If such had been his expectations with regard to the Philippines, the news of Dewey's victory must have brought him a bitter disappointment, while at the same time the careless and indiscreet remark of an American official to certain Germans--"We don't want the Philippines; why don't you take them ?"--may well have given him a feeling that perhaps the question was still open.
Under such circumstances, with Europe none too well-disposed and the Kaiser watching events with a jealous eye, it was very important to the United States not to be without a friend.

In England sympathy for America ran strong and deep.

The British Government was somewhat in alarm over the political solitude in which Great Britain found herself, even though its head, Lord Salisbury, described the position as one of "splendid isolation." The unexpected reaction of friendliness on the part of Great Britain which had followed the Venezuela affair continued to augment, and relations between the two countries were kept smooth by the new American Ambassador, John Hay, whom Queen Victoria described as "the most interesting of all the ambassadors I have known." More important still, in Great Britain alone was there a public who appreciated the real sentiment of humanity underlying the entrance of the United States into the war with Spain; and this public actually had some weight in politics.

The people of both Great Britain and the United States were easily moved to respond with money and personal service to the cry of suffering anywhere in the world.

Just before the Spanish American War, Gladstone had made his last great campaign protesting against the new massacres in Armenia; and in the United States the Republican platform of 1896 had declared that "the massacres in Armenia have aroused the deep sympathy and just indignation of the American people, and we believe that the United States should exercise all the influence it can properly exert to bring these atrocities to an end." John Hay wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge, of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, April 5, 1898, as follows: "For the first time in my life I find the drawing-room sentiment altogether with us.