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The American soldier of 1898 became invincible, man for man, because of his intelligent response to individual discipline and drill. Failure in either, whether of officer or soldier, shaped character and result. As with the ancient Hebrew, citizenship meant knowledge of organic law and obedience to its behests. Every individual, therefore, when charged with the central electric force, became a relay battery, to conserve, intensify, and distribute that force.

VI. Statesmanship in War.—This is illustrated by the suggestion of Christ, that “a king going to war with another king would sit down first and count the cost, whether he would be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand.”

Note.—American statesmanship in 1898, exacted other appliances than those of immediately available physical force. The costly and insufferable relations of the Spanish West Indies to the United States, had become pestilential. No self-respecting nation, elsewhere, would have as long withheld the only remedy. Cuba was dying to be free. Spain, unwilling, or unable, to grant an honorable and complete autonomy to her despairing subjects, precipitated war with the United States. The momentum of a supreme moral force in behalf of humanity at large, so energized the entire American people that every ordinary unpreparedness failed to lessen the effectiveness of the stroke.