It was a great danger which Commodore Dewey and his bold followers faced. Before them lay the Spanish ships and the forts. There were torpedo boats which might rush out and sink them. There were torpedoes under the waters which might send the flagship itself to the bottom. Some men would have stopped and felt their way, but George Dewey was not that kind of a man. Without stopping for a minute after his long journey from China, he dashed on with the fleet and ordered his men to fire. Soon the great guns were roaring and the air was full of fire and smoke. Round and round went the American ships, firing as they passed. Every shot seemed to tell. It was not long before some of the Spanish ships were blazing, while hardly a ball had touched an American hull. After an hour or two of this hot work Dewey drew out and gave his men their breakfast. Then back he came and finished the job. When he was done, the whole Spanish fleet was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its men dead and wounded, while not an American ship was badly hurt and not an American sailor was killed. There had hardly been so one-sided a battle since the world began. There, I have, as I promised, told you in few words the story of the war. Soon after a treaty of peace was signed and all was at an end. The brave Dewey was made an admiral and was greatly honored by the American people. If you should ask me what we gained from the war, I would answer that we gained in the first place what the war was fought for, the freedom of Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did not come out of it without something for ourselves. We obtained the fertile island of Porto Rico in the West Indies and the large group of the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia. These last named came as the prize of Dewey's victory, but I am sorry to say that there was a war with the people themselves before the United States got possession. During the war with Spain we obtained another fine group of islands, that known as Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean. You can see from this that our country made a wide spread over the seas at the end of the nineteenth century. The winning of all these islands was an event of the greatest importance to the United States. It gave this country a broad foothold on the seas and a new outlook over the earth. Some of the proud nations of Europe had looked on this country as an American power only, with no voice in world affairs. But when Uncle Sam set his left foot on the Hawaiian Islands, in the Central Pacific, and his right foot on the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia, these powers of Europe opened their eyes and began to get new ideas about the great republic of the West. It was plain that the United States had become a world power, and that when the game of empire was to be played the western giant must be asked to take a hand.