The correspondence following shows the progress of the negotiations for the surrender of the city of Santiago and the Spanish Army, from the morning of July 3d until the final convention was signed on the sixteenth of the same month. This surrender virtually closed the war, but did not restore the contending nations to a status of peace. Twenty-three thousand Spanish soldiers had laid down their arms and had been transformed from enemies to friends. On the tenth of August following, a protocol was submitted by the President of the United States, which was accepted by the Spanish cabinet on the eleventh, and on the twelfth the President announced the cessation of hostilities, thus closing a war which had lasted one hundred and ten days. On the tenth of December a Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain was signed at Paris, which was subsequently ratified by both nations, and diplomatic relations fully restored. The war, though short, had been costly. One hundred and fifty million dollars had been spent in its prosecution, and there were left on our hands the unsolved problem of Cuba and the Philippines, which promised much future trouble. Within a month from the signing of the convention, the Army of Invasion, known as the Fifth Army Corps, was on its homeward voyage, and by the latter part of August the whole command was well out of Cuba. Well did the soldiers themselves, as well as their friends, realize, as the former returned from that campaign of a hundred days, that war in the tropics was neither a pastime nor a practice march. The campaign had tested the powers of endurance of the men to its utmost limit. The horrors of war were brought directly to the face of the people, as the ten thousand invalids dragged their debilitated forms from the transports to their detention camps, or to the hospitals, some too helpless to walk, and many to die soon after greeting their native shores. Those who had been so enthusiastic for the war were now quiet, and were eagerly laying the blame for the sorrow and suffering before them upon the shoulders of those who had conducted the war. Few stopped to think that a good part of this woe might be justly charged to those who had constantly resisted the establishment of an adequate standing army, and who, with inconsistent vehemence, had urged the nation into a war, regardless of its military equipment. The emaciated veterans arriving at Montauk were spoken of as the evidences of "military incompetency;" they were also evidence of that narrow statesmanship which ignores the constant suggestions of military experience. * * * * * Headquarters United States Forces, Near San Juan River, July 3, 1898--8.30 A.M. To the Commanding General of the Spanish Forces, Santiago de Cuba.