INTRODUCTION.

When, on the 22d day of April, 1898, Michael Mallia, gun-captain of the United States cruiser Nashville, sent a shell across the bows of the Spanish ship Buena Ventura, he gave the signal shot that ushered in a war for liberty for the slaves of Spain.

The world has never seen a contest like it.  Nations have fought for territory and for gold, but they have not fought for the happiness of others.  Nations have resisted the encroachments of barbarism, but until the nineteenth century they have not fought to uproot barbarism and cast it out of its established place.  Nations have fought to preserve the integrity of their own empire, but they have not fought a foreign foe to set others free.  Men have gone on crusades to fight for holy tombs and symbols, but armies have not been put in motion to overthrow vicious political systems and regenerate iniquitous governments for other peoples.

For more than four centuries Spain has held the island of Cuba as her chattel, and there she has revelled in corruption, and wantoned in luxury wrung from slaves with the cruel hand of unchecked power.  She has been the unjust and merciless court of last resort.  From her malignant verdict there has been no possible appeal, no power to which her victims could turn for help.

But the end has come at last.  The woe, the grief, the humiliation, the agony, the despair that Spain has heaped upon the helpless, and multiplied in the world until the world is sickened with it, will be piled in one avalanche on her own head.

Liberty has grown slowly.  Civilization has been on the defensive.  Now liberty fights for liberty, and civilization takes the aggressive in the holiest war the world has even known.

Never was there a war before in which so many stimulating deeds of bravery were done in such a short time, and this in spite of the fact that the public has been restless for more action.  It is almost worth a war to have inscribed such a deed of cool, intelligent heroism as that of Hobson and his men with the Merrimac, in the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba.  That is an event in world history, one never to be forgotten, and in the countries of Europe quite as generously recognized as by our own people.  There is a word to say for the Spanish admiral.  In his chivalry after that act of heroism, Cervera proved himself a worthy adversary, who could realize and admire bravery in a foe, even when it had been directed against himself with such signal success.  Not every commander would be great enough in that circumstance to send a flag of truce to the opposing admiral, in order to inform him that his brave men were safe and that they were honored as brave men by their captors.