Truly a May day long to be remembered. Even as we followed the flag to the confines of the town news came from a distant land where that same beloved standard had been carried to victory and undying glory. In the far-away harbor of Manila a gallant officer had awaked that morning unknown to fame, but before he slept he had written the name of George Dewey upon the imperishable scroll with that of Drake, and Nelson, and Perry, and Farragut; destroyed the power and prestige of Spain in the East--a fabric four centuries in building, but toppled over in as many hours; annexed a new and splendid territory to our domain, and--most important of all--launched the Republic upon a new and greater career. A wonderful day indeed, and the first of many that were to make the twelvemonth just concluded one of the most, if not the most important in our history. He is a dull citizen of the Republic, indeed, who does not see in this swift succession of events a significance wide and deep. An ancient regime has been swept from our hemisphere and relegated to the rubbish heap of nations. Our flag flies not only in the Antilles but in mid-Pacific, by token that that illimitable ocean is now to us an inland lake. Our army and navy, posted at China's doorway to uphold our place in the perennial struggle for mastery in the East, is a notification to the great powers that henceforth they have to reckon with another as formidable--perhaps, also, as rapacious--as themselves. "You must understand," said Mr. Speaker Reed the other day to a distinguished British visitor, "that we have burst our swaddling-clothes." And in that jocular epigram lies a meaning almost beyond words to express. If we ourselves fail to take in the full significance of these recent events--and it would appear that some of us do--our neighbors in Europe and Asia are not so dull. Five and twenty years ago Von Moltke turned away from our civil war as unworthy the study of a soldier. It was, he said contemptuously, "a conflict of armed mobs." But mark the instructive power of our recent victories. A surviving countryman and colleague of Von Moltke, discussing the progress of our arms in Manila, the courage, intelligence and perfect discipline of our "raw militia," uttered recently this truly significant warning: "Here is a new power with which we all must reckon--a new giant, as yet ignorant of his strength. He can, if need be, muster ten millions of men, who in three months will be veteran soldiers, the equals if not the superiors of the best troops in Europe. It is a menace to the world's peace." And, "It would be absurd," writes an English military officer who looked on as a critic and student of war at the charge up San Juan hill, "to compare with those men the finest soldiers in Germany, France, Russia or England. Their equals do not exist."