judgment as to the causes of this disaster, and that the Spanish
authorities in Havana and in Madrid expressed grief and sympathy,
it, was impossible to subdue a general belief that in some way
Spanish treachery was responsible for the calamity. With the
history of Spanish cruelty in Cuba before them, and the memory of
Spanish barbarities through all their existence as a nation, the
people could mot disabuse their minds of this suspicion.

One month later this popular judgment was verified by the finding
of the naval court of inquiry which had made an exhaustive
examination of the wreck, and had taken testimony from every
available source. With this confirmation and the aroused sentiment
of the country concerning conditions in Cuba, the logic of events
was irresistibly drawing the country toward war with Spain, and
all efforts of diplomacy and expressions of polite regard
exchanged between the governments of the two nations were unable
to avert it.

For a few weeks, history was made rapidly. Conservative and
eminent American senators visited Cuba in order to obtain personal
information of conditions there, and upon their return, gave to
Congress and to the country, in eloquent speeches, the story of
the sufferings they had found in that unhappy island. The loss of
the Maine had focused American attention upon the Cuban situation
as it had never been before, and though there were no more reasons
for sympathetic interference than there had been for many months,
people began to realize as they had not before, the horrors that
were being enacted at their thresholds.

The sailors who died with the Maine, even though they were not