gh.

It is a matter of universal regret that so many of our brave volunteers
died of neglect in camps and on transports, and that fever, malaria, and
exposure carried several times the number to their graves as were sent
there by Spanish bullets. Severe criticisms have been lodged against the
War Department for both lack of efficiency and neglect in caring for the
comfort, health, and life of those who went forward at their country's
call.

However, it must be remembered that the War Department undertook and
accomplished a herculean task, and it could not be expected, starting
with a regular force of less than 30,000 men, that an army of a quarter
of a million could be built up out of volunteers who had to be
collected, trained, clothed, equipped, and provisioned, and a war waged
and won on two sides of the globe, in a little over three months,
without much suffering and many mistakes.

THE TREATY OF PEACE.

December 10, 1898, was one of the most eventful days in the past
decade--one fraught with great interest to the world, and involving the
destiny of more than 10,000,000 of people. At nine o'clock on the
evening of that day the commissioners of the United States and those of
Spain met for the last time, after about eleven weeks of
deliberation, in the magnificent apartments of the foreign ministry at
the French capital, and signed the Treaty of Peace, which finally marked
the end of the Spanish-American War.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES PEACE COMMISSIONERS OF THE SPANISH WAR

Appointed September 9, 1898. Met Spanish Commissioners at Paris, October
1st. Treaty of Peace signed by the Commissioners at Paris, December
10th. Ratified by the United States Senate at Washington, February 6,
1899.]

This treaty transformed the political geography of the world by
establishing the United States' authority in both hemispheres, and also
in the tropics, where it had never before extended. It, furthermore,
brought under our dominion and obligated us for the government of
strange and widely isolated peoples, who have little or no knowledge of
liberty and government as measured by the American standards. In this
new assumption of responsibility America essayed a difficult problem,
the solving of which involved results that could not fail to influence
the destiny of our nation and the future history of the whole world.

On January 3, 1899, the Hon. John Hay, Secretary of State, delivered the
Treaty of Peace to Preside