THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 232 Alma-ante Oquendo, had sailed from Cuba for Porto Rico, and that the cruisers Cristobal Colon and-Maria Teresa were on their way to join the squadron at the De Verde Islands, they protested that Spain was only trying to gain time while she concentrated a powerful fleet, and that the Government should have ahead}' proclaimed the blockadeof Cuba, bottledup the cruisers in Havana with Sampson's fleet, and sent Schlev and the flying squadron to destroy the torpedo flotilla at St. Vincent. At Madrid General Woodford was trying to induce the Spanish Government to admit in some form the " friendly intervention" of the United States for the settlement of Cuban affairs. This would have been an acknowledgence for Cuba. They went further, and that the insurgents themselves would oppose any American force sent to Cuba unless intervention was preceded by a recognition of independence. This declaration had such a chilling effect on popular enthusiasm for Cuba that the Junta next day tried to explain it away. For the moment it helped,if anything, in the direction ofpeace.

On Monday, April nth, the week of delay came to an end, and the President's Message was sent to Congress. From an early hour the steps and corridors of the Capitol at Washington were thronged with an excited crowd, waiting for admission to the public galleries of both Houses. As soon as the doors were opened every available spot was filled, and hundreds went away disappointed, or lingered about the building in the hope of hearing some startlingnew-.

The Message was read rately in both Houses, and it was noted that it was greeted with very little applause. Mr. McKinley's supporters cheered time to time, but especially in the Senate the majority listened in moody silence, they were disappointed with the moderate tone of the document. The popular ment that Spain no longer ruled the island. The Spanish Ministers could not grant it without facing a revolution. On the other hand, to accept any concession short of this would, in the actual temper of public opinion in America, have almost as certainly led to the President's being overruled by a war vote of Congress. Woodford cabled asking for further delay, during which he hoped to get Sagasta's Government to reconsider his proposals. Senor Galves, the President of the Home Rule Govern-CENERAL LHE.

feeling for war was expressed in the tumultuous applause with which the galleriesgreeted every allusion to the possibility of a rupture with Spain.

The Message was a very lengthv document. It summed up the history of the Cuban insurrection and of the efforts made by the United States to induce the Spanish Government to bring to a peaceful end a war which had been conducted by means that inflicted terrible sufferings on the people of Cuba, and in various wa\ s caused serious loss to citizens of the States. 'He argued that the United States Government had a direct interest in speedily putting an end to a state of disorder in Cuba, disorder the best evidence of which was that the Spanish Government had not been able to prevent the destruction of a friendly American cruiser lying in the harbour of Havana. It was an intolerable state of things, and he asked for power to take the necessary steps to end it, and to co-operate in ment at Havana, appealed to Mr. McKinley to give the new system at. least a trial by abstaining from intervention. At the same time General Lee, the United States consul in the Cuban capital, began to arrange for the departure of American residents. From day to day for a week, that seemed to those chiefly concerned the longest week of the year, Mr. McKinleyheld back his Message.

A despatch telling General Lee to leave Havana and return to Washington was the first open sign that the President was beginning to despair of peace. From the insurgent camp there came a message that Gomez and the other chiefs refused tohear of an armistice with Spain on any terms. In New York Senor Palma, the President of the CubanJunta, and Mr. Rubens, an American lawyer, who claimed to be the Cuban Consul-General, scouted the idea ot an armistice, or any compromiseshort of independ-