Such, in large outline, was the battle of Manila Bay. Foreign critics have derided American enthusiasm on the ground that the American fleet was far superior, that the Spanish vessels, many of them mere gunboats, lacked armor and adequate guns, and that they were imperfectly manned. Yet the same critics ranked the naval forces of Spain as quite equal to the American at the outset of the war. Furthermore, the action of Dewey, without a single battle-ship or torpedo-boat under his command, in entering a mined harbor without waiting to countermine, and in attacking a fleet whose strength was not accurately known, under the guns of land batteries, must be classed among the distinctive achievements of naval history. The battle was decisive in its immediate outcome, far-reaching in its ultimate consequences. Dewey’s victory but presaged the final triumph of American arms. The Battle of Manila Bay meant the expulsion of Spain from the Pacific and the succession of the United States to Spain’s heritage of Asiatic power. Politically, therefore, in its establishment of the United States as a power in the Orient, Manila Bay is to be placed among the decisive battles of history.[273] XXII THE BATTLES OF SANTIAGO, 1898 I THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR IN THE WEST INDIES Ex-President Roosevelt once said that the most striking thing about the war with Spain was the preparedness of the navy and the unpreparedness of the army. For fifteen years the United States had been building up a navy, and for months preceding the war every effort was made, with the resources at the command of the Navy Department, to put it in a state of first-class efficiency. As early as January 11, 1898, instructions were sent to the commanders of the several squadrons to retain in the service men whose terms of enlistment were about to expire. As the Cuban situation grew more threatening, the North Atlantic Squadron and a torpedo-boat flotilla were rapidly assembled in Florida waters; and immediately after the destruction of the _Maine_ the ships on the European and South Atlantic stations were ordered to Key West....