The relations of the United States and Spain: the Spanish-American War said:
An Italian writer, who has been among those who have dealt most intelligently with the subject of the war, is strongly of the opinion that Cienfuegos should in any case have been selected in preference to Havana and Santiago. He says:
"Two capital reasons, supply and effectiveness of defence, imposed the selection of Cienfuegos. The question of supply is evident, since at Cienfuegos Cervera would have found himself in railway communication with Havana, and with the whole west of the island, whence he would be able to receive coal, than which there could be nothing more important.
"The defensive advantages were less evident, and in fact no military writer, not even Wilson or Mahan, lays stress upon this characteristic of Cienfuegos, which by itself could not impose its selection. The blockade was sufficiently more difficult and dangerous, the probability of forcing an entrance greater than at Santiago or Havana, the security of the anchorage certainly not less; but that which gave Cienfuegos an absolute superiority over Santiago if not over Havana, was the impossibility of forcing a capitulation by an expeditionary force such as that of the Americans at Santiago. The whole of the military resources could have been concentrated at Cienfuegos with sufficient rapidity, and it can be unhesitatingly affirmed that a force of 50,000 men would have been found insufficient to reduce the place; and since the Union did not have any such force the result for Cervera would have been the security of the squadron, the possibility of holding on until the hurricane season, and for Sampson, the necessity of forcing the port, with gravest dangers, or of bombarding Havana d outrance, which would have been impolitic, in order to force the Spanish squadron to battle or to try another solution of the war more odious and less efficacious.
"Cienfuegos guaranteed, according to all probability, the safety of the squadron and the prolonging of the conflict to the period of rains and cyclones, with all the consequences which such delay invited..."