tropical sun and through a dense forest and undergrowth with the steadiness and marksmanship of experienced bushfighters. It was a very brave, honest, and effective piece of work, showing admirable discipline and a surprising readiness to meet new and strange conditions.

On June 15 the work of the marines was followed up by the Marblehead, Texas, and Suwanee going into Caimanera, silencing the batteries, and driving the Spaniards completely away. The ships penetrated so far into the channel of the inner harbor that they ran on to torpedoes, the Marblehead picking up one on her propeller, fortunately so thick with barnacles that it did not explode by contact, as it was intended to do. Thus the affair at Guantanamo Bay was finished, and a secure refuge, base, coaling and repair station were secured for the fleet, which assured its ability to continue the blockade-a very important operation, performed with the thoroughness, foresight, and minute care which characterized all Admiral Sampson's work. But the best arranged and most systematic blockade, the most vigorous and sustained bombardments, the workmanlike establishment of a fine naval base-none of these things could bring the American ships alongside the Spanish cruisers. It was not the comparatively feeble batteries of the Morro, the Socapa, or Estrella Point which stood in the way. That which held back the American fleet was the mine-field at the entrance of the harbor, sown thick with torpedoes and submarine mines, exploding either by contact or by electric wires leading to batteries on shore. The navy which offered hundreds of volunteers to accompany

Hobson had plenty of officers and men who would have cheerfully dared all the dangers of that narrow channel, defying alike shore batteries and sunken mines. But such an attempt would have been not only perilous, and worthless, but a blunder of the first magnitude. Small ships, which perhaps might have slipped in, would have been utterly useless against the heavy Spanish cruisers, and a battle-ship sunk by torpedoes in the narrow channel would have been a useless and crippling sacrifice, and would have blocked the entrance so that the Spaniards could never have been forced out and the American fleet could never have gone in. Once the mine field was cleared, the ships could enter, but the mines could not be reached or removed until the batteries at the entrance were taken and the garrisons driven away. For this land-work the fleet had no adequate force. To reach and destroy the sea power of Spain in the West Indies, upon which the whole campaign against both Cuba and Puerto Rico turned, an army was needed to support the fleet, to take the entrance forts and thus permit the ships to enter, or else to capture the town itself and force the Spaniards out into the open. Thus it was that while Admiral Sampson was perfecting his blockade at every point, he was urgently asking that land forces be sent to his support, and all the officers and men of the fleet were waiting impatiently for the coming of the army which should deliver the Spanish cruisers into their hands.

CHAPTER VI

SANTIAGO-THE LAND FIGHT

THE American navy was ready, as ships of war must always be, and when the President signed the Cuban resolutions, the fleet started for Cuba without a moment's delay. With the army, the case was widely different. Congress had taken care of the army in a spasmodic and insufficient manner, consistently doing nothing for it except to multiply civilian clerks and officials of all kinds, who justified their existence by a diligent weaving of red-tape and by magnifying details of work, until all the realities of the service were thoroughly obscured. Thus we had a cumbrous, top-heavy system of administration, rusted and slow-moving, and accustomed to care for an army of 25,000 men. war was declared. An army of 200,000 volunteers and 60,000 regulars was suddenly demanded, and the poor old system of military administration, with its coils of red-tape and its vast clerical force devoted to details, began to groan and creak, to break down here and to stop there, and to produce a vast crop of delays, blunders, and what was far worse, of needless suffering, disease, and death, to the brave men in the field. Thereupon came great outcry from newspapers, rising even to hysterical shrieking in some cases, great and natural wrath among the American people, and much anger

Then

and fault-finding from Senators and Representatives. Then came, too, the very human and general desire to find one or more scapegoats and administer to them condign punishment, which would have been eminently soothing and satisfactory to many persons-just in some cases, perhaps, unjust in most, but in any event of little practical value. There was undoubtedly a certain not very large percentage of shortcomings due to individual incapacity, which should have been sharply rooted up without regard to personal sensibilities. But the fundamental fact was that the chief and predominant cause of all the failures, blunders, and needless suffering was a thoroughly bad system of military administration. An inferior man can do well with a good system better than a superior man with a bad system, for a good administrative organization will go on for generations sometimes, carrying poor administrators with it. But a really bad system is wellnigh hopeless, and the men of genius, the Pitts, the Carnots, and the Stantons, who, bringing order out of chaos and strength out of weakness, organize victory, are very rare, and are produced only by the long-continued stress of a great struggle, and after bitter experience has taught its harshest lessons. At the outset of our war we had a bad system, and men laid the blame here and there for faults of system and organization which were really due to the narrowness and indifference of Congress, of the newspaper press, and of the people, running back over many years. To-day the system stands guilty of the blunders, delays, and needless sufferings and deaths of the war, and war being over, reforms are resisted by patriots who have so little faith in the republic that

they think a properly organized army of 100,000 men puts it in danger, and by bureau chiefs and their friends in Congress who want no change, for reasons obvious if not public-spirited.

Thus much by the way of preface, essential to the comprehension of even the barest outline of our military operations in the war of 1898, and to make clear not merely why there were shortcomings, which any account must notice, but also the fact that the wonder of it all lies not in the blunders and failures of organization, but in the indomitable energy and force of the American people which made the rusty, clumsy machine work in some fashion, and in the ability and bravery of American officers and soldiers which brought unbroken victory out of such conditions.

On April 23, 125,000 volunteers were called for, and a month later, on May 25, 75,000 more. It was soon found that it was one thing to call out volunteers, and quite another to make them into an army, which, strangely enough, appeared to surprise the country. Even the mobilization of the regulars was not rapid, and the middle of May had passed before they were assembled at Tampa. By the beginning of June, however, the regulars were gathered; but of all the volunteers, slowly mustering in different camps and in various stages of unreadiness, only three regiments were sufficiently prepared to join the forces at Tampa. These three were the Seventy-first New York, the Second Massachusetts, and the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. It was to this army of regulars and volunteers that the government turned when it became evident that troops were needed at Santiago, and the com