to meet. There were only two cables between Key West and the mainland of Florida. Because the official Government dispatches took precedence over everything else, correspondents found that the cables were soon overloaded and they had to wait the pleasure of the Government. Some of the newspapers then made arrangements to run their dispatch boats to Miami on the main coast of Florida. This trip took longer, but it got the messages through.
After the American correspondents left Havana, several of them joined the insurgents and thus kept in touch with what was going on. Every so often they returned to some point on the coast where they were met by dispatch boats which forwarded their copy to their newspapers.
When Sampson sailed for Porto Rico, correspondents stationed at Key West found that the censor had placed an embargo on any word relating to the departure for San Juan. One correspondent, in spite of this censorship, managed to get the information, as he thought, to his managing editor in New York. The latter, with a stupidity unusual in newspaper work, failed to interpret the news in the personal message, "Tell father to send my valise to San Juan," and cabled the reply, "Can't find father, send better address." By this time the Key West censor, who was Lieutenant-Colonel Allen, of the Signal Corps, had read between the lines and refused to allow the correspondent to send any more personal messages. The correspondents, however, were poorly prepared to report the sea fight outside of Santiago. Of all the dispatch boats on the south side of the island only two were present at the time Cervera's fleet was destroyed. The explanation was that none of the newspaper correspondents thought that Cervera would come out and were devoting all their attention to the exciting events on the island.
Correspondents located in Madrid had their problems almost as difficult as those of their brethren in Havana. The cable companies took their messages, but neglected to forward the same to New York. In vain did the correspondents protest that either the messages should be sent or the money returned. The American newspapers spent thousands of dollars for which they never received a single word of news. Later, the American correspond-
