The Question of the Philippines.

I wish to maintain a single proposition. We should withdraw from the Philippine Islands as soon as in dignity we can. It is bad statesmanship to make these alien people our partners; it is a crime to make them our slaves. If we hold their lands there is no middle course. Only a moral question brings a crisis to man or nation. In the presence of a crisis, only righteousness is right and only justice is safe.

I ask you to consider with me three questions of the hour. Why do we want the Philippines? What can we do with them? What will they do to us?

These questions demand serious consideration, not one at a time but all together. We should know clearly our final intentions as a nation, for it is never easy to retrace false steps. We have made too many of these already. It is time for us to grow serious. Even the most headlong of our people admit that we stand in the presence of a real crisis, while, so far as we can see, there is no hand at the helm. But the problem is virtually solved when we know what our true interests are. Half the energy we have spent in getting into trouble will take us honorably out of it. Once convinced that we do not want the Philippines it will be easy to abandon them with honor. If we are to take them we cannot get at it too soon. The difficulty is that we do not yet know what we want, and we are afraid that if we once let these people go we shall never catch them again. With our longings after Imperialism we have not had the nerve to act.

Let us glance for a moment at the actual condition of affairs. By the fortunes of war the capital of the Philippine Islands fell, last May, into the hands of our navy. The city of Manila we have held, and by dint of bulldog diplomacy our final treaty of peace has assigned to us the four hundred or fourteen hundred islands of the whole archipelago. To these we have as yet no real title. We can get none till the actual owners have been consulted. We have a legal title of course, but no moral title and no actual possession. We have only purchased Spain's quit claim deed to property she could not hold, and which she cannot transfer. For the right to finish the conquest of the Philippines and to close out the page 6 insurrection which has gone on for almost a century we have agreed, on our part, to pay $20,000,000 in cash, for the people of the Islands and the land on which they were born, and which, in their fashion, they have cultivated. This is a sum absurdly large, if we consider only the use we are likely to make of the region and the probable cost of its reconquest and rule. It seems criminally small if we consider the possible returns to us or to Spain from peddling out the Islands as old junk in the open market, or from leasing them to commercial companies competent to exploit them to their utmost. The price is high when we remember that the United Slates for a century has felt absolutely no need for such property and would not have taken any of it, or all of it, or any other like property as a gift. The price is high, too, when we observe that the failure of Spain placed the Islands not in our hands but in the hands of their own people, a third party, whose interest we, like Spain, have as yet failed to consider. Emilio Aguinaldo, the liberator of the Filipinos, the "Washington of the Orient," is the de facto ruler of most of the territory. In our hands is the city of Manila, alone, and we cannot extend our power except by bribery or by force. We may pervert these fragile patriots as Spain claims to have done; or, like Spain, we may redden the swamps of

"Who are these Americans?" Aguinaldo^* is reported to ask, "these people who talk so much of freedom and justice and the rights of man, who crowd into our Islands and who stand as the Spaniards did between us and our liberties?"

What right have we indeed? The right of purchase from Spain. We held Spain by the throat and she could not choose but sell.^†

If, at the close of our Revolutionary War, the King of France, coming in at the eleventh hour and driving the English from our Capital, had bought a quit claim deed to the colonies, proposing to retain them in the interest of French commerce, he would have held exactly the position in which our administration has placed the United States.

In that case George Washington would have insisted, as Aguinaldo has done, that only the people who own it have any sovereignty to sell. He would have held his people's land against all comers, not the least against his late allies. He might even have led a hope as foolish and forlorn as that which inspired the late pitiful attack upon our forces at Manila, if, indeed, there was such an attack, for there is not the slightest evidence that hostilities were begun by Aguinaldo.

The blood shed at Manila will rest heavy on those the people hold responsible for it. There is not the slightest doubt where this responsibility rests. A little courtesy, a little tact, on the part of those in power would have spared us from it all. These men have not led a forlorn fight against Spain for all these years to be tamely snubbed and shoved aside as dogs or rebels at the end. If the President had assured Aguinaldo that his people would not be absorbed against their will, there would have been peace at Manila. If he had assured the people of the United States that no vassal lands would be annexed against their will, there would be peace at Washington. The President has no right to assume in speech or in act that the United States proposes to prove false to her own pledges or false to her own history. Unlike the fighting editor, he is sworn to uphold the Constitution.

If we may trust the record, Aguinaldo became our ally in good page 8 faith on the belief that we were working with him for the freedom of his people. In good faith our consuls made him promises we have never repudiated, but which, after six months of silence by the casting vote of our Vice-President, we refuse to make gocd. These promises were in line with our pledges to Cuba. The consuls, like Aguinaldo, supposed that we meant what we said. When we pledged ourselves to give up the prisoners he had taken we acknowledged him as our ally; and our threats to arrest him, for holding his prisoners as shown in the published correspondence of General E. S. Otis, brought on the present wanton bloodshed. In any case, we should have lost nothing through courteous treatment, and our dignity as a nation would not have suffered even though a civil hearing had been given to his envoy, Agoncillo. It may be that Agoncillo is a coward as our funny papers picture him, but that should not make him lonesome in

We know nothing of Philippine matters, save through cablegrams passed through government censorship, and from the letters and speech of men of the army and navy. The letters and cablegrams do not always tell the same story. It is certain, however, that General Otis has been promoted for gallantry at the slaughter of the fifth of February and in the subsequent skirmishes which have left 20,000 natives homeless. This is right if he acted under orders, for a soldier must obey. If he acted on his own motion, he should have been cashiered. He should neither have provoked nor permitted a conflict if any leniency or diplomacy could have prevented it. Even taking the most selfish view possible as to our plans, their success must depend on our retention of the respect and good will of the subject people.

If the Filipinos are our subjects, they have the right to be heard before condemnation. If they are our allies, they have the right to be heard before repudiation. Their rights are older than ours. It was their struggle for freedom before most of our people had even heard of their existence. We may treat these matters as we will, but, in the light of history, we shall appear with the tyrant and the coward, and our act be the fit conclusion of the "century of dishonor." "The wreck of broken promises," says General Miles, referring to our Indian treaties, "is strewn across the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific." We have broken the record now for we have expanded it to the Orient. "Why is it," a friend once asked General Crooks, "that you have such influence with the Indians?" "Because I always keep my word" was the reply.

To be sure Aguinaldo may not be much of a Washington, a Washington of the hen-roost type, perhaps, as the brigand patriots of page 9 Spanish colonies have been in the past. As to this we have not much right to speak. We have never heard his side of the case, and we have listened only to Spanish testimony. It is worthy of note that our returned officers from Manila, who are men competent to judge, speak of him in terms of the highest respect. His government, which we try to destroy, is the most capable, enlightened, and just these Islands have ever known. These germs of civic liberty constitute the most precious product of the Philippines. But whatever his character or motives, he has one great advantage which Washington possessed—he is in the right. By that fact he is changed from an adventurer, a soldier of fortune, into a hero, an instrument of destiny. If Aguinaldo betrays his people by selling out to us, the heroism of the people remains. When men die for independence there is somewhere a hero. Self-sacrifice for an idea means some fitness for self-government.

Whatever we may choose to do Aguinaldo is a factor, and our sovereignty over his islands must be gained through peaceful concession if it is gained at all. We could crush Aguinaldo easily enough, but we dare not. "Instans tyrannus!" However feeble he may be while we run our fires around "his creep-hole" he has only to "clutch at God's skirts," as in Browning's poem, and it is we who are afraid. This great, strong, lusty nation is too brave to do a cowardly deed. In spite of the orgies of our newspapers, we are still bothered by a national conscience. We do not like to fight in foreign lands against women with cropped hair defending their own homes; against naked savages with bows and arrows, nor in battles likened to a Colorado rabbit drive.

The Filipinos are not rebels against law and order but against alien control. As a Republic under our protection or without it, they stood apparently ready to give us any guarantee we might ask as to order and security.

We may easily destroy the organized army of the Filipinos, but that does not bring peace. In the cliffs and jungles they will defy us for a century as they have defied Spain. According to Dewey, the Filipinos are "fighters from away back." These four words from Dewey mean more than forty would from an ordinary warrior. In Sumatra it has cost the Dutch upwards of 300,000 men to subdue Acheen, and its Malay chieftains are still defiant. Three hundred thousand men, of whom two-thirds rotted in the swamps, never seeing a foe or a battle. We shall abandon the struggle in very shame. Four thousand Filipinos fell on the glorious fifth of February. At the rate of 4000 a day, as Mr. Reed calculates, the race will last seven years. A deficit of $160,000,000 a year will appeal to our page 10 people, if the glory and the bloodshed do not. I see in the papers to-day (March 1) that the honorable Secretary has just saved a million of dollars, reducing this deficit in corresponding degree. This he has taken from the return allowance of those volunteers at Manila who will not re-enlist. Such economies touch the hearts of the people. The people will not foot the bills. They are ashamed of shame, and their eyes once opened they cannot be coaxed nor

Let us consider the first of our propositions. Why do we want the Philippines? To this I can give no answer of my own. I can see not one valid reason why we should want them, nor any why they should want us except as strong and friendly advisers. As vassals of the United States they have no future before them; as citizens they have no hope. But even if we could by kind paternalism make their lives happier or more effective, I am sure that we will not. Our philanthropy is less than skin deep. The syndicates waiting to exploit the Islands, and incidentally to rob their own stockholders, are not interested in the moral uplifting of negroes and dagoes. On the other hand I am sure that their possession can in no wise help us, not even financially or commercially.

The movement for colonial extention rests on two things: Persistent forgetfulness of the principles of democratic government on the one hand; hopeless ignorance of the nature of the tropics and its people on the other.

But while I give no reason of my own, I have listened carefully to the speech of others, and the voices I have heard are legion. Their opinions I shall try in a way to classify, with a word of comment on each. And, first, I place those which claim some sort of moral validity, though I acknowledge no basis for such claim. For the only morality a nation can know is justice. To be fair as between man and man, to look after mutual interests and to do those necessary things out of the reach of the individual is the legitimate function of a nation. It cannot be generous, because it has no rights of its own of which it can make sacrifice. Moral obligations belong to its people as individuals. Legal obligations, financial obligations, the pledges of treaties, only these can bind nation to nation. A nation cannot be virtuous, for that is a matter of individual conduct. It must be just. So far as it fails to be this, it is simply corrupt.

It is said that if we do not annex the Philippines we shall prove false to our obligations. Obviously there are two primary pledges which must precede all others; first, the obligation of our whole history that we shall never conquer and annex an unwilling people; second, our pledge at the beginning of the war, that the United page 11 States has no disposition to seize territory or to dictate its government.^*

Several questions arise at once. What are those obligations? To whom are they held? By what responsibility have they been incurred?

To the first question we may get this answer. We are under obligations to see that the Philippines are no longer subject to Spanish tyranny and misrule. In the words of General Miles, "Twelve millions of people that a year ago were suffering under oppression, tyranny, and cruelty are to-day under our protection. It would be the crime of the nineteenth century to turn them back again." Very well, then, we shall not turn them back, nor could we do it if we would. Spain is helpless and harmless. She has ceased to be a factor in the world's affairs. What next? Let us quote further from General Miles: "If you cannot give them government in their own country, if you cannot establish government for them, you can, at least, protect them until such time as they shall be prepared for self-government. And if they do not care to come and be part of this country you can see to it that they have a liberal and free government such as you enjoy yourselves."

This is, perhaps, an average statement of our supposed obligations. If we had adopted this view we should have had no war at Manila and our honor would be untarnished. Some would put it more strongly. Our obligations demand that we take the Islands by force, lest they fall back into the hands of Spain, or, still worse, lest they become victims of the cruel schemes of the German Emperor, ever anxious to try his hand on matters of which he knows nothing. For the House of Hohenzollern, as well as ourselves, is afflicted with a "manifest destiny."

But this German bugaboo is set up merely as an excuse. No nation on earth would dare set the heel of oppression on any land our flag has made free. The idea that every little nation must be subject to some great one is one of the most contemptible products of military commercialism. No nation, little or big, is "derelict" that minds its own business, maintains law and order, and respects the development of its own people. If we behave honorably towards the people we have freed, we shall set a fashion which the powers will never dare to violate.

We can be under no obligations under our Constitution and theory of government, to do what cannot be done, what will not be done, or ought not to be done.

Still others put the case in this way: "We have destroyed the only stable government in the Philippines. It is our duty to establish another." But if this is really the case we have done very wrong. We were told that the rule of Spain was not stable, that it was not just, and that it was far worse than no rule at all. Our sympathies were with those who would destroy this government of Spain, and our armies went out with our sympathies. Either we were on the wrong side in the whole business, or else we should now respect the rights of the people we set forth to help. If, by ill chance, we have overturned the only stable government, we must help the people to make another. "A government of the people, for the people, and by the people," would be a good kind to help them to establish; one made in their own interest not in ours, even though we think them a sorry sort of folk. We shall not talk in the same breath of our duty to humanity and of the demands of American commerce, not even though both speeches be canting falsehoods. Asa matter of fact, of all the people of the tropics the inhabitants of Luzon have shown most promise of fairly wise self-rule. All competent judges speak in the highest terms of the Cabinet and Parliament at Malolos and of their wisdom and self-restraint. At the same time under whatever rule, these people will

To better define these obligations let us find out to whom they were incurred. Nobody in particular lays claim to them. Surely we are not bound to Spain, for she feels outraged and humiliated by the whole transaction. The Filipinos ask for nothing more of us. Doubtless their rulers would return our twenty millions and give us half a dozen coaling stations if that would hasten our departure. It is their firm resolve, so their spokesmen in Hong Kong have declared, that they will not consent "to be experimented upon by amateur colonial administrators." Even our "benevolent assimilation" is intolerable on the terms which we demand.

It was for freedom, not for law and order, that the Filipinos and the Cubans took up arms against Spain. Good order we are trying to bring to the Filipinos, but that does not satisfy. The grave is quiet but it is not freedom. Perhaps it is wrong for these people to care for freedom, but we once set them the example, as we have to many poor people, to strive for a liberty they have never yet won.

More likely we owe obligations to the city of Manila. Her business men look with doubt on Aguinaldo and his Cabinet, with golden page 13 bands and whistles and peacock quills to indicate their rank and titles. Doubtless they fear the native rabble and the native methods of collection of customs. But, again, we have as to this only prejudiced testimony. According to Lieutenant Calkins, an honored officer in Dewey's fleet, the life and property of foreigners has been as safe in Malolos as in San Francisco. Moreover, these peddlers from all the world have no claims on us. They have long fished in troubled waters and they have learned the art. The pound of flesh they have exacted from the Filipino in times of peace serves as the insurance against all losses in war. It was not to accommodate a few petty tradesmen, for the most part Chinese, a few English, and a dozen German and Japanese, that we entered into this war. If we owe them protection, they owe something to us. The shelter of the American flag is the birthright of Americans. Maybe it is to Germany and France that we owe obligations. To keep their rulers from falling out over the rich spoils of the Philippines, we are under bonds to take them all ourselves. But these nations are not in the slightest danger of fighting each other or fighting us over the Philippines. The Philippines would be as safe as an independent republic, with our good will, as they would be in another planet. The huge bloodless commercial trusts are afraid of a nation with a conscience. Maybe we are under bonds to England alone. Her advice is "take it," "take it," and those of her politicians hitherto most prone to snub and humiliate us are now most loud in their encouragements. No doubt these clever schemers want to see us entangled in the troubles of the Orient. No doubt England is sincere in thinking that a few years' experience in the hardest of schools will teach us something to our advantage as well as to hers. In our compactness lies a strength which alarms even England. It means our future financial and commercial supremacy. It is England's way to play nation against nation so that the strong ones will keep the peace, while the weaker ones are helpless in her hands.

The essential spirit of British diplomacy is to recognize neither morality nor justice in relation to an opponent. This has been explained and defended by Chamberlain as a matter of course in questions of party rivalry or imperial dominion. The only wrong is failure to carry one's point. This feature of British diplomacy has been exemplified a hundred times. The career of Cecil Rhodes, the struggle with Parnell, the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration in 1893, are all cases in point. This gives the clue to British diplomatic success, and it explains also the cordial hatred the world over for "Anglo-Saxon" methods. From beginning to end of British colonial dealings with lower races there has never appeared the word nor the thought page 14 of justice. Law and trade constitute her sole interest in tropical humanity, and law for trade. The thought of human equality, in any sense of the term, is foreign to British polity. To emphasize and perpetuate inequality lies at the basis of British polity.

To give up the idea of "equality of all men before the law" would be to abandon our sole excuse for being as a nation. We would then become a mere geographical expression or police arrangement, and might logically as well join Canada as a dependency of Great Britain. The hope that we may do so is the source of much English "good-will."

If we feel edgewise toward Germany^* or if Germany is unfriendly toward us, we have England to thank for it. That is her diplomacy. She means nothing wrong by it. She is our friend, and in politics no water is thicker than her blood. We shall cease twisting the British Lion's tail when we have parts equally vulnerable. We shall not thwart England when we are dependent upon her good will. But all this constitutes no obligation. We did not go into the war on England's account, nor must we settle it to suit her. It is our first duty to follow our own best interests.

I yield to no one in admiration for the British people or the British character. The best thoughts of the world spring from British brains, and British hands have wrought earth's noblest deeds. But British inequality is not the source of lofty thought or brave deed. We may emulate England in all matters of political administration save the very one in which she now urges on us, her cynical advice. It was in protest against British inequality that the United States became a nation. British politics have changed their form, but the basal principles remain, and inequality and injustice are no more lovely now than in the days of' 76.

A London journal now pictures America as a rosy-cheeked, unsophisticated youth who has left parental boundaries and now "goes out to see the world." We may accept this "lightly proffered laurel," but we may note that the youth is gaining this experience under the convoy of the toughest old pirate of the whole water front.

Moreover, England welcomes our intrusion in the Orient because she finds in us a necessary ally. We become a partner in her games. More than this our new relations must break down our Protective Tariff, which is most offensive to her, as, perhaps, it should be to us. The possession of Asiatic colonies makes nonsense of our Monroe

^* Doubtless German industrial jealousy is acute and well-grounded and the loss of many good soldiers each year by emigration displeases German militarism. But these matters have gone on for years and have no relation with the war with Spain.

page 15 Doctrine. To realize this fact will teach us needed caution. We shall not go at diplomacy in our shirt sleeves any more as though it were a game of poker on a Mississippi flat-boat. Besides to follow in England's footsteps is the sincerest form of flattery. It gives her methods the sanction of our respectability. It takes from the opposition party in Parliament one of its strongest weapons. But this, again, is no national obligation. If any obligation whatever exists, it is to the Filipinos. It is met by insuring their freedom from Spain. For the rest, their fate is their own.

A higher class of English public men advise us to hold the Philippines because they do not understand the purpose or basis of our government. Our machinery of rule is so constructed that it will not work with unwilling people, nor with people lacking in the Saxon instinct for co-operation. England has no scruples and no ideals. Her only purpose, in the tropics, is to hold to doors open to trade. In this business she has the lead and all gains of all trade swell her wealth. In her capital is the clearing house of all the world. There all prices are fixed and all bills are settled. What is good business for her might be impossible for us who are not, as a nation in business.

Admitting, however, an obligation to do something to somebody, by whom was such obligation incurred? To whom have we given authority to bind us to change the whole current of our history? Who is the mighty agent who brings about such things? The Constitution prescribes methods in which our people may incur obligations by concurrent action of Congress and the President. Have we empowered a commodore or even a rear-admiral to change our national purposes? Did the victory at Manila bind our people to anything? To say that it did is simple nonsense. This was an incident of war, not a decision of peace. Did the action of the President in sending eighteen thousand soldiers to Manila oblige us to keep them there, even if the Constitution of the United States had to be changed to give this act justification? If so, where did the President get his authority? This, too, was an incident of war. Moreover, the President is not our ruler but our servant. The people of the United States are subject to no obligations save those they impose on themselves. Neither the President nor the Cabinet have the slightest right to incur national obligations. None have been incurred.

But it may be that efforts have been made to bind the people to "expansion" in advance of their own decision. The victory at Manila was so unexpected, so heroic, so decisive, that it fired the imagination of our nation. It set the world page 16 to talking of us, and it inspired our politicians with dreams of empire. Such dreams are far from the waking thoughts of our people, though while the spell was on us we made some movement toward turning them into action. These steps taken in folly our nation must retrace. It is not pleasant to go backward. For this reason those responsible for our mistakes insist that we are sworn to go ahead whatever the consequences. Political futures are involved in the success of these schemes. And so every effort has been used to rush us forward in the direction of conquest. Our volunteer soldiery is held as an army of invasion to rot in the marshes when summer comes, as brave men once rotted in Libby and Andersonville. Each step in the series has been planned so as to make the next seem inevitable. To stop to reconsider our steps is made to appear as backing down. The American people will not back down and on this fact the whole movement depends. This movement was not a conspiracy, because every step was proclaimed from the housetops and shouted back from the newspapers and the mobs around the railway stations. No wonder the fighting editor claims to dictate our national policy. The current of "manifest destiny" is invoked as the cover for the movement of Imperialism. At each step, too, the powers that be assure us that they are not responsible for the invisible forces of Divine Providence have taken matters from their hands.

In the one breath we are told that it is the will of God that we should annex the Philippines and make civilized American Christians of their medley population. In another, we must crush out the usurper, Aguinaldo, drive his rebel followers to the swamps and fastnesses and build up institutions with the coward remnant that survive.

All this is in the line of least resistance. Along this line Spain ruled and plundered her colonies. In such fashion her colonies impoverished and corrupted Spain. Because she had no moral force to prevent it, cruelty and corruption became her manifest destiny. It will be ours if we follow her methods. Toward such a manifest destiny, "the tumult and the shouting" of to-day are hurrying us along. The destiny which is manifest is never a noble one. The strong currents of history run deep, and the fates never speak through the daily newspapers. "Hard are the steps, rough-hewn in flintiest rock, States climb to power by." Providence acts only through men with strong brain and pure heart. The hand of Providence is never at the helm when no hand of man is there. Nations like men must learn to say No, when Yes is fatal. To have the courage to stop throwing good money after bad is the way nations keep out of bank-ruptcy. To back out now, we are told, would expose us to the ridicule of all the nations. But to go on will do the same. It is we who page 17 have made ourselves ridiculous. We have already roused the real distress of all genuine friends in Europe, because we have given the lie to our own history and to our own professions. That a wise, strong, peaceful nation should rise and fight for the freedom of the oppressed, rescuing them with one strong blow, touches the imagination of the world. The admiration fades into disgust in view of the vulgar scramble for territory and commercial advantage, and the inability of those responsible to guide the course of events in any safe direction.

I know that words of this sort are not welcome. The funny papers have their jokes about Senator Hoar and Cassandra, a person who once took a dark view of things in very gloomy times. But there are occasions when optimism is treason. Only an accomplice is cheerful in presence of a crime. The crisis once past we may rejoice in the future of democracy. It is a hopeful sign to-day that the people have never consented, nor have those directing affairs dared trust the plain issue of annexation either to the people or to Congress. Their schemes must pass through indirection, or not at all.

We need a cheerful and successful brigand like Cecil Rhodes to pat us on the back and stiffen our failing nerves. He is not afraid. Why should we flinch from the little misdeeds we have in contemplation?

Alfred Russell Wallace, in the London Chronicle expresses the "disappointment and sorrow which I feel in common, I am sure, with a large body of English and Americans, at the course now being pursued by the government of the United States toward the people of Cuba and the Philippine Islands.

"The Americans claim the right of sovereignty obtained by the treaty and have apparently determined to occupy and administer the whole group of Islands against the will and consent of the people. They claim all the revenues of the country and all the public means of transport, and they have decided to take all this by military force if the natives do not at once submit. Yet they say that they come 'not as invaders and conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, their employments and their personal and civil rights,' and for the purpose of giving them 'a liberal form of government through representatives of their own race.' But these people who have been justly struggling for freedom are still spoken of as 'insurgents' or 'rebels,' and they are expected to submit quietly to an altogether new and unknown foreign rule which, whatever may be the benevolent intentions of the President, can hardly fail to be a more or less oppressive despotism.

"It may be asked what can the Americans do? They cannot allow Spain to come back again, and .... they are responsible for the future of the inhabitants. But surely it is possible to revert to their first expressed intention of taking a small island only as a naval and coaling station and to declare themselves the protectors of the Islands against foreign aggression.

"Having done this they might invite the civilized portion of the natives to form an independent government, offering them advice and assistance if they wish for it, but otherwise leaving them completely free. If we express our disappointment (as Englishmen) that our American kinsfolk are apparently following our example, it is because, in the matter of the rights of every people to govern themselves, we had looked up to them as about to show us the better way by respecting the aspirations towards freedom, even of less advanced races, and by acting in accordance with their own noble traditions and republican principles."

Do we say that these obligations were entailed by chance, and that we cannot help ourselves? I hear many saying, "If only Dewey had sailed out of Manila Harbor, all would have been well." This seems to me the acme of weakness. Dewey did his duty at Manila; he has done his duty ever since. Let us do ours. If his duty makes it harder for us, so much the more we must strive. It is pure cowardice to throw the responsibility on him. Who are we to "plead the baby act?" If Dewey captured land we do not want to hold, then let go of it. It is for us to say, not for him. It is foolish to say that our victory last May settled once for all our future as a world power. It is not thus that I read our history. Chance decides nothing. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation of the Slaves, were not matters of chance. They belong to the category of statesmanship. A statesman knows no chance. It is his business to foresee it and to control it. Chance is the terror of despotism. A chance shot along the frontier of Alsace, a chance brawl in Hungary, a chance word in Poland, a chance imbecile in the seat of power, may throw all Europe into war. In a general war the nations of Europe, their dynasties, and their thrones, will burn like stubble in a prairie fire. Our foundation is less combustible. Our Constitution is something more than a New Year's resolution to be broken at the first chance temptation. The Republic is, indeed, in the gravest peril if chance and passion are to be factors in her destiny.

One of the ablest of British public men, one known to all of us as a staunch friend of the United States through the Civil War when page 19 our allies in the present British Ministry could not conceal their hatred and contempt, writes in a private letter these words to me:

"I could not say this in my public writings," he says, and so I do not give his name, "but it seems to me that expansionism has in it a large element of sheer vulgarity, in the shape of a parvenu desire for admission into the imperialist and military camp of the old world,"

This is the whole story. Our quasi-alliance with Aguinaldo obliges us to see that he and his followers do not rot in Spanish prisons. Here or about here our obligation ends, though our interest in freedom might go further. "Sheer vulgarity" does the rest. The desire to hold a new toy, to enjoy a new renown, to feel a new experience, or the baser desire to gain money by it, is at the bottom of our talk about the new destiny of the American republic and the new obligations which this destiny entails.

We have set our national heart on the acquisition of the Philippines to give Old Glory a chance in a distant sea, to do something unheard of in our past history. We look on every side for justification of this act and the varied excuses we can invent we call our obligations. We have saved Manila from being looted by the barbarians. This may be true, though we have not the slightest evidence that it was ever in such danger. But we have made it a veritable hell on earth. Its saloons, gaming halls and dives of vice have to-day few parallels in all the iniquitous world.

But we have incurred, some say, the obligation to civilize and christianize the Filipinos, and to do this we must annex them, that our missionaries may be safe in their work. "The free can conquer but to save." This is the new maxim for the ensign of the Republic, replacing the "consent of the governed," and "government by the people," and the worn out phrases of our periwigged fathers.

But to christianize our neighbors is no part of the business of our government. It is said by Dr. Worcester, our best authority on the Filipinos, that "as a rule the grade of their morality rises with the square of the distance from churches and other civilizing influences." This means that the churches are not keeping up with our saloons and gaming houses. If they are not we cannot help them. Missionary work of Americans as against Mohammedanism, Catholicism, or even heathenism our government cannot aid. It is our boast, and a righteous one, that all religion is equally respected by our State. It has been the strength of our foreign missionaries that they never asked the support of armies. "The force of arms," said Martin Luther, "must be kept far from matters of the Gospel." The courage of devoted men and women and the power of the Word, such page 20 is the only force they demand. When the flag and the police are sent in advance of the Bible, missionaries fall to the level of ordinary politicians. It is the lesson of all history that the religious forms of aspirations of any people should be respected by its government. From Java, the most prosperous of Oriental vassal nations, all missionaries are rigidly excluded. They are disturbers of industry.

It is the lesson of England's experience that all forms of government should be equally respected. In no case has she changed the form however much she may have altered the administration. Success in the control of the tropical races no nation has yet achieved, for no one has yet solved the problem of securing industry without force, of making money without some form of slavery. But those nations which have come nearest solution have most respected the religions and prejudices and governmental forms of the native people. Individual men may struggle as they will against heathenism. A government must recognize religions as they are.

It is said again that the whole matter does not deserve half the words given it. We destroyed the government, such as it was, in Cuba and Manila; we must stay until we have repaired the mischief. When we have set things going again it will be time to decide what to do. The answer to this is that it is not true. We are not repairing the damages anywhere, but are laying our plans for permanent military occupation, which is Imperialism. Those responsible for these affairs have kept annexation steadily in view. It is safe to say that there is no intention to withdraw even from Cuba, or to permit any form of self-government there, until American influences shall dominate.

It is not because the governed have some intangible right to consent that we object to this, but because the machinery of democracy, which is acquiesence in action, will not work without their co-operation.

But we must take the Philippines, some say, because no other honorable course lies before us. Some civilized nation must own them; Spain is out of the question; so are the other nations of Europe, while Aguinaldo and the Filipinos themselves, "big children that must be treated like little ones," are unworthy of trust and incapable of good government.

But, again, what guarantee is there that we shall give good government? When did it become our duty to see that anarchy and corruption are expelled from semi-barbarous regions? When did we learn how to do it? We have had six months in which to think about it. Who has ever suggested a plan? For thirty years we have misgoverned Alaska^* with open eyes and even now scarcely a visible

^* Last week, according to the Springfield Republican Senator Carter asked unanimous consent for the consideration of a code of laws for Alaska. "Various senators objected. Gallinger and Bate thought a night session for such a purpose a very bad precedent. Mr. Tillman thought the time should be devoted to the anti-scalping bill and Mr. Chandler was anxious to discuss a ticket brokerage bill." There being no senator from Alaska to enter into trade or combination there is no hope for legislation to bring order into the territory.

In a recent address Governor Roosevelt is reported as saying:

" Have you read in the papers that an Alaskan town Wrangel) wants to be transferred to Canada? It wants to get out from under our flag merely because no one has thought it worth while to give Alaska good government. If we govern the Philippines, Cuba, Porto Rico and Hawaii as we have governed Ahska, we shall have the same results."

Mr. Brady, the excellent Governor of Alaska, says:

"There are sixty men in charge of the government of the territory. They have no interests in Alaska except to grab what they can and get away. They are like a lot of hungry codfish. Seven of these officials, eleven per cent of the entire government, are now under indictment for malfeasance in office."

page 21 sign of repentance. We are not sworn to good government even in our own cities. We give them self-government and that is all. The people everywhere make their own standards. The standard of Arizona is different from that of Massachusetts, and South Carolina has another still. There is no good government in America except as the people demand it. We want good government on no other terms.

China, Corea, Siam, Turkey, Tartary, Arabia and the peoples of Asia generally, "half devil and half child," are none of them under good government. The rulers of Central America, of Venezuela, Bolivia, and, worst of all, the unspeakable Hayti are no more efficient or more virtuous than the Filipinos. As men we may care for these things and work for their improvement. As a nation they are none of our business so long as their badness of government does not harm our national interests. We have no nearer concern in the government of the Philippines, nor can we give their people a government any better than they know how to demand. We might do so possibly, but we shall not. We are not in "knight-errantry for our health," and we are in no mood for trying fancy experiments. Those among us who might lead child races to higher civilization are not likely to be called on for advice.

Others say with swelling breasts that the finger of Providence points the way for us, and we cannot choose but obey. The God of battles has punished Spain for her centuries of cruelty, corruption, and neglect, and we are but as the instrument in His hand.

There is a story of a man and his boys who got their breakfast at a tavern where food was scarce and bills were high. As they left the place they complained loudly of the bad treatment they had received. At last one of the boys spoke up: "The Lord has punished that man. I have my pocket full of his spoons."

"The terrible prophecy of Las Casas," says an eloquent orator, "has come true for Spain. The countless treasures of gold from her American bondsmen have been sunk forever, her empire richer than Rome's has been inherited by freemen, her proud armada has been scattered, her arms have been overwhelmed, her glory has departed. If ever retributive justice overtook an evil-doer it has overtaken and crushed this arrogant power. An army of the dead, larger by far than the whole Spanish nation, stormed the judgment seat of God demanding justice—stern, retributive justice. God heard and answered. This republic is now striking the last blow for liberty in America, an instrument of justice in the hands of an omnipotent power. In the interest of civilization, of imperative humanity, we now go forth to the rescue of the last victim, strong in the consciousness of the purity of our purpose, and the justice of our cause."

Again let us say, "The Lord has punished this nation. We have our pockets full of her spoons."

Doubtless Spain was very corrupt and very weak and very wicked, but that is not for us to judge while we have our pockets full of her

The plain fact is this: the guiding hand of Providence, in such connection as this, is mere figure of speech, intended for our own justification. Doubtless Providence plays its part in the affairs of men, but not in such fashion as this. Providence is our expression for the ultimate inevitable righteousness which rules in human history. It "hath put down the mighty from their seats and hath exalted them of low degree; "but its voice is not the" sound of popular clamor." "Fame's trumpet" does not set forth its decrees and it is not interested in increasing volume of trade.

The war with Spain was in no sense holy, unless we make it so through its results. Our victories indicate no accession of divine favor. We succeeded because we were bigger, richer, and far more capable than our enemy. Our navy was manned with trained engineers, while that of Spain was not. Our gross wealth made sure the final success of our army in spite of incompetence and favoritism which has risen to the proportions of a national shame. When we have cast aside all hopes of booty we shall be fit to sit in judgment on the sins of Spain. Till then, to say that we alone are led by Divine Providence is wanton blasphemy. Four very different impulses carried us into the war; the feeling of humanity, the love of adventure, the desire for revenge, and the hope of political capital. Strength and wealth and our prestige led us to success. The decision of history to the righteousness of the war will be determined by the motive that finally triumphs.

Again, some say we went to war in the interests of humanity, civilization, and righteousness. In this end we have poured out blood and treasure. It is only fair that we should be paid for our losses. Let us fill our pockets with the spoons. It ceases to be a war for humanity when we have forced a humbled enemy, condemned without a hearing, to foot all the bills.

But we would plant the institutions of freedom in the midst of the Orient. Freedom cannot be confined. Expansion is her manifest destiny. "We are like the younger sons of England who, finding their own country inadequate, have gone forth to fill the unoccupied places of the East, and now the time comes when our children are beginning to face the conditions that hedged around our fathers and made us turn our faces towards the West. The United States on this continent have been pretty well surveyed, explored, conquered, and policed. Shall we not see to it that our children shall have as good a forward outlook as we have? We have proved our capacity to expand. We have proved our capacity to compete with any man. It were worse than folly, yea, criminal, to attempt to set back the onward march of manifest destiny."

So runs the current of yellow patriotism. But if the Anglo-Saxon has a destiny incompatible with morality and which cannot be carried out in peace, if it is bound by no pledges and must ride roughshod over the rights and wills of weaker people the sooner he is exterminated the better for the world. In like strain we are reminded that the arguments against expansion to-day were used to oppose the Louisiana purchase in Jefferson's time and the less glorious acquisition of the provinces of conquered Mexico. If expansion to Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Dakota, and California was good national policy, why not still further to the Philippines? But the difference between the one case and the others are many and self-evident. The Louisiana territory and the territory of California were adjacent to our States. They were in the temperate zone with climate in every way favorable to the Anglo-Saxon race and to the personal activity on which free institutions depend. They were virtually uninhabited districts, being peopled chiefly by nomad barbarians who made no use of the land, and whose rights the Anglo-Saxon has never cared to consider. The first governments were established by the free men who entered them. Finally the growth of railroads and the telegraph brought this vast region almost from the first into the closest touch with the East and with the rest of the world. If it were not for the development of transportation, unforeseen by the fathers, the arguments they used against expansionism would have remained valid even as against the Louisiana purchase.

It is said that "Jefferson was a rank expansionist." But there is no record that he favored expansion for bigness' sake, the seizure or purchase of all sorts of land and all sorts of inhabitants regardless of conditions, regardless of rights, and regardless of the interests of

The Philippines are not contiguous to any land of freedom. They lie in the heart of that region which Ambrose Bierce calls "the horrid zone; Nature's asylum for degenerates." They are already densely populated—more densely than even the oldest of the United States. Their population cannot be exterminated on the one hand, nor made economically potent on the other, except through slavery. Finally the conditions of life are such as to forbid Anglo-Saxon colonization. Among hundreds of colonial experiments in Brazil, in India, in Africa, in China, there is not to-day such a thing as a self-supporting European colony in the tropics. White men live through officialism alone. There are military posts, so placed as to appropriate the land and enslave the people, but there is not one self-dependent, self-respecting European or American settlement.

Individual exceptions and special cases to the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon or any other civilized race degenerates in the tropics mentally, morally, physically. This statement has been lately denied in some quarters. As opposed to it has been urged the fact that 'Thackeray and Kipling, the most virile of British men of letters, were born in India, and many other distinguished men have first seen the light in tropical Africa or Polynesia. Several Stanford athletes are natives of Hawaii, and Cuba has furnished her full share of the men of science of the blood of Spain. But this argument indicates a confusion of ideas. Degeneration may be any one of three different kinds; race decline, personal degeneration, and social decay.

The essential of race degeneration is the continuous lowering of the mental or physical powers of each successive generation. Such a process is very slow, requiring centuries before it shows itself. It finds its cause in unwholesome conditions which destroy first the bravest, strongest, and most active, leaving the feeble, indolent, and cowardly to perpetuate the species. Military selection, or the seizure of the strong to replenish the armies, has produced race degeneration in many parts of Europe. Such degeneration has been the curse of Italy and parts of France and Switzerland and doubtless of Spain and Germany also. The dull sodden malarial heat of the tropics spares the indolent longest. In the Song of the Plague, written by some unknown British soldier, we find these words as to India: page 25

"Cut off from the land that bore us
Betrayed by the land we find
When the brightest are gone before us
And the dullest are left behind."

This is the beginning of race degeneration. The Anglo-Saxon in the tropics deteriorates through the survival of the indolent and the loss of fecundity; but this is met or concealed by a number of other tendencies and is not soon apparent. The birth of a Kipling, a Thackeray, or a Dole could not in any way affect the argument. The British child bom in India to-day must be reared in England; and it is to be remembered that not all the regions south of the Tropic of Cancer are to be classed as tropical; most of Mexico, much of India, and the whole Andean region belong to the temperate zone. The equable climate of the Hawaiian Islands is not in any proper sense torrid.

In the tropics the tendency to personal decay is more directly evident. The swarm of malarial organisms, the loss of social restrictions, the reduced value of life, the lack of moral standards, all lend to promote individual laxity and recklessness. "Where there are no Ten Commandments," and "the best is as the worst," there, life is held cheap and men grow careless. Kipling's fable of "Duncan Parenness" tells the story of personal degeneration, and this case is typical of thousands and thousands. Vice and dissipation are confined to no zone, but in the tropics few men of northern blood can escape them.

With individual deterioration goes social decay. Man becomes less careful of his dress, his social observances, his duties to others. Woman loses her regard for conventionalities, for her reputation, and for her character. The little efforts that hold society together are abandoned one by one. The spread of the "Mother Hubbard," crowding out more elaborate forms of dress, indicates a general failure of social conventionalities. The decay of society reacts on the individual. Where it is too warm or too malarial to be conventional, it is too much trouble to be decent. Without going into causes, it is sufficient to say that Anglo-Saxon colonies of self-respecting, self-governing men and women are practically confined to the temperate regions.

The annexation of the Philippines is, therefore, not a movement of expansion. We cannot expand into space already full. Our nation cannot expand where freedom cannot go. Neither the people nor the institutions of the United States can ever occupy the Philippines. The American home cannot endure there, the town-meeting cannot exist. There is no room for free laborers, no welcome for them, and no pay. The sole opening for Americans in any event will be as page 26 corporations or agents of corporations, as Government officials or as members of some profession requiring higher than native fitness. There is no chance for the American workman, but for syndicates it offers great opportunities. Yes, for the syndicates who handle politics as an incident in business. But the more syndicates we can induce to leave the shelter of our flag, the better for our people. Let them take their chances without our help.

If it were possible to exterminate the Filipinos as we have destroyed the Indians, replacing their institutions and their people by ours, the political objections to annexation would, in the main, disappear whatever might be said of the moral ones.

For our treatment of the Indian, there is, in general, no moral justification. There is a good political excuse in this—that we could and did use their land in a better way than was possible to them. We have no such excuse in Luzon; we cannot use the land except as

We cannot plant free institutions in the Orient because once planted they will not grow; if they grow they will not be free. We cannot exterminate these people, and if we did we could not use their land for our own people; we could only fill it with Asiatic colonists, Malay, Chinese, or Japanese, more of the same kind, not of our kind. "Any attempt to govern the tropical possessions of the United States on democratic principles," says Mr. W. Alleyne Ireland, one of our wisest authorities, "is doomed to certain failure. It has been already shown that without forced labor, or at least some form of indentured labor, large industries cannot be developed in tropical colonies." Such forced labor can be controlled only by the compulsion of the Government as in Java, or by the activity of great corporations as in

"It is thought by many," says Mr. Ireland, "that though it may be unadvisable to grant the (tropical) colonies representative government at present, the time will soon come when the people will show themselves capable of self-government. Judging from past experience there would seem to be little hope that these pleasant anticipations will ever be realized. We look in vain for a single instance within the tropics of a really well-governed country."

The notion that in these fertile Islands our surplus working men shall find homes is the height of absurdity. Our labor leaders understand this well enough, and for once they stand together on the side of common sense. Scarcely any part of the United States is so crowded with people as Luzon or Porto Rico; in no part is the demand for labor less or its rewards so meager. Ten cents a day is not a free man's scale of wages; and no change of government can materially page 27 alter this relation. In the tropics the conditions of subsistence are so easy and the incentives to industry so slight that all races exposed to relaxing influences become pauperized. It is the free lunch system on a boundless scale, the environment of Nature too generous to be just, too kind to be exacting.

For the control of dependent nations and slave races the fair sounding name of Imperialism has lately come into use. It has been hailed with joy on the one hand for it is associated with armorial bearings and more than royal pomp and splendor. It has been made a term of reproach on the other, and our newspaper politicians now hasten to declare that they favor expansion only when it has no taint of Imperialism. But to our British friends nothing could be more ridiculous. You must have an iron hand or you get no profits. To cast aside Imperialism is to cast away the sole method by which tropical colonies have ever been made profitable to commerce or tolerable in politics. On the other hand these same people tell us that they have not the slightest thought of making States of Cuba or the Philippines, or of admitting the Filipinos to citizenship. But if the Filipino is not a citizen of his own land, who is?

We are advised on good patrician authority that all is well, whatever we do, if we avoid the fatal mistake of admitting the brown races to political equality—of letting them govern us. We must rule them for their own good—never for our advantage. In other words, lead or drive the inferior man along, but never recognize his will, his manhood, his equality; never let him count one when he is measured against you.

These maxims should be familiar; they are the philosophy of slavery, and they only lack the claim of the right to buy and sell the bodies and souls of men. Our purchase of the Filipinos from Spain, and our subsequent treatment of the resultant slave insurrection supplies the missing element.

One plan or the other we must adopt; either self-rule or Imperialism; there is no middle course, and both under present conditions are virtually impossible. Let the friends of annexation develop some plan of government, any plan whatever, and its folly and ineffectiveness will speedily appear. To go ahead without a plan means certain disaster, and that very soon; whatever we do or do not do, there is no time to lose.

Conquest of the Orient is not expansion, for there is no room for free manhood to grow there. It is useless to disclaim Imperialism when we are red-handed in the very act. Annexation without Imperialism is sheer anarchy. Annexation with Imperialism may be much worse, for so far as it goes it means the abandonment of democracy. The Union page 28 cannot endure "half slave, half free," half republic, half empire We may make vassal tribes of the Filipinos, but never free States in the sense in which the name "State" applies to Maine, Iowa, or California. The Philippines can have no part in the Federal Union Their self-government must be of a wholly different kind, the outgrowth of their own needs and dispositions. What they need is not our freedom, but some form of paternal despotism or monarchy of their own choosing which shall command their loyalty and yet keep them in peace.

"It is no man's duty to govern any other man." Still less is it a nation's duty to govern another nation. All that the weak nations ask of the strong is: "Stand out of my sunlight and let me alone."

We have never adopted the theory that each small nation must be tributary to some other, and that each nation of the lazy tropics must have slave drivers from Europe to make its people work.

Imperialism means such a control of tropical lands that they may be economically productive or that their doors may be thrown open to commerce. It is a definite business, difficult and costly, with few rewards and many dangers. It is fairly well understood by some of those engaged in it. It has been successfully conducted under certain very narrow lines by Great Britain and by Holland, although both countries have the record of many failures before they learned the art. Germany has tried it for a little while, as have also Japan and Belgium, none of these with successful results. Spain is out of the business in final bankruptcy and her assets are in our hands for final disposition. France has made failures only, and this because she has held colonies for her own ends, regardless of their own

"No soonar," says Lionel Dècle, "was the island (of Madagascar) in the hands of these (French colonial leaders) than they closed it to all foreign prospectors. They imposed prohibitive duties on all foreign goods, keeping the country for the French colonists that never came, and that never will come."

Control of the tropics has none of the glories we vulgarly associate with imperial sway. Its details are trivial, paltry and exasperating in the last degree. The more successful as to money, the more offensive to freedom. In some regions, as Guiana, no nation has yet accomplished anything either in bringing civilization or in making money, while in Java and Trinidad the results, however great, have been financial or commercial only. Every dollar made in Java has been blood money, red with the blood of Dutch soldiers on the one side and with that of the Malay people page 29 on the other. In Jamaica, the abolition of slavery marked the end of industrial prosperity.

The voice of common British opinion is that it is our turn to take a hand in the control of the tropics. This idea is assumed in Kipling's appeal, "Take Up the White Man's Burden," and the real force of his verse is a warning that there is no easy way to success. The motive is not glory, but the profit to the world. It is our duty, with the others, to share the burden of tropical control that we may increase the wealth and commerce of the nations. There is some reason in this appeal. It is a business we cannot wholly shirk. I maintain, however, that so far as we are concerned, this is a matter purely for individual enterprise. The American merchant, missionary, and miner have taken up the white man's burden cheerfully; the American Government cannot.

"A certain class of mind," says Mr. Charles T. Lummis, "froths, at the bare suggestion that the United States cannot 'do anything any other nation can.' Well, it cannot—and remain United States. A gentleman has all the organs of a blackguard. But a gentleman cannot lie, steal, bully nor ravish. A republic cannot be a despotism. The Almighty himself cannot make two mountains without a valley between them. The one would cease to be a republic; the other would cease to be two mountains. It is no more to the reproach of the United States that it cannot be a tyrant than to God's shame that He cannot be a fool."

I notice that not one of our tried friends in England, men like Bryce, Morley, and Goldwin Smith, who understand our spirit and our laws, urge the holding of the Philippines. In England, as in America, the call to hold the Philippines is mainly that of the jingo and the politician, the reckless and conscienceless elements in the public life of each nation joining hands with each other.

The white man's burden, in the British sense, is to force the black man to support himself and the white man, too. This is the meaning of "control of the tropics." The black man cannot be exterminated at home as the red man can; therefore, let us make him carry double. The world needs all that we can get out of him. This may be all the better for the black man in need of exercise, but it is the old spirit of slavery, and its disguise is the thinnest.

Our Monroe Doctrine pledges us to a national interest in the tropics of the New World. This is because throughout the New World American citizens have interests which our flag must protect. In matters of legitimate interest no nation has been less isolated than America; but our influence goes abroad without our armies. Force of brains is greater than force of arms, more worthy and more lasting. page 30 Of all the recent phases of American expansion the most important and most honorable is that which is called the "peaceful conquest of Mexico." We hear little of it because it sounds no trumpets and vaunts not itself. The present stability of Mexico is largely due to American influences. Every year American intelligence and American capital find better and broader openings there. In time, Mexico shall become a republic in fact as well as in name, side by side in the friendliest relation with her sister republic of broader civilization. It is not necessary that the same flag should float over both. If one be red, white, and blue, let the other be green, white, and red—what matter? The development of Mexico, the "awakening of a nation," is thus a legitimate form of expansion. It is not a widening of governmental responsibility, but a widening of American influence and an extension of republican ideas. The next century will see Mexico an American instead of a Spanish republic, and this without war, conquest, or intrigue.

The purpose of the Monroe Doctrine is not to keep the European flag from America. Its function is to prevent the extension here of European colonial methods, the domination of weak races by strong, of one race for the good of another, of the principle of inequality of right which underlies slavery.

The spread of law and order, respect for manhood, of industrial wisdom and commercial integrity, this is the true "white man's burden," not the conquest and enslavement of men of other races. Expansion is most honorable and worthy if only that which is worthy and honorable is allowed to expand. The love of adventure, a precious heritage of our race, may find its play under any flag if it cannot honorably take our own to shelter it.

The world of action is just as wide to-day as it ever was, and if the red, white, and blue floated over every foot of it, it would be no

If after our conquest of Mexico, while our flag floated over Chapul-tepee, we had never hauled it down but had seized the whole land, we should have gained nothing for civilization. The splendid natural development of the country by which, in Diaz's own words, it has become "the germ of a great nation," would have been impossible under our forms, as under the imperial forms of Napoleon and Maximilian, The modern growth of Japan would never have taken place had she, like India, been numbered with England's vassals. A nation must develop from within by natural processes if it is to become great and permanent.

"The silent, sullen peoples, 'half devil and half child," shall "weigh us and our God," not by our force of arms nor by our page 31 accuracy of aim, but by our loyalty to the sense of justice which exists even under a dusky skin.

But some urge that we must hold far-off colonies, the farther the better, for the sake of our own greatness. Great Britain is built up by her colonies. "What does he know of England, who only England knows?"

"Just pride is no mean factor in the state,

The sense of greatness makes a people great."

The grandeur of Rome lay in her colonies, and in her far and wide extension must be the greatness of the United States.

But the decline of Rome dates from the same far and wide extension. Extension for extension's sake is a relic of barbarous times. An army in civilization must exist for peace not for war, and it should be as small as it can safely be made. A standing army means waste, oppression, and moral decay. Carlyle once said something like this, "It is not your democracy or any other 'ocracy that keeps your people contented. It is the fact that you have very much land and very few people." But this is not half the truth. The main reason of our prosperity is our freedom from war. Our farmer carries no soldier on his back. We fear no foreign invader because we invite none. Were the people of the continent of Europe once freed from the cost of militarism, their industrial progress would be the wonder of the ages. As it is they are ground down by worse than medieval taxation. A French cartoon represents the farmer of 1780 with a feudal lord on his back. The French farmer of 1900 is figured as bearing a soldier, then a politician, and on the back of these a money-lender. Without these, industry would buy prosperity and prosperity contentment; with contentment would rise new hope. The hopelessness of militarism is the basis of European pessimism; men see no end to the piling up of engines^* of death. Were the continent of Europe freed from killing taxation, England could no longer hold her primacy in trade. War has destroyed the life of her rivals. Could bankrupt Italy disband her armies and sink her worthless navies the glories of the golden age would come again. Could France cease to be militant she would no longer be decadent. If politics in the army is fatal to military power the army in politics is fatal to the State. No nation

^* "The forces of darkness," says Dr. Edward Alsworth Ross, "are still strong and it seems as if the middle ages would swallow up everything won by modern struggles. It is true that many alarms have proved false, but it is the steady strain that tells on the mood. It is pathetic to see on the Continent how men fear to face the future. No one has the heart to probe the next decade. The people throw themselves into the pleasure of the moment with the desperation of doomed men who hear the ring of the hammer on the scaffold."

page 32 can grow in strength when its bravest and best are each year devoured by the army. This has gone on in southern Europe for a thousand years. It is the chief cause of the decline of the Latin nations.

There is no doubt that military selection is the most insidious foe to race development. The destruction of the brave in the Roman wars finally, according to Otto Sech, left the Romans a race of "congenital cowards." In proportion as a nation succeeds in war, it must lose its possibility of future success in war or peace. The greatest loss to America in her Civil War rests in the fact that a million of her strongest, bravest, most devoted men have left no descendants. Such loss has gone on in Europe since war began. If we cannot stop fighting, civilization will have nothing left worth fighting for.

The terrible wastes of war are recognized by Great Britain. These she has tried to minimize by letting alone everything which does not relate to commerce. She has ceased to hope for the impossible and has come down to business principles. The British Empire is a huge commercial trust. England has no illusions. She "neither fears nor admires any nation under heaven." She never fights save when she is sure to win and to throw the costs on her opponent. She has secured all points of real commercial advantage and is making the most of the ignorance and folly of those who strive to emulate her.

Great Britain expands where order and trade extend. Our expansion demands one thing more, equality of all men before the law. All expansion of our boundaries brought about by honorable means and carrying equal justice to all men, I, for one, earnestly favor. To that limit, and that only, I write myself down as a "rank expansionist." I see no honor in our seizure of the Philippines, nor prospect of justice in our ultimate rule.

Our British friends speak of the smoothness of their colonial methods, especially in the Crown colonies, which Parliament cannot touch. Everything runs as though newly oiled and the British public hears nothing of it. Exactly so. It is none of the public's business, and the less the public has to say the less embarrassment from its ignorant meddling. The Colonial Bureau^* belongs to the Crown, not to the people. The waste and crime and bloodshed do not rest on their heads. But we are not ready for that kind of adjustment. Our Executive is a creature of the public. We have no governmental affairs which are sacred from the eyes or the hand of the people. "Govern-

^* In the journals, to-day, I see a record of a question addressed in Parliament to the British Minister of Finance. "This is the question of government with government," said he, in refusing to answer. In other words, imperial affairs in England are none of the people's business. If they were, there would be fewer of them.

page 33 ment of the people, for the people, and by the people" implies that the people are to be interested in all its details; every one to the least and the greatest, even at the risk of destroying its smoothness of operation. Hence, colonial rule as undertaken by us must be marred by vacillation, ignorance, incompetence, parsimony, and neglect. All these defects appear in our foreign relations as well. For the reason of the greater intelligence of our people in public affairs, our government will enter on the control of the tropics with a great handicap. The people want to know all about it. The Administration must keep open books and justify itself at every step. This will act against its highest efficiency. The forms of self-government are not adapted to the government of others. The very strength of the Republic unfits it for complicated tasks, because its power can be brought at once into effect only as the people understand its purposes. Popular government and good government are two very different things. Often they are for generations not on speaking terms with each other.

The advantages of sound nationality over strong government were the subject of the fullest discussion a hundred years ago. The feeble rule of democracy is the strongest of all governments when it has the force of the popular will behind it; when this fails it is paralyzed as all government should be. A monarchy is more effective in foreign affairs and calls out better service than democracy. If that were all we might revert to monarchy and close the discussion. But that is not all, and every move toward centralization costs on the other side. The essential fact of monarchy is not the presence of the king, but the absence of the people in all large transactions.

This subject has been ably discussed by Goldwin Smith, who calls special attention to our want of governmental apparatus for the control of dependencies. That we cannot have such apparatus most other British writers have failed to note. Imperialism demands the powers of an emperor. "The British Crown, for the government of the Indian Empire, has an imperial service attached to it as a monarchy, and separate from the services which are under the immediate control of Parliament. British India, in fact, is an empire by itself; governed by a Viceroy who is a delegate of the Crown, exempt as a rule from the influence of home politics and reciprocally exercising little influence over them. Before the Mutiny, which broke up the army of the East India Company, India was still the dominion of that Company; and the transfer of it to the Crown, though inevitable, was not unaccompanied by serious misgiving as to the political consequences which might follow. Even for the government of other dependencies Great Britain has men like the late Lord Elgin, page 34 detached from home parties and devoted to the Imperial Service, In her dependencies Great Britain is, in fact, still a monarchy though at home she has become practically a republic. In the case of the United States it would seem hardly possible to keep the Imperial Service free from political influence, or, reciprocally, to prevent the influence of the empire on politics at home. Imperial appointments would almost inevitably be treated as diplomatic appointments are treated now."

"In what, after all," continues Goldwin Smith, "does the profit or bliss of imperial sway consist? The final blow has just been dealt to the miserable and helpless remnant of that empire on which, in the day of its grandeur, the sun was said never to set, and to which Spanish pride has always desperately clung. It may safely be said that not the expulsion of Moriscos or Jews, nor even the despotism of the Inquisition, did so much to ruin Spain as the imperial ambition which perverted the energies of her people, turning them from domestic industry and improvement to rapacious aggrandizement abroad. The political and religious tyranny was, in fact, largely the consequence of the imperial position of the monarchy, which, by the enormous extent of its dominions and its uncontrolled sources of revenue, was lifted above the nation."

In the conduct of the war and the peace negotiations which followed it we have examples of the conditions of colonial rule. At no step since the beginning has the American people been consulted. At no point has consultation been possible. In managing affairs like this there can be no divided councils. The responsible head must rule, and it matters not a straw what is the wish of the people who foot the bills. The only check on the Executive is the certainty that the people will have the last word. What you think or I think or the people think of the whole business cuts no figure whatever in the progress of events, because our opinion can at no time be asked. After all, we are not so much worried because we have not asked the consent of the people of the Philippines. It is because the American people have not been consulted. In a matter most vital to the life of the nation they are represented only by the rabble of the streets. When their consent should be asked they are told that it is too late to say, No!

But there are many wise economists who would make permanent just this condition of affairs. The certainty that success in colonial matters would take them absolutely out of the hands of the people is their argument for imperial expansion as opposed to democracy.

Through concentration of power in the Executive we may be able to make of Havana and Manila clean and orderly cities. Shall page 35 we not by similar means sooner or later purify San Francisco and New York? If martial law is good for Luzon or for Santiago, why not for Wilmington, or Virden, or even for Boston?

If military methods will clean up Havana and Santiago, why not use them for the slums of all cities? If it is our "white man's burden" to make the black man work in the tropics, why not make white men work outside of the tropics? If we furnish public employment in the tropics, forcing the unemployed to accept it, why not do the same with the unemployed everywhere? Why not make slaves of all who fail to carry the black man's burden of toil?

To be good, it is argued, government must first be strong, and the difficulties before us will demand and at last secure the strong hand.

Impressed by the weakness and corruption of popular government these economists wish, at any cost, to limit it. To decide by popular vote scientific questions like the basis of coinage, the nature of the tariff, the control of corporations, is to dispose of them in the most unscientific way possible. The vote of a majority really settles nothing, and a decision which the next election may reverse exposes us to the waste which vacillation always entails.

It is said that in the ideal of the fathers our government was not a democracy. It was a representative republic, and the system of representation was expressly designed to take the settlement of specific affairs out of the hands of the people. It was not the part of the people to decide public questions, but to send "their wisest men to make the public laws." Nowadays this ideal condition has been lost. The people no longer think of choosing their wisest men for any public purpose. They try to choose those who will do their bidding.

The daily newspaper and the telegraph carry to every man's hand something of the happenings of every day the world over. On the basis of such partial information every man forms his own opinion on every subject. These opinions for the most part are crude, prejudiced, and incomplete; but they serve as a basis for public action. The common man's horizon is no longer bounded by the affairs of the village, to be settled in town-meeting in accordance with the expectations of the fathers. He knows something about all the affairs of State, and as local affairs receive scant notice in the newspapers it is these which he neglects and forgets. The town-meeting has decayed through the growth of newspaper information, the introduction of the voter to broader interests—interests less vital no doubt to the average man but more potent to affect his fancy.

Having opinions of his own, however crude, on all public ques-tions, the citizen demands that his representatives should carry out these opinions. If he has, or thinks he has, a financial interest in any line of policy, he will vote for men whose interests are the same as his. In such manner Congress has become not an assembly of "the wisest men to make the public laws," but a gathering of attorneys, each pledged to some local or corporate interest, and each doing his best, or appearing to do it, to carry out lines of policy dictated by others. This condition the fathers could not foresee. The tele graph and the newspaper have brought it about. It has great disadvantages, but it cannot be helped and it is with us to stay.

Because of this condition economists of a certain type welcome all extensions of administrative functions. They would prescribe a dose of Imperialism to stiffen the back of our democracy. If we complicate the duties of government, if we plunge into delicate and dangerous foreign relations, our failures and humiliation will increase the demand for skill. The business of horse-stealing quickens a man's eye and improves his horsemanship. In such fashion the business of land-grabbing improves diplomacy. The old idea of representation by statesmen unpledged to any line of action will arise again. The choice of attorneys will be limited to local assemblies, and real leaders of parties will come to the front,

Such a change England has seen since her aggressive foreign policy forced upon her the need of eternal vigilance. Such a change makes for better government at the expense of popular choice. "This may not be republicanism," says Lummis, speaking of the work of Diaz in Mexico, "but it is business." The ruler of England is not the people's choice nor the choice of the Queen. He is the cleverest mouthpiece of the dominant oligarchy. It is currently said that British imperial experiences have caused the purification of British politics and the expulsion from them of the spoils system. For this statement there is no foundation in fact. It is through the growth of individual intelligence in a compact homogeneous nation that higher political ideals have arisen. The conquest of tropical races has accompanied this, but has been in no degree its cause.

In the British system, the Parliament of the people is behind the premier, who can act as freely, as boldly and as quickly as he dare. In the Federal system, the Congress of the people stands first and the President acts behind them and by their permission. Only in time of war are these conditions reversed and then only partially. For this reason the severe blame visited on the President for failure to declare any tangible policy in regard to the Philippines is only par.

A movement toward the British system would require changes in the Constitution, a movement toward further centralization and toward greater party responsibility. This its advocates usually recognize. "It may not be republicanism, but it is business." Such a change, it is maintained, would soon do away with our poisonous and shameful spoils system. It would insure strong, sound, and dignified party administration, because anything short of this would ruin party or country. Under such conditions no paltry place-hunter could hold a seat in our Cabinets, no weakling could thrust himself forward in our Civil Service, and our Presidents would be men who would make public opinion, never supinely wait for it, still less accept its vulgar counterfeit of mob opinion.

With such conditions in the Executive, and an automatic, persistent, competent colonial service, with army and navy to match, we could dictate to the whole earth. We could have our hand in the affairs of all nations, and the diplomacy of all the world would tremble at our frown.

All this in its essence, it is claimed, is to return to the ideals of the fathers before Jackson's vulgarity corrupted our Civil Service, and before Lincoln's "bath of the people" led the common man to regard himself as the main factor in our government. "Of the people, by the people," were Lincoln's additions. The right word is "Government for the people," and by those who know better than the people how the people should be governed.

In this vein we are told that the people have been "debauched by freedom." They have come to fear the bugaboo of too much government, too much army. Because we are "debauched by freedom "we have lost our respect for authority, our respect for law.

Some of our historians now assure us that government by the consent of the governed was only a catch-phrase. We never meant what we said when we took these glittering generalities from the philosophers of France. We governed our Louisiana territory just as we pleased with these phrases in our mouths, asking no advice of the French Creoles. We never sought consent of the Indian. We override the will of the negro even yet. His vote is only a farce. We have never even asked our women, half our whole number, whether they consent to our government or not. All of this is petty quibbling. These exceptions only prove the rule. The principle holds in spite of temporary failures justified by local conditions or not justified at all. So far as women are concerned it is still, right or wrong, the theory of most civilized governments, ours with the rest, that women have no governmental interests at variance with those of men. They consent tacitly but constantly to be represented by page 38 their fathers, brothers, or husbands. Doubtless this condition is not eternal, but it exists at present, and no one can claim that "consent of the governed "is reached only by a formal vote.

As to this Lincoln once said: — "the framers of the Declaration of Independence meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, and revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness, and value of life to all peoples of all colors everywhere. " One year later, speaking at Philadelphia, he said that he would "rather be assassinated on the spot than to act in the view, that the country could be saved by giving up the principles of the Declaration of Independence." "Our own country," says Hosea Wilbur, "is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west by justice, and where she oversteps these invisible bounds, even so much as by a hair's breadth, she ceases to be our mother." Inside these boundaries our flag is the banner of freedom; outside it is the standard of the pirate. Whether on a stolen guano Mexican island or on a sugar plantation wrenched or bought from Spain, its truest friends shall be the first to haul it down.

Doubtless these imperialists are partly in the right. It is certain that the formation of a colonial bureau and a foreign bureau wholly outside of popular control would make, for the time at least, for better government and stronger administration. Doubtless needs like those of England will hasten British methods of meeting them. But government for the people and not of them has its weakness as well as its strength. The strength of democracy lies not in its apparent force. It lies latent, to be drawn on in times of real need.

Because of its latent power our great blundering democracy, slow in war and simple or clumsy in diplomacy, is strong above all other nations. It can safely try civic experiments the very thought of which, if taken seriously, would throw all Europe into convulsions. The imperial government is a swift express train which will run with great speed on a proper track, but which is involved in utter ruin by a moment's slip of mismanagement. The Republic is an array of lumbering farm wagons, not so swift nor so strong, but infinitely more adaptable, the only thing you can use on a farm.

The beauty of democratic institutions is that without the intelligent consent of those affected by them they will not work at all. All permanent government rests on acquiescence of the people but democracy demands more. It insists on their positive action.

The strength of empire, however disguised, lies in brute force and that alone. That of democracy lies in the self-control and the self-respect of its individual citizens. The work of Great Britain through the centuries has been to teach its people and its vassals the lesson of respect of law. It has been the mission of the United States to teach respect for manhood, a matter vastly more difficult as well as more important.

A nation self-governed is the most powerful of all nations, because she is at peace within herself, and being sound at heart she has taken the first step toward good government, a step by which the best government possible to men must be reached in time. Even the blunders and corruptions of democracy make for good government at last. When the people find out what hurts them, that particular wrong must cease. Even the spoils system with all its waste and shame has its educative value, and tremendous will be the educative value of the process by which it is at last thrown off. The reaction from the conquest of Luzon will save us from Imperialism for the next fifty years.

Democracy is always wiser than it seems. The common politician knows the weaknesses of the people and tries to profit by them. The true statesman knows the strength of the people and tries to lead it, and the results he attains are the marvel of the world. Such a leader of the people was Lincoln. He could touch the noblest springs in our national character. Such leaders will rise when occasion shall demand them. Meanwhile, the men are not wanting. Sound common sense and devoted patriotism are needed in all walks in life and are found there. The froth on the waves may fill our public offices, but the great deep is below them.

"Are all the common ones so grand,

And all the titled ones so mean?"

was asked in 1863 of the Army of the Potomac. "The common men so grand "though all the titled ones be mean is the experience of all democracy. It is far better and far safer than the reverse condition when only titled men are great and all the common men are mean. Such nations are like inverted pyramids resting on the strength of one man.

For a nation to be ruled by leaders may be considered as a survival of primitive conditions, when there was no politics save war. Then all men were warriors and the tribe was but an array with a camp-following of women, children, and civilians.

When militarism gives way to industrialism we have the rise of the individual man at the expense of the relative standing of his leaders; page 40 for leadership is necessary only as collective danger threatens, The rulers are transformed from leaders to agents. These are at first under democracy responsible to self-constituted managers demagogues, and bosses who usurp control when no imminence of danger forces the necessity of strong leadership.

From this transition stage, democracy must pass on to settled institutions and good service. In the stage which comes next, the intelligent citizen shall be the trust and head of political affairs with servants elected, appointed, or chosen by competitive examinations to do his bidding and carry out his will. "The citizen is at the head," says Walt Whitman, and President, Congress and Courts "are but his servants for pay." The decay of leadership must accompany the rise of the individual man.

Let us assume by way of illustration a few impossible things. Let us suppose that the Emperor of Germany should die suddenly, and that with him should disappear the whole royal family, the army, the judiciary, and all others in power with all the force over which they had control. Who can say what would happen next? Can we even guess at the map of the next new Germany?—for the German Empire has no strength in itself. It is strong in battle, because it owns millions of fighting men. It has no strength in the hearts of the people. The failure of the force of arms even for a day would mark

On even frailer basis rests the Republic of France. Could such good fortune befall her as the loss of her army and all others in power, no one could foretell her protean changes. If, perchance, the sceptre fell into the hands of the people, the new Republic of France would be very different from any she has ever yet seen.

If in Great Britain the same change could take place what should we see? If every official of whatever grade, all the army, and all the navy were swallowed in the sea can we forecast the result?

Evidently in England herself no great change would arise. Respect for law and respect for tradition are firmly ingrained in the English character. What had been would be established again, and the Commonwealth of England would lose not a whit of its power or stability. But what of the British Empire? Its scattered fragments could never be collected again. Ireland, held by force, would go in her own way, and her different factions would again repel one another. Self-government for Ireland means disunion of the Empire, and this the English statesmen know too well. India is no nearer England to-day than she was a hundred years ago. There is not one of her vassal nations which would not escape if it could. There is not one whose presence does not weaken the British Empire. Shrewd admin- page 41 istration has learned to count on this and to find out compensating advantages, A vast business on a small capital is the type of British dominion. No wonder England cherishes her relation to Canada and Australia, elder children of hers, who give her moral help but who take care of themselves. England dare not release Ireland from federal union, because only as a helpless minority can Ireland be controlled. On the other hand she dare not admit the rest of the empire to the same federation lest she be thrown into the minority herself. Sooner or later both these questions will become burning ones. When they are solved Great Britain will be no longer an empire.

"Gladly," says Dr. Woolsey, "would Great Britain limit her responsibilities if she could; but it would be construed as a sign of weakness, and she fears the consequences. She cannot let go." "Imperial expansion, "says Frederick Harrison, speaking of conditions in England, "means domestic stagnation. It swallowed the energies of Liberalism and bartered progress for glory." The fabric of Imperialism, whatever its form, is built in shifting sands. The only solid foundation for any government is "the consent of the governed;" and here lies the strength of the United States, the soundest government on the face of the earth. Not the wisest, not the most economical, most dignified, or most just, but the firmest in its basis, and, therefore, the most enduring.

At the close of the Civil War, when more than ever before in its history the nation was dependent on a single man, and he the wisest, bravest, tenderest of all, Lincoln was murdered. The land was filled with sorrow and distress, but there was no alarm in our body politic. It was left to Lincoln, says Brownell,

"Even in death, to give

This token for freedom's strife

A proof how republics live,

Not by a single life,

But the right divine of man

The million trained to be free."

Our government would have endured, even in that troubled time, had every official of every State fallen with Lincoln.

Should our whole body of officers, our army, our navy, perish to-morrow, all would go on as before. Some veteran of the Civil War, or some schoolmaster, perhaps, would take the chair and call the people to order. The machinery of democracy would be started, and, once started, would proceed in its usual way. We should not have Cuba nor the Philippines, but we should retain all that was worth keeping. This stability of administration would not arise from our respect for law. That feeling is none too strong among page 42 our "fierce democracy," Still less would it spring from respect for tradition. We don't care a continental for tradition. We should act on the common sense of the common man. To cultivate this common sense is the chief mission of democracy. In this it is effective, and for that reason our Republic is the strongest and soundest government under heaven.

"I have never learned," says John Brown, "that God is a respecter of persons." There is "God in our Constitution," not in name, but in fact, for by it "all men are equal before the law," which "is no respecter of persons." Men are men, whether white or black or brown or yellow. The British government rests on a foundation of inequality. Its rewards are titles of nobility which imply that the plain man is ignoble. The word law is written on its every page; the word justice occurs only as between equals. Neither the word nor the idea of justice finds place in England's dealing with other nations.

"How long will the United States endure? " Guizot once asked of James Russell Lowell. "So long as the ideas of its founders remain dominant," was his answer. Just so long as her government rests on the intelligent "consent of the governed." When it rests in part on force, no matter how wisely applied, in so far will it be unstable. A standing army contains the seeds of decay. As militarism grows democracy must die. But without the constant pressure of force of arms, law and order and industry have never in any high degree existed in the tropics. Mexico to-day is a land of law and order, but the soldier is everywhere. Every railway train in the Republic carries at least three rurales, or national guardsmen. Every flag station has two or three, and every considerable town has its battalion or its regiment. These soldiers are drawn from the body of the people; very many of them are ex-brigands, reformed to the higher use of the enforcement of law. "This may not be republicanism, but it is business." The conditions of law and order in the Philippines are just the same. You may use native soldiers if you like, but without force order cannot exist.

The cost of this whole business may be urged as an argument against annexation. It will appeal to our people as the discussion of the bill for the enlargement of the army plainly shows. The financial statements of Congress have proved the strongest arguments against persistency in folly. It is clearly evident that the cost of conquest or even military occupation of the Philippines is grotesquely in excess of any possible gain to the government. The whole trade of the Islands for five years, if we get all of it, would not pay for a second-class battle-ship. People who live in straw houses do not page 43 make international trade. We may open the way for individuals and corporations to grow rich, but the people can never get their money back.

No possible development of the Islands can profit the people at large. There are no openings in the tropics for the small farmer, none for the American laborer, or in general none for any of the rank and file of the American people; nor can any be made by any act of ours. We cannot alter the conditions of life in he Orient. The question of flag, other things being equal, affects neither commerce nor industry. Trade never "follows the flag "because it is a flag. Trade "flies through the open door" because it is a door. Men buy or sell wherever they can make money.

The whole argument that the needs of our commerce demand the occupation of the Philippine Archipelago is both fallacious and immoral. It is untrue in the first place, and unworthy in the second. The needs of commerce demand no act of injustice and they excuse none. The total cost of maintenance of our proposed government in the Philippines cannot fall short of $10,000,000 per year and may be far greater. Our actual trade with the Islands now amounts to less than $500,000 per year, imports and exports together, and the whole trade of the Philippines with all the world is less than $30,000,000. No form of government could increase this much, and, under republican forms it might fall off. The less compulsion, the less labor. Allowing a net profit of ten per cent on all transactions, a complete monopoly of Philippine trade would leave the people a debt of seven millions for every three millions our trading companies might gain. In time, perhaps, the outlook would be less unequal. Trade might increase, expenses grow less, but in no conceivable event would the people get their money back. The returns either in money or civilization would always be below their cost. The argument for commercial expansion has its roots in our experience of booming towns and has no value with careful financiers. The whole trade of all the tropics will, at the best, be but a trifling part of the commerce of the world. Certain drugs, dyes, and fruits, mainly natural products, with sugar, tobacco, coffee, and tea make almost the whole of it.

So far as San Francisco is concerned, she has not much to gain or lose from our actions in the Philippines. She will always be a noble city, a great city, but never an enormous one. She will not be the gigantic mart of the Orient, nor even the Chicago of the Pacific. The Pacific may be our ocean, but it is too wide to be an equal of the Atlantic. Besides, San Francisco has too many rival ports. She has little to sell but flour and fruit, and no ships to carry even these. page 44 The trade with Manila, consisting now of outgoing transports carrying troops and returning with coffins, will never make San Francisco rich. It is true that conditions may change, but no signs of improvement are visible yet.

Yet it is true that commercial Imperialism might pay if we were free to act as England would with her wisdom, her experience, and her selfishness; but only on a vast and generous scale, considering commercial results only, could we make her policy effective. The function of the British army and navy in these days is not glory nor dominion. It is to clear away the barriers to trade. When England subjugates a nation she lets it alone as much as she can. Interference means waste of men and money. She never meddles with the religion nor the forms of government of her vassals. The people may choose king, or president, or sultan, and each may conduct his own court in his own way, with all the gold lace and peacock feathers that his barbaric taste may demand. England does not care for this. On her coat-of-arms are these three words only, Volume of Trade.

All that England now asks of the nations she calls colonies is this, and this she gets, that there shall be law and order, and all doors wide open to the commerce of all the world. So long as other nations keep closed doors at home, England can undersell them in the markets of the world. Imperialism, then, as Lord Beresford truthfully insists, means with England simply this, Volume of Trade. All the rest is mere flummery. The sole purpose of the British navy, accident aside, is to hold the doors of the world open to British merchant ships. Except as an adjunct to an open door of commerce all foreign possessions are costly and ruinous folly. The maintenance of Algiers, Madagascar and the Indo-China as tariff-bound colonies for Frenchmen to exploit has wrought the financial ruin of France. The militarism these follies made necessary has wrought her civic ruin. But with Great Britain army and navy are but adjuncts used with marvelous skill toward one great purpose, Volume of Trade.

The United States cannot be thus turned into a vast machine for helping its manufacturers and merchants. She has many other interests, and the greatest are educational and moral.

To drop all this and plunge into the promotion of commerce she must cast aside all the checks and balances of her Constitution and to stand unhampered, just as England stands.

The British Government acts on the instant. Its only limitation is the confidence of the people. So long as it holds this by success there is no restraint on its achievements. One doubt or failure throws the power into the hands of the opposing party. This forces to the page 45 front the cleverest and strongest men in all England. It forbids incompetence in every branch of government. A paltry Minister of War, a scandal of embalmed beef, a rebellion which tact would have avoided, any of these things would throw the British Ministry out of power. So these things in England never happen.

Our government is not an organism which can think and act as a unit. It is simply the reflex of the people themselves; the mirror of the mass, with all its crudities and inconsistencies. It exists for the purpose of exalting men, not for developing industry or swelling the Volume of Trade. The British flag extends the trade of England because it insures local peace and clears away the rubbish of tariff which obstructs traffic. The Dutch flag helps the trade of Holland because it means enforced industrialism, slavery that pays its way. The American flag, outside of America, as yet means nothing; neither greater industry nor freer commerce, nor yet increased observance of law; our flag stands for something accomplished. To plant it anywhere cannot help our trade.

If we were to follow in England's footsteps let us see what we should have done. Let us begin with the war for Cuban freedom, though with England in our place there would have been no war. She would have found a way of saving Cuba for herself without humiliating Spain.

But the war once on would have been pushed on business principles. Our navy shows the British method. Our army suggests the f methods of Spain. Great Britain would have no scandal in her army because she would have no politicians there. There would have been no officials not trained to the profession; no colonels who had not earned their promotion by success. Severe training and faithful service give military precedence in England. Political services or favor of the Minister do not count. They find their reward in titles of nobility. Favoritism on the part of a Minister of War would throw the whole government out of power. In England, political scheming in army or navy or civil service alike stands on the plane of forgery or counterfeiting. The nation could not endure it and live.

The war once finished, peace would be made with the blade of the sword. No civil commission would be sent to wrangle over the details. They would be settled on the instant. Spain would be given a day to relinquish whatever England wanted, and England would speak her wishes in no uncertain tones. What England would do with these possessions is evident enough. She would put down rioting and brigandage, and she would employ the native soldiery to do it. She would press the strongest leaders into her service, page 46 humoring their vanity with titles and making her interests their own. She would let the people form whatever government their fancy chose, with only this limitation, all factions must keep the peace. To show what peace means she would knock down a fortress or two, or blow a few hundred rebels from her guns for an object lesson to the rest.

All this in England's case would have taken place long ago with the sinking of the navies of her foes, and once accomplished the door of commerce would be flung open to all the world. All this has its glories, it may be its advantages, and we have men enough who, with force in hand, could carry out its every detail. But it could not be done under our Constitution, nor under our relation of parties, nor under the administration now at the head of our affairs. To pause in its accomplishment would be fatal. To hesitate is to fail, and our opportunity, such as it was, as well as our imperial prestige, was lost when we made the leaders of the Filipinos our enemies.

"If ever," says Dr. William James of Harvard, "there was a situation to be handled psychologically, it was this one. The first thing that any European Government would have done would have been to approach it from the psychological side: Ascertain the sentiments of the natives and the ideals they might be led by, get into touch immediately with Aguinaldo, contract some partnership, buy his help by giving ours, etc. Had our officers on the ground been allowed to follow their own common sense and good feeling they would probably have done just this. Meanwhile, as they were forbidden by orders from Washington, no one knows what they would

"But it is obvious that for our rulers at Washington the Filipinos have not existed as psychological quantities at all, except so far as they might be moved by President McKinley's proclamation. * * * When General Miller cables that they won't let him land at Iloilo, the President, we are told, cables back: "Cannot my proclamation be distributed?" But apart from this fine piece of sympathetic insight into foreigners' minds there is no clear sign of its ever having occurred to anyone at Washington that the Filipinos could have any feelings or insides of their own whatever, that might possibly need to be considered in our arrangements. It was merely a big material corporation against a small one, the "soul" of the big one consisting in a stock of moral phrases, the little one owning no soul at all.

"In short we have treated the Filipinos as if they were a painted picture, an amount of mere matter in our way. They are too remote from us ever to be realized as they exist in their inwardness. They are too far away; and they will remain to far away to the end of the page 47 chapter. If the first step is such a criminal blunder, what shall we expect of the last?"

In grim and graphic fashion the clear-sighted editor of the San Francisco Argonaut sets forth the lines on which we may succeed in our schemes of conquest:

"If we persevere in our imperialistic plans, we shall have to rely upon native troops, for the reason that we can not get Americans. It is becoming more and more apparent that the youth of America will not volunteer for regular service in the tropics. We shall have to adopt the same methods pursued by European colonial powers if we continue in our imperialistic groove. We shall have to lay aside a great many scruples to which we now cling.

"For example, in the Philippines we may have to adopt Spanish methods in many ways. We may find it necessary to stir up one tribe of natives against another. Thus we could arm the Visayans, drill them, and ship them to Luzon. The Visayans hate the Tagalos, and we could set the two tribes to fighting together, and with the Visayans we might exterminate the Tagalos. Then, after the Tagalos were exterminated or subjected, we could stir up the fierce Moros of Mindanao against the Visayans. By judiciously fomenting strife we could exterminate the Visayans. There would then remain only the Moros, and probably we could get away with them ourselves.

"Here is another suggestion. The Spaniards have always found it necessary to use treachery, torture, and bribery in the Philippines. We shall probably have to do the same. The Anglo-Saxon methods of warfare do not appeal to the Malay. In pursuance of our imperialistic plans, it would be well to hire some of the insurgent lieutenants to betray Aguinaldo and other chieftains into our clutches. A little bribery, a little treachery, and a little ambuscading, and we would trap Aguinaldo and his chieftains. Then, instead of putting them to death in the ordinary way, it might be well to torture them. The Spaniards have left behind them some means to that end in the dungeons in Manila. The rack, the thumbscrew, the trial by fire, the trial by molten lead, boiling insurgents alive, crushing their bones in ingenious mechanisms of torture—these are some of the methods that would impress the Malay mind. It would show them that we are in earnest. Ordinary, decent, Christian, and civilized methods, such as the United States have always pursued in warfare, will only lead them to believe that we are weaklings and cowards, and that we are therefore to be steadily and sturdily combated.

"This may seem to some of the more sentimental of our readers like grim jesting. It is not. It is grim earnest. We assure them that the Malay race can be ruled only by terror. The Dutch page 48 can tell us a little about that from their experiences in Java. If there be a belief throughout the United States that these medieval methods are unfitted for us, then we shall have to retire from attempting to manage Malays. Malays are more than medieval. They hark back to the old, cruel days of primeval man. They are primeval rather than medieval, and if we want to manage Malays, we will have to do it in such ways that mere murder would be kindness."

Others say that China is soon to be looted by the powers of Europe. We wish to be on hand in the center of the fight to get a share of her land and trade. "I held the enemy down," said brave John Phoenix at San Diego, "with my nose, which I inserted between his teeth for that purpose." The vultures are already at the huge Mongolian carcass. Let the Eagle of Freedom join his fellow buzzards till his belly is full. Too proud to attack for ourselves, we will be close at hand to seize whatever the others may drop in the scramble. Why not? If we do not enter the struggle, they "will forever shut us out of the trade of China." What nonsense this is. Trade demands customers, and China will never have a better customer than the United States. To shut out anybody shuts out trade and the wrangling powers will bid for our markets, even if we leave to them the cost, the waste and the shame of the spoliation of China. To secure our share of the China trade we have only to be ready with something to exchange and ships to carry it. No nation can afford to subjugate China or to hold any part of it under military force. The sphere of influence is the open door. We have only to meet the open door with open door. To hold the Philippines will not make our commerce. Annex them and we shall be just as far from the goal as before. Bind them with our tariffs and we shall leave them practically no commerce at all. In any case, beyond the conveniences of a coaling station they do not enter into the Chinese

The argument that annexation is a violation of our Constitution does not impress me as conclusive. The Constitution is an agreement to secure justice and prudence in our internal affairs. Its validity is between State and State, and between man and man. The hope of this country lies in the intelligence, morality and virility of its people, not in the wisdom of its leaders, still less in the perfections of its Constitution. Constitutions are mere paper at best, unless they rest on the consent of the governed; unless the principles they represent are deep ingrained in the hearts of the people. If the United States is a nation she holds all national prerogatives. As a nation she may do whatever she chooses, if no other power prevents. The Constitution cannot test the wisdom of an action. She may page 49 annex barbarous countries, make war on the universe, or do any other wicked or foolish thing if the decision to do so keeps within proper forms of law. If, however, the Constitution offers an effective barrier against folly we shall soon find it out. We may be sure that no weapon against Imperialism will be left unused. Whether the letter of the Constitution forbids the acquisition of vassal provinces and rotten boroughs is an open question. But there is no question that the spirit is opposed to both. Had such conditions been foreseen, the annexation of either would doubtless have been formally forbidden.

I do not myself believe that the annexation of the Philippines will prove fatal to our Constitution or fatal to democracy. It will be endlessly mischievous, but it will not kill. The only poison that can kill is personal corruption, the moral rottenness of our people. The government by the people has wondrous vitality, and it has already survived gigantic crimes. It has outlived the monstrous blunder of secession and the headless spasms of "organized labor." It will outlive the aftermath of this war with Spain. "You cannot fool all the people all the time." This epigram of Lincoln's expresses the final strength of democracy. When the craze of the day has subsided and we have counted our loss in blood and treasure, we shall "walk backward with averted gaze to hide our shame." May this shame be enduring, for it is our guarantee that we shall not do the like again.

Of late the argument of annexation assumes a different form. It is justified because it is inevitable. Let us enter the movement to rule it. Some of our ablest students of political affairs argue in this fashion. The treaty with Spain is sure to be ratified. The Philippines will be ceded to the United States. Cession compels annexation. We are in the current—not of divine Providence nor of abstract destiny, but of inevitable public opinion. It is no more use to struggle against this than against winds and tides. "The King can do no wrong." All the prestige of power is with the administration. The American people are bent upon keeping all the territory won from Spain. It is all a great joke with them, and they will never stop to look at the thing seriously. The one-sided, freakish and chivalrous war has intensified the humor of the situation. As well argue against a cyclone as against a national movement. The American people are fearless and determined. They go ahead to the aim in view, and can take no backward step. They have solved many difficulties in the past by sheer headlong obstinacy. They will solve these difficulties in the same fashion. Let us join the procession. Let us not cheapen our influence by mugwumpery, but accept the page 50 inevitable, step to the front as leaders and handle the movement as best we can. Especially, they tell us, we must seize the occasion to emphasize the value of wise methods, and, above all, the vital needs of thorogh Civil Service reform.

But Civil Service reform is the special abhorrence of most of the leaders in the movement for annexation. The petty offices the Philippines promise are the basis of half their influence. The promises of the Administration lavishly scattered before nomination as before election are still far in excess of their fulfillment. Because of these outstanding promises our volunteer army has been cheapened and disgraced. Is there any promise of better things when civil rule in the Islands shall succeed martial law and the natives are turned over to "amateur experimenters in colonial administration?"

As a matter of fact we know that the pressure of the spoilsman has been and is greater than most Presidents can resist. The appointment of civil officials in the Philippines means the carnival of the spoilsmen. The United States must prepare itself for scandal and corruption in greater measure than it has ever yet known. Already such scandals are ripening at Manila, if we may trust the guarded language of our volunteer soldiers. The "embalmed" beef and the rotten commissaries are only the first instalment. What shall follow will not be more fragrant. The universities of California have more than one hundred men in the ranks at Manila to-day, men of culture and education, volunteers who rushed forward at the call of their country. Over these men are some officers brave and manly, a few of them even trained for their business. But those officers placed in authority over our patriotic soldiers are not always gentlemen. Too many of them are men to whom in civil life these same volunteers would not entrust their dogs. Who is to blame for this? Who organized the army to place political pull in place of the training of West Point? Had our volunteers been sent to Cuba or Manila with only corporals chosen by themselves and not an officer of staff or line, brave as some of the latter were, they would have made as good a record as is shown to-day. Officers competent to lead, willing to share privations, could accomplish anything with these soldiers. The tinsel sons of politicians were an insult to patriotism. The feeling of the volunteer army to-day is that of men insulted on every side. Compare this with the feeling of the men who came home from Appomattox in 1865: and the difference is not in the soldiers; it is the work of the spoilsman.

The American soldier will gladly suffer every hardship necessary in the work on which his country sends him. Under real officers, men whose special training makes their orders effective, men page 51 who are not afraid to live or die in his company, he will face every danger. But he will not willingly endure imposed hardships which serve no purpose and which he thinks due to carelessness or greed, nor under pasteboard officers who riot in luxury while he rots in the swamps.

Very soon the preacher, the economist, and the politician who now work together for expansion shall part company. The politician does not enter the Philippines to convert the heathen—unless, indeed, he can convert them into coin. He is there for the same reason that the Spaniards were, what he can make out of it. He has shown no signs of repentance in the matter of spoils. He has not joined the economist in devising schemes for a purified automatic colonial Civil Service. When he is mustered out from one place he must be cared for somewhere else.

Let me give an illustration or two from past experience. Some ten or twelve years ago Congress made an effort to protect the buffalo herd in the Yellowstone Park. To this end provision was made for a certain number of experts to act as Keepers of the Park. Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, wished to have these Keepers drawn from the ranks of trained naturalists, that the Park might be investigated while the animals were cared for. He asked me to nominate one of these and my choice fell on a young man, a person of eminent fitness, a doctor of philosophy in Zoology and a man of physical strength and woodcraft. He is now curator in the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago. When the Congressman from his district in Indiana learned of this choice he demanded the right to make it himself. This the appointing power dared not refuse, and the Congressman proceeded to redeem his outstanding promises. He first chose a man named C—n, who could not accept as he was serving a sentence in the Monroe County jail for larceny. His second choice, H—n, received the notice of his appointment while under arrest for riding a mule into a Martinsville saloon on Sunday morning. The mule was sober and would not go in. H—n died of alcoholism at Mammoth Hot Springs, and the buffaloes were slaughtered in the Absarokie Hills unprotected and unavenged.

In 1890 the Census Bureau asked me to send them an expert in fishery matters, at a low salary, below that offered in the classified service. I suggested the name of a young man from Kansas. At once the representative from Topeka claimed the appointment. He had promised the first plum that fell to his district to Major Somebody, and the Major must have it. So the Census Bureau was obliged to find in the Post Office Department a position at the same salary for the Major. This the Major declined in indignant disgust.

Meanwhile the census of the marine industries went on in the hands of men grotesquely incompetent. They were set to doing things that could not be done. They copied their figures from the magnificent census report of 1880. They made statistics at random, which were changed in the Bureau itself to tally with the records of 1880. The expert wrote me: "However little confidence the outside public has in our census figures, it is vastly greater than the confidence of anyone inside the Bureau." Finally he resigned in disgust. The resignation was not accepted. Then he brought charges of incompetence and falsification against the chief of the division and all his clerks and enumerators save one or two. On investigation all were dismissed and the expert was directed to compile the census of the fisheries for 1890 from the report of the Fish Commission for 1888. The sound and thorough work of Willcox and Alexander was thus utilized, but the whole manuscript of the Census Bureau on the same subject costing several thousands of dollars went into the waste basket. The courage of one clerk saved us from trusting for our information to a lot of "amateur experimenters" in statistics.

The appointment of drunken idlers to positions of trust was an every-day affair in all departments not many years ago. The Civil Service regulations have saved the minor positions, but at the same time they have intensified the pressure on those above the classified list. It is a maxim of our politics that anybody will do for positions outside the country or where newspapers do not send their reporters. All of last year the parlors of the White House were crowded every day with vulgar incompetents, and the Senators forced to stand as their unwilling sponsors. Every one familiar with the facts knows that the day of appointments for merit only has not yet come to Washington. I have purposely chosen two cases from another administration. I can parallel both of these from the present one. I see in Mexico the President and his advisers using every effort to select a wise and effective successor to Matias Romero, their accomplished and manly Ambassador at Washington. They have found, at last, such a man worthy of their country and ours. When we have chosen Ministers to Mexico, with one exception, Pacheco (himself a Spanish-Californian), not one of them has understood the language of the country to which he was sent. Fitness does not interest our politicians. The President at the best is almost helpless in the hands of the Congressional influence. The Administration has rarely tried to rise above it. In the international commissions only, useless and belated as most of them have been, can we see an effort to secure the best service possible. This fact we must recognize, and I do so with real satisfaction.

We may counsel together, economists and preachers; we may discuss in conventions the wise management of alien colonies; we may pass our virtuous resolutions; we may analyze the successes of the Dutch and the failures of the French, but our masters care not for our discussions and our resolutions. Even now the rough riders of our politics do not conceal their contempt of the whole business of good government. They are not in the Philippines "for their health," and our mugwump remonstrances are but as the idle wind which they regard not.

But the deed is not yet accomplished. I have tried to keep up with the progress of events, but I have never heard that we have constitutionally annexed any territories since we absorbed the little nation of Hawaii.

But if annexation is our final decision, the nation must begin at once its life and death grapple with spoilsmen in high places as well as in low.

We are told that the Philippine question is bringing our best men forward and that it therefore, furnishes a needed "stimulus to higher politics." But the higher politics has not yet been shown in our official action. It appears only in the earnest protest of all classes of men who look forward to the inevitable disaster. Their warning voices are outside of politics.

Admitting, however, that somewhere or other a reason exists for taking the Philippines; admitting that we have extinguished Aguinaldo somehow by gold or by sword, what shall we do with them?

Shall we hold them as vassal nations, subject to the sovereign will of Congress? Shall we make them territories, self-governing so far as may be under republican forms? Shall we devise tariffs and other statutes in their interest alone or shall we extend to them unchanged our protective tariff, our navigation laws, and our Chinese Exclusion Act just as they stand, without modification? At this point the Annexationists fall apart one from another. To hold the Philippines as a vassal nation is Imperialism. It is the method of Great Britain and Holland. Its justification is its success. It teaches respect for law, which is the first essential in industrial development. It holds the open door which is the first essential to commerce.

In promoting industrial progress in the tropics we have two successful models: wealth through enforced labor and through contract labor. Neither of these is slavery, as Mr. Ireland has pointed out, but the distinction is not one worth wrangling over. Java, with law and order, perfect cultivation, fine roads and great industrial activity, the fairest garden in all the world, furnishes the page 54 highest type of industrial success. The Island is one vast plantation owned by the kingdom of Holland. The natives have lost the title to the land and can not buy nor sell it. The natives pay their taxes to the government in work; the labor is obligatory and the obligation is enforced by law. In such manner the people are rescued from natural indolence. There is prosperity everywhere. The State derives a large revenue, the people are relatively contented, though a stranger to the idea of freedom. With politics the native has nothing to do. Missionaries are excluded from the island and the people have only to work as they are told, and enjoy themselves as they can. "This may not be republicanism, but it is business."

This is a way to a certain prosperity in the Philippines, but with us it is not a possible way. Our temper, our traditions, our machinery of government leave no room for such despotic paternalism. Even this method has failed in other Dutch colonies. It fails with the negroes in the Dutch colony of Surinam. In the midst of the coffee harvest the people go off to the woods for a month of devil worship. The spell comes on them and off they go. The only recourse of the plantation owners is to bring contract labor from China or Japan. This method has failed in Sumatra where the natives still hold out against the civilization that would make money out of their work.

Only through coolie contract labor has industrial success in any of the British West Indies been possible. The natives will not work continuously unless they are forced to work as slaves. But contract labor from the outside means the ultimate extermination of the

In tropical Mexico the industrial situation is not much better. The great haciendas in the sugar and coffee region, cheap as labor is (six to ten cents a day), are never sure of help when needed. Even now Señor Wollheim, Mexican Minister in Japan, is arranging for Japanese contract laborers to work the great coffee plantations of Chiapas and Tabasco. Enforced labor of the natives, contract labor from the outside—between these we must choose, if the tropics are made economically profitable. Both systems are forms of slavery, but slavery is endemic in the tropics. Freedom in the warm countries means freedom from work, but without work there is no wealth in

"If the Antilles are ever to thrive," says James Anthony Froude (as quoted by Mr. Ireland), "each of them should have some trained and skilful man at its head unembarrassed by local electe assemblies ... Let us persist in the other line, let us use the West Indian governments as asylums for average worthy persons to be provided for, and force on them black parliamentary insti- page 55 tutions as a remedy for such persons' inefficiency, and these beautiful countries will become like Hayti with Obeah triumphant and children offered to the devil and salted and eaten, and the conscience of mankind wakes again and the Americans sweep them all away."

Concerning Dominica, Mr. Froude says: "Find a Rajah Brooke if you can, or a Mr. Smith of Scilly . . . Send him out with no more instructions than the Knight of La Mancha gave Sancho,—to fear God and do his duty. Put him on his metal. Promise him the praise of all good men if he does well; and if he calls to his help intelligent persons who understand the cultivation of soils and the management of men, in half a score of years Dominica will be the brightest gem of the Antilles . . . The leading of the wise few, the willing obedience of the many is the beginning and end of all right action. Secure this and you secure everything. Fail to secure this and be your liberties as wide as you can make them, no success is possible."

This ideal of Mr. Froude is not without precedent in American Colonial affairs. The wonderful development of New Metlakahtla by William Duncan is the perfection of wise paternalism. Its failure lies in its certain collapse when the strong hand of the founder is withdrawn. The rule of the Pribilof Islands is the same in theory, and under competent men, as it is to-day, it works well in practice. But government by rulers not responsible to the people they rule is Imperialism. It is contrary to our ways and traditions, and our newspapers and politicians alike hasten to repudiate it. It is, in fact, industrial success at the expense of political development. The alternative is to bring the Philippines into politics, to endow them with the rights of our citizens, to give them the services of our own politicians and let natives and carpet-baggers work out their own salvation under our forms of law. I cannot imagine any government much worse than this might be, but it is safer than Imperialism, if these lands and these people become a part of our democratic nation. If we must choose, let us stick to republican forms. A folly is always better than a crime. Confusion, bankruptcy, and failure probably are better in the long run than Imperialism. They are more easily cured. America has ideals in civil government and to these she must be loyal. The Union can never endure "half slave, half free," half democracy, half empire. We cannot run a republic in the West and a slave plantation in the East. We must set our bondsmen free, however unready they may be for freedom. There is no doubt that our forms of law, the evolution of ages, are ill fitted for the needs of primitive men. Doubtless it would be better for themselves to work out their own destiny as we have worked out ours. page 56 But if they join us, they must take up with our fashions because we cannot adapt ourselves to theirs.

The Anglo-Saxon is, doubtless, the grandest of races, pushing, effective, successful. But it is not the most lovable, the most considerate, nor the most just when it covets what another possesses Most Anglo-Saxon achievements are justified only by success. "The efforts of our Anglo-Saxon nations," says Professor Lewis G. Janes "to civilize inferior races by force have always been tragic failures. Witness New Zealand where about 40,000 Maoris survive out of 700,000 who were there a century ago . . . It is not the testimony of history that the best survive. The strongest and ablest resist and are killed off. Those lacking in vitality who supinely submit to the inevitable are the ones who survive ... It is the fate of all people on whom conditions of life are forced in advance of their functional development. Does the tragedy of the passing of these peoples bring any adequate compensation to the world? The sociologist and ethical teacher is compelled to say no. It brutalizes and depraves the conqueror. It perpetuates despotic methods of government. It prolongs the evil region of militancy. It debases labor and gives rise to class distinctions.

"The Maoris, the Hawaiians, the Filipinos, the Cubans, areall more competent to rule themselves than we are to govern them, judged by any test that implies their permanent betterment and survival as a people. We have begun at the wrong end in our efforts to civilize the world . . . The path of conquest is gory with the blood of victors and victims alike."

"True liking between colors is impossible," says the London Spectator. But this may depend on how the man of white color

Says Goldwin Smith: "If empire is to be regarded as a field for philanthropic effort and the advancement of civilization, it may safely be said that nothing in that way equals, or ever has equalled, the British Empire in India. For the last three-quarters of a century, at all events, the empire has steadily administered in the interest of Hindu. Yet what is the result? Two hundred millions of human sheep, without native leadership, without patriotism, without aspirations, without spur to self improvement of any kind; multiplying too many of them, in abject poverty and infantile dependence on a government which their numbers and necessities will too probably in the end overwhelm. Great Britain has deserved and won the respect of the Hindu; but she has never won, and is now perhaps less likely than ever to win, his love. Lord Elgin sorrowfully observes that there is more of a bond between man and dog than between Englishman and page 57 Hindu. The nativesgenerally having been disarmed cannot rise against the conqueror, and their disaffection is shown only in occasional and local outbreaks, chiefly of a religious character, or in the impotent utterances of the native press. But the part of the population which was armed, that is to say the Sepoys, did break out into what was rather an insurrection of caste than a military mutiny, and committed atrocities which were fearfully avenged by the panic fears of the dominant race. It is perilous business all round, this of governing inferior races. Nor is it true that the work is done better by the highest race than by one upon a lower level, to which it is not so impossible to sympathize or even fuse with the lowest. 'Some of the tribes of the Philippines are said to be as fierce as Apaches. If that is all Uncle Sam will handle them in his accustomed style.' Is not a warning conveyed in such words? Dire experience has shown that the character of the matter suffers as well as the body of the slave.

"War, the almost certain concomitant of empire, is alleged to have a more blessed effect on the internal harmony of nations. This we are told not only in the press, but free from the pulpit; some going even so far as to intimate that the restoration of national harmony was a sufficient object for this war. The moral world would be strangely out of joint if a nation could cure itself of factiousness or of an internal disorder by shedding the blood and seizing the possessions of its neighbors. War has no such virtue. The victories of the Plantagenets in France were followed by insurrections and civil wars at home, largely owing to the spirit of violence which the raids of France had excited. The victories of Chatham were followed by disgraceful scenes of cabal and faction as well as of corruption, terminating in the prostration of patriotism and the domination of George III. and North. Party animosities in the United States do not seem to have been banished or even allayed by the Cuban War. Setting party divisions aside, no restoration of harmony appeared to be needed, so far as the white population was concerned. Not only peace, but good-will, between the North and the South had been restored in a surprising degree. The Blue and the Gray had fraternized on the field of Gettysburg. It was to harmonize white and black that some kindly influence was manifestly and urgently needed. But all through the war and since the war American papers have been almost daily recording cases of lynching, sometimes of such a character as to evince the last extremity of hatred and contempt. The negro is lympathetic, apathetic, patient of degradation and even of insult. But San Domingo saw that he had a tiger in him; and when the tiger hroke loose, hell ensued. There has been at least one instance of the retaliatory lynching of a white man; and now we have page 58 a bloody battle of races at Virden. Why should the American Commonwealth want more negroes?"

It is said that we must conquer Aguinaldo because he in turn is unable to subdue the rest of the four hundred or fourteen hundred islands. We tolerate two republics in Hayti and five in Central America. What matter if two or three exist in the vast extent of the Philippine Archipelago? What business is that of ours? These wide-scattered islands never constituted one nation and never will The most of them were never in the hands of Spain, except in name. Outside of Luzon there are thirty-two different tribes, it is said, each a little nation of itself, each speaking a different tongue. So far from being "paralyzed by centuries of Spanish oppression" as the editor of the "Outlook" describes them, most of these wild folks have never heard of Spain. What harm if our "new-caught" vassal the Mohammedan Sultan of Sulu shall continue to rule his Mohammedan tribes in Mohammedan fashion? We must let him do it anyhow. We cannot do it any better. Why not a republic of Visayas as well as a republic of Luzon? If separate autonomy suits the people concerned why should we fight for unification? Do we believe that Spanish rule was better than freedom? These wild tribes must work out their own destiny or else go into slavery. Perhaps the latter is their manifest destiny. There is no reason why we should make it ours.

As I have said many times, the function of democracy is not to secure good government, but to strengthen the people so that they may be wise enough to make good government for themselves. Not long ago, at the Congress of Religions in Omaha, I had occasion to say:

That government is best that makes the best men. In the training of manhood lies the certain pledge of better government in the future. The civic problems of the future will be greater than those of the past. They will concern not the relation of nation to nation, but of man to man. The policing of far-off islands, the herding of baboons and elephants, the maintenance of the machinery of Imperialism—all are petty things beside what the higher freedom demands. To turn to those empty and showy affairs is to neglect our own business for the gossip of our neighbors.

Men say that we want nobler political problems than those we have. We are tired of our tasks "artificial and transient," "insufferably parochial," and seek some new ones worthy of our national bigness. I have no patience with such talk as this. The greatest political problems the world has ever known are ours to-day, and still unsolved—the problems of free men in freedom. Because these are hard and trying we would shirk page 59 them in order to meddle with the affairs of our weak-minded neighbors. So we are tired of the labor problem, the race problem, the corporation problem, the problem of coinage and of municipal government. Then let us turn to the politics of Guam and Mindanao, and let our own difficulties settle themselves! Shame on our cowardice! Are the politics of Luzon cleaner than those of New York? We would give our blood to our country, would we not? Then let us give her our brains. More than the blood of heroes she needs the brains of men.

"Insufferably parochial," the affairs of free men must ever be. The best government is that which best minds its own business. Our own affairs are always local and devoid of world interest. Only through usurpation and tyranny do governmental affairs attract the fickle notice of the world public.

The political greatness of England has never lain in her navies nor the force of her arms. It has lain in her struggle for individual freedom. Not Marlborough, nor Wellington, nor Grenville is its exponent. Let us say, rather, Pym and Hampden, Maine and Black-stone, Herbert Spencer and John Bright. The real problems of England have always been at home. The pomp of Imperialism, the display of naval power, the commercial control of India and China, all these are as li the bread and circuses," by which the Roman Emperors kept the mobs from their thrones. They kept the people busy and put off the day of final reckoning. "Gild the dome of the Invalides," was Napoleon's cynical command when he learned that the people of Paris were becoming desperate. The people of England seek for a higher justice, a worthier freedom, and so the ruling ministry crowns the good Queen as Empress of India.

Meanwhile, the real problems of civilization develop and ripen. They care nothing for the greatness of empire or the glitter of Imperialism. They must be solved by men, and each man must help solve his own problem.

The question is not whether Great Britain or the United States has the better form of Government or the nobler civic mission. There is room in the world for two types of Anglo-Saxon nations, and nothing has yet happened to show that civilization would gain if either were to take up the function of the other. We may not belittle the tremendous services of England in the enforcement of laws amid barbarism. We may not deny that every aggression of hers on weaker nations results in at least some good to the conquered, but we insist that our own function of turning masses into men, of "knowing men by name," is as noble as the function of the open door. The real "white man's burden" is not the control of delinquent and de- page 60 pendent races, the turning of indolence into gold. It is the deveopment of what is sound and sane in human nature, the elimination of war and corruption by the force of healthy manhood Better for the world that the whole British Empire should be dissolved as it must be late or soon,^* than that the United States should forget her own mission in a mad chase of emulation. He reads history to little purpose who finds in Imperial dominion, for dominion's sake, a result, a cause, or even a sign of national greatness.

We may have navy and coaling stations to meet our commercial needs without entering on colonial expansion. It takes no war to accomplish this honorably. Whatever land we may need in our business we may buy in the open market as we buy coal. If the owners will accept our price it needs no Imperialism to foot the bills. But the question of such need is one for commercial experts, not for politicians. Our decision should be in the interest of commerce, not of sea power. We need, no doubt, navy enough to protect us from insults, even though every battle-ship Charles Sumner pointed oat fifty years ago, costs as much as Harvard College, and though schools, not battle-ships, make the strength of the United States. We have drawn more strength from Harvard College than from a thousand men-of-war. Once Spain owned some battle-ships as many and as strong as ours, but she had no men of science to handle them. A British fleet bottled up in Santiago or Cavite would have given a very different account of itself. It is men, not ships which make a navy. It is our moral and material force, our brains and character and ingenuity and wealth that makes America a power among the nations, not her battle-ships. These are only visible symptoms, designed to impress the ignorant or incredulous. The display of force saves us from insults—from those who do not know our mettle.

Annexationists now admit that the seizure of the Philippines is a "leap in the dark." But this is not the truth. Every element in the matter is known, and well known, to every student of political science. Our excellent commission can bring us no new facts. What we do not know is which way Congress may decide to leap. Between military rule and democratic anarchy there is all the difference in the world, and the degree of our final disappointment depends on our policy as to conciliation, taxation, and the control of the Civil Service.

Just when shall we begin democratic rule in the Philippines? How shall we make it work with a people alien and perverse, who

^* "England must take all her colonies inlo political copartnership (of taxation and of responsibility) or else abandon them, or in the end be crushed by the burden of their care."

page 61 have no Anglo-Saxon instincts and no relation to our history? It will take some time, some say 20 years, some 500, of military discipline to prepare them to do their part as citizens of the United States, their part in governing us. Military rule is offensive and costly. The longer it endures the less fitted are the people for civic independence. Are we ready to meet the expense? Some say that we must wait till the Anglo-Saxon is in the numerical majority. That time will never come. With every rod of Luzon soil marked by an Anglo-Saxon grave, the living Anglo-Saxons would be a hopeless minority.

If we go further into details of control of the tropics we shall see that difficulties accumulate. When we consider a tariff policy for the Philippine Islands we find ourselves at once between the devil and the deep sea. The "open door" is the price of England's favor, or rather it is the price of the approval of England's ruling politicians. It is the price of our own commerce. A generous policy as to foreign trade is essential to any kind of prosperity. But the open door to commerce marks the doom of our protective system. It is left for Imperialism to give the death blow to Protectionism. The open door places the veto on our schemes for Asiatic exclusion. To open the doors of the Orient is to open our doors to Asia as well. To do or not to do is alike difficult and dangerous. The feeling that unless we can exploit the Islands and ultimately exterminate their inhabitants we do not want them at all is growing, especially in humanitarian circles. The dead hand of monasticism already holds a great part of Luzon. This we cannot tolerate for it was the head and front of Spanish oppression, nor by our Constitution can we remedy it. We are bound to respect the rights of property, however acquired. Our sole remedy for any ill is freedom. For these problems I see no solution, nor indeed should we hope for any. If the Administration should formulate any policy whatever, two-thirds of the expansionists would repudiate it. There is no scheme on which we can agree which can be made to work.

"Something between an American territory and a British colony," we are told, is to be their final condition. A territory is a waiting State; a colony is land held under martial law or in any other way for the good of trade. To work for something between these is to fail on every hand. As matters are, we shall fall short of Imperialism. On the other hand, we shall fail to give justice. The final result will be a hybrid military imperial-democratic occupation, unworthy the name of government, the laughing stock of the monarchy, the shame of democracy. Toward such a condition the movement of events is swiftly rushing us.

I note in the journals that the Secretary of the Treasury in his estimates takes no account of the revenue to be derived from Cuba and the Philippines. For this the papers justly praise his wisdom. There can be no real revenue from these sources. The only income which any people can receive from colonies is through increase of trade. This goes into private hands but finally swells the wealth of taxables. Since her experience in 1776, England has never taxed her colonies. The more worthless islands we undertake to conquer and rule the further are we from a favorable balance of accounts.

We now come to the final question: If we take the Philippines, what will they do to us?

If we fail, they will corrupt and weaken us. If we succeed and continue our success, they will destroy our national ideals. To rule them as a vassal nation is to abandon our democracy, to introduce into our government machinery which is not in the people's hands. Shall we handle our vassals through the President, through Congress, or through military occupation? Obviously military occupation, under the direction of the Executive, is the only possible way. Congress is too busy with other things. Paternalism degenerates into tyranny, and without the artificial stimulus of honor and titles which England so lavishly uses tyranny becomes corruption and neglect.. To admit the Filipinos to equality in government is to degrade our own citizenship with only the slightest prospect of ever raising theirs. It is to establish rotten boroughs where corruption shall be the rule and true democracy impossible. The relation of our people to the lower races of men of whatever kind has been one which degrades and exasperates. Every alien race within our borders is, to-day, an element of danger. When the Anglo-Saxon meets the Negro, the Chinaman, the Indian, the Mexican as fellow-citizens, equal before the law, we have a raw wound in our political organism. Democracy demands likeness of aims and purposes among its units. Each citizen must hold his own freedom in a republic. If men cannot hold their rights through our methods our machinery runs over them. The Anglo-Saxon will not mix with the lower races. Neither will he respect their rights if they are not strong enough to maintain them for themselves. If they can do this they cease to be lower races.

Between Imperialism on the one hand and assimilation on the other, are all unwholesome possibilities. An efficient colonial bureau would be as in England an affair of the Crown, its details out of the people's hands. An inefficient one would be simply spoils in the hands of future Tammanies. Unless represented in Congress and potent in party conventions outlying possessions will be wholly neg- page 63 lected. When the newspaper correspondents are called home nobody cares what goes on in Cuba or Manila. We have not yet framed a code of laws for Hawaii or Alaska.

With the war in Luzon a certain class of obligations have arisen. These should be met in manly fashion. But the final result should not be a Philippine State, which shall rule itself and help rule us. Still less do we want an oligarchy of sugar syndicates, or a rule by military force, or a carpet-bag anarchy like that which once desolated the South, nor the equal corruption of rule under agents and proconsuls sent out from Washington. These alternatives are all abhor rent, and we see no other save that of chronic hopeless guerilla warfare, the condition in Luzon to-day, unless we recognize Philippine independence. This has its embarrassments, too, but they are honorable ones and can leave no disgrace or regret.

The establishment of a protectorate over the Philippines has many difficulties. It is on the one hand a scheme for finally seizing the Islands, on the other a device to let them go easily. If we assume unasked responsibilities for them, they will be reckless in making trouble. A protected republic is the acme of irresponsibility. Its politicians may declare war against neutral nations, solely "to see the wheels go round." As matters now stand we have no other course before us, and the blunders in dealing with Aguinaldo have made this course not easy. The protectorate is favored by the best judgment of the Filipinos themselves. They ask the help and sympathy of America.

Ramon Reyes Lala, a full-blooded Filipino, born in Luzon but educated in England, an American citizen of standing in New York, is quoted as saying:

"Although I believe we have a great future, I cannot disguise to myself the fact that we are not yet ready for independence. More especially because the Filipinos have not had the preparation for self-government possessed by the founders of the American Republic. And I apprehend that, intoxicated with their new-found liberty, the Filipinos might perpetrate excesses that would prove fatal to the race. I feel this all the more when I consider that the revolutionary leaders, Aguinaldo and his companions, though fervent patriots, do not represent the best classes of my countrymen, who, almost without exception, are for a protectorate, or for annexation.

"And it is this that I, too, a Filipino, desire most ardently. Give us an American protectorate; a territorial government; the judiciary, the customs, and the executive in the hands of Federal officials; the interior and domestic administration in the hands of the Filipinos themselves; and their self-selected officials will rule under- page 64 standingly and well without friction, which would be wholly impossible for alien functionaries begotten of a Western civilization.

"Of you, Americans, I, a Filipino, therefore, beg to not leare my countrymen as you found them I You cannot, in humanity, gire them back into Spanish bondage. You cannot, in justice, sell them to some European power to become subject, most likely, to another tyranny. They feel that they have fought for and won their own freedom, though acknowledging that you have facilitated it. They would, therefore, oppose such disposition to the bitter death. And a Filipino knows how to die! Let a thousand martyrs attest!

"You must help them, you who have so nobly assisted in freeing them; you must make it possible for them to attain their destiny—the realization of the national self."^*

As to our true policy of to-day I give the fullest endorsement to the sane words of Professor Janes, in substance as follows:

I. Let us carry out the solemn pledge made to the world with respect to Cuba, and retain military possession only long enough to enable the Cubans to organize a government of their own. We have no right to insist that our own, or any particular form of government shall be adopted by the Cubans, or to impose qualifications of

2. The same rule should be adopted in regard to Porto Rico.

3. This government should acquire no inhabited country which cannot be made self governing under our forms and ultimately received into the family of States. If, in the future, the people of Cuba and Porto Rico agree with those of the United States that annexation is mutually desirable, the matter can be decided, and in accordance with the provisions of their Constitution and ours.

4. Our policy in the Philippines should be exactly the same. Let the people fit their government to their own needs with the guarantee of our protection from outside interference for a time, at least.

5. Under no circumstances should distant territory inhabited by an alien population, not self-governing under republican forms, be retained as a permanent possession by the United States.

The immediate necessity of the day is set forth in the petition of the "Anti-Imperialist League:"

"They urge, therefore, all lovers of freedom, without regard to party associations, to cooperate with them to the following ends:

"First. That our government shall take immediate steps towards a suspension of hostilities in the Philippines and a conference with the Philippine leaders, with a view of preventing further bloodshed upon the basis of a recognition of their freedom and independence as soon as proper guarantees can be had of order and protection to property.

"Second. That the Congress of the United States shall tender an official assurance to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands that they will encourage and assist in the organization of such a government in the Islands as the people thereof shall prefer, and that upon its organization in stable manner the United States, in accordance with its traditional and prescriptive policy in such cases, will recognize the independence of the Philippines and its equality among nations, and gradually withdraw all military and naval forces."

There is nothing before us now save to make peace with the Filipinos to get our money back if we can, to get a coaling station if we must—and get out. These people mitst first be free before they can enter a nation of freemen.

I may quote in this connection the noble words of Carl Schurz:

"We are told that, having grown so great and strong, we must at least cast off our childish reverence for the teachings of Washington's farewell address—'nursery rhymes that were sung around the cradle of the republic.' I apprehend that many of those who now so flippantly scoff at the heritage the Father of his Country left us in his last words of admonition, have never read that venerable document. I challenge those who have to show me a single sentence of page 66 general import in it that would not as a wise rule of national conduct apply to the circumstances of to-day. What is it that has given to Washington's farewell address an authority that was revered by all until our recent victories made so many of us drunk with wild ambitions? Not only the prestige of Washington's name, great as that was and should ever remain. No, it was the fact that under a respectful observance of those teachings this Republic has grown from the most modest beginnings into a Union spanning this vast continent our people having multiplied from a handful to 75,000,000; we have risen from poverty to a wealth the sum of which the imagination can hardly grasp; this American nation has become one of the greatest and most powerful on earth, and, continuing in the same course, will surely become the greatest and most powerful of all. Not Washington's name alone gave his teachings their dignity and weight; it was the practical results of his policy that secured to it, until now, the intelligent approbation of the American people. And unless we have completely lost our senses, we shall never despise and reject as mere 'nursery rhymes' the words of wisdom left us by the greatest of Americans, following which the American people have achieved a splendor of development without parallel in the history of mankind."

The grave responsibility we have assumed, that of bringing freedom to the oppressed, calls us to act with conscience and with caution. We are no longer a child nation, a band of irresponsible human colts, but mature men, capable of wielding the strongest influence humanity has felt. We must shun folly. We must despise greed. We must turn from glitter and cant and sham. We must hate injustice as we have hated intolerance and oppression. We must never forget among the nations we alone stand for the individual man.

The greatness of a nation lies not in its bigness but in its justice, in the wisdom and virtue of its people, and in the prosperity of their individual affairs. The nation exists for its men, never the men for the nation. "I cannot help thinking of you as you deserve," said Thoreau; "O, ye governments! The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it or how small is its army—is that which establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice." The will of free men to be just, one towards another, is our final guarantee that "government of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth."