Secretary of the Navy, and came with his family to Washington. The
Secretary of the Navy was Mr. John D. Long.

America was within a year of getting into war, and as usual was
not ready for it. There are men so foolish as to rejoice because
we have never been ready for the wars in which we have taken part
about every twenty or thirty years in our history. This simply
means that they rejoice at the unnecessary deaths of thousands of
other Americans who die from disease in camp, or are killed in the
field through neglect to prepare in advance. Preparation for war
is not wholly the matter of having weapons ready to fight the
enemy. It also means healthy camps for our soldiers to live in,
and readiness to furnish clothing, food and medical supplies. For
lack of these, thousands of our friends and relatives die in every
war we are in. A rebellion had been going on in Cuba for years.
The cruel government of Spain had kept the Cubans in misery and in
rebellion, and disturbed the friendship between Spain and the
United States. It was our duty to see that Cuban expeditions did
not sail from our coast to help their friends, and in this work a
great many ships of our Navy were busy all the time. Nobody liked
to have to do this for we naturally sympathized with the Cubans,
who were making such a brave fight against stupid and tyrannical
governors sent from Spain. One of the last of these was
particularly bad. He herded the Cuban people into camps where they
died of disease and starvation, and he had great numbers of them
shot without mercy. We had justly revolted against the mis-
government of King George III in 1776, but nothing that King
George's governors and generals had done to us was as bad as the
things the Spaniards were doing in Cuba, in 1896 and 1897.