THE Spanish-American War has passed into history. Regiment by regiment
the troops of the United States have been transported to Cuba and Porto
Rico, to take quiet possession of the stations relinquished by the
departing remnants of the Spanish colonial army, and now our flag flies
over even Havana itself. Of the six regiments—the First Heavy Artillery,
Second, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Infantry—sent out by
Massachusetts in response to the calls of the President, all now are
home again, while the officers and men of the gallant Naval Brigade have
returned from their service afloat on cruiser and monitor to rejoin the
command from which they volunteered. Gradually, but none the less
surely, the stirring events of the spring and summer of 1898 are
becoming but memories—memories to be recalled in years to come at the
reunions of those who served together in the war so happily brought to a
conclusion.
Even today, after the lapse of but a year, it has become difficult, if
not impossible, to realize the state of public feeling in Boston on that
wet, raw day in April, 1898, when the First Massachusetts Heavy
Artillery, then a militia regiment, marched solidly and grimly through
the muddy streets on its way to Fort Warren. The sight of the long, blue
column—officers on foot, men in heavy marching order—told more plainly
than any telegraphic despatch that the long-expected war had come at
last. Day by day the feeling of uneasiness in the cities and towns along
the New England coast had been growing in intensity. Bombardment
insurance was being written, securities and valuables were being removed
from the safe-deposit vaults of shore cities to those of inland towns,
while letters by the hundred, and delegations by the score were coming
to the governors of coast States, praying for protection against naval
raids. As in 1812, and as again in 1861, the authorities at Washington
were overwhelmed with petitions for the naval protection of local
interests, and—even as in former wars—they were compelled to reply that
the few ships of war on the navy list could not be spared to do the work
of shore batteries. The entire fleet of battleships, modern monitors,
and cruisers barely sufficed for the composition of Dewey's squadron in
the far East, of Sampson's and Schley's in the West Indies.
Nor was this wide-spread feeling of alarm entirely without foundation,
or due to unreasoning fear. More than one foreign service journal had
reckoned the opposing fleets as nearly of equal strength, and even our
own Captain Mahan now writes: "The force of the Spanish navy on paper,
as the expression goes, was so nearly equal to our own, that it was well
within the limits of possibility that an unlucky incident, the loss, for
example, of a battleship, might make the Spaniard superior in nominal,
or even in actual, available force. Where so much is at stake as the
result of a war, or even the unnecessary prolongation of war, with its
sufferings and anxieties, the only safe rule is to regard the apparent
as the actual, until its reality has been tested." We are looking
backward now; then we were looking forward. We now know, through the
supreme tests of May 1st and July 3d, that the paper strength and the
fighting strength of the Spanish navy were two widely differing
qualities; but late in April, 1898, all this yet remained to be
determined, and the memorable rush of the _Oregon_ from the far Pacific
bears witness that the Navy Department recognized the preponderance that
might be given by the addition of even a single fighting-ship to our
force on the threatened Atlantic sea-board.
Of the result of a general fleet action the country had small doubt; it
was the possibility of sudden and unexpected naval raids that caused
concern. The words of the English naval critic, Steevens, applied with
tenfold force to our own case: "It is tolerably obvious that no
superiority in the world could guarantee our whole empire against raids
by hostile cruisers. A fast cruiser could break the closest blockade
possible in the days of torpedo boats, and though she would stand to
meet and be engaged by a cruiser or cruisers of our own, yet she would
also stand to elude them. She might then shell or lay under contribution
unprotected coast towns, destroy shipping lying in their harbors, or
making for or from them, besides landing small forces to do serious, if
not vital damage." And this fact was recognized no better by any one
than by Admiral Cervera himself, who, in a letter written in February,
1898, after deploring the lack of Spanish naval preparation, said:
"Under such conditions, a campaign would be disastrous, if not an
offensive one, and all that could be done in an offensive war would be
to make some raids with a few fast vessels."
Reduced to its lowest terms, the situation confronting the authorities
was this: the Spanish naval list showed—either in commission or
building—nine 20-knot cruisers,[1] heavily armed and armored, and
theoretically able to run away easily from any armored ships in our
establishment save the _Brooklyn_ and _New York_, while (still
theoretically) capable of whipping without effort these two latter
cruisers, if brought to bay. Furthermore, the operations of the army and
navy, in the West Indies and the Philippines, imperatively required the
services of every modern fighting-ship at our disposal, and thus the
long stretch of Atlantic coast, with its teeming harbors and populous
cities, practically was left at the mercy of any chance squadron of
swift cruisers, or even—at least in the earlier days of the war—of
possible raids by privateers or wandering torpedo-gunboats. There was,
it is true, the hastily improvised and costly coast-patrol fleet, of
something over forty vessels—monitor relics of the '60's, armed yachts,
ferry-boats, and tugs—distributed along the coast at stations from
Eastport to New Orleans, but this heterogeneous outfit was brought into
existence rather for scouting than for fighting. As a factor in actual
resistance to determined naval attack it called for no serious
consideration, and as a matter of record its organization was not
complete until the 16th of June, when the dreaded _Vizcaya_, with her
sister ships, finally had been marked down and safely penned in the
harbor of Santiago.
Footnote 1:
_Almirante Oquendo_, _Cardenal Cisneros_, _Cataluna_, _Cristobal
Colon_, _Emperador Carlos V._, _Infanta Maria Teresa_, _Pedro
d'Aragon_, _Princesa de Asturias_, _Vizcaya_.—"Brassey's Naval
Annual," 1897.
It was evident that the coast States, in the impending emergency, must
turn for comfort from the Navy to the War Department, and it soon became
most painfully evident that the prospect of obtaining any immediate aid
from this quarter was far from reassuring. This especially was true in
the case of the New England States, and notably so in that of
Massachusetts. To make a broad statement, modern defensive works, modern
sea-coast guns, and trained artillerymen to man them, were lacking. In
other words, the apathy of thirty years had borne its legitimate fruit:
the Congressmen of New England—with honorable exceptions, like Senators
Hawley and Lodge—while ever willing to exert themselves in favor of
"Protection" of the commercial variety, had been sublimely indifferent
to their duty in providing protection of another and very vital sort,
and their constituents, in consequence, were enabled to enjoy the
sensation of a war-scare which was far from being unwarranted. For it
did not require a high order of intellect to comprehend that thirty days
would not suffice for the accomplishment of the work of ten years—nor,
indeed, could any one furnish a satisfactory guarantee of even thirty
days' freedom from attack.
THE COAST-DEFENCE PROBLEM IN
MASSACHUSETTS