“Let the waters of the orient as they moan through the shell-riven wrecks at Cavite, the booming waves of the Caribbean as fathoms deep it sweeps over Pluton and Furor and breaks into spray on the shapeless and fire-distorted steel of Vizcaya and Oquendo, tell how the navy has paid our debt to Spain.  Nor is the renown which crowns the standards of our army one whit less glorious.  Nothing in the lucid page of Thucydides nor in the terse commentaries of Caesar, nothing in the vivid narrative of Napier or the glowing battle scenes of Allison, can surpass the story how, spurning the chapparal and the barbed wire, pressing their rifles to their throbbing hearts, toiling up the heights, and all the while the machine guns and the Mausers mowing the jungle as if with a mighty reaper, on and yet right on, they won the fiery crests, and Santiago fell.  Well may we exclaim with the royal poet of Israel: 

“’Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory.’

“America!  Humane in the hour of triumph, gentle to the vanquished, grateful to the Lord of Hosts, a reunited people forever: 

“’Great people.  As the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade
The multitudinous earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.’”

The band burst into the strains of “Dixie” in honor of the Southern birth of Judge Speer, as he concluded his oration.  President McKinley, as on other occasions during the program, joined in the hearty applause.  Cries of “McKinley,” “McKinley,” “The President,” “The President,” were heard all over the hall, and in a moment it was seen that the President was going to respond.  Every one stood up.  Ex-Governor Oglesby approached the front of the box, and said, “I have the honor to introduce the guest of the occasion, the President.”

“Leaning forward,” we quote the Tribune, “from his box in the earnestness of his utterance, speaking in the tones of emotion having birth in the fullness of heart, President William McKinley, at the Auditorium jubilee meeting yesterday morning gave to the people a message of simple thanks and significant augury.  Save for a wave of applause at the mention of American charity, the terse, reverent address was heard in silence.  An added hush fell upon the intent throng when the President began the portentous concluding paragraph, and when he ceased speaking and stood before them grave and masterful, the quiet was breathless, tense under the force of repression.  Then the meaning of the words of the Executive coursed from heart to brain, and men’s minds grasped the fact that they had heard the President’s lips declare that he had seen the direction of the flow of the currents of destiny, that he recognized their majesty, and that his purpose was in harmony with the common will—­the force working for the retention of the conquered islands in the distant Pacific and for the policy of national growth.