"The expulsion of Spain from the Antilles is merely the last and final step of the inexorable movement in which the United States has been engaged for nearly a century. By influence and by example, or more directly, by arms and by the pressure of ever-advancing settlements, the United States drove Spain from all her continental possessions in the Western Hemisphere, until nothing was left to the successors of Charles and Philip but Cuba and Porto Rico. How did it happen that this great movement stopped when it came to the ocean's edge? The movement against Spain was at once national and organic, while the pause on the sea-coast was artificial and in contravention of the laws of political evolution in the Americas. The conditions in Cuba and Porto Rico did not differ from those which had gone down in ruin wherever the flag of Spain waved on the mainland. The Cubans desired freedom, and Bolivar would fain have gone to their aid. Mexico and Colombia, in 1825, planned to invade the island, and at that time invasion was sure to be successful. What power stayed the oncoming tide which had swept over a continent? Not Cuban loyalty, for the expression 'Faithful Cuba' was a lie from the beginning. The power which prevented the liberation of Cuba was the United States, and more than seventy years later this republic has had to fight a war because at the appointed time she set herself against her own teachings, and brought to a halt the movement she had herself started to free the New World from the oppression of the Old. The United States held back Mexico and Colombia and Bolivar, used her influence at home and abroad to that end, and, in the opinion of contemporary mankind, succeeded, according to her desires, in keeping Cuba under the dominion of Spain."