storm
 of shot and shell, and showed once
 again that he who runs away is in far
 greater danger than even he who waits
 to be killed, but intends to sell his life as dearly as possible.
 That Is an old-time lesson to be
 drawn from the battle of Santiago. Another Is equally clear, equally i'm portant, and almost equally old. It is | that in naval war what really matters | is not the armor- plating, the build of the ship. or even the power of the en- zines, but the man behind the gun. 1 When Captain Mahan was entertained | in England at naval dinner, the | speech of the evening was admitted by | all to have been made by the American 1 admiral He reminded his hearers that | strategy and armor, and new types of l gun, and scientific dodges, and all the | rest were very good things, but in the | last resort what really mattered was the man behind the gun. That was l true in the old wars, and has been proved true again, both at Manila and | at Santiago. Straight shooting is, af- ter all, what wins the battle. Of | course, you had better have a gun that will fire, and fire a powerful shot at a longish range, but even If you have got it, it is perfectly useless if the men be-
 hind it are too excited or have had too
 little practice to be able to fire it
 straight, and so to hit with it. The
 most deadly patent shell, fired from the newest and most expensive and most ] scientific of guns, is no better than an
 old round-shot fired from gun of Nell
 sons day if 1t drops in the water and
 does not strike the enemy's hull or
 deck. In other words, superiority of
 gun-ffre is now, as in the days of old, l the chief thing to look for.-London l Saturday Review.