the Spanish empire stretched eastward as well as westward.
Already William Pitt, when he had foreseen in 1760 the entrance
of Spain into the war which England was then waging with France,
had planned expeditions against both Cuba and the Philippines.
Now in 1898 the Navy Department of the United States,
anticipating war, saw in the proximity of the American squadron
to the Spanish islands of the Philippines an opportunity rather
than a problem. Commodore George Dewey, the commander of the
Asiatic squadron, was fully prepared to enter into the plan. As
early as the seventies, when the Virginius affair* threatened war
between Spain and the United States, Dewey, then a commander on
the west coast of Mexico, had proposed, in case war were
declared, that he sail for the Philippines and capture Manila.
Now he was prepared to seek in the hostile ports of those islands
the liberty that international law forbade him in the neutral
ports of Asia. How narrow a margin of time he had in which to
make this bold stroke may be realized from the fact that the
Baltimore, his second vessel in size, reached Hongkong on the 22d
of April and went into dry dock on the 23d, and that on the
following day the squadron was ordered either to leave the port
or to intern.

* A dispute between the United States and Spain, arising out of
the capture of the Virginius, an American vessel engaged in
filibustering off the coast of Cuba, and the execution at
Santiago of the captain and a number of the crew and passengers.
The vessel and the surviving passengers were finally restored by
the Spanish authorities, who agreed to punish the officials
responsible for the illegal acts.