The Dallas Daily Herald

GRANT AND SPAIN.

The President will have his row with Spain notwithstanding the pacific and statesmanlike tone of his annual message on the subject. It is given out now that there must be mediation or intervention, or both, whichever or however may best serve the purposes of the administration. When the navy is in proper trim, and Robeson is ready with his sea-dogs, Mr. Cushing, the ablest of all our diplomats, will be instructed to try on mediation, taking special care that mediation shall fail, and necessitate intervention, and that intervention shall be so shaped as to render war necessary, and then we shall be precipitated into war before the country has time to take breath.

Well, it will be superlative folly; a war without a necessity to justify it at this time, and yet it will be so presented to Congress and the nation, that opposition to it will be impracticable. Spain has done more than enough time and again to provoke war, but what she is doing just now, or what she is to do hereafter to justify war, is more than we can guess. But if war should be deemed a political necessity, as now seems reasonably certain, we will force a war, and then declare that we are at war by the act of Spain, and proceed, in the name of humanity and civilization, to pile up a few hundred millions of debt and hasten Castilians and Americans to hospitable graves.—Philadelphia Times.

We have had enough of war. If we fight at all let it be in some just quarrel, and with a nation not broken, anarchical and bankrupt. If we choose to play the bully, and crush out the weak because forsooth some Caesar's ambition prompts it, let there be no shuffling, hypocritical excuses, but a frank avowal of plunder and rapine.