Significance of the Fall of Santiago: San Juan and Waterloo

The military observers present, representing foreign nations, were unanimously of the opinion before the attack on Friday the 1st, that the storming of San Juan and El Caney, without the aid of heavy artillery, was a military feat impossible of accomplishment. The intrenchments of the enemy, his position, his advance defences, his artillery and numbers, rendered him impregnable against enormous odds. Yet all this was swept away by infantry alone, by troops thrown into regimental confusion in the jungle, some without brigade or regimental commanders, yet all welded into substantial cohesive formation by the instinct of self-reliance, springing from intelligent knowledge of the value of combination and organization.

Captain Lee and Captain Paget of the British army declared that the United States troops had performed the impossible in warfare. Count von Goetzen, the German attache, whose opinion will scarcely be suspected of too much leaning to the side of the United States, said the fighting of the Americans was wonderfully well done, and that the storming of the outposts was a wonderful feat of war. The fighting was creditable, he declared, to both sides, but he did not dream how formidable San Juan was until after it had been taken. The American marksmanship was surprising. The vigorous way in which our troops sprang to the deadly work was a tremendous lesson to other nations. The volunteers, he heard from other expert observers who had watched them, were fully up to the regulars, and the dash and spirit exhibited were marvellous. Major Grandprey, of the French service, who has been quoted elsewhere, declared that some of the best-grounded theories adopted in Europe were overturned by the achievements of the American soldiers. The Frank-furter Zeitung, a leading newspaper authority of Germany, in a well-considered article from a military contributor, declared that the United States troops before Santiago had surpassed all precedents, and that the susceptibility of the American citizen to quick training had demonstrated that our volunteer militia was a much more reliable force than the compulsory reserves of Europe, an utterance astonishing in the light of past beliefs.

It may be said that our military operations against Santiago were marred by blunders or misfortunes, without raising the question of cause or responsibility for them. But through all, the intelligence, tenacity, and strong character of the American citizen found an unerring way to victory against the odds of the enemy in front and the failure or impossibility of support behind.

The courage of our soldiers was matched by the skill of our seamen. The naval battle of Santiago was most extraordinary in its contrasts of methods and men. For eighty-six years American seamen had engaged no foreign adversaries. Our ships were regarded as too light in armor, or too heavy in armament, and too delicate in interior mechanism. It had been predicted by foreign experts that our battle-ships would be capsized by the recoil from the delivery of full broadsides from the great and small guns. These theoretical doubts were dissipated. The battleships, in bombarding, were "listed," or careened to one side by running the heavy guns out of the ports and turrets, in order to gain elevation sufficient for the guns on the other side to throw shells over the hills. Not a gun exploded, not a piece of delicate machinery failed, not one gloomy prediction was realized.

Our methods of fighting, like our methods of diplomacy, were startling to the enemy. Europe has clung to the conventions. In diplomacy, Europeans proceed by the tortuous paths of tradition and the etiquette of precedent. They pronounced the American directness of procedure by going to the heart of the subject in a business-like manner as "brutal" and "irritating." At San Juan the Spanish complained that our troops charged, when, under all the conventions of warfare by accepted tactics they should have run away!

In the naval battle our commanders wasted no time in vain technical parade and manoeuvre. They fell upon the adversary with all the weight of metal that could be discharged, pounding the amazed and breathless Spaniards to destruction before they could recover from the shock. The European gunner is trained to shoot on the upward roll of his side of the ship, with the result that most of the Spanish shots were hurled harmlessly over our ships. United States gunners are trained to fire on the downward roll, so that the missile may go straight to the enemy's hull, or reach it on ricochet. The hulls of the Spanish cruisers testified to the deadly efficacy of the method. The three battles of this century, preceding Santiago, that were enormously greater in political significance than important as mere military operations, were Waterloo, Gettysburg and Sedan. The effect of Waterloo was the destruction of Napoleon's personal power and threatened political supremacy in Europe. The effect of Gettysburg was to presage the downfall of the institution of slavery in the United States, and the denial, by force of arms, of the political theory of the right of any State to withdraw peacefully from the Federal Union. The effect of Sedan was the ushering into immediate power of the German Empire, that Bismarck had patiently constructed from the petty German states, the solidarity of which was committed with its crown to the keeping of William I., of the new imperial dynasty. In no military sense are these battles comparable, but in significance they are. They were of momentous effect upon the nations and continents whose interests were directly concerned. But to the round world they were, after all, more or less incidents of locality. Waterloo was, perhaps, greatest of all; but the world of 1814 was much smaller than the world of 1898.