Spanish column coming out. It turned sharply to the west and within the next few minutes the naval fight was on. Every American commander had his orders from Admiral Sampson as to his conduct in such a battle, and the vessels immediately closed in to hold the Spanish fleet against the shore, and to destroy it there. Commodore Schley, on the bridge of the Brooklyn, assumed that the departure of Sampson had left him as the senior in command of the fleet. He signaled orders to the other vessels, which appear to have been ignored. The emerging column headed for a few minutes directly at the Brooklyn, which lay southwest of the entrance. Instead of swerving to the left and taking immediately a westward course parallel to the Spanish fleet, Schley ordered and the Brooklyn executed a loop to the right, and nearly rammed the Texas, its right-hand neighbor, that was closing in according to its orders. After completing the circuit to the right that carried it away from the danger of being rammed by the outcoming squadron, the Brooklyn swerved back into the line of pursuit and speedily took the lead. Sampson meanwhile had proceeded some six miles east from his station before the flight was observed, and turning brought up the rear of the pursuit rapidly overtaking the rest of his warships. The Oregon, Brooklyn, and Texas did the bulk of the damage in the chase, and one by one the Spanish ships were beached and burned. The chase ended some forty-three miles west of Santiago, when the last of the fugitives turned her nose in shore for safety at about half-past two. The flagship arrived on the scene to receive the surrender of the prisoners as Schley was preparing to receive them, and a little later that night Sampson's report of the engagement took the wires ahead of the report which Schley had wished to send. The overwhelming victory at sea reversed the whole military situation, and in the following fortnight Shafter entered into correspondence with the Spanish Health of commanders for an unconditional surrender of the army their forces. This occurred July 17, when the formal capitulation was carried out, The surrender was received by an American army riddled with fever and in danger of extermination from tropical diseases within the next few weeks. The army had been landed in the tropics at the beginning of the hottest season, in uniforms which had been designed for winters on the western plains. Group sanitation was yet in its infancy, and the medical department was unprovided with medicines and hospital facilities for the treatment of malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever. There was some question as to whether the fighting morale of the army could last until the capitulation of Santiago. Thereafter it speedily broke down. On August 3 a "round robin" was prepared under the leadership of volunteer officers who had no military careers to hope for, asserting that the army must be withdrawn to a cooler climate at once in order to be saved. The regular officers, who were prevented by the bonds of discipline from taking the lead in this sort of action, were nevertheless nearly unanimous as to its need. The responsibility was largely Colonel Roosevelt's, and upon him fell much of the criticism when the protest was given to the Associated Press before it was turned over to military channels for transmission to Washington. The protest accomplished its purpose. On August 8 the expeditionary force started for a new camp at Montauk Point on Long Island. Of the total force, that had been increased by this time to about 25,000, four fifths were sick when they landed in the United States. The third of the expeditionary forces was put together after the battle of Santiago, under the command of General Miles. It was ordered to proceed to Porto Rico. Preceded by the war correspondents, who, like the army, found the Porto Ricans passive and indifferent, it accomplished its purpose only to be halted on the eve of its first engagement by notification that the war was over. Negotiations for an armistice and peace were opened by Spain through Jules Cambon, the French Ambassador at Armistice Washington, a few days after the capitulation of Santiago. He found in the State Department a new Secretary and a definite program. John Sherman had given way to William B. Day, an old personal associate of the President, who had been Assistant Secretary of State since the formation of the Administration. As the relations with Spain had become more difficult, Judge Day had quietly taken over more and more of the detail work in the Department, with the approval of McKinley, but to the great chagrin of his immediate chief. Sherman was incapacitated by age and health for his duties, and finally resigned on April 25, when he found his Assistant Secretary actually summoned to Cabinet meetings. Judge Day met the proposal for an armistice with a demand for the withdrawal of Spain from the Western Hemisphere. The draft of a protocol to be followed by a conference on peace was handed to Cambon on August 10. Two days later he signed it on behalf of Spain, and the Adjutant-General hurried copies of it by telegraph to the three commanders in the field, to Shafter at Santiago, to Miles at Ponce, and to Merritt at Manila. Before it arrived at the last post, Merritt had on the day following its signature stormed and occupied the city of Manila. The first problem which was taken up by the peace commissioners when they convened at Paris, October 1, The Peace 1898, was presented by this post-armistice capCommission ture of the city of Manila. The American Gov ernment refused to accede to the demand that the status quo of August 12 be restored, but it accepted the principle that the islands had not been conquered and that their status was subject to negotiation. The American Commission included four Republicans, Day, Davis, Frye, and Reid, and one Democrat, Judge George Gray. Day had withdrawn from the State Department to accept the chairmanship. To fill his place President McKinley recalled from London the American Ambassador, John Hay. Since early boyhood John Hay had been familiar with the intimate workings of Republican Governments. As one of Lincoln's private secretaries, he had come to know Washington in war-time, and later he was Assistant Secretary of State under President Hayes. As a man of letters he had been prominent for thirty years. "If there is a man in the country who is handy with his intellectuals," wrote E. S. Martin, "Colonel Hay is that person; but he has been a lucky man, too." He had written verse that he regarded as too amusing and popular for his dignity. His anonymous novel, The Bread-Winners, was the best seller of 1884. As the joint biographer of Lincoln with John J. Nicolay he had helped to establish the great reputation of a national leader. In London as Ambassador he had shared the credit for keeping England friendly throughout the Spanish War. He now for the first time in his life came into great responsibility, as part of a Government before which the vistas of world influence had opened, and which was ready to give instant adhesion to a new idea of empire, the doctrine of the open door. The instructions of the peace commissioners were definite as far as the American campaigns were concerned. Cuba was to be set free without encumbrance, and Problem Porto Rico was to be ceded to the United States. of the Philippines The Philippine Islands constituted a new problem for which public opinion was not yet ready, and which the Protocol of August 12 had deferred for consideration at Paris. As the autumn advanced the factors controlling their destiny proved to turn upon relative disadvantages rather than benefits. No thought of conquest in the Philippines or elsewhere preceded the Spanish War, and no serious desire to begin a colonial system was in evidence. The most definite body of public opinion was fundamentally opposed to colonial control as un-American and undemocratic; but against the disadvantages involved in holding the Philippines McKinley weighed the greater dangers to their people in letting them go. The combined force of Aguinaldo's insurrection and Dewey's victory had broken down the Spanish power beyond repair. The insurgents, although they pretended to maintain a provisional government, had even fewer elements of stability than were in Cuba. Independence was unthinkable. The obvious desires of at least one great power, Germany, to |