From Columnist James O. Goldsborough in Voice of San Diego

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=euLTJbMUKvH&b=312470&ct=1286717
To honor his 75th birthday a century ago, William Dean Howells was asked by the city of New York to make a statement to be read in every city school. Howells, a leading novelist and critic of the day whose column in Harper's gave him a nationwide audience, decided to speak out on the Spanish-American war, which, until Bush's war, occupied the highest place in America's pantheon of bad wars. Here's part of what Howells said:

"When our country is wrong she is worse than other countries when they are wrong, for she has more light than other countries, and we somehow ought to make her feel that we are sorry and ashamed for her."