The better the condition of Cuba was understood, the more deplorable it was seen to be; the more the government of the island was examined, the wider seemed the divergence between Spain’s methods and our own; the more the diplomatic history of the case was considered, the plainer became Spain’s purpose to brook no interference, whether in the name of humanity or in the name of friendly commercial interests.  The calm report of the naval court of inquiry on the blowing up of the Maine and Senator Proctor’s report on the condition of Cuba put the whole people in a serious mood.

These and more made their contributions to the rapidly rising excitement.  But all these together could not have driven us to war if we had not been willing to be driven—­if the conviction had not become firm in the minds of the people that Spanish rule in Cuba was a blot on civilization that had now begun to bring reproach to us; and when the President, who favored peace, declared it intolerable, the people were ready to accept his judgment.

Congress, it is true, in quiet times, is likely to represent the shallows and the passing excitement of our life rather than its deeper moods, but there is among the members of Congress a considerable body of conservative men; and the demand for war was practically unanimous, and public opinion sustained it.  Among the people during the period when war seemed inevitable, but had not yet been declared—­a period during which the powers of Europe found time and mind to express a hope for peace—­hardly a peace meeting was held by influential men.  The President and his Cabinet were known to wish longer to try diplomatic means of averting war, but no organized peace party came into existence.  Except expressions of the hope of peace made by commercial and ecclesiastical organizations, no protest was heard against the approaching action of Congress, Many thought that war could be postponed, if not prevented, but the popular mood was at least acquiescent, if not insistent, and it eventually became unmistakably approving.

Not only was there in the United States an unmistakable popular approval of war as the only effective means of restoring civilization in Cuba, but the judgment of the English people promptly approved it—­giving evidence of an instinctive race and institutional sympathy.  If Anglo-Saxon institutions and methods stand for anything, the institutions and methods of Spanish rule in Cuba were an abomination and a reproach.  And English sympathy was not more significant as an evidence of the necessity of the war, and as a good omen for the future of free institutions, than the equally instinctive sympathy with Spain that was expressed by some of the decadent influences on the continent; indeed, the real meaning of the American civilization and ideals will henceforth be somewhat more clearly understood in several quarters of the world.

American character will be still better understood when the whole world clearly perceives that the purpose of the war was only to remove from our very doors this cruel and inefficient piece of medievalism which was one of the great scandals of the closing years of the century.