34 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



payment, but the confidence of the people in those 

 who held their fortunes in the palm of the hand 

 was sustained and justified. 



I was in California when war was declared be- 

 tween the United States and Spain. Of that war 

 so much has been written by so many and such 

 able men that little remains to be said — now. 

 Later, when the history of it is set forth calmly 

 and dispassionately, when time has adjusted the 

 scales by which the great events of the world are 

 measured, it will be found that the Declaration of 

 Independence has not been fraught with more 

 vital interest and significance to the people of the 

 New World than this declaration — so to speak — 

 of Dependence: the dependence, not of the weak 

 upon the strong, but of the strong in relation to 

 the ignorance and folly and vice of the weak : a 

 confession that no nation, however great, can stand 

 alone. The particular causes that constrained Mr. 

 McKinley to let loose the dogs of war have not 

 yet been determined. The ugly word "revenge" 

 was in many mouths. Political expediency, in- 

 crease of territory, were phrases heard at the street 

 corners and in the clubs. And, doubtless, these 

 and half a dozen others were factors in' a sum that 

 must have sorely puzzled the President and his 

 Cabinet. But, personally, I believe that from Maine 

 to California the Puritan spirit, using the adjective in 

 its best sense, was stirring the hearts of the people. 



There is a feeling all over America, but more 

 especially in the West, a feeling essentially Gallic, 

 that leads men to pose as being worse than they 



