"No, you must not wish for war with Spain. If we ever are placed in a position where patriotism commands war, I shall be the last to oppose it. If England had not behaved with her calm good sense at the time of the Venezuela difficulty, but had taken our jingoes seriously and returned their insults, we should have had no alternative but war,--the serious and conservative of the country would have had to suffer from the errors of its fools, as is often the case. But for this war there would be no possible excuse. Spain at one time owned nearly two-thirds of the earth's surface. She has lost every inch of it, except the Peninsula and a few islands, by her cruelty and stupidity. Her manifest destiny is to lose these islands in the same manner and for the same reasons. And brutal and stupid as she is, we have no more right to interfere in her domestic affairs than had Europe to interfere in ours when we were torn by a struggle that had a far greater effect on the progress of civilization than the trouble between dissatisfied colonists and decadent Spaniards in this petty island. God only knows how many intellects went out on those battlefields in the four years of the Civil War, which, had they persisted and developed, would have added to the legislative wisdom of this country. We knew what we were losing, knew that the longer the struggle lasted the longer would our growth as a nation be retarded, and the horrors of our battlefields were quite as ghastly as anything set forth in the reports from Cuba. And yet every thinking man among us, young and old, turned cold with apprehension when we were threatened with a European interference which would have dishonoured us. That Spain is behaving with wanton brutality would not be to the point, even if the reports were not exaggerated, which they are,--for the matter of that, the Cubans are equally brutal when they find the opportunity. The point is that it is none of our business. The Cubans have rebelled. They must take the consequences, sustained by the certainty of success in the end. Moreover, we not only are on friendly terms with Spain, we not only have no personal grievance as a nation against her, but we are a great nation, she is a weak one. We have no moral right, we a lusty young country, to humiliate a proud and ancient kingdom, expose the weaknesses and diseases of her old age to the unpitying eyes of the world. It would be a despicable and a cowardly act, and it horrifies me to think that the United States could be capable of it. For Spain I care nothing. The sooner she dies of her own rottenness the better; but let her die a natural death. My concern is for my own country. I don't want her to violate those fundamental principles to whose adherence alone she can hope to reach the highest pitch of development." Betty smiled. "Mr. Burleigh says that Washington had a brain of ice, and that his ideal of American prosperity was frozen within it. I suppose he would say the same of you."