“Turning to the official report of Admiral Sampson, we find him saying that, as soon as it was light enough, he began ‘an attack upon the batteries defending the city. This attack lasted about three hours, and resulted in much damage to the batteries, and incidentally to a portion of the city adjacent to the batteries.’ It is, therefore, clear that this latter damage was simply the result of the proximity of the defensive works to some of the dwellings. The same thing would occur in bombarding Havana. Can any one imagine that the Spaniards, if they suddenly appeared in New York Bay, would be obliged to give notice before opening fire on Fort Hamilton and Fort Wadsworth, for the reason that adjacent settlements would suffer from the fire? The advantage of suddenness in the attack upon a place, not only fortified, but forewarned by current events, cannot be renounced. Civilians dwelling near defensive works know what they risk in war. “In the Franco-German war of 1870 there were repeated instances, according to the authority already quoted, of deliberately firing on inhabited towns instead of on their fortifications, and ‘there were cases, like that of Peronne, where the town was partially destroyed while the ramparts were nearly intact.’ The ground taken was that which a military writer, General Le Blois, had advocated five years before, namely, that the pressure for surrender exercised by the people becomes greater on subjecting them to the loss of life and property. ‘The governor is made responsible for all the disasters that occur; the people rise against him, and his own troops seek to compel him to an immediate capitulation.’ At San Juan there was no attempt of this sort, the fire being concentrated upon the batteries, with the single view of destroying them. The likelihood that adjacent buildings and streets would suffer did not require previous notice of the bombardment, and, in fact, when the Germans opened fire on Paris without notification, and a protest was made on behalf of neutrals, Bismarck simply replied that no such notification was required by the laws of war.” CHAPTER VII. FROM ALL QUARTERS. _May 11._ A state of siege proclaimed throughout Spain. In a dozen cities or more continued rioting and sacking of warehouses. The seacoast between Cadiz and Malaga no longer lighted. The second division of the Spanish navy, consisting of the battle-ship _Pelayo_, the armoured cruiser _Carlos V._, the protected cruiser _Alphonso XIII._, the converted cruisers _Rapido_ and _Patria_, and several torpedo-boats, remain in Cadiz Harbour. _May 12._ The story of an attempt to land American troops in Cuba is thus told by one of the officers of the steamer _Gussie_, which vessel left Tampa on the tenth.