“Before our civil war we had a merchant marine second only to that of Great Britain. American sails whitened every sea, the stars and stripes glowed in every port. We were a nation of sailors. Even so long ago as the war of 1812 we held our own with Great Britain on the ocean, though beaten everywhere on land by inferior numbers with superior training. To-day we could not hold our own against any maritime people, even if we fought with full coal-bunkers near our own shores. The American behind the gun is no longer a born sailor with the salt of the sea in every globule of the blood of him. Our fate in encountering a seagoing people, sailors and fishermen and the sons of sailors and fishermen, with sea legs, sea eyes and sea souls, would be that which has befallen inlanders against islanders, from Salamis to Tsu Shima. The sea would be strewn with a wreckage of American ‘magnificent fighting-machines.’” The Timorous Reporter murmured the words “Manila Bay” and “Santiago de Cuba,” then diffidently lifted his eyes, with a question mark in each, to the face of his distinguished interlocutor—which darkened with a smile. “With regard to Manila,” he said, “I am told that Dewey’s famous command, ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,’ was not accurately reported. According to my informant, the Spanish ships were ingeniously wound with ropes to keep them from falling apart. What Dewey actually said was this: ‘When you are ready, Gridley, you may fire at those ropes.’ Anybody can cut a rope with a cannon if not molested. At Santiago, the Spanish Admiral was ordered not to give battle, but to escape, and ships cannot run away and fight at the same time. “Sir, two naval victories in which the victors lost one man killed do not supply a reasonable presumption of invincibility. Manila and Santiago were slaughters, not battles. They are without value.” The reporter said he thought that they were not altogether worthless as “horrors of war,” and visibly shuddered. The superior intelligence flamed and thundered!