Everybody now realizes that, once war was begun, absolutely the most efficient means of making it speedily and overwhelmingly victorious, as well as of defending the most exposed half of our own coast, was to go to Manila.
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
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Find the Spanish fleet and destroy it" was as wise an order as the President ever issued, and he was equally wise in choosing the man to carry it out.
The American people admire him for the battle which sank the Spanish navy; but they trust and love him for the months of trial and triumph that followed.
The public servant who, without instructions, should in a gush of irresponsible sentimentality abandon great possessions to which his country is justly entitled, whether by conquest or as indemnity for unjust war, would be not only an…
We may as well, here and now, keep our feet on solid ground, and deal with facts as they are.
The Nation that scatters principalities as a prodigal does his inheritance is too sentimental and moon-shiny for the Nineteenth Century or the Twentieth, and too unpractical for Americans of any period.
It may flourish in Arcadia or Altruria, but it does not among the sons of the Pilgrims, or on the continent they subdued by stern struggle to the uses of civilization.
The evidence in support of this view has been fully set forth, examined, and weighed, and, unless I greatly mistake, a popular decision on the subject has been reached.
The constitutional power is no longer seriously disputed, and even those who raised the doubt do not seem now to rely upon it.
This conception of International Law is absolutely new; it is no longer a case of might against right, but of might without right....
Under these circumstances one of the very first and noblest acts of the President was to announce that the United States would not avail itself of the right to send out privateers, reserved under the Declaration of Paris.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.