The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-14


 flight, their generals threaten pronun- | ciamentos, their manufacturing cities propose peace on perfectly impossible terms; but Spain as whole, as an en- | tity still alive, though stricken With | some recondite brain disease, holds on' as stubborn as one of her own blood | hounds. Her people are wholly una | ware that she is beaten, see no reason l why she should not triumph, are uttef- | ly indifferent whether she IS pecunlaflly 1 ruined or not, and, so far as we can | judge, regard peace as something Whlch | the Americans are to make by gong | home again. If they go-which is lm- | possible-the Spaniards would regard | them as dangerous pirates driven on l by Spanish valor. The effect ot that 1 temper is that the Americans, in order |! to dictate peace must carry the war l into Spain itself, very serious ana dicult piece of business. So serious is | is that the general impression in Eu- | rope is that it will not be attempted, | that the threat is mere bluff" and | that if Admiral Camara, who IS going l with wretchedly equipped squadron ''to the Philippines" returns from Port | Said to Cadiz the idea will be aban- l doned. We do not think so.
 | The speciality of American threaten | ing is that, loud and boastful as it may be, it is usually followed by quiet but decided action. When an American | swaggers with a revolver somebody is | apt to get killed. The Americans begin to see that the loss of her colonies will relieve rather than depress Spain, they l are tired of expeditions which settle nothing, and in their lght-hearted yet l resolute way they are making up their minds to final measures of coercion. | To execute them they must send pow | erful fleet into the Mediterranean, must seize the Canaries as a halfway depot, must obtain a coaling station in the Balearic Isles, or in Spain itself, and | must run a grave risk of so exciting 1 opinions both in France and Italy as to | produce if not intervention, at least menaces of it. This will be an entirely new position for America, and indeed l for Europe, which, If American guns i destroy Barcelona or American ships l blockade Cadiz, will feel as if a new 1 power had arisen, as it were, out of the depths of the sea, to upset all ancient l combinations There will be fury among the ruling men of the continent, for if America can threaten Barcelona, she can menace Marseilles, or Trieste, | or Cuxhaven; and this fury will be the more important because of the eX- trenely complicated situation in the Philippines, where, unless both parties keep their heads and their tempers, 1 there will be shots exchanged between American and German ships.
 1 The German government declares that it is strictly neutral at Manila; but the German emperor stands on all such questions above the German gov ernment, and it is self-evident that he has not sent his brother and his whole far eastern squadron to Manila with out some project of importance in his head. Either he thinks 1t possible to obtain the islands when peace Is made as colony for Germany or he thirsts for coaling station, or he is waiting to take advantage of any of those
 happy chances" which, as Napoleon l III. said, occur in war time. It is cer- tain that his plan is a large one, and has been seriously considered, for the German emperor though a man of rap i'd resolves and showy speeches, is @ statesman, and must be quite aware
 that, apart from the certainty that America will resist any interference
 even by a coalition, with the disposal of her conquests, there is danger in the
 mere presence of q fighting squadron in a harbor where a bombardment is
 threatened or going on. Both sides I may misunderstood the position of the
 strictly neutral fleet, the weaker
 thirsting to commit everybody, so that he may benefit by the confusion, the | stronger irritated at having to provide for a contingency which he did not an-
 ticipate. Admiral Dewey, for example, cannot venture to exhaust or nearly ex-
 haust his supply of shells in lombard
 Ing Manila, with the Germans looking on. When the bombardment begins,
 with German officers in Cavite, and
 German marines in Manila, and Ger man cruisers in the harbor, and Ger
 man prince among them all, Admiral Dewey will have most delicate part
 to play, and, playing a delicate part
 while the shells are screaming and sail
 ors dying and the reputation of new
 navy at stake is not so easy.
 Already the Spanish captain general
 is said to have issued proclamation
 pledging the Germans--of course, with out authority--to prevent a lombard
 ment; and there is further danger not
 yet mentioned in the telegrams. Senor Aguinaldo, the trusted insurgent leader,
 doubtless knows who the Germans are
 and their great position in Europe but
 it is probable that the drilled Tagals in
 the insurgent army do not and quite
 conceivable that they may not distin-
 guish between Spanish soldiers and
 German marines. As they are allies of
 the Americans, a rush on their part
 upon those marines would be an inci-
 dent of the kind which admirals do not
 like. Altogether we do not wonder that MT Mckinley is anxious" that Ameri-
 cans study the telegrams from Manila
 more carefully than those from Santia-
 go, and that even well-informed Span
 iards in Madrid think that Germany may, possibly without her own consent, be turned into an ally. 1t is most prob-
 able, we should say, that with Prince
 Henry on the spot-though not in com- mand-and with both admirals acting
 under the strictest instructions, all
 these risks may be averted; but with , America fighting Spaniards in the ] Philippines and in Cuba and threaten
 ing to invade Spain itself, and a Ger