AMERICA AND SPAIN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11555, 16 April 1898, Page 4

AMERICA AND SPAIN.

With Madrid and Washington both frantic for war, it is impossible to discern any prospect of a peaceful way out of the threatening situation. There is a curious difference between the conduct of the two capitals under the influence of bellicose excitement. In Madrid the people are clamorous for war, and have to be forcibly suppressed by the authorities, who appear disinclined —and, doubtless, with good reason, for they know, as the people do not, how terribly unprepared the nation is—to enter upon a serious campaign in the crippled condition of the army and the finances. In the legislative capital of the United States, on tiie other hand, it is the leaders who have lost their heads, while fhe people appear to be comparatively cool. The spectacle of American legislators fighting like madmen and hurling abusive epithets at each other, when discussing the grave question of making wav on behalf of an oppressed people, is less edifying and less explicable than that of the ignorant populace of Madrid demanding hostile tactics and threatening to wreck the Legation of the Power that has dared to question the sovereign rights of Spain. In both cases, however, the portent is the same, and it foreshadows a sanguinary conflict, with liberty for Cuba and ignominy for Spain at the end of it. The overwhelming vote of the House ot Representatives at Washington in favour of forcible intervention in Cuba is exactly what we were led to expect. That Spain should hesitate, even when her people are crying for war, and her very rebels are promising to lay aside their feud and make common cause against the foreign enemy, is not surprising in view of the many difficulties of her position. In addition to the Cuban quarrel, she has a fresh rebellion on hand in the Philippines, with the prospect of Japan seizing an opportunity to assert her power and make an ally of the United States by seizing those islands. The “latent crisis ” in Spain, arising out of the Carlist and Republican agitations, would disappear for a time at the commencement of a foreign war, and might altogether disappear if Spanish arms were successful; but in the probable event of defeat the crisis would suddenly become acute, and there would he an end of the royal house of Castile and of monarchy in Spain. It is the dread of such developments that is making the Spanish Government cautious; and yet, in the excited state of popular feeling it has become more dangerous to make peaceful overtures than to embark upon a war that is almost certain to end in Spain’s humiliation. America is so far com- i

mitted that she cannot withdraw. The conviction, that the warship Maine was destroyed by a treacherous “ Gunpowder Plot,” with the connivance of Spanish officials, and the knowledge of the terrible atrocities perpetrated upon the islanders by the Spanish soldiery, will make the people well-nigh unanimous in their resolve to end the abominable sway of the Power that is responsible for such doings in America. War will therefore take place, and its outcome need not long be in doubt. With all their powerful warships and numerous army, the Spaniards have not, during the past three centuries, shown themselves possessed of martial qualities or of ability to win a campaign. Unless, therefore, they get an ally, which seems very improbable at present, they will emerge ingloriously from the conflict that is now imminent, and their country will be deprived of the last of her colonial possessions, and the last vestige of pretence to be a great Power. Spain’s record is so terrible, and her reformation is apparently so hopeless, that the prospect now opening up will not alarm any lover of civilised pro* gress. !