hostilities, the sympathies of the impartial reader will lean toward the anxious and cornered inheritors of the splendours of Isabella.
The fact that public opinion in the United States was in a fever heat cannot be given as a legitimate casus belli by a statesman, and the fulminations of senators and representatives have never in our history been a safe guide to foreign policy. If these last had been any criterion we should have invaded and annexed Cuba long ago without any other reason than that it was manifestly placed there by the Lord to be owned by us.
Before picturing the negotiations between Washington and Madrid, so abruptly finished by the famous message of the 11th of April, 1898, it is necessary to point out that it was universally recognized that any message leaving a decision to Congress amounted to a declaration of war. The views of Congress were that the insurgents were the angelic and saintly victims of an inhuman warfare—that the concentration camps were not only an outrage
