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four or five hours' time, every ship of the Spanish squadron was sunk to the bottom of the bay and hundreds of their men killed, while we never lost a single sailor and had only eight men wounded, and they all slightly and by one shell; and three hundred years of Spanish rule over 10,000,ooo people had gone up in the smoke of American powder and we had lopped off, by the first blow of the war, a clean third, both in population and in area, of the great Spanish Empire.*

DEWEY'S PROBLEMS AFTER MANILA BAY

What was Dewey's situation after the battle? No power in the Philippines could resist him within the range of his guns. By a word from him he might perhaps secure the surrender of the

*The entire Spanish Empire, before Manila Bay, was composed as follows: Spain, 191,100 square miles and 17,550,246 people; the Philippines, 114,326 square miles and 10,000,000 people; Caroline Islands, 2944 square miles and 234,046 people; Cuba with 43,220 miles and 1,521,684 population; Balearic Islands, 1860 miles and 262,893 people; the Canary Islands with 2808 miles and 287,728 people, and Porto Rico with 3530 miles and 807,708 populationa grand total of 359,788 square miles and 30,664,305 people -one-third of which is 119,929 square miles and 10,221,435 people, and the Philippines have 114,326 square miles and 10,000,000 of people.

city of Manila with its some 250,000 people, with all its great wealth and even of its army of 14,000 Spanish veterans who garrisoned it. A single message from Dewey to the Spanish GovernorGeneral to the effect that the former would bombard the town unless it and its garrison capitulated at once, might have brought the two to Dewey's feet.

Dewey was all alone. He had no communication with his government. The Spaniards held both ends of the only cable from the islands, and all Dewey could do was to cut it and tie the severed ends to two barrels floating in the harbor where he could keep watch of them.

So long as he remained there on guard, he knew he held that Spanish army where it could not strike a blow at us anywhere else. It could only leave on Spanish ships while he was there, and the Spanish ships were all under water. Is there any Is there any doubt but that Dewey ought to have remained just where he was, retaining every bit he had won, and improving every new opportunity to inflict further injury on Spain? This was a war in which Dewey was engaged. He knew the advantage he had gained. He knew that he would have been

court-martialed if he had relinquished it. What would have been done to Grant if, after mastering the fortifications of Richmond, he had turned around and run away? Dewey's problem was the same. This was a war and wars are won by surrenders like that of Manila and its garrison, an army of 14,000 troops, that guard at. empire and by the fall of Santiago with 25,000 more.

Dewey knew this. He knew what an awful blow it would be for Spain to have to surrender to him Manila and its garrison. But he could not try to inflict that blow; he could not catch the hare; he could only watch the hole. If Manila and its 14,000 troops had been offered to him on a golden salver he would have had to refuse them. He could not accept the surrender of anything.

WHY DEWEY COULD NOT ACCEPT THE SUR

RENDER OF MANILA

Why? because, by the terms of international law, the United States was obliged, if it accepted the surrender of Manila and its great garrison, to take care of them both,—to govern that city of 250,000 people, to establish and maintain order in it, to protect the lives and property of all the

people therein, both foreigners and peaceful natives, to establish courts of justice, and to treat and guard these 14,000 Spanish soldiers as prisoners of war,—and Dewey could not spare a man for that purpose from his hot decks. Thousands of extra men were needed to do this work that would have fallen upon us the moment Manila and its garrison capitulated. There was no way we could escape that liability to every other nation in the world who had citizens there.

THE INTERNATIONAL LAW ON THIS POINT

Here are the leading authorities upon that point. Probably the greatest work on international law that has been written in the last half century is from the pen of Calvo, the eminent Frenchman.

In Vol. II, Ch. Calvo, Le Droit International (2d edition), at pp. 301-2, § 999, he quotes with approval, our own Chief Justice Marshall, as follows:

"At the moment of the transfer of the territory, the relations of its inhabitants with the former sovereign dissolve themselves. The same act that transfers the ownership of the soil transfers the loyalty of the people who continue to remain there."

That is, as soon as the territory of Manila were actually transferred to the keeping of the United States, the United States would become bound to protect the lives and property of all persons in Manila "by all the efforts in

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power," as Mr. John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, puts it in a letter to Mr. De Onis, March 12, 1818:

"There is no principle of the law of nations more firmly established than that which entitles the property of strangers within the jurisdiction of a country in friendship with their own, to the protection of its sovereign by all the efforts in his power." Whart. Int. Law Dig., Vol. 2, § 201.

Mr. Hannis Taylor, probably the foremost American authority now writing on international law, in his Public International Law, § 570, says, with regard to the liabilities we would have assumed if Dewey had come into actual military occupation of Manila:

"The whole subject (of military authority over hostile territory) has been regulated by Section III of The Hague Second Convention, On Military Authority over Hostile Territory.'

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xx Art. XLII. Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.

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