THE UNREMEMBERED MAINE.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 65, 15 September 1908, Page 7

THE UNREMEMBERED MAINE.

WHY IS SHE NOT RAISED?

To every American who enters the harbor of Havana, whether it bo for the first time or the twentieth, there comes a moment when. a silence takes hold of him as he stares and stares across the greasy waters. It is when his searching eyes encounter the distorted mass of wreckage, with the wheeling birds above it,, that marks the Maine. His mind flashes back 10 years, to the February night, when the whole United States shook with the explosion which 'destroyed her.

"REMEMBER THE MAINE!"

That was the cry to which a war was waged (writes Walter Scott Meriwether, in Harper's Weekly). And the watcher at the steamer's rail finds himself repeating it. Its sharp, clear syllables beat out the roar; of twin guns in a turret, the measured tap of the drum, the step of advancing men. Then in an instant his thoughts swing to. his own day and hour and he gazes before him the words that, 10 years -ago, were a nations call to arms are now the-whis-pering of waters in the cranies of a wreck. ...,■■ . : : , • ;.

'Ten' years is a: short time in which to forget so much ; but -juslfc as long has the shattered Maine lain in the harbor of Havana, .forgotten. We are bidden so eagerly, so insistently to reihe'nibery -arid how 1 , her inflammatory task accomplished, we have left her to herself — -and to the. 63 men who are berthed ; : with her in the 'clutch of the harbor- mud. ;w

Why has the Government not raised the wreck of the Maine? That is the question the: watcher asks himself, and the question is as old as the admonition to remember. If there be 'an answer the Government has never made it, and nothing has yet served to compel an. answer. Rumours of all kinds have flown from mouth to ear in these later years, and some of them have had a far from pleasant sound. To many it now seems that.it is the manifest duty of the Government to remove the wreck. Some say that only this will determine • beyond all doubt whether the ship was. destroyed by an explosion from without or by an explosion from within, for this is a doubt which the neglect of 10 years has permitted to arise.

At last, however, a formal demand that the wreck be raised has been made by Representative William Sulzer, of New York, in , the form; of a Bill, which he has introduced in Congress. And he is confident that at its next session ; Congress will pass it, and the Secretary of the Navy will be directed to remove the wreck of the Maine, and to have the bodies of the sailors within it brought to Washington for interment in" the national cemetery at Arlington.