NOTE.—Washington never lost sight of the _set-up_ of the individual soldier, as the best dependence in the hour of battle. Self-reliance, obedience to orders, and confidence in success, were enjoined as the conditions of success. His system of _competitive marksmanship_, of _rifle ranges_, and _burden tests_, was initiated early in his career, and was conspicuously enjoined before Brooklyn, and elsewhere, during the war. The American soldier of 1898 became invincible, _man for man_, because of his intelligent response to individual discipline and drill. Failure in either, whether of officer or soldier, shaped character and result. As with the ancient Hebrew, citizenship meant knowledge of organic law and obedience to its behests. Every individual, therefore, when charged with the central electric force, became a _relay_ battery, to conserve, intensify, and distribute that force. VI. STATESMANSHIP IN WAR.—This is illustrated by the suggestion of Christ, that “a king going to war with another king would sit down first and count the cost, whether he would be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand.” NOTE.—American statesmanship in 1898, exacted other appliances than those of immediately available physical force. The costly and insufferable relations of the Spanish West Indies to the United States, had become pestilential. No self-respecting nation, elsewhere, would have as long withheld the only remedy. Cuba was dying to be free. Spain, unwilling, or unable, to grant an honorable and complete autonomy to her despairing subjects, precipitated war with the United States. _The momentum of a supreme moral force in behalf of humanity at large, so energized the entire American people that every ordinary unpreparedness failed to lessen the effectiveness of the stroke._ It was both statesmanship and strategy, to strike so suddenly that neither climatic changes, indigenous diseases, nor tropical cyclones, could gain opportunity to do their mischief. When these supposed allies of Spain were brushed aside, as powerless to stay the advance of American arms in behalf of starving thousands, and a fortunate occasion was snatched, just in time for victory, it proved to be such an achievement as Washington would have pronounced a direct manifestation of Divine favor.