The age-herald., 1898-04-02
AMERICA IND SPAIN.
Their Attitude Toward Each Other for One
 Hundred Years.

From the Washington Times.
 Americans are now asking themselves how many times their country will be con- tent to ask for an indemnity from Spain to square up for insults and injuries, and await Spain's pleasure as to when pay ment shall be made.
 Nowhere, however, is there printed history of our complicated and trouble some relations with the most treacherous of European nations. A comprehensive &C., count of these dealings can be had only after laborious search of histories, treat les. diplomatic documents and state pa pers.
 Three times already within 100 years have Castilian diplomacy and Castilian cash set- tied Spanish outrages upon America, and thus ended incidents which no other nation in the world would have closed except by issue of the sword Besides these three instances in which war was narrowly avoided by the payment of indemnities, there have been cash payments in many minor cases for unwarranted seizures upon the high seas or for injuries done to Ameri- can citizens upon Spanish soil.
 Spain paid us an indemnity, as provided for in our treaty with her in 1875, for re- prisals upon our commerce before the question of the navigation of the Missis- sippi was settled.
 Spain paid us, by ceding Florida, an in- demnity of $5, 900 900 for reprisals upon our commerce in Spanish ports during our short-lived trouble with France two or three years after the signing of the treaty of 1795.
 Spain paid us ssOOoO indemnity for the execution without due course of law of lao Afoa ri Op 10 VirQiniiG in 1813.
 In all these cases war would have re- suited had not Spain paid the price for having injured our citizens.
 In dozens of other minor cases Spain has paid us indemnities.
 And now, as an influential newspaper In Madrid says, Spain would be glad to know that the hand of Spaniard had sent the Maine to the bottom of Havana harbor, and adds: "The matter would be settled by our punishment of the culprits and the payment of an indemnity. What Is 1t to us to have to pay 12.0OO,0OO or 100000 pesetas 900 or $3.00O,00O more, after we have given away so much money"
 The same tactics of protusely polite de- lay with which Spain played upon us 100 years ago she has used in every crisis since, including the present. Spain was the same weak nation at the close of the American revolution that she Is today. France got her to fight Great Britain in that struggle for much the same cause that France nerSelI went Into lt-entlreiy Seil- seeking reasons.
 France having lost her possessions in America in f763, saw a possible chance to get back something, and saw, too, that If England were successful in putting down her revolting colonies 1t would endanger Spanish possessions in North America. which included the vast Louisiana terri tory. The two Floridas, which ran from the peninsula to the Mississippi Spain gave to England in 1763 in exchange for Cuba which England had captured. So Spain entered the fight not at all to help the Americans, but to regain from Britain territory
 She attacked and got possession of West Florida and then seized the country to the north. When it came to making the treaty of peace between England and the colonies, and the subject of a western boundary was brought up, Spain claimed not only the Floridas, but the whole country to the north as far as the Great Lakes. France, our 'disinterested friend" of the Revolu ton, supported Spain in this to the extent of proposing the Ohio as the northern boundary.
 But there were shrewd men in the colo- nies, who could make a treaty of peace as well as they had fought. They saw in all this the desire of France and Spain to bound the United States on the west by the Alleghanies and not leave us any gulf coast or western outlet.
 The old treaty closing the French and Indian war placed the northern boundary of West Florida at the parallel which runs through the mouth of the Yazoo river about where Vicksburg now stands. Eng land proposed to aid her late colonies to lsssssssseseeeees