The victory ensured the fall of the Philippines, for Manila surrendered as soon as our land forces arrived and were in position to press their attack home. The work, however, was by no means done, and Dewey’s diplomacy and firmness were given full scope for the year he remained in Manila waters, not only in dealing with Spaniards and insurgents, but in making it evident that we would tolerate no interference from any hostile European power. It is not yet the time to show how much he did in this last respect. Suffice it to say that by his firmness he effectually frustrated any attempt to interfere with our rights, while by his tact he avoided giving needless offence, and he acted in hearty accord with our cordial well-wishers, the English naval and diplomatic representatives in the islands. Admiral Dewey comes back to his native land having won the right to a greeting such as has been given to no other man since the Civil War. GRANT SPEECH DELIVERED AT GALENA, ILLINOIS, APRIL 27, 1900 In the long run every great nation instinctively recognizes the men who peculiarly and pre-eminently represent its own type of greatness. Here in our country we have had many public men of high rank—soldiers, orators, constructive statesmen, and popular leaders. We have even had great philosophers who were also leaders of popular thought. Each one of these men has had his own group of devoted followers, and some of them have at times swayed the nation with a power such as the foremost of all hardly wielded. Yet as the generations slip away, as the dust of conflict settles, and as through the clearing air we look back with keener wisdom into the nation’s past, mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. There are great men also in the second rank; for in any gallery of merely national heroes Franklin and Hamilton, Jefferson and Jackson, would surely have their place. But these three greatest men have taken their place among the great men of all nations, the great men of all time. They stood supreme in the two great crises of our history, on the two great occasions when we stood in the van of all humanity and struck the most effective blows that have ever been struck for the cause of human freedom under the law, for that spirit of orderly liberty which must stand at the base of every wise movement to secure to each man his rights, and to guard each from being wronged by his fellows. Washington fought in the earlier struggle, and it was his good fortune to win the highest renown alike as soldier and statesman. In the second and even greater struggle the deeds of Lincoln the statesman were made good by those of Grant the soldier, and later Grant himself took up the work that dropped from Lincoln’s tired hands when the assassin’s bullet went home, and the sad, patient, kindly eyes were closed forever.