The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-26

peacetul people, non- -combatants, by starvation or the sword, we went and examined for ourselves, and then re- monstrated, and offered our good of- nces' to try to help set matters right. me answer we got was one of the most aenberate and atrocious assassinations or all history, the assassination of na- uonal ship, one of the finest of her class Tn the world, and that of 25S of her gal lant men, in the harbor of friendly power, guest in the berth where she was stationed by her hosts,-like guest led trustingly to bed-chamber selected for him-selected because un- der that bed was an internal machine placed there beforehand on purpose to ploW him to atoms when his hospitable host got ready to press the button. "A stout steel keel broken asunder and the ends bent upward like the rafters of a sharp roof, 34 feet above their natural position-by an inward explosion!"
 And the most chivalrous nation on earth performs that "deed of horror" and then coolly tells that story about it! Truly the need for a new Cervantes to sing the chivalrous deeds of this modern Don Quixote is even greater than for the old one! And he has a far harder task before him. The elder CerVantes was only needed to prick the balloon of an obsolete and pompous ab- surdity with the lance of satire. The modern Cervantes must celebrate the purity, honor and truthfulness of one of the vastest, blackest and most delib- crate murders ever perpetrated in all the history of time! He must take this hlack-winged midnight Gorgon and transform it into white-robed and white-w winged angel of innocence and righteousness! But as to the results of this war. 2. As Gods mills ground fast, for once, as well as fine, seventy-five days from that day of the Maine's de- | struction, Deweys S-inch rifles sunk, | burned and annihilated Spain's Orien | tai fleet at Manila; and siXty-four days | later the 13-inch rifles of Sampson and Schley, in like manner, sunk, burned | and annihilated every ship of Cevera's | far more formidable fleet at Santiago | de Cuba, leaving to Spain not one really | formidable warship capable of crossing | the ocean, and not one American ship crippled beyond fitness for immediate | fighting, and not a cock boat shattered or sunk
 | If we are we'll informed as to the 1 great naval battles of the world, we shall understand what an astounding record those two great battles make. Never in all the history of naval war
 fare have such things happened before. Perry, on Lake Erie, captured the whole British squadron, (the first time that was ever done, and the last) but l ,,nt until biS ou,, Ina ow
 renee, was a shattered and sinking wreck. How it could possibly have happened that, with the mass of metal hurled at our ships in both battles, | not one should have been sunk, blown up or even seriously damaged; and that with the recognized strength and speed at any rate of Cevera's splendid ships, not one should have escaped-that fact l is what no theories of war, no difference 1 in guns or gunnery no partial intoxica- | tion of Spains men, no mathematical | doctrine of chances, can possibly ac- | count for. On all natural theories it is | perfectly unaecountable. It reads like
 A chapter out of the book of Exodus l on the Egyptian plaques, or from the l books of Joshua and Judges or from l the histories of Elijah and Elisha. If we found it there we would know just how to explain it. It belongs there.
 Future eyes will recognize that such is l it's true explanation, whatever petty
 subordinate items may have contribu-
 ted to the result The Divine Machin- | ist presided over that job no matter
 what particular cog in His machine did
 the work. The whole providentai ma chine, from first to last, was all of His making, and did His bidding. When Spain sunk one friendly ship by black est treachery and assa ssination, the 1 Naval Court of Divine Retribution was promtly convened, and it decreed That is the only ship you shall sink in this
 war, and for that ship your whole
 available navy shall go to the bottom!" l And 1t went. That decree of the court
 was registered on high, and was execu- ted to the last letter.
 | Well might Wainwright, who was blown up on the Maine say to himself, as he stood on his deck on the little Gloucester and received the rescued
 Spanish commander on board; "The Maine is avenged. Spain boasted that
 Cervera's fleet would burn Boston and New York and Philadelphia, and dic- tate peace to America over the smoking ruins of Washington. To-day Spain holds not a foreign colonial possession
 in the world unmortgaged besides the | little Canary Islands, which we could have had for the taking. Spain would
 bring all Europe crashing about our
 ears, but since Dewey, with decks
 cleared for action, put the German ad-
 miral through his catechism lesson at
 Manila, the European powers have con-
 cluded that our Uncle Samuel's boys
 are first-rate fellows to let alone! And
 when the peerless Oregon has been | "cleaned and greased' at Brooklyn for
 her next race from New York to Mani-
 la, where she is to go, and gets there,
 to argue with our enemies-if there are
 any, with her four 13-inch, eight S-inch
 and four 6-inch rifles and plenty of rap-
 i'd firers, with the Monterey's four 12-
 inchers and the Monadnocks four 10-
 inchers, in addition to the fleet Dewey
 had there before it is probable that
 neither Germans nor any other power
 European or Asiatic will be seized
 with any uncontrollab,e itching to med
 de farther with any conclusions that
 the United States and Spain may sec
 fit to agree upon. England has no dis.
 position to do so, and not all the other
 naval powers in the world combined | would dare do SO Fne]and has never