Patriotism was rampant, but some observers perceived that it was not going to be entirely disinterested. There were notable exploits, chief among them the superb victory of Dewey, but even in Manila Bay the Spanish were licked before they began to fight. In no other respect was American wisdom so apparent as in the choice of an antagonist. To the skillful pen of Mr. Millis we must leave the details of the comedy and its happy ending. The awkward American youth suffered a few scratches but felled the aged Spaniard with a few lusty blows and despoiled him of his imperial treasure, to the incredible delight of the partisan spectators, who easily convinced themselves of the justice of unexpected acquisitions.
The yellow journals gained less profit than they had expected, and most of the personal glory of officials and commanders was dissipated by, the winds of controversy. All things continued to work together for good, however, to the Grand Old Party.
This mountain of a man showed a good deal of robust common sense and, by force of sheer diplomacy, gained the surrender of thousands of Spaniards, outside the city, whom he had not even hoped to capture. It did look as if God were with us. A more extraordinary figure even than Shafter was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Rough Riders, who made here his first important appearance as the supreme publicity man of his generation.
As McKinley, who applied his ear to the ground and then justified with pious phrases the retention of the Philippines, symbolizes our self-righteousness and the sentimentalism with which our pretensions were cloaked, so Roosevelt symbolizes personal and national aggressiveness, untrammeled and unabashed.
That the one man followed the other in the Presidency was an accident; that one spirit followed the other was all but inevitable. Millis probably did not intend to single him out, but to our mind he has made him chief of the unconscious comedians. Perhaps the God whose name the patriots of and so confidently invoked perceives in the heroics of other militarists and empire builders a comic quality to which suffering mortals are blind.
It may. View cart Subscribe Login. How to Give Why Give? How to Give Store. Issue: Autumn Volume 7 4. Download Lecture 6. Have you seen any evidence of it in discussions in your list? Film Review. Book Review.
Introduction During the late 19 th century the United States had grown into a world power, but a latent one. Imperial Democracy The late s and early s were a second age of imperialism, during which the United States , founded as a democracy opposed to British imperialism, itself contemplated assuming imperial, or at least global, roles. Origins of the Spanish War The motives of the U. American Empire How could a war against Spanish imperialism turn into a war for American imperialism?
No film on the subject to recommend. In Cuba will get her independence, though the US retains the right to intervene, if it is felt that stability there is threatened, and to maintain a permanent naval base at Guantanamo.
The Marines will return in , , and In he had been ready to fight Britain for Canada, using as an excuse a border dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela.
But then the victory of Japan over China in , the German establishment of a naval base in China at Tsingtao in and the Russian presence in Manchuria made the US reconsider its position in the Pacific. In Congress passed the resolution for a joint annexation of Hawaii and in February that year the US battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana harbour.
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