ng could be
decisively inferred. The last news of the _Oregon_ was that she had
left Bahia, in Brazil, on the 9th of the month. Her whereabouts and
intended movements were as unknown to the United States authorities as
to the enemy. An obvious precaution, to assure getting assistance to
her, would have been to prescribe the exact route she should follow,
subject only to the conditional discretion which can never wisely be
taken from the officer in command on the spot. In that way it would
have been possible to send a division to meet her, if indications at
any moment countenanced the suspicion entertained by some--the author
among others--that Cervera would attempt to intercept her. After
careful consideration, this precaution had not been attempted,
because the tight censorship of the Press had not then been
effectually enforced, and it was feared that even so vital and evident
a necessity as that of concealing her movements would not avail
against the desire of some newspapers to manifest enterprise, at
whatever cost to national interests. If we ever again get into a
serious war, a close supervision of the Press, punitive as well as
preventive, will be one of the first military necessities, unless the
tone and disposition, not of the best, but of the worst, of its
members shall have become sensibly improved; for occasional
unintentional leakage, by well-meaning officials possessing more
information than native secretiveness, cannot be wholly obviated, and
must be accepted, practically, as one of the inevitable difficulties
of conducting war.

The _Oregon_, therefore, was left a loose end, and was considered to
be safer so than if more closely looked after. From the time she left
Bahia till she arrived at Barbados, and from thence till she turned up
off Jupiter Inlet, on the Florida coast, no one in Washington knew
where she was. Nevertheless, she continued a most important and
exposed fraction of the national naval force. That Cervera had turned
west when last seen from Martinique meant nothing. It was more
significant and reassuring to know that he had not got coal there.
Still, it was possible that he might take a chance off Barbados,
trusting, as he with perfect reason could, that when he had waited
there as long as his coal then on hand permitted, the British
authorities would let him take enough more to reach Puerto Rico, as
they did give Captain Clark sufficient to gain a United States port.
When the _Oregon_