New Britain herald., 1917-01-17

plomacy.
 He could have taken Manila of course, with ease: but. aside from the fact that this must have involved some bombardment of the city, he had not the men with which to hold it against the Spanish army. He was short of ammunition, operating from an improvised base, without land supports; he had to reckon with large Spanish army in LuZon. and he had also increasingly delicate inter- national problems to encounter. Pending the arrival of troops and naval reinforcements from California, Dewey hlockadcd Manila. Meanwhile the Filipino insurgents under Aguln- aldo were stirred into redoubled ac- tivity, and began to lend more or less unwelcome aid to the American | fleet.
 The sudden collapse of Spanish na- 1 val power in the Orient. and the pat ent fact that Spanish dominion in the l Philippines was presently to pass into stronger hands aroused the natural l interest of tho nations which had | commercial interest; in the islands and territorial ambitions in the east l ern seas In the wide roadstead or ] Manila Bay there presently gathered l suuadrons of British, French, German 1 and Japanese Warshipa. The German l fleet was the most numerous. eVentu- l ally attaining the number of five ships 1 including at least one unit, the kal- l serin Augusta, which was match 1 for the Olympia, and the behavior or 1 it's officers speedily began to trans gress the punctilious rules of block ! ade then in force. Admiral von D1ede- 1 richs, the German commander, maln- 1 tained an attitude which the Amer l jeans regarded distinctly omlnous. l On two occasions German war Ves- sells, failing to report to the blockad- ing squadron when they entered the ] bay or to stop when signaled to give information as to their identity, had to be halted by shots across the bow. The German cruiser Prinzessin Irene was sent to cooperate with the Spanish troops in Subig Bay against the Filipino insurgents. who by this time were acting with the Americans. but Dewey's prompt dispatch of two ] of his ships to the danger post re- | suited in the Irene's precipitate with drawal.
 Matters however, grew worse; the l German admiral went so far at one time as to ask Sir Edward Chichester, the British commander what his atti- 1 tude would be if things came to a l clash between the German and Amer ican s,quadrons. Chichester respond ed that that attitude was known only | to himself and Admiral Dewey, and eventually moved his ships to an an- chorage between the Germans and l Americans.
 Dewey's situation at this time was ! most critical. The German fleet was practically the equal of his; the Spanish army made any attempt to hold an extended base on shore out of the question, and, worst of all, Admiral Camara, with a fleet includ- ing practically all the rest of the Spanish Navy, headed by several armored ships, had started east through the Mediterranean to at tempt to regain the mastery of the
 seas about Manila. Two coast de-
 fense monitors, the Monadnock and
 Monterey were on their way to
 Dewey's assistance, but they were very i slow, and if Camara could arrive be-
 fore them and master Dewey's in-
 ferior fleet the American transports
 bringing expeditionary forces across
 the Pacific would be at the Spaniards'
 mercy:
 But the Germans were the most im-
 mediate problem and the German
 problem was settled by Dewey when
 Admiral von Diederichs sent one of his
 aids to protest against the American
 practice of challenging warships en-
 tering the harbor, and other incidents
 of the blockade. In conversation with
 this junior officer Dewey used the
 word war more than once in dis
 cussing a hypothetical set of cir
 cumstances, and though the German
 versions represent the officer as leav-
 ing at once when this breach of the
 properties was committed, it was mo-
 ticed that the behavior of the Ger
 man fleet became much less objec-
 tionable at once.
 Plan to Reinforce Dewey.
 Other factors contributed to the re- 1 taxation of the tension. With the de-
 struction of Cervera's fleet at San-
 tiago on July 3, the bulk of the American naval forces was released 1 for other work, and while Cuba and Porto Rico continued to be the center of the fighting, it was realized by that
 time, that the real point of interest from the angle of world politics was ! where Dewey lay in a blockade of
 Manila Preparations were made al