THE WIDENING OF THE WAR.
THE Spanish-American War, which was expected at first to be quite a small affair—" a mere Indian business," as one able American described it to us—is widening in every direction. The Americans, who were when the war commenced quite wonderfully without experience, have discovered that a transmarine expedi- tion, even if the distances are not great, involves a vast amount of transport ; and besides the armed fleet which they are creating, they are collecting both in the Atlantic and Pacific, usually by purchase, whole fleets of trans- ports, which they are obliged to command, officer, and man in a way which will leave them when the war is over with entire Services on their hands. They will not like parting with the men who have gained experience in the transport business, or with the means of rapidly despatch- ing troops to their new, and probably very unsettled, island possessions. They are also discovering that the impedimenta of an army corps, when they have to be despatched by sea, occupy endless room, that you cannot pack animals like sardines, and that heavy guns are difficult to embark or disembark, or drag over roadless plains, without adequate machinery. They are said—but of course that is newspaper nonsense—to be much "irritated" because Spain does not make peace, and are evidently quite surprised to find that General Shafter wants twice the men he expected to capture Santiago, that he will require a regular siege train, and that he will probably have to expend soldiers in the final assault in a lamentably profuse way. The effect of all these dis- coveries is that the Americans are warming to their work, that they are building ironclads, drilling and providing a really formidable army — two hundred thousand men—and are in fact developing into a considerable military Power. They still, however, have to take Santiago and Porto Rico, and then to accomplish, what they supposed would be their only task, the capture of Havana, the destruction of a Spanish army of seventy thousand men, and the subjugation of the great island of Cuba, which is as big as England without Wales, and full of hills, defiles, and brushwood, into which the Spanish troops, if they do not surrender en masse, will disperse as guerillas. They will do all those things by degrees, being a determined and resourceful people, with millions of men among them fitted for rough fighting ; but when they have done them they may find that their task is only just beginning.
Nothing can be more inept than the Spanish manage- ment of the war, and nothing more respectable than the peasant-like stubbornness with which Spaniards accept the consequences of their ineptitude. Their fleet has been utterly neglected, their armies are half-fed, their represen- tatives exhaust themselves in argumentative grandilo- quence, their Queen has prepared for flight, their Generals threaten pronuneiamientos, their manufacturing cities propose peace on perfectly impossible terms ; but Spain as a whole, as an entity still alive, though stricken with some recondite brain-disease, holds on, as stubborn as one of her own bloodhounds. Her people are wholly unaware that she is beaten, see no reason why she should not triumph, are utterly indifferent whether she is pecuniarily ruined or not, and, so far as we can judge, regard peace as something which the Americans are to make by going home again. If they go—which is impossible—the Spaniards would regard them as dangerous pirates driven off by Spanish valour. The effect of that temper is that the Americans, in order to dictate peace, must carry the war into Spain itself, a very serious and difficult piece of business. So serious is it, that the general impression in Europe is that it will not be attempted, that the threat is mere "bluff," and that if Admiral Camara, who is going with a wretchedly equipped squadron "to the Philippines," returns from Port Said to Cadiz, the idea will be abandoned. We do not think so. The specialty of American threatening is that, loud and boastful as it may be, it is usually followed by quiet but decided action. When an American swaggers with a revolver somebody is apt to get killed. The Americans begin to see that the loss of her colonies will relieve rather than depress Spain, they are tired of expeditions which settle nothing, and in their light-hearted yet resolute way they are making up their minds to final measures of coercion. To execute them they must send a powerful fleet into the Mediterranean, must seize the Canaries as a half-way depot, must obtain.' a coaling- station in the Balearic Isles, or in Spain ..iteelti. and must run a grave risk of so exciting opinion batik in' France and Italy as to produce, if not intervention, at least menaces of it. This will be an entirely new position for America, and indeed for Europe, which, if American guns destroy Barcelona or American 'ships blockade Cadiz, will feel as if a new Power ha4 arisen, as it were out of the depths of the sea, to upset all ancient combina- tions. There will be fury among the, ruling men of the Continent, for if America can threat& Barcelona, she can menace Marseilles, or Trieste, oi.Ottill4ien ; and this fury will be the more important becauae 9f the extremely complicated situation in the Philippines, where, unless both parties keep their heads and their tempers, there will be shots exchanged between American and German ships. The German Government declares that it is strictly neutral at Manila ; but the German Emperor stands on all such questions above the German Government, and it is self-evident that he has not sent his brother and his whole Fax Eastern squadron to Manilla without some project of importance in his head. Either he thinks it possible to obtain the islands when peace is made as a colony for Germany, or he thirsts for a coaling-station, or he is waiting to take advantage of any of those "happy chances" which, as Napoleon III. said, occur in war time. It is certain that his plan is a large one, and has been seriously considered, for the German Emperor, though a man of rapid resolves and showy speeches, is a statesman, and must be quite aware that apart from the certainty that America will resist any interference, even by a coalition, with the disposal of her conquests, there is danger in the mere presence of a fighting squadron in a harbour where a bombardment is threatened or going on. Both sides may misunderstand the position of the "strictly neutral" fleet, the weaker thirsting to commit everybody so that he may benefit by the confusion, the stronger irritated at having to provide for a con- tingency which he did not anticipate. Admiral Dewey, for example, cannot venture to exhaust or nearly exhaust his supply of shells in bombarding Manilla, with the Germans looking on. When the bombardment begins, with German officers in Cavite, and German Marines in Manilla, and German cruisers in the harbour, and a German Prince among them all, Admiral Dewey will have a most delicate part to play, and playing a delicate part while the shells are screaming, and. sailors dying, and the reputation of a new Navy at stake, is not so easy. Already the Spanish Captain-General is said to have issued a proclamation pledging the Germans—of course, without authority—to prevent a bombardment ; and there is a further danger not yet mentioned in the telegrams. Senor Aguinaldo, the trusted insurgent leader, doubtless knows who the Germans are and their great position in Europe ; but it is probable that the drilled Tagals in the insurgent army do not, and quite conceivable that they may not distinguish between Spanish soldiers and German Marines. As they are allies of the Americans, a rush on their part upon those Marines would be an incident of the kind which Admirals do not like. Altogether we do not wonder that Mr. McKinley is "anxious," that Americans study the tele- grams from Manilla more carefully than those from Santiago, and that even well-informed Spaniards in Madrid think that Germany may, possibly without her own con- sent, be turned into an ally. It is most probable, we should say, that with Prince Henry on the spot—though not in command—and with both Admirals acting under the strictest instructions, all these risks may be averted ; but with America fighting Spaniards in the Philippines and in Cuba, and threatening to invade Spain itself, and a German fleet "protecting German interests" in Manilla while an American Admiral bombards that city, and with the spectre of Revolution in Spain itself standing silent but expectant behind it all, the area of the war and of its consequences is widening fast.
One thing is very curious indeed in all this matter, and that is the scanty evidence of American opinion which reaches Europe. What do all those quiet millions of working freeholders and industrious citizens who live away from newspaper correspondents think about the progress of the war ? Are they aware that their country stands at the parting of the ways, that her external policy must be radically modified, that she is engaged in a war which may so develop that it will occupy years, create a National Debt, and leave the United States with a powerful army and the second fleet in the world ? Do they think of peace, or have they made up their minds that there shall be no peace until Spain begs for it and sur- renders her colonies as a measure of conciliation ? Above all, have they thought of the possibility of the war ex- tending, and of what, in that case, they will order their Government to do ? So far as Europe knows, there is no answer to these questions. A little is known—very little —of what the American Government thinks, a little more can be gathered from the votes of Congress, and a little more still from the Press of the seaboard cities; but of the real opinion of that vast silent democracy, always pro- ducing, always storing up power, nothing whatever is revealed. Observers can but guess from the evidence afforded by national character, and by the history of the great War of 1860-64, and so guessing, they arrive at this conclusion. The Americans will go on fighting with ever-increasing energy and volume of sacrifice until they win, and are able to dictate terms of peace to their antagonist, which again will be terms proportioned to the duration of the war. They will repel all interference, what- ever suffering or loss such a repulse may involve ; and they will in future insist on a great fleet and the skeleton of a powerful army being regarded as part of the national machinery, no more to be neglected or abolished than the lighthouses or the offices for paying the interest on the Debt. They will be very reluctant to be involved in future wars ; they will pay attention for the future to diplomacy, probably creating a diplomatic service ; and. they will regard alliances as useful, though cumbrous and costly, forms of insurance. That is to say, they will adopt, as regards the external world, precisely the attitude which centuries of experience have forced upon the " effete " nations of Europe. Whether they will be the happier for so great a change we do not know, but we do know that they will be much the wiser. Their present difficulties, which may soon be serious, are all traceable to want of experience,—that is, to the absence of powerful rivals on their own continent, the absence of jealousies directed. against themselves,, and the absence of burdensome arma- ments, all things on which they have hitherto privately and publicly, without ceasing, congratulated themselves and their institutions.
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