Senator North by Gertrude Atherton

Betty, who had come justly to the conclusion that she knew something of politics after a year's application to the science and several object lessons, made in the following weeks her first acquaintance with the intricacies which sometimes may involve political motives. The President was not given time to exhaust diplomacy with Spain, although in his War Message he was obliged to state that he had done so. To deal successfully with a proud and mediaeval country required months, not days, and as Spain had grudgingly but surely yielded all along the line to the demands of the United States, it is safe to assume that she would have withdrawn peacefully her forces from Cuba if her pride could have been saved. Sagasta was working in the interests of peace; but a bigoted old country, too indolent to read history, and puzzled at a youthful nation's industry in the cause of humanity, would move so fast and no faster.

The President was rushed off his feet and his hand was forced. An honest but delirious country was threatening impeachment and clamouring for war. Its representatives were hammering on the doors of the White House and shrieking in Congress. A dishonest press was inflaming it and injuring it in the eyes of the world by assaulting the integrity of the Executive and of the leading men in both Houses; and unscrupulous politicians were extracting every possible party advantage, until it looked as if the Democratic party, rent asunder by Mr. Bryan and his doctrines, would be unified once more. The House, after the President's calm and impersonal message on the _Maine_ report, acted like a mutinous school of bad boys who had not been taught the first principles of breeding and dignity; the few gentlemen in it hardly tried to make themselves heard, and even the Speaker was powerless to quell a couple of hundred tempers all rampant at once.