lled and their
substance wasted merely because an adversary will not admit he is
whipped, when he is. When our fleet reached the Spanish coast that
case might have arisen; but probably the unwillingness of our
Government so to act would have postponed its decision to the very
last moment, in order to spare the enemy the final humiliation of
yielding, not to reasonable acceptance of facts, but to direct threat
of violence. The purpose of bombardment, so freely asserted by the
Press, was one of the numerous baseless discoveries with which it
enlightened its reader during the hostilities,--mixtures of truth and
error, so ingeniously proportioned as to constitute an antidote, than
which none better could then be had against its numerous
indiscretions.

The determining factor in this proposed movement of the battle fleet
as a whole was the necessity, or at least the advantage, of
reinforcing Dewey, and of placing two battleships in the Pacific. It
was not thought expedient now to send them by themselves, as at first
proposed, for the reason already given in another instance in this
paper; that is, the impropriety of taking even a small risk, if
unnecessary. Camara's two ships had now returned to Spain, and there
were besides in the ports of the Peninsula other armed vessels, which,
though evidently unfit for a distant voyage, might be good for some
work in the Straits of Gibraltar, where our two ships must pass. That
the latter would beat them all, if assembled, we quite believed, as we
had hoped that the _Oregon_ might do had she met Cervera; but the
_Oregon_ could not be helped without neglecting more immediately
pressing duties, whereas, at the end of July, there was nothing to
detain our heavy ships in the West Indies. It was determined,
therefore, to keep them massed and to send them across the ocean. It
was probable, nearly to the extent of absolute certainty, that neither
before nor after the separation of the division bound for the East
would the entire Spanish Navy venture an attack upon the formidable
force thus confronting its ports. To ensure success without fighting
is always a proper object of military dispositions; and, moreover,
there were reasons before alluded to for maintaining in perfect
integrity vessels whose organized fighting efficiency had now been
fully vindicated to the world. Even during peace negotiations, one's
position is not injured by the readiness of the battle fleet. In
short, it should b