Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Lest We Forget: An Address Delivered Before the Graduating Class of 1898, Leland Stanford Jr.
The second crisis came through the growth of slav ery. The union of the states could not endure, half slave, half free. The emancipation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln marked our decision that the Union Should endure; and that all that made for division should be swept away.
The third great crisis is on us now. The war with Spain is only a part of it. The question is not: Can we capture Manila, Havana, Porto Rico or the Canaries? It is not what we can take or what we can hold. The American navy and the American army can accomplish all we ask of them with time and patience.
Battles are fought today through engineering and technical skill, not through physical dash. The great cannon speaks the language of science, and individual courage is helpless before it. The standing of our naval Officers in matters of engineering is beyond question. There are a hundred nameless lieutenants in our war ships who, if opportunity offered, could write their names beside those of Grenville and Nelson and Farragut and Dewey. The glory of Manila is not dim beside that of Mobile or Trafalgar. The cool strength and soberness of Yankee courage, added to the power of naval engineer ing, could meet any foe on earth on equal terms, and here the terms are not equal. Personal fearlessness our adversaries possess, and that is all they have. That we have, too, in like measure. Everything else is ours. We train our guns against the empty shell of a mediaeval monarchy, broken, distracted, corrupt.
The war with Spain marks in itself no crisis. The end is seen from the beginning. It was known to Spain as clearly as to us. But her government had no recourse. They had come to the end of diplomacy, and could only die fighting. To die game is an old habit of the Spaniard. Whatever else the war may do, says the Spanish diplomat, with pathetic honesty, it can only bring ruin to Spain.
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