Our men had to be trained to handle the ships singly and in fleet formation, and they had to be trained to use the new weapons of precision with which the ships were armed.  Not a few of the older officers, kept in the service under our foolish rule of pure seniority promotion, were not competent for the task; but a proportion of the older officers were excellent, and this was true of almost all the younger officers.  They were naturally first-class men, trained in the admirable naval school at Annapolis.  They were overjoyed that at last they were given proper instruments to work with, and they speedily grew to handle these ships individually in the best fashion.  They were fast learning to handle them in squadron and fleet formation; but when the war with Spain broke out, they had as yet hardly grasped the principles of modern scientific naval gunnery.

Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy I became convinced that the war would come.  The revolt in Cuba had dragged its weary length until conditions in the island had become so dreadful as to be a standing disgrace to us for permitting them to exist.  There is much that I sincerely admire about the Spanish character; and there are few men for whom I have felt greater respect than for certain gentlemen of Spain whom I have known.  But Spain attempted to govern her colonies on archaic principles which rendered her control of them incompatible with the advance of humanity and intolerable to the conscience of mankind.  In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged along for years with unspeakable horror, degradation, and misery.  It was not “war” at all, but murderous oppression.  Cuba was devastated.

During those years, while we continued at “peace,” several hundred times as many lives were lost, lives of men, women, and children, as were lost during the three months’ “war” which put an end to this slaughter and opened a career of peaceful progress to the Cubans.  Yet there were misguided professional philanthropists who cared so much more for names than for facts that they preferred a “peace” of continuous murder to a “war” which stopped the murder and brought real peace.  Spain’s humiliation was certain, anyhow; indeed, it was more certain without war than with it, for she could not permanently keep the island, and she minded yielding to the Cubans more than yielding to us.  Our own direct interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and especially because of Cuba’s relation to the projected Isthmian Canal.  But even greater were our interests from the standpoint of humanity.  Cuba was at our very doors.  It was a dreadful thing for us to sit supinely and watch her death agony.  It was our duty, even more from the standpoint of National honor than from the standpoint of National interest, to stop the devastation and destruction.  Because of these considerations I favored war; and to-day, when in retrospect it is easier to see things clearly, there are few humane and honorable men who do not believe that the war was both just and necessary.