THE LESSON OF CARTAGENA.
MR. GOSCHEN must be a sweet-tempered man, if at heart he is delighted with the Intransigentes of Cartagena. If they had only fired that shot, the Peace party might have roared their loudest, but the English people would never have forgotten or deserted the First Lord. Nevertheless, though the shot was not fired, the dramatic scene enacted -outside that harbour of Cartagena has a lesson in it which ought not to be overlooked. Whatever we may say of the British Army—and we talk nonsense when we talk of the -decay of its fighting powers—the British Fleet is a real thing, an organisation which, once under orders, can and will do its work in most unmistakable style. On the 30th of August the aspect of affairs appears to have been much in this wise. The Irreconcilables of Cartagena, having armed themselves, with very creditable alacrity and decision—owing, as we imagine, to the presence among them of a true Dictator, one Galvez, whom it will be an abominable waste of power to shoot—thought themselves strong enough, with their forts and three great ironclads, the Numancia, Mendez Nunez, and Tetuan, all armed and all manned by sailors, fisher- men, port loafers, and convicts, to dictate terms to 'the British Admiral. They accordingly warned him that if he took away the Vittoria and Almansa, the two ships caught without a flag and detained on suspicion of piracy, a ' -suspicion confirmed by a declaration of their own Government, they would open fire upon the British fleet. Admiral Yelverton informed them that his orders were to send the -ships to Gibraltar, and he should obey his orders, but gave them forty hours to reconsider their decision. So real, how- -ever, was their apparent resolution, that the merchantmen were withdrawn, the British inhabitants fled to the ships, and the German ironclads, the American, the Frenchman, indeed -everybody except two Italian ironclads,—who, at the last moment, might have struck in against, not the Irreconcilables, 'bat Don Carlos, who has friends in Cartagena,—retired, and deft the field free to the Englishman. Emboldened apparently by his isolation, the Junta once more informed Admiral Yelverton that he must obey their orders and not Mr. Goschen's, and re- ceived the quiet reply that he must send away the impounded vessels at once, and " if fired at should silence the forts, capture -the ironclads, but spare the town and lighthouse as far as possible." To prove his words, Admiral Yelverton cleared for action, filled his tops with riflemen, got his heavy :guns ready, hoisted the British flag on the Vittoria and Almansa, moved his flagship so as to be ready to ram, and with his ragged-school boys all mad for action, sent away the two Spanish vessels, escorted by the Swiftsure and the Triumph, right under the guns of the forts. The Spaniards were all ready, the fort guns were pointed, and the -convicts were on board, with their long knives, and par- dons if they killed Englishmen enough, but at the last moment the Junta, probably more afraid of their -own countrymen whom our victory would have ad- mitted than of our interference, repented, and not a -shot was fired. The Vittoria. and Almansa, the Swift- -sure and Triumph, glided on, and Admiral Yelverton, thus deprived of three out of his four great vessels— "for the Vittoria, a fine ironclad, had a British crew on board —returned quietly to his watch in the Escombrera, where he will remain open to attack, if the Irreconcilables so please, -until joined once more by reinforcements. He had no particu- lar wish to hurt anybody in Cartagena, or to destroy Federalism ; but his orders must be obeyed at any cost, more particularly as with the Lord Warden, the Triumph, the :Swiftsure, the Vittoria, and we think three smaller vessels, he had ample means of maintaining most fully his thesis that if keartagena insisted on firing on the British flag, Cartagena -must, as a strong fortress, disappear. Throughout he appears to have acted with the utmost moderation, more moderation than his subordinates liked, and with a certain consideration for Spanish pride, but with the most fixed decision that any order he received should be carried out, without reference to consequences.
Admiral Yelverton will obtain his reward, perhaps obtain even yet the opportunity of challenging the Cartagenian fleet, which may take a second opportunity of a cruise for plunder and encouragement to their party, but the real lesson of the affair seems to us this. The moment any power approaches the sea, the fiat of Great Britain, when in earnest, is as irresistible as ever it was. These Intransigentes were not cowards, but just as brave as other Spaniards,—who made, said Nelson, far more formidable sailors than the French,—and they had ample resources ; but they had to live on the sea coast, and for a seaboard population to fire on the British flag is next to an impossibility. Suppose by a miracle of luck they had won, in eight days a fleet twice or thrice as strong, headed by the Devastation, would have been exacting retribution ; and if that were stayed, another and another would have appeared until Cartagena had ceased to be. To be beaten at sea is for Englishmen to cease to exist, and the know- ledge of that fact, which is pretty widely diffused, is the strongest reason for not attacking her fleet even with a superior force, such as the Spanish ironclads backed by the forts ought to have made up. It is perfectly clear, for instance, that in a war with Spain, such as we hope may never occur, but such as will occur between Italy and Spain if Don Carlos ever mounts the throne, it is the strongest fleet which will be the ultimate arbiter, as no State could live with all its seaboard cities and forts at the mercy of a daring foe. This is as true still as ever it was, of Powers mightier than Spain, and is in our eyes the full justification of our constant argument, that England gains instead of losing when a great Power seats herself upon the coast. Our power over Russia, for example, was tripled when she made of Sebastopol a port it was not in her honour to abandon, and would be quadrupled if ever she gained a seat on the Atlantic by the conquest or purchase of Hammerfest. Think how we could drag her troops across that weary frozen steppe. The policy of keeping ourselves lonely on the seas is altogether a mistake, for our loneliness, even if we could achieve it, would make our Naval force as worthless for offence as if it were safely enclosed within another planet. Points of attack by sea are not benefits to our enemies, but to us, who by attacking them can draw their forces to the ends of the country, and with a comparatively small army, sheltered by an impregnable fleet, can fight what for many purposes is a de- fensive war, which we can keep up without serious harm for years. They cannot abandon such a war, for it destroys their prestige, while we have only to retire within our fleet-pro- tected territory. To take a single instance. During the Crimean war we could, with the fleet we had in the Sea of Saghalien, have destroyed the Russian fleet, which was twice over in sight, have restored Manchooria to China, and with a few thousand Tartar troops and marines have roused half Asiatic Russia to insurrection. That we did not do it is one of the passages in our recent history still unexplained, for the Anglo- Chinese explanation was rubbishy slander ; but we certainly had the power, and did not exercise it. There is, in fact, no defence against a British fleet, except that land-locked isolation some of us are so anxious that our enemies should preserve. There will, we suppose, be quite enough said about this Cartagena affair, and although it will be said quite use- lessly—all Englishmen, except a few ideologists, actually hungering for Galvez to open fire—it may be as well to state briefly what our claim to be there was. We had helped the Germans to capture two armed vessels flying no flag, and therefore liable to preventive capture, and took them to the port they sailed from, to await the orders of their regular Government. The regular Government being unable to send an escort, and the Germans being recalled, responsibility fell on the British alone, and it was determined to send them under escort to Gibraltar. The insurgents in possession of Cartagena threatened to fire, but the vessels, according to orders, were sent to Gibraltar. No act of hostility or menace was committed against Spain, or even against the insurgents holding Cartagena, they being merely warned, as any seaport in the world would have been warned, that if they fired on Her Majesty's fleet in execution of Her Majesty's orders—which in this case were legal orders—the fire would be returned without delay. If that fire destroyed a fortress, a rebellion, or a kingdom, that is the affair of those who provoked it, not of those who were quietly watching vessels suspected by their own Government of piracy.
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