[5] Polo de Bernabé was appointed Minister to the United States on 16 February 1898, three days after the blowing up of the Maine battleship in Havana Harbor.
[3] Polo was unable to make up for the actions of his predecessor, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme,[5] before the declaration of war against Spain's Sagasta administration by President William McKinley.
[6] After receiving the declaration of war from U.S. Secretary of State John Sherman, he "immediately replied that the resolution was of such a nature that his continuance in Washington became impossible.
[a] His command of the German language and the social standing of his wife, Ana María Méndez de Vigo (daughter of the former Ambassador to Germany), opened the doors to members of the Hohenzollern family.
His anti-Americanism and Francophobia then emerged as a response to the growing hostility that the governments in Washington, D.C. and London showed towards the expansionary policy of the Holy Roman Empire.
[1] At the beginning of World War I, Polo de Bernabé watched Germany's initial triumphs and recognized the thousands of Allied captives interned on German soil.
Not only did he discuss the orders of successive Foreign Ministers, the Marquis of Lema, Miguel Villanueva, Amalio Gimeno, Juan Alvarado, Eduardo Dato, the Count of Romanones, but he even questioned the appointment of new delegates in Germany by King Alfonso XIII himself.
When German's last chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, forced Wilhelm II's abdication, Polo de Bernabé remained in Berlin for a few months while his replacement, Pablo Soler y Guardiola, the Ambassador in Buenos Aires, arrived.