Peace With Spain

For nearly eight months the United States has been practically at peace with Spain.  Since the protocol was signed in August last there has been an entire cessation of hostilities and a treaty has been negotiated which was ratified by the United States Senate and approved by the queen regent of Spain.  Last week the final ceremony took place in the White House in Washington,  and now peace has been formally established and proclaimed between the two countries.  In time,  diplomatic relations will be resumed, new commercial treaties will be negotiated, and the attitude of the United States and Spain towards each other will be as it was before the destruction of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana, and the action of Congress in ordering the Spaniards out of Cuba. 

 Spain has lost the most important of its Colonial possessions as a result of the war. It has evacuated Cuba, to which the Congress of the United States, before war was declared, pledged freedom and Independence. It has been compelled to ceed Puerto Rico to this country, and, on account of reverses in the Philippines and in consideration of $20,000,000, Have transferred its sovereignty in the archipelago to the United States. Its best fleets have been annihilated and its Army in Cuba escaped destruction only because of the early cessation of hostilities. This, briefly stated, is a summation of Spain's losses in his brief war with a vastly superior power.

The United States is a quiet place in Puerto Rico, which may be of some value to us in the future as a strategic point if we are ever involved in war with a naval power. If our acquisition of territory had been confined this island in the West Indies are treating makers would have displayed greater wisdom. Not content with this addition to our territory, the administration insisted upon the cession by Spain of a thousand islands or more, nearly 7,000 miles  from our Pacific coast, inhabited in the main by a semi civilized population for whom it has agreed to pay $20,000,000 or about $250 apiece. In acquiring this remote territory from Spain the United States has become involved in a war with the Filipinos and is now engaged in the difficult task of “benevolently assimilating”  the natives with a large Army and Navy and at a sacrifice of blood and treasure by no means insignificant. Furthermore, it has abandoned the policy of this government from Washington down to and including Cleveland and has made it possible for this country to be involved at any time and complications with European nation. This abandonment of the principles of the founders of the government may prove a very costly experiment.

 Spain has sustained an enormous loss in territory, but Cuba and the Philippines were a great burden, held only by the maintenance of a large military and Naval fourth in both feet. This burden has been shifted permanently the United States, so far as the Philippines are concerned, while we are under the necessity of keeping an army of occupation temporarily in Cuba. Spain's loss of territory may prove a blessing in disguise to the Spaniards. Let us hope that the “new possessions” will not prove as great a curse to us as they were to the nation from whom we have taken them.