After the peace treaty had been ratified by the American Senate and signed by President McKinley, on February 10, it received the signature of the Queen Regent on March 17, the Cortes having been prorogued. In a Red Book on the peace treaty issued by the Government later in the year, Senor Rios thus explained Spain’s predicaments: “The prostration and bloodless indifference of the public mind constantly alluded to in the press, the want of well meditated exposition of a high plane in the discussion and defense of Spain, especially those which related to the colonial debts, perhaps the most important which she had to assert in the conference; the multiplicity of opinions constantly manifested during these negotiations on the other points to be determined in the treaty; the eagerness apparent from the first day on the part of this press that the Philippine Archipelago should be abandoned, its preservation being considered incompatible with the national interests; the incessant excitation of another part of the press for this Commission to promptly terminate in any way whatever its labors, giving way at once to the exigencies of the Federal Government, and many other things which converted the Spanish press into a subject for the preferred attention of the American Commissioners, weakened the moral influence of this Commission and the force of its demands and of the reasons on which it founded them. Would to God that they may not also have strengthened the spirit of the American Commission to uphold and amplify its exactions! “The Spanish Commission, considering the narrow limits in which it could move and which had been irrevocably fixed for Spain in the preliminaries of peace signed at Washington on August 12 last, during these negotiations constantly drew inspiration for its acts in the purpose to save from the ruin of the colonial empire of Spain such remnants as were possible, however lacking in importance these remnants might be, and, above all, in its unconquerable resolve to never consent that the honor and the dignity of the fatherland should become stained. “As regards the question of the ‘Maine,’ the truth is that above all precedents there weighed upon the American Commission the inability of giving any satisfactory reply to the Spanish protest, because of the action of the President of the Union--violative of the most elementary dictates of generosity and prudence--on recalling, with language offensive to Spain, the ‘Maine’ incident on the most solemn occasion in the public life of the United States, and when the negotiations for the re-establishment of peace were on the point of terminating.