What, then, was the cause of Spain’s premature discomfiture and utter collapse? Perhaps, without arrogating to themselves any superior virtues, the Americans may not be mistaken in ascribing it to the corruption of her body politic, to her pride, her refusal to accept a lesson from experience. Above all, she was fighting a forlorn hope; her cause was foredoomed to failure, because it was the cause of mediævalism, of the collective cruelties of ages long agone; and the moral sense of the world was against her. She was reaping the harvest of retributory justice—the field sown by Alva and Cortes, by Pizarro and Philip II—yes, by Isabella the Catholic and Columbus! And what gall of bitterness to the Spaniard, in the reflection that the greatest nation in that hemisphere brought to the knowledge of Europe by Columbus, should be instrumental in wresting from Spain the first among the islands he discovered, and her last possessions in America! In justice to Spain, we should note that she had seemed desirous of averting the war. In response to President McKinley’s diplomatic suggestions, through his minister at Madrid, she pledged herself to inaugurate reforms, recalled the cruel Weyler, and substituted the pacific General Blanco; revoked the edict which had proved the death–knell of the _reconcentrados_, and proposed for Cuba an autonomist government. But all too late! She could not bring to life the thousands of starved and murdered Cubans, could not efface from the page of history the record of her multitudinous cruelties. It became necessary that the war should be fought: that Spain should be punished for her ignoring of the common rights of humanity, her trampling upon the sacred brotherhood of man. With a queen regent whose court will compare favourably for purity of morals with any other in Europe, and a titular king yet an innocent child; with public men like Castelar and Sagasta devoted to reform; with valorous soldiers and sailors blindly obedient, and a common people adherent to the monarchy: yet Spain’s system of government is one of the most hideous relics of ancient despotism.