time to put a stop to such crimes, if ever they are to be stopped. "America has been the great example and great hope of the lovers of liberty and humanity and self-government throughout the world. She started gloriously on her high career as a nation. Her great statesmen held her steadily to the principles upon which she was founded. She had more great and good chief magistrates in one hundred years than Great Britain has had in five hundred, and it would be the saddest picture in the book of time if she should continue in the downward road upon which she has now entered. Nothing but the most determined effort can save her, for it is as true of nations as it is of individuals, as the history of the world has demonstrated that ""The gates of hell are open night and day, "An English historian, in speaking of the despotism of Henry the Eighth, says: 'All sense of loyalty to England, to its freedom, to its institutions, has utterly passed away. The one duty which fills the statesman's mind is a duty to his prince, a prince whose personal will and appetite were overriding the highest interests of the state, trampling under foot the wisest councils, and crushing with the blind ingratitude of a fate the servants who opposed him.' "The distinction here made by the historian between loyalty to one's country and devotion to an unprincipled ruler, who would sacrifice the best interests of that country to gratify himself, should never be forgotten. It is the sup port, both in war and in peace, of the highest interests and most lasting good of the nation, and not the support of any ruler, that makes a man a true patriot. It is a delusion to suppose that, because the ruler or rulers of a country have plunged it into an unjust, disgraceful, and ruinous war, its citizens are bound to support them and are disloyal if they do not. The makers and supporters of unjust wars use the word 'patriotism' as a ruse to wheedle the people into the support of bad measures, which, as good citizens, they are bound to and would oppose if they were not frightened from their propriety by the dread of being called traitors for their opposition. Traitor is a dangerous word and should be handled very carefully. It is a two-edged sword and is applicable to rulers as well as ruled, when the occasion demands it. "I am a Russian and have denounced the arbitrary and unjust measures of the Czars of my country for many years —their war measures more than any others—and shall continue to do it as long as I live. If the words 'patriot' and 'traitor' are to be used here, the Czar is not the patriot and I am not the traitor. Henry the Eighth had Sir Thomas Moore beheaded for treason for refusing to support him in one of his arbitrary measures, but Moore was the patriot and Henry was the traitor. President Polk made the Mexican War and Mr. Lincoln opposed it and was called a traitor. If there was any treason in that business, I will submit the question to the people of the United States to decide who was the traitor. "The present chief magistrate of the United States made and is now prosecuting a war against the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, because they claim the right to freedom and independence and self-government and refuse to be governed by him. In doing this he is making war upon the Declaration of Independence, upon the constitution of his country, and upon the very principles upon which the government was founded. There are millions of people in the United States who believe that war is unjust and unconstitutional, and that in its ultimate effects and consequences it will be ruinous to their country. They therefore oppose it. For this the President, in his travels through the country, in his numerous speeches, intimates and implies that they are traitors; and some of his supporters say it plainly. If I were an American as I am a Russian, and the President should call me a traitor for opposing his foolish and wicked war, I would undertake, by word and pen, to make him carry to the end of his days the mark of being himself a traitor as plainly as if the word were branded upon his forehead. "It seems to me almost impossible that any considerable proportion of the American people can be imposed upon much longer by the enormous deceit, the stupendous lie, that this war is in favor of their country. It is against it and against everything good in the political, moral, and religious world. "It is understood that the President did not originally intend to claim the Philippines, much less to take them by what he called 'criminal aggression.' Their appropriation was urged upon him by politicians who thought their seizure would be popular, and by speculators and traders who expected to profit by it, and by well-meaning people who did not realize the enormity of the spoliation. It is also known that many of his friends strongly opposed it, and that one, Senator Sewell, of New Jersey, begged him, 'For God's sake, Mr. President, recall Dewey and let those islands alone!" There is a world of meaning in that exclamation. It is also believed, upon good evidence, that the robbery was finally decided upon by the influence of the British government. If this is true, it was a bad day for the world when that selfish monarchy induced the great American republic to adopt her cold-blooded and rapacious policy. "The citizens of the United States are the most intelligent people in the world. It is reasonable to conclude that the delusion under which many of them have been laboring, that patriotism requires them to support a war begun and waged for spoil and by the advice of another nation and for her benefit, must pass away. "It is to be hoped that their reason and sense of justice will return to them, that the principles of those great Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, will be reëstablished in the government of the United States, and that all its departments may be filled with men who will be faithful to their own country and devoted to the everlasting truths of their Declaration of Independence." GENERAL WASHINGTON'S SPEECH. General Washington was the next speaker. He said: "In discussing the importance of peace with all nations and the danger of being hurried into war by passion and preju dice, in my farewell address I stated that the nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity and adopts, through passion, what reason would reject. "That statement grew out of the relations of the United States at that time to foreign nations, but was intended as a general truth, and has been entirely applicable to this country since the beginning of the agitation against Spain. There was, to use Mr. Clay's expression, no 'dire necessity' for our war with Spain. Spain, England, or Russia had, upon principle, the same right to make war upon the United States for the cruelty with which we treated the negroes and the rob. bery we practiced upon the Indians, that we had to make war upon Spain for her robbery of and cruelty to the Cubans. “The President, according to his own public and positive statement, was opposed to that war. The quotation I have made fits the origin of the war with Spain as well as it fitted the occasion for which it was made. That war, in my opinion, was not the offspring of reason or principle or sound policy. Its professed object was to secure to the Cubans the blessings of freedom and self-government. There is not, at present, very much probability of any other fate for Cuba than a change of masters. But, however that may be, and however specious and plausible may have been the reasons for the war with Spain, and however much good citizens may have been misled by them, I think it is perfectly clear that the war upon the Filipinos, because they insist upon their |