neutral ports. Lord Cromer could have construed that law just as well
against us. His construction brought it about that those Spanish ships
couldn't get to Manila Bay in time to take part against Admiral Dewey.
The Spanish War revealed that our Navy could hit eight times out of a
hundred, and was in other respects unprepared and utterly inadequate to
cope with a first-class power. In consequence of this, and the criticisms
of our Navy Department, which Admiral Sims as a young man had written,
Roosevelt took the steps he did in his first term. Three ticklish times
in that Spanish War England stood our friend against Germany. When it
broke out, German agents approached Mr. Balfour, proposing that England
join in a European combination in Spain's favor. Mr. Balfour's refusal is
common knowledge, except to the monomaniac with his complex. Next came
the action of Lord Cromer, and finally that moment in Manila Bay when
England took her stand by our side and Germany saw she would have to
fight us both, if she fought at all.

If you saw any German or French papers at the time of our troubles with
Spain, you saw undisguised hostility. If you have talked with any
American who was in Paris during that April of 1898, your impression will
be more vivid still. There was an outburst of European hate for us.
Germany, France, and Austria all looked expectantly to England--and
England disappointed their expectations. The British Press was as much
for us as the French and German press were hostile; the London Spectator
said: "We are not, and we do not pretend to be, an agreeable people, but
when there is trouble in the family, we know where our hearts are."

In those same days (somewhere about the third week in April, 1898), at
the British Embassy in Washington, occurred a scene of significance and
interest, which has probably been told less often than that interview
between Mr. Balfour and the Kaiser's emissary in London. The British