=The De Lome and the Maine Incidents.=—­Such a policy was defeated by events.  In February, 1898, a private letter written by Senor de Lome, the Spanish ambassador at Washington, expressing contempt for the President of the United States, was filched from the mails and passed into the hands of a journalist, William R. Hearst, who published it to the world.  In the excited state of American opinion, few gave heed to the grave breach of diplomatic courtesy committed by breaking open private correspondence.  The Spanish government was compelled to recall De Lome, thus officially condemning his conduct.

At this point a far more serious crisis put the pacific relations of the two negotiating countries in dire peril.  On February 15, the battleship Maine, riding in the harbor of Havana, was blown up and sunk, carrying to death two officers and two hundred and fifty-eight members of the crew.  This tragedy, ascribed by the American public to the malevolence of Spanish officials, profoundly stirred an already furious nation.  When, on March 21, a commission of inquiry reported that the ill-fated ship had been blown up by a submarine mine which had in turn set off some of the ship’s magazines, the worst suspicions seemed confirmed.  If any one was inclined to be indifferent to the Cuban war for independence, he was now met by the vehement cry:  “Remember the Maine!”

=Spanish Concessions.=—­Still the State Department, under McKinley’s steady hand, pursued the path of negotiation, Spain proving more pliable and more ready with promises of reform in the island.  Early in April, however, there came a decided change in the tenor of American diplomacy.  On the 4th, McKinley, evidently convinced that promises did not mean performances, instructed our minister at Madrid to warn the Spanish government that as no effective armistice had been offered to the Cubans, he would lay the whole matter before Congress.  This decision, every one knew, from the temper of Congress, meant war—­a prospect which excited all the European powers.  The Pope took an active interest in the crisis.  France and Germany, foreseeing from long experience in world politics an increase of American power and prestige through war, sought to prevent it.  Spain, hopeless and conscious of her weakness, at last dispatched to the President a note promising to suspend hostilities, to call a Cuban parliament, and to grant all the autonomy that could be reasonably asked.

=President McKinley Calls for War.=—­For reasons of his own—­reasons which have never yet been fully explained—­McKinley ignored the final program of concessions presented by Spain.  At the very moment when his patient negotiations seemed to bear full fruit, he veered sharply from his course and launched the country into the war by sending to Congress his militant message of April 11, 1898.  Without making public the last note he had received from Spain, he declared that he was brought to the