I pulled it off my saddle and said: "General,
it's too long a story to tell you now, but here is the flag of the
town. It's the first Spanish flag" - and it was - "that has been
captured in Porto Rico."
General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag. He and about four
thousand other soldiers think it belongs to them. But the truth will
out. Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks
from Congress, a pension, or any other trifle, like prize-money, will
show the American people to whom that flag really belongs.
I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven heroes of Coamo,
or eight, if you include "Jimmy," will be told in song and story.
Some one else will write the song. This is the story.
IV - THE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL
When I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places
selected for the purpose. I argued from the fact that when our
school nine wished to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to
search for a vacant lot. I thought opposing armies also marched out
of town until they reached some desolate spot where there were no
window panes, and where their cannon-balls would hurt no one but
themselves. Even later, when I saw battles fought among villages,
artillery galloping through a cornfield, garden walls breached for
rifle fire, and farm-houses in flames, it always seemed as though the
generals had elected to fight in such surroundings through an
inexcusable striving after theatrical effect - as though they wished
to furnish the war correspondents with a chance for descriptive
writing. With the horrors of war as horrible as they are without any
aid from these contrasts, their presence always seemed not only
sinful but bad art; as unnecessary as turning a red light on the
dying gladiator.
There are so many places which are scenes set apart for battles -
places that look as though Nature had condemned them for just such
sacrifices. Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of
veldt, is one of these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, and, in
Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The photographs have made all of us
familiar with the vast, desolate approaches to Port Arthur. These
are among the waste places of the earth - barren, deserted, fit
meeting grounds only for men whose object in life for the moment is
to kill men. Were you shown over one of these places, and told, "A
battle was fought here," you would answer, "Why, of course!"
But down in Cuba, outside of Santiago, where the United States army
fought its solitary and modest battle with Spain, you might many
times pass by San Juan Hill and think of it, if you thought of it at
all, as only a pretty site for a bungalow, as a place obviously
intended for orchards and gardens.
