THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 204 the Spar-isl: Government was involved directly in it, and that the anger of isolated individuals at a greatcrisis recks little of the interest of the people to which they belong. Otherwise there would be no political crimes.

The Spanish Government also published an official report alleging that the destruction of the Maine was due to an internal explosion,and that it was impossible that there could have been a mine Unfortunately for Spain, such a report could carry with it very little authority, for the Spanish commission had not before it the detailed evidence with which the United States Court of Enquiry had to deal, and the Spanish report was really little more than an elaborate plea of "Not guilty." Yet it must, at the decks and the sides of the ship must have gone with the first explosion. This makes the absence ofa great fountainof water all the more puzzling. True, the night was dark ; but for the moment it was lit up by the flame of the explosion, which ought to have shown the great jetof water.

It is also argued by some experts that an internal explosion, acting for the most part upwards, which was the linewhere it met with least resistance, would leave behind it a vacuum, so that the tendency would be for the shaken platesof bottom and side to collapse inwardand upward as the framework that supportedthem within was swept away. Further, one of the leading technical reviews has argued that the the same time, be admitted that the United States report is not so absolutelyconclusive as it seems at first sight; and many expertson such questions hold that a good case might be made out for the Spanish plea, alihough some of the arguments brought against the theory of the submarine mine count for next to bending upwardofthe keel might possibly be in great part the result of the way in which the ship sank. " The Court," it writes, "was of opinion that this forcing up of the bottom of the ship could only be caused by the explosion of a minesituatedbeneath the vessel,andat first sight it may appear difficult not to accept SKETCH OF THE BROKEN KEEL. nothing. Thus it was said that if a mine had been exploded, the harbour next morning wouldhave hadhundreds of dead fish afloat on its surface. But the answer is that the water in Havana Harbour is so foul that the fish shun it. A more serious objection is that a mine would have thrown into the air a considerable volume of water. An ordinary torpedo explosion sends up a geyser that is sixty or seventy feet high. Now, though one newspaper reporter, in a highly-coloured account of the disaster, speaks ofsuch ageyser, there is no mentionof it in the evidence before the United States Court of Enquiry. On the contrary,evidence was to show that an explosion could have taken place without a very great disturbance of thewater. But the evidence went to show that this wouldhappen with moderate charges only: It could have been no "moderate charge" that blew the keel of the Maine up into a crumpled wreck of bent plates some thirty feet above its proper position. And to enable it to rise thus, this view We think, however, a little consideration will show there is something tobe said on the other side. The question to consider is: Would it be possible for the hull to be distorted in the way shown supposing both explosions took place inside the ship? Undoubtedly the second explosion, that due without dispute to the magazine or magazines, was sufficient to blow out the sides of the vessel and remove the decks. That would,to use the favourite simile of the naval architect, reduce the hull to the condition of a box girder with only its bottom flange left through a part of its length. The after part of the ship was comparativelyuninjured, whilst the appears to be fairly whole,but the evidence shows that the fore part sank first. The questionthen arises: Would it be possible part in sinking while the after part was waterborne t<> bend the thin bottom into the shape shown? Theillustrations (pp. 203, J04) certainly give more the idea of a bending of plat sucha wayrather than thedistortion thai w luldbe