eir fleet across the ocean and land
a force on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. This force marched to
Washington, attacked the city, and burned the Capitol and other
public buildings, with little inconvenience to itself.

The War of the Rebellion is instructive because it shows how two
earnest peoples, each believing themselves right, can be forced,
by the very sincerity of their convictions, to wage war against
each other; and because it shows how unpreparedness for war, with
its accompanying ignorance of the best way in which to wage it,
causes undue duration of a war and therefore needless suffering.
If the North had not closed its eyes so resolutely to the fact
of the coming struggle, it would have noted beforehand that the
main weakness of the Confederacy lay in its dependence on revenue
from cotton and its inability to provide a navy that could prevent
a blockade of its coasts; and the North would have early instituted
a blockade so tight that the Confederacy would have been forced
to yield much sooner than it did. The North would have made naval
operations the main effort, instead of the auxiliary effort; and
would have substituted for much of the protracted and bloody warfare
of the land the quickly decisive and comparatively merciful warfare
of the sea.

In the Spanish War the friction between the United States and Spain
was altogether about Cuba. No serious thought of the invasion of
either country was entertained, no invasion was attempted, and
the only land engagements were some minor engagements in Cuba and
the Philippines. The critical operations were purely naval. In the
first of these, Commodore Dewey's squadron destroyed the entire
Far Eastern squadron of the Spanish in Manila Bay; in the second,
Admiral Sampson's squadron destroyed the entire Atlantic squadron of
the Spanish near Santiago de Cuba. The two naval victories compelled
Spain to make terms of peace practically as the United States wished.
Attention is invited to the fact that this war was not a war of
conquest, was not a war of aggression, was not a war of invasion,
was not a war carried on by either side for any base purpose; but
was in its intention and its results for the benefit of mankind.

The Russo-Japanese War was due to conflicting national policies.
While each side accused the other of selfish ends, it is not apparent
to a disinterested observer that either was unduly selfish in its
policy, or was doing more than every country oug