When you have been in this department twenty-five or thirty years you learn never to say what you want to say and never to speak unless you think twice.'" "Wherefore it will be seen that 'Eddie' Savoy has mastered the first principles of diplomacy."-- _N.Y.

World._ A COPY OF THE RESOLUTION BY CONGRESS was also cabled to Minister Woodford, at Madrid, to be officially transmitted to the Spanish Government, fixing the 23d as the limit for its reply, but the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs had already learned of the action of Congress, and did not permit Minister Woodford to ask for his passports, but sent them to him on the evening of the 21st, and this was the formal beginning of the war.
[Illustration: JOSE MACEO.] A FATAL STEP WAS THIS FOR SPAIN, who evidently, as her newspapers declared, did not think the "American pigs" would fight.

She was unaware of the temper of the people, who seemed to those who knew the facts, actually thirsting for Spanish blood--a feeling due more or less to thirty years of peace, in which the nation had become restless, and to the fact also that America had some new boats, fine specimens of workmanship, which had been at target practice for a long time and now yearned for the reality, like the boy who has a gun and wants to try it on the real game.

The proof of the superiority of American gunnery was demonstrated in every naval battle.

The accurate aim of Dewey's gunners at Manilla, and Sampson and Schley's at Santiago, was nothing less than wonderful.