Page:American Boy's Life of William McKinley.djvu/252

210 became strangely hushed as the government band played the national air, "Hawaii Ponoi" for the last time. Then the flag of the Republic was lowered, and Old Glory was hoisted in its stead, while the band from the United States cruiser Philadelphia played the "Star-spangled Banner," and the cheering became louder and louder. To this day none of the Hawaiians have regretted the step this taken, nor is it likely that they will regret it in the future.

In Cuba there had been a war of long standing. The island was under the rule of Spain, and Spain had been the oppressor of all her colonies for centuries. Her cruelty to her subjects had cost her a good portion of the United States, Mexico, and her enormous power in Central and South America, and now it was to cost her the loss of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the twelve hundred islands on the other side of the, globe known as the Philippines.

It would be impossible in a work of this kind to go into the details of the Cuban trouble. Let me say briefly, then, that the people were taxed to the utmost, and the many improvements promised to