And what can be expected or predicted of a nation which, in its total population of eighteen millions, contains at least twelve million illiterate persons; in the Cortes of which it was recently seriously proposed to endow a school for bull–fighters; in which cock–fighting and bull–fighting are the national pastimes; where the successful bull–fighter is the popular hero, and half a million dollars are annually expended for bulls and horses to be slaughtered in the arena; where eight millions of the people have no trade or profession, and there are nearly one hundred thousand professional beggars; where, though agriculture is the chief employment, the land is broken up by means of wooden ploughs; where, though rich in mineral resources, the mines are farmed out to foreign companies or their revenues hypothecated to brokers abroad; and finally, where everything taxable groans beneath its burden. It is not inexplicable to the student of history that Spain, with a formidable navy, yet was rendered helpless in two engagements; with more than one hundred thousand soldiers in Cuba, yet surrendered after but one city had been besieged and taken, and whose vast colonial possessions fell to pieces and crumbled like a house of cards. Was it chance alone that chose Santiago as the crucial battle ground—Santiago, where, twenty–five years before, scores of American sailors, men of the Virginius, were stood against the white walls of a slaughter–house and butchered in cold blood? Was it chance alone that directed the events of war so that the West Indies should be the scene of final conflict—the Antilles, which Spain had depopulated in the first century of her rule, and made desert places of fair isles which once supported millions of innocent and happy inhabitants? Was it strange that a nation guilty of such enormities should lack the moral courage, the sound heart and core of integrity, necessary to withstand the impact of another nation goaded by the spectacle of those iniquities to righteous indignation? While mourning the losses of the war, with a heart still bleeding for their sons done to death in battle and by disease—and they were not few—the people of the United States will never regret that they went forth to fight for a principle. They have won the commendation, they have compelled the respect, of the world powers; yet more than that: have given evidence of a moral and physical virility which, it was feared, the past generation of enervating peace had impaired.