THE INTERNATIONAL EFFECT OF THE WAR.
IT is not very easy to perceive what the international effect of the Spanish-American war will be, but two nr three points stand out with something like clearness. a t first, we have no doubt, the world will look on quietly, partly because it will be excessively interested, partly because it is really uncertain, to a very curious degree, whether the United States are as powerful at sea as they are on land. There is no doubt as to their wealth, or as to their possession of materials for shipbuilding, or as to their mechanical skill ; but there is doubt, since their mer- cantile marine declined, as to their supply of sailorThey may not be able, it is supposed on the Continent, to equip an overwhelming fleet, though they might build one; and if so, a great many occurrences will be possible which are not possible now. The world, therefore, will wait, looking on, and will be guided a good deal by what it sees. (If, for instance, as many observers expect, Spain at first wins in the struggle—that is, is victorious in the first naval battle—and so protracts the contest until America can build a new fleet, theretill be on the Continent a great disposition to help Spain Germany, Austria, and Russia all sympathise with the Monarchical principle, all dislike the great Republic, as by its very prosperity inimical to Monarchy, and all have grounds for quarrel, more or less acute and of long standing. France, too, though not Monarchical, is very friendly to Spain, hankers always for alliance with her in the Mediterranean, and would greatly like to possess Morocco with Spanish consent. Moreover, the Continent thirsts for the power of entering Spanish America, the feeling being particularly strong in France and Germany, — in France because General Grant hustled her out of Mexico, in Germany owing to her economic situation. Germany is being eaten up by her millions, and the lands which would hold them all are closed to preserve American reversionary interests. Brazil would hold five German populations, and is protected from invasion only by the long shadow which th great ct Republic casts all down the Western Continent. If that shadow is lifted, if, that is, it becomes clear t t the United States is at sea only an ordinary Power with which another first-class Power canontend on equal terms, Spanish America will be insecure. All our readers will remember how, when the Union s med about to be divided, Napoleon rushed for Mexico, and Napoleon had no motives half so strong as those which would impel William II. to rush for Brazil, where the German settlers alone would furnish him with a reasonably powerful army. France wants her bit of Brazil too, very much, and, in short, if the prowess of Spain diminished the terror of the Western Republic, transmarine ambitions would wake up in a very dangerous way. South America, as we have often warned Americans, is the great prize of the future, a prize terribly attractive to nations without natural wealth sufficient to go round, rich, tlinly populated, and capable of cultivation by white men. AA great many new problems, and sources of contention, and political objects of desire would, we may be certain, be at once presented if Spain were to reveal at sea such unexpected strength that America could only maintain the Monroe dectrine as regards countries to which she had access by lany We do not believe Spain will. History is full of sur- prises, nobody can say which people will next turn out a fighting genius, and we pretend to no minute knowledge like that of the naval experts, but we think it safe to say that in maritime war the maritime peoples win. American naval officers have in them qualities which Spanish naval officers have not, and for which mere courage, however gallant, is no sufficient substitute, and we think that when the two fleets clash in earnest the American flag will not be the one to be struck. The fight may be a stubborn one, but it will be a fight between a brave man with his weapons only, and a brave man also with weapons, but clad in an enchanted armour of scientific knowledge. The American will have fifty devices where the Spaniard has five. If, then, America wins, and clears the seas, two very dangerous situations Will arise. There will be the Philippines to dispose of. A great maritime Power holding the Philippines ought to be mistress in the Far East ; and which of them is it to be ? America will be owner of the islands, but she will not want to keep them, thus giving hostages to all the maritime Empires ; and she can hardly invest the medley of dark races who obey and massacre the parochial curas of the Philippines, with independ- ence and self-government. Manilla is not Spanish like Porto Rico, but Asiatic, and would be only a new Hayti. At the same time, America will not like to transfer the Philippines to a non-Christian Power, even if it should be ready to offer the forty millions sterling at which Japan values the possession; and failing herself. Japan, and the Tagals, to whom is she to offer the myriad of islands, harbours, and plantations, with their four or five millions of copper-coloured people, two millions and a half of them nominally Christian ? There will be fierce biddings for that prize, if we are not mistaken ; fierce biddings and fierce jealousies among those who bid and who are not triumphant. We can hardly imagine any- thing which would so excite Russia, Great Britain. Ger- many, and France as the idea that a rival maritime Power would for all time be seated on the thousand islands included in the word "Philippines." Then there would be the problem of Spain herself. To avoid the war with America would unseat the dynasty, but we question whether to fight the war and fail in it will seat the Bourbons firmly. In all human probability the dynasty, if defeated, will be cast out as inefficient and "unable to protect the national honour," and Spain, which is terribly distressed by a bad tenure and a poverty far beyond anything natural to a country so rich, will pass through a social as well as political revolution. We need not say how such an agitation in Spain would disquiet all Europe except England, how ambitions as old as the Bourbons would wake in France, how the " example" would disturb the peasantry of Italy, how frantic the maritime Powers would grow over the talk about " the balance of power in the Mediterranean." Spain will emerge, of course, probably as a Federal Republic with Catalonian rulers, without a Debt, and with a freeholding peasantry, and may even commence a new and great career ; but we can foresee a long vista of troubles in Europe caused by the transformation, and by quarrels for the inheritance- Morocco—which her fall would leave as a derelict prize. No European nation has ever yet died in peace. It is all dreams ? We question if any Spaniard will say so, or will even affect to doubt that defeat will not only be a deadly shock to the Monarchy, which is only main- tained in order that Spain may be a power, but to what in the rest of Europe is described as "social order." The relation between landlord and tenant in South Spain is as bad as it ever was in Ireland, and half the cultivators have passed through the military mill.
There is one other contingency of which no one has yet spoken. Spain is terribly stubborn, and believes at sea, as well as on land, in the word "guerilla." Suppose her fleet defeated at sea, and Cuba lost, but her two or three hundred privateers afloat. How long will it take America to clear the seas of them by seizing all coaling stations ? Or how long will Europe bear the disturbance to trade, the increase of piracy, the harrowing stories which always accompany a dreary, drifting, pur- poseless, merciless privateers' war ? We all think it could not happen, but the 'Alabama' was afloat for nearly two years, and the Confederacy had not a ton of coal outside its own dominion. A naval guerilla war would make the waterways of the world decidedly unsafe ; and though America does not think so, to compel Madrid to yield might be a very long and a very costly process. We trust that the experiment will not be made, and that Spain, if defeated by superior force, will submit with dignity, and betake herself to the work which requires doing in the Peninsula ; but a fierce people of seventeen millions may develop powers of resistance,- as they did in 1808-14, of which professional experts have never thought.
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