Then the band: "Oh, say, can you see—" while far off on the hills from our intrenchments Capron's battery began to thunder the salute.
The moment was perhaps the most intense of the whole campaign. There was no cheering and that was the best of it. It is hard to understand this, but the occasion was too big for mere shouting, and infinitely too solemn. I have heard the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel, and in comparison with the raising of the flag over the city of Santiago it was opera comique.
For perhaps a full minute we stood with bared heads reverently watching the great flag as it strained in the breeze that, curiously enough, was now steady and strong, watching it as it strained and stiffened and grew out broader and broader over the conquered city till you believed the glory of it and the splendor and radiance of it must go flashing off there over those leagues of tumbling water till it blazed like a comet over Madrid itself.
And the great names came to the mind again—Lexington, Trenton, Yorktown, 1812, Chapultepec, Mexico, Shiloh, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Appomattox, and now—Guasima, San Juan, El Caney, Santiago.