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It is impossible to imagine that any definite policy at all was followed by the advisers of the Queen Regent in this matter, unless it were the incredible one ascribed to it by Captain Concas Palan of deliberately allowing the fleet, such as it was, to be destroyed in fact, in the case of Admiral Cervera's squadron, sending it out to certain and foreseen annihilation so as to make the disaster an excuse for suing for peace, without raising such a storm at home as might have upset the Ministry.
Captain Concas Palan claims for his chief and the comrades who fell in this futile and disastrous affair "a right to the legitimate defence which our country expects from us, though it is against the interested silence which those who were the cause of our misfortunes would fain impose on us," and says that "some day, and that probably much sooner than seems probable at present," the judgment of Spain on this episode will be that of the English Review, which he quotes as the heading of his chapter.
And, for all her thousand tons, she must have bucketed about in the chops of the Channel with the same sort of hobby-horse, see-sawing pitch that bothered Captain Concas in 1893 when sailing an exact reproduction of Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria, across the North Atlantic to the great World's Fair at Chicago.
La Escuadra del Almirante Cervera, por Victor M. Concas Palan. This was the moment which the responsible Ministers of the Crown thought propitious to throw down the gauntlet to the overwhelming power of America rather than to face what the writer terms the "cabbage-headed riff-raff of the Plaza de la Cevada" of Madrid. Again and again was the absolute inefficiency of the fleet pointed out to them.
Captain Concas Palan points out that even after it was fully recognised that the retention of Cuba was impossible, the worst catastrophes might have been avoided.
Allowing somewhat for the natural indignation of one of those who was sacrificed, who saw his beloved commander and his comrades-in-arms sent like sheep to the slaughter, and all for an idea, and that a perfectly stupid and useless one, there is no gainsaying the facts which Captain Concas Palan relates, and the original telegrams verify every word of his story.
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