third, from the fact that the accused party was already a declared enemy.

Of sixty-one witnesses examined, fifty-two were in the service of the United States government and forty-three of those were attached to the Maine. The evidence turned almost entirely upon the state of affairs on the Maine before the explosion or on the condition of the wreck afterward. No rebutting testimony was heard, no cross-examination by anybody representing the defence. After twenty-three days the board reported that the evidence showed the explosion to have taken place from the outside, but that they could not fix the responsibility upon

any person or persons.

The Spaniards also made a report. It rested upon two assumptions. The first was that an explosion from the outside sufficient to have destroyed the Maine, encountering no resistance in any other direction except the water, must have caused a violent upheaval of that element and a powerful concussion of other vessels. There were two explosions on the Maine. It was admitted on all sides that the second took place in the magazine. The exterior one could, therefore, only have been the first. Not only did every witness examined by the Spaniards deny having perceived any concussion, but of the nine outside witnesses examined by the American board only one, an English captain of a bark, felt anything and he sitting in his cabin described it as if his ship had been collided with. Two of those witnesses were merchants, passengers by the steamer City of Washington. Standing on the deck three hundred 'feet distant, according to the testimony of the captain of the steamer, though the captain of the Maine described it as two hundred yards, they witnessed both explosions. It was a calm still night. They testified separately that neither of them perceived any shock or upheaval of the water from the first explosion, and the same testimony was

given by the first officer of the City of Washington, who witnessed the explosion from the gangway. The captain of the same steamer, standing on her deck and witnessing both explosions, said that he felt no trembling of his ship from the first of them. No witness examined by the board testified that he did perceive any such upheaval, though two officers and a seaman on the deck of the Maine declared positively that they did not.

The next argument advanced by the Spaniards was that all explosions on public works in the harbor had been accompanied by numbers of dead fish floating on the surface, and that a search early on the following morning had revealed none. The only question put by the American Board of Inquiry on this point was to the English captain above referred to, who replied that he saw no fish.

It seems to be admitted that every aid was rendered by the Spanish ships of war with their boats in rescuing the wounded; and that the funeral ceremonies of the dead were attended by almost the whole population of Havana in silent and respectful sympathy. The Spanish government, expressing great regret for the event, distinctly offered to submit the whole case to arbitration.

With reference to the question of fact, which results from the diversity of opinion between the representatives of the Spanish and North American commissioners, the government of Her Majesty, which as yet does not know the official text of those opinions, has hastened to declare itself ready to submit the question to the decision of impartial and disinterested experts, accepting in advance the decision of the arbitrators named by both parties.1

Putting the worst possible construction on the Spanish side of the case there was at least doubt enough as to the culpability of any responsible persons to require, upon all the principles of civilization supposed to have been reached in the nineteenth century, the acceptance of arbitration.

1 Note of the Spanish minister Polo delivered to the Secretary of State, April 10, 1898.

This was so evident that for a few weeks the matter remained quiet. But the fury of the violent faction in Congress and of the sensational press could not be restrained. The occurrence was charged as an act of deliberate treachery upon the Spanish government and people, for which vengeance was the only possible satisfaction, and Remember the Maine' was used as a slogan to stimulate the most ferocious passions.

On the 7th of March, eleven days before the President sent to Congress the report of the Naval Board of Inquiry on the Maine, and while the country was trembling with excitement, a bill "to supply urgent deficiencies in the appropriations for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1897" was introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Cannon, chairman of the committee on Appropriations, and referred to that committee. On the 8th the bill was reported back from the committee with the following items:

For the national defence, and for each and every purpose connected therewith, to be expended at the direction of the President, and to remain available until January 1, 1899 .

$50,000,000

The report was received "with loud applause" not only by the House but by the spectators in the gallery. This enormous sum constituted but one item among a number in a general bill.

How far this was in accordance with the wish of the President, or how far compulsion was applied to him by the violent faction in Congress, will probably never be known. Certainly, he made no formal or public request

for it. It was confidently reported in the press as made by him in private interviews with members of Congress, which leaves the question still entirely open. The bill was passed at a single sitting, with no debate except a few rhetorical flourishes, and by a vote of 313 to 0. In the Senate the same bill was reported on the next day, March 9, and passed in one sitting and without a word of debate by a vote of 76 to 0. If it is remembered that only twice since the Civil War1 has Congress been unanimous about anything, and that if in 1896 Great Britain had taken up our challenge in the Venezuela case as Spain did in the Cuban, it would have been the former country with which we went to war, it seems not unfair to assert that the object aimed at was not war with Spain or on account of Cuba, but war for the sake of war.

Upon this vote-and the date must be carefully kept in mind a journal remarked:

...

The country has now voted fifty millions for national defence, but against what or whom must we defend ourselves? No man speaking with authority at Washington or anywhere else has said. We are absolutely in the dark as to who is going to attack us, or why. . . . Whatever favored congressmen may know or suspect, whatever the President's advisers may keep locked up in their breasts, the people, as a whole, have not one authentic word to guide them as to the policy of the administration respecting Cuba, either in the past or in the future.

It is safe to assert that no monarch or minister could get from the merest semblance of a Parliament fifty millions for war purposes without one lisp why it was asked for, and against whom. Mr. Cleveland, at the time of the Venezuela upheaval, asked for only one hundred thousand dollars, but even for that trifle he felt compelled to lay the whole correspondence before Congress.2

It may be worth while also to note the cheerful observation of another critic.

No part of the fifty million dollars will be squandered by the administration.3

1 See Chap. XXI.

2 Nation, March 17, 1898.

3 Review of Reviews, April, 1898.

The first-named journal also said: —

The framers of the Constitution dreaded a powerful executive. They believed that specific appropriations should be made by Congress because, as Story puts it, "if it were otherwise, the executive would possess an unbounded power over the public purse of the nation." We have changed all this, and the unquestioned grant of fifty millions by Congress to the President to be expended at his discretion is only the embodiment of a tendency which has long been plain to every observer. The American people no longer fear the executive, and they no longer trust the legislative body.1

We should put a somewhat different interpretation on the particular event; namely, that the legislative body having secured entire possession of the government and reduced the executive to be a mere tool in its hands, forced this large and indefinite appropriation upon him, with the intention of compelling him to expend it in carrying out its purposes, or rather those of the most violent faction dragging the rest after them.

Still there is no doubt of the tendency of public opinion to the side of the executive against Congress, illustrating our contention that the battle of the future is to be between these two branches, and that there are only two alternatives open to us: either an executive strong enough to govern, and responsible to public opinion, or such an executive responsible only to the private and class interests surrounding and controlling it.

On the 11th of April, after the greatest anxiety and suspense on the part of the country, the President sends a message to Congress, in which, after arguing the case at length, he concludes by asking Congress for power to put a stop to the strife in Cuba and secure the establishment of a stable government, and for that purpose to use the military and naval forces of the United States.

The issue is now with Congress. It is a solemn responsibility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of

1 Nation, loc. cit.