3-086-182 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Spanish-American War: Spanish outposts in Cuba: wire defences in use by the Spanish troops, 1898. 'Ruins of a Sugar Factory and Plantation in the Background. Drawn by Paul Frenzeny...As has not infrequently been the case in the course of the world's history, the formal declaration of war between Spain and the United States found both nations but partially equipped for serious combat, and the first week of war was chiefly occupied with the final arming for the fray and the opening moves in the great struggle which, it is now obvious, means war in grim and deadly earnest, a war in which not Cuba alone is to be at stake, but the Philippine Islands, and the complex questions of international import to Europe that are gathered around them - a war, in short, which, whatever be its precise outcome, marks an epoch in the relations of the New World to the Old. The preliminary alarums and excursions which followed the blockade of the western coast of Cuba by the American Fleet grew into the importance of a serious naval engagement on the first day of the month'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.