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 States 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 Luzon with their rebellious blood. "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.† * According to Capt. Gadsby, U. S. V. "Ambrose Bierce has given an account of this transaction cast in the lines of historical drama, and quite as true to fact as the best of such records. ft runs as follows: 666 McKinley-Have the goodness, sir, to remove your hand from the Phil ippine Islands. 66 6 Sagasta-But, Señor, you have no right to these Islands, and they are worth much money to me. "McK.-Very well. I mean to give you twenty million dollars for them. Sag-Twenty million dollars! God o' my soul ! And they are 66 6 worth a billion! "McK.-My friend, it is an axiom of political economy that property is worth what it will bring; the Islands will bring you exactly twenty millions. 606 Sag-From you? "McK.--From me. There are no other bidders. 66 6 Sag. But it is not an open market. If you would stand aside"McK.-I am not considering hypothetical cases to-day; we must 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 look at the situation as it is. The Islands are going to bring you twenty million dollars; that, therefore, is their value, and that is what I offer you. 666 Sag.-Madre de Dios!—what logic! Señor, you should have the chair of Dialectics in our great university of— “ ́ McK.—It is not impossible; our demands are not all submitted. "McK.-I trust in God for that. This war is, on our side, for Liberty, Humanity, Progress, Religion 666 Sag.-Porto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. He who is in God's pay does not starve. Will your Excellency permit me to indulge in a little logic? -not as good as that of your Excellency, but such as we can pick up in illiterate Spain. "McK.-Well. 66 6 Sag.-Either you have a right to the Philippines, or you have not. If you have, why do you pay for them? If you have not, why do you take them? And in such fashion the war for humanity comes to a business-like end. 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 Washington. 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. Even 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. 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 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 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 driven. 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 て |