Anti-Imperialism AssignmentStudents are to read three of the following articles and to critique three articles, citing the author or speaker's thesis and analyzing the support and argument the author or speaker uses. After completing the critiques the student should write an argument for the article with the strongest position. The student must defend their selection by discussing the different viewpoints and supporting their position with material from the articles.

First Speech Against ImperialismBy William Jennings Bryan

Extract from speech delivered at Trans-Mississippi Exposition, Omaha, Neb., June 14, 1898. Nebraska is ready to do her part in time of war as well as in time of peace. Her citizens were among the first to give expression to their sympathy with the Cuban patriots, and her representatives in the Senate and House took a prominent part in the advocacy of armed intervention by the United States.When the President issued a call for volunteers Nebraska's quota was promptly furnished and she is prepared to respond to the second and subsequent calls. Nebraska's attitude upon the subject does not, however, indicate that the state is inhabited by a contentious or warlike people; it simply means that our people understand both the rights conferred, and the obligations imposed, by proximity to Cuba.Understanding these rights and obligations, they do not shrink from any consequences which may follow the performance of a national duty. War is harsh; it is attended by hardship and suffering; it means a vast expenditure of men and money. We may well pray for the coming of the day, promised in Holy Writ, when the swords shall be beaten into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks; but universal peace cannot come until Justice is enthroned throughout the world. Jehovah deals with nations as He deals with men, and for both decrees that the wages of sin is death. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart government must, as a last resort, appeal to force. As long as the oppressor is deaf to the voice of reason, so long must the citizen accustom his shoulder to the musket and his hand to the saber.Our nation exhausted diplomacy in its efforts to secure a peaceable solution of the Cuban question, and only took up arms when it was compelled to choose between war and servile acquiescence in cruelties which would have been a disgrace to barbarism.History will vindicate the position taken by the United States in the war with Spain. In saying this I assume that the principles which were invoked in the inauguration of the war will be observed in its prosecution and conclusion. If, however, a contest undertaken for the sake of humanity degenerates into a war of conquest, we shall find it difficult to meet the charge of having added hypocrisy to greed. Is our national character so weak that we cannot withstand the temptation to appropriate the first piece of land that comes within our reach?To inflict upon the enemy all possible harm is legitimate warfare, but shall we contemplate a scheme for the colonization of the Orient merely because our ships won a remarkable victory in the harbor of Manila?Our guns destroyed a Spanish fleet, but can they destroy that self-evident truth, that governments derive their just powers, not from superior force, but from the consent of the governed?Shall we abandon a just resistance to European encroachment upon the Western hemisphere, in order to mingle in the controversies of Europe and Asia?Nebraska, standing midway between the oceans, will contribute her full share toward the protection of our sea coast; her sons will support the flag at home and abroad, wherever the honor and the interests of the nation may require. Nebraska will hold up the hands of the government while the battle rages, and when the war clouds roll away her voice will be heard pleading for the maintenance of those ideas which inspired the founders of our government and gave the nation its proud eminence among the nations of the earth.If others turn to thoughts of aggrandizement and yield allegiance to those who clothe land-covetousness in the attractive garb of "national destiny" the people of Nebraska will, if I mistake not their sentiments, plant themselves upon the disclaimer entered byCongress and insist that good faith shall characterize the making of peace as it did the beginning of war. Goldsmith calls upon statesmen"*** to judge how wide the limits stand betwixt a splendid and a happy land."If some dream of the splendors of a heterogeneous empire encircling the globe, we shall be content to aid in bringing enduring happiness to a homogeneous people, consecrated to the purpose of maintaining a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Distant Possessions: The Parting of the Ways

By Andrew Carnegie

From The Gospel of Wealth (New York: The Century Co., 1901). Originally published in the North American Review (Aug. 1898).

Twice only have the American people been called upon to decide a question of such vital import as that now before them. 

Is the Republic, the apostle of Triumphant Democracy, of the rule of the people, to abandon her political creed and endeavor to establish in other lands the rule of the foreigner over the people, Triumphant Despotism?

Is the Republic to remain one homogeneous whole, one united people, or to become a scattered and disjointed aggregate of widely separated and alien races?

Is she to continue the task of developing her vast continent until it holds a population as great as that of Europe, all Americans, or to abandon that destiny to annex, and to attempt to govern, other far distant parts of the world as outlying possessions, which can never be integral parts of the Republic?

Is she to exchange internal growth and advancement for the development of external possessions which can never be really hers in any fuller sense than India is British or Cochin China French? Such is the portentous question of the day. Two equally important questions the American people have decided wisely, and their flag now waves over the greater portion of the English-speaking race; their country is the richest of all countries, first in manufactures, in mining, and in commerce (home and foreign), first this year also in exports. But, better than this, the average condition of its people in education and in living is the best. The luxuries of the masses in other lands are the necessaries of life in ours. The school-house and the church are nowhere so widely distributed. Progress in the arts and sciences is surprising. In international affairs her influence grows so fast, and foreshadows so much, that one of the foremost statesmen has recently warned Europe that it must combine against her if it is to hold its own in the industrial world. The Republic remains one solid whole, its estate inclosed in a ring fence, united, impregnable, triumphant, clearly destined to become the foremost power of the world, if she continue to follow the true path. Such are the fruits of wise judgment in deciding the two great issues of the past, Independence and Union.

In considering the issue now before us, the agitator, the demagogue, has no part. Not feeling, not passion, but deliberate judgment alone, should have place. The question should be calmly weighed; it is not a matter of party, nor of class; for the fundamental interest of every citizen is a common interest, that which is best for the poorest being best for the richest. Let us, therefore, reason together, and be well assured, before we change our position, that we are making no plunge into an abyss. Happily, we have the experience of others to guide us, the most instructive being that of our own race in Great Britain.

There are two kinds of national possessions, one colonies, the other dependencies. In the former we establish and reproduce our own race. Thus Britain has peopled Canada and Australia with English-speaking people, who have naturally adopted our ideas of self-government. That the world has benefited thereby goes without saying; that Britain has done a great work as the mother of nations is becoming more and more appreciated the more the student learns of world-wide affairs. No nation that ever existed has done so much for the progress of the world as the little islands in the North Sea known as Britain.

With dependencies it is otherwise. The most grievous burden which Britain has upon her shoulders is that of India, for there it is impossible for our race to grow. The child of English-speaking parents must be removed and reared in Britain. The British Indian official must have long respites in his native land. India means death to our race. The characteristic feature of a dependency is that the acquiring power cannot reproduce its own race there.

Inasmuch as the territories outside our own continent which our country may be tempted to annex cannot be colonies, but only dependencies, we need not dwell particularly upon the advantages or disadvantages of the former, although the writer is in thorough accord with Disraeli, who said even of colonies: "Our colonies are millstones round the neck of Britain; they lean upon us while they are weak, and leave us when they become strong." This is just what our Republic did with Britain.

There was something to be said for colonies from the point of view of pecuniary gain in the olden days, when they were treated as the legitimate spoil of the conqueror. It is Spain's fatal mistake that she has never realized that it is impossible to follow this policy in our day. Britain is the only country which has realized this truth. British colonies have complete self-government; they even tax the products of their own motherland. That Britain possesses her colonies is a mere figure of speech; that her colonies possess her is nearer the truth. "Our Colonial Empire" seems a big phrase, but, as far as material benefits are concerned, the balance is the other way.

Thus, even loyal Canada trades more with us than with Britain. She buys her Union Jacks in New York. Trade does not follow the flag in our day; it scents the lowest price current. There is no patriotism in exchanges.

Some of the organs of manufacturing interests, we observe, favor foreign possessions as necessary or helpful markets for our products. But the exports of the United States this year are greater than those of any other nation in the world. Even Britain's exports are less, yet Britain possesses, it is said, a hundred colonies and dependencies scattered all over the world. The fact that the United

States has none does not prevent her products and manufactures from invading Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and all parts of the world in competition with those of Britain. Possession of colonies or dependencies is not necessary for trade reasons.

What her colonies are valued for, and justly so, by Britain, is the happiness and pride which the mother feels in her children. The instinct of motherhood is gratified, and no one living places a higher estimate upon the sentiment than I do. Britain is the kindest of mothers, and well deserves the devotion of her children.

If we could establish colonies of Americans, and grow Americans in any part of the world now unpopulated and unclaimed by any of the great powers, and thus follow the example of Britain, heart and mind might tell us that we should have to think twice, yea, thrice, before deciding adversely. Even then our decision should be adverse; but there is at present no such question before us. What we have to face is the question whether we should embark upon the difficult and dangerous policy of undertaking the government of alien races in lands where it is impossible for our own race to be produced.

As long as we remain free from distant possessions we are impregnable against serious attack; yet, it is true, we have to consider what obligations may fall upon us of an international character requiring us to send our forces to points beyond our own territory. Up to this time we have disclaimed all intention to interfere with affairs beyond our own continent, and only claimed the right to watch over American interests according to the Monroe Doctrine, which is now firmly established. This carries with it serious responsibilities, no doubt, which we cannot escape. European nations must consult us upon territorial questions pertaining to our continent, but this makes no tremendous demand upon our military or naval forces. We are at home, as it were, near our base, and sure of the support of the power in whose behalf and on whose request we may act. If it be found essential to possess a coaling-station at

Puerto Rico for future possible, though not probable, contingencies, there is no insuperable objection. Neither would the control of the West Indies be alarming if pressed upon us by Britain, since the islands are small and the populations must remain insignificant and without national aspirations. Besides, they are upon our own shores, American in every sense. Their defense by us would be easy. No protest need be entered against such legitimate and peaceful expansion in our own hemisphere, should events work in that direction. I am no "Little" American, afraid of growth, either in population or territory, provided always that the new territory be American, and that it will produce Americans, and not foreign races bound in time to be false to the Republic in order to be true to themselves.

As I write, the cable announces the annexation of Hawaii, which is more serious; but the argument for this has been the necessity for holding the only coaling-station in the Pacific so situated as to be essential to any power desirous of successfully attacking our Pacific coast. Until the Nicaragua Canal is made, it is impossible to deny the cogency of this contention. We need not consider it a measure of offense or aggression, but as strictly defensive. The population of the islands is so small that national aspirations are not to be encountered, which is a great matter. Nor is it obtained by conquest. It is ours by a vote of its people, which robs its acquisition of many dangers. Let us hope that our far-outlying possessions may end with Hawaii.

To reduce it to the concrete, the question is: Shall we attempt to establish ourselves as a power in the Far East and possess the Philippines for glory? The glory we already have, in Dewey's victory overcoming the power of Spain in a manner which adds one more to the many laurels of the American navy, which, from its infancy till now, has divided the laurels with Britain upon the sea. The Philippines have about seven and a half millions of people, composed of races bitterly hostile to one another, alien races, ignorant of our language and institutions. Americans cannot be grown there. The islands have been exploited for the benefit of Spain, against whom they have twice rebelled, like the Cubans. But even Spain has received little pecuniary benefit from them. The estimated revenue of the Philippines in 1894-95 was £2,715,980, the expenditure being £2,656,026, leaving a net result of about $300,000. The United States could obtain even this trifling sum from the inhabitants only by oppressing them as Spain has done. But, if we take the Philippines, we shall be forced to govern them as generously as Britain governs her dependencies, which means that they will yield us nothing, and probably be a source of annual expense. Certainly they will be a grievous drain upon revenue if we consider the enormous army and navy which we shall be forced to maintain upon their account.

There are many objections to our undertaking the government of dependencies; one I venture to submit as being peculiar to ourselves. We should be placed in a wrong position. Consider Great Britain in India to-day. She has established schools and taught the people our language. In the Philippines, we may assume that we should do the same, and with similar results. To travel through India as an American is a point of great advantage if one wishes to know the people of India and their aspirations. They unfold to Americans their inmost thoughts, which they very naturally withhold from their masters, the British. When in India, I talked with many who had received an English education in the British schools, and found that they had read and pondered most upon Cromwell and Hampden, Wallace and Bruce and Tell, upon Washington and Franklin. The Briton is sowing the seed of rebellion with one hand in his schools,

-- for education makes rebels, -- while with the other he is oppressing patriots who desire the independence of their country. The national patriotism upon which a Briton plumes himself he must repress in India. It is only a matter of time when India, the so-called gem of the British crown, is to glitter red again. British control of India is rendered possible to-day only by the division of races, or rather of religions, there. The Hindus and Mohammedans still mistrust each other more than they do the British, but caste is rapidly passing away, and religious prejudices are softening. Whenever this distrust disappears, Britain is liable to be expelled, at a loss of life and treasure which cannot be computed. The aspirations of a people for independent existence are seldom repressed, nor, according to American ideas hitherto, should they be. If it be a noble aspiration for the Indian or the Cuban, as it was for the citizen of the United States himself, and for the various South American republics once under Spain, to have a country to live and, if necessary, to die for, why is not the revolt noble which the man of the Philippines has been making against Spain? Is it possible that the Republic is to be placed in the position of the suppressor of the Philippine struggle for independence? Surely, that is impossible. With what face shall we hang in the school-houses of the Philippines our own Declaration of Independence, and yet deny independence to them?

What response will the heart of the Philippine Islander make as he reads of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? Are we to practice independence and preach subordination, to teach rebellion in our books, yet to stamp it out with our swords, to sow the seed of revolt and expect the harvest of loyalty? President McKinley's call for volunteers to fight for Cuban independence against the cruel dominion of Spain meets with prompt response, but who would answer the call of the President of an "imperial" republic for free citizens to fight the Washington and slaughter the patriots of some distant dependency which struggles for independence?

It has hitherto been the glorious mission of the Republic to establish upon secure foundations Triumphant Democracy, and the world now understands government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Tires the Republic so soon of its mission, that it must, perforce, discard it to undertake the impossible task of establishing Triumphant Despotism, the rule of the foreigner over the people? And must the millions of the Philippines who have been asserting their God-given right to govern themselves be the first victims of Americans, whose proudest boast is that they conquered independence for themselves?

Let another phase of the question be carefully weighed. Europe is to-day an armed camp, not chiefly because the home territories of its various nations are threatened, but because of fear of aggressive action upon the part of other nations touching outlying "possessions." France resents British control of Egypt, and is fearful of its West African possessions; Russia seeks Chinese territory, with a view to expansion to the Pacific; Germany also seeks distant possessions; Britain, who has acquired so many dependencies, is so fearful of an attack upon them that this year she is spending nearly eighty millions of dollars upon additional war-ships, and Russia, Germany, and France follow suit. Japan is a new element of anxiety; and by the end of the year it is computed she will have sixty-seven formidable ships of war. The naval powers of Europe, and Japan also, are apparently determined to be prepared for a terrific struggle for possessions in the Far East, close to the Philippines -- and why not for these islands themselves? Into this vortex the Republic is cordially invited to enter by those powers who expect her policy to be of benefit to them, but her action is jealously watched by those who fear that her power might be used against them.

It has never been considered the part of wisdom to thrust one's hand into the hornet's nest, and it does seem as if the United States must lose all claim to ordinary prudence and good sense if she enter this arena and become involved in the intrigues and threats of war which make Europe an armed camp.

It is the parting of the ways. We have a continent to populate and develop; there are only twenty-three persons to the square mile in the United States. England has three hundred and seventy, Belgium five hundred and seventy-one, Germany two hundred and fifty. A tithe of the cost of maintaining our sway over the Philippines would improve our internal waterways; build the Nicaragua Canal; construct a waterway to the ocean from the Great Lakes, an inland canal along the Atlantic seaboard, and a canal across Florida, saving eight hundred miles' distance between New York and New Orleans; connect Lake Michigan with the Mississippi; deepen all the harbors upon the lakes; build a canal from Lake Erie to the Allegheny River; slack-water through movable dams the entire length of the Ohio River to Cairo; thoroughly improve the Lower and Upper Mississippi, and all our seaboard harbors. All these enterprises would be as nothing in cost in comparison with the sums required for the experiment of possessing the Philippine Islands, seven thousand miles from our shores. If the object be to render our Republic powerful among nations, can there be any doubt as to which policy is the better? To be more powerful at home is the surest way to be more powerful abroad. To-day the Republic stands the friend of all nations, the ally of none; she has no ambitious designs upon the territory of any power upon another continent; she crosses none of their ambitious designs, evokes no jealousy of the bitter sort, inspires no fears; she is not one of them, scrambling for possessions; she stands apart, pursuing her own great mission, and teaching all nations by example. Let her become a power annexing foreign territory, and all is changed in a moment.

If we are to compete with other nations for foreign possessions, we must have a navy like theirs. It should be superior to any other navy, or we play a second part. It is not enough to have a navy equal to that of Russia or of France, for Russia and France may combine against us just as they may against Britain. We at once enter the field as a rival of Britain, the chief possessor of foreign possessions, and who can guarantee that we shall not even have to measure our power against her?

What it means to enter the list of military and naval powers having foreign possessions may be gathered from the following considerations. First, look at our future navy. If it is only to equal that of France it means fifty-one battle-ships; if of Russia, forty battle-ships. If we cannot play the game without being at least the equal of any of our rivals, then eighty battle-ships is the number

Britain possesses. We now have only four, with five building. Cruisers, armed and unarmed, swell the number threefold, Britain having two hundred and seventy-three ships of the line built or ordered, with three hundred and eight torpedo-boats in addition; France having one hundred and thirty-four ships of the line and two hundred and sixty-nine torpedo-boats. All these nations are adding ships rapidly. Every armor- and gun-making plant in the world is busy night and day. Ships are indispensable, but recent experience shows that soldiers are equally so. While the immense armies of Europe need not be duplicated, yet we shall certainly be too weak unless our army is at least twenty times what it has been -- say five hundred thousand men. Even then we shall be powerless as against any one of three of our rivals -- Germany, France, and Russia.

This drain upon the resources of these countries has become a necessity from their respective positions, largely as graspers for foreign possessions. The United States to-day, happily, has no such necessity, her neighbors being powerless against her, since her possessions are concentrated and her power is one solid mass.

To-day two great powers in the world are compact, developing themselves in peace throughout vast conterminous territories. When war threatens they have no outlying possessions which can never be really "possessed," but which they are called upon to defend. They fight upon the exposed edge only of their own soil in case of attack, and are not only invulnerable, but they could not be more than inconvenienced by the world in arms against them. These powers are Russia and the United States. The attempt of Britain to check Russia, if the wild counsels of Mr. Chamberlain were followed, could end in nothing but failure. With the irresistible force of the glacier, Russia moves upon the plains below. Well for Russia, and well for the world, is her advance over pagan China, better even for Britain from the standpoint of business, for every Russian to-day trades as much with Britain as do nine Chinamen. Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, are all vulnerable, having departed from the sagacious policy of keeping possessions and power concentrated. Should the United States depart from this policy, she also must be so weakened in consequence as never to be able to play the commanding part in the world, disjointed, that she can play whenever she desires if she remain compact.

Whether the United States maintain its present unique position of safety, or forfeit it through acquiring foreign possessions, is to be decided by its action in regard to the Philippines; for, fortunately, the independence of Cuba is assured; for this the Republic has proclaimed to the world that she has drawn the sword. But why should the less than two millions of Cuba receive national existence and the seven and a half millions of the Philippines be denied it? The United States, thus far in their history, have no page reciting self-sacrifice made for others; all their gains have been for themselves. This void is now to be grandly filled. The page which recites the resolve of the Republic to rid her neighbor, Cuba, from the foreign possessor will grow brighter with the passing centuries, which may dim many pages now deemed illustrious. Should the coming American be able to point to Cuba and the Philippines rescued from foreign domination and enjoying independence won for them by his country and given to them without money and without price, he will find no citizen of any other land able to claim for his country services so disinterested and so noble.

We repeat, there is no power in the world that could do more than inconvenience the United States by attacking its fringe, which is all that the world combined could do, so long as our country is not compelled to send its forces beyond its own compact shores to defend worthless possessions. If our country were blockaded by the united powers of the world for years, she would emerge from the embargo richer and stronger, and with her own resources more completely developed. We have little to fear from external attack. No thorough blockade of our enormous seaboard is possible; but even if it were, the few indispensable articles not produced by ourselves (if there were any such) would reach us by way of Mexico or Canada at slightly increased cost.

From every point of view we are forced to the conclusion that the past policy of the Republic is her true policy for the future; for safety, for peace, for happiness, for progress, for wealth, for power -- for all that makes a nation blessed.

Not till the war-drum is silent, and the day of calm peace returns, can the issue be soberly considered.

Twice have the American people met crucial issues wisely, and in the third they are not to fail.

Imperialism -- Its Dangers and Wrongs

By Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor

Extract from a speech delivered at the Chicago Peace Jubilee, Oct. 18, 1898.

 It is worse than folly, aye, it is a crime, to lull ourselves into the fancy that we shall escape the duties which we owe to our people by becoming a nation of conquerors, disregarding the lessons of nearly a century and a

quarter of our national existence as an independent, progressive, humane and peace-loving nation. We cannot with safety to ourselves, or justice to others keep the workers and the lovers of reform and simple justice divided, or divert their attention, and thus render them powerless to expose abuses and remedy existing

injustice.

A "foreign war as a cure for domestic discontent" has been the device of tyrants and false counselors from time immemorial, but it has always lead to a Waterloo, a Sedan, to certain decadence and often utter ruin. In our country we are perhaps too powerful to incur outside disaster; but we shall certainly court worse evils at home if we try to benumb the nation's sense of justice and love of right, and prevent it from striving earnestly to correct all proved errors.

If the Philippines are annexed what is to prevent the Chinese, the Negritos and the Malays coming to our country? How can we prevent the Chinese coolies from going to the Philippines and from there swarm into the United States and engulf our people and our civilization? If these new islands are to become ours, it will be either under the form of Territories or States. Can we hope to close the flood-gates of immigration from the hordes of Chinese and the semi-savage races coming from what will then be part of our own country? Certainly, if we are to retain the principles of law enunciated from the foundation of our Government, no legislation of such a character can be expected.

In a country such as ours the conditions and opportunities of the wage-earners are profoundly affected by the view of the worth or dignity of men who earn their bread by the work of their hands. The progress and improvement in the condition of the wage-earners in the former slave States have been seriously obstructed for decades in which manual labor and slave labor were identical. The South now, with difficulty, respects labor, because labor is the condition of those who were formerly slaves, and this fact operates potentially against any effort to secure social justice by legislative action or organized movement of the workers. If these facts have operated so effectually to prevent necessary changes in the condition of our own people, how difficult will it be to quicken our conscience so as to secure social and legislative relief for the semi-savage slave or contract laborers of the conquered islands?

If we attempt to force upon the natives of the Philippines our rule, and compel them to conform to our more or less rigid mold of government, how many lives shall we take? Of course, they will seem cheap, because they are poor laborers. They will be members of the majority in the Philippines, but they will be ruled and killed at the convenience of the very small minority there, backed up by our armed land and sea forces. The dominant class in the islands will ease its conscience because the victims will be poor, ignorant and weak. When innocent men can be shot down on the public highway as they were in Lattimer, Pa., and Virden, Ill., men of our own flesh and blood, men who help to make this homogenous nation great, because they dare ask for humane conditions at the hands of the moneyed class of our country, how much more difficult will it be to arouse any sympathy, and secure relief for the poor semi-savages in the Philippines, much less indignation at any crime against their inherent and natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

True PatriotismBy Charles Eliot Norton

Address before the Men's Club of the Prospect Street Congregational Church,Cambridge, Mass., June 7, 1898.

  There are moments in every man's life, in the life of every nation, when, under the excitement of passion, the simple truths which in common times are the foundation upon which the right order and conduct of life depend are apt to be forgotten and disregarded. I shall venture tonight to recall to you some of these commonplace truths, which in these days of war need more than ever to be kept inmind.

There never was a land that better deserved the love of her people than America, for there never was a mother-country kinder to her children. She has given to them all that she could give. Her boundless resources have lain open to them, to use at their will. And the consequence has been that never in the history of man has there been so splendid a spectacle of widely diffused and steadilyincreasing material welfare as America has displayed during the last hundred years. Millions upon millions of men have lived here with more comfort, with less fear, than any such numbers elsewhere in any age have lived. Countless multitudes, whose forefathers from the beginning of human life on earth have spent weary lives in unrewarded toil, in anxiety, in helplessness, in ignorance, haverisen here, in the course of even a single generation, to the full and secure enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, to confident hope, to intelligent possession of their own faculties. Is not the land to be dearly loved in which this has beenpossible, in which this has been achieved?

But there is a deeper source of love of country than the material advantages and benefits it may afford. It is in the character of its people, in their moral life, in the type of civilization which they exhibit. The elements of human nature are indeed so fixed that favorable or unfavorable circumstances have little effect upon its essential constitution, but prosperity or the reverse brings different traits into prominence. The conditions which have prevailed in America have, if broadly considered, tended steadily and strongly to certain good results in the national character; not, indeed, to unmixed good, but to a preponderance of good. The institutions established for self-government have been founded with intent to secure justice and independence for all. The social relations among the whole body of the people, are humane and simple. The general spirit of the people is liberal, is kindly, is considerate. The ideals for the realization of which in private and public conduct there is more or less steady and consistent effort, are as highand as worthy as any which men have pursued. Every genuine American holds to the ideal of justice for all men, of independence, including free speech and free action within the limits of law, of obedience to law, of universal education, of material well-being for all the well-behaving and industrious, of peace and good-will among men. These, however far short the nation may fall in expressingthem in its actual life, are, no one will deny it, the ideals of our American democracy. And it is because America represents these ideals that the deepest love for his country glows in the heart of the American, and inspires him with that patriotism which counts no cost, which esteems no sacrifice too great to maintain and to increase the influence of these principles which embody themselves in the fair shape of his native land, and have their expressive symbol in her flag. The spirit of his patriotism is not an intermittent impulse; it is an abiding principle; it is the strongest motive of his life; it is his religion.

And because it is so, and just in proportion to his love of the ideals for which his country stands, is his hatred of whatever is opposed to them in private conduct or public policy. Against injustice, against dishonesty, against lawlessness, against whatever may make for war instead of peace, the good citizen is always in arms. No thoughtful American can have watched the course of affairs among usduring the last thirty years without grave anxiety from the apparent decline in power to control the direction of public and private conduct, of the principles upon regard for which the permanent and progressive welfare of America depends; and especially the course of events during the last few months and the actual condition of the country today, should bring home to every man the question whether or not the nation is true to one of the chief of the ideals to which it has professed allegiance. A generation has grown up that has known nothing of war. The blessings of peace have been poured out upon us. We have congratulated ourselves that we were free from the misery and the burdens that war and standing armies have brought upon the nations of the Old World. "Their fires" -- I cite afine phrase of Sir Philip Sidney in a letter to Queen Elizabeth -- "Their fires have given us light to see our own quietness." And now of a sudden, without cool deliberation, without prudent preparation, the nation is hurried into war, and America, she who more than any other land was pledged to peace and good-will on earth, unsheathes her sword, compels a weak and unwilling nation to a fight,rejecting without due consideration her earnest and repeated offers to meet every legitimate demand of the United States. It is a bitter disappointment to the lover of his country; it is a turning-back from the path of civilization to that of barbarism.

"There never was a good war," said Franklin. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to defend the cause of justice, to die for it if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end,before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense; it is a national crime. And however right, however unavoidable a war may be, and those of us who are old enough to remember the war for the Union know that war may be right and unavoidable, yet, I repeat the words of Franklin, "There never was a good war." It is evil in itself, it is evil in itsnever-ending train of consequences. No man has known the nature of war better than General Sherman, and in his immortal phrase he has condensed its description -- "War is hell." "From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day," said Edmund Burke, more than a hundred years ago, "the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays

of clubs and stones to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all these species of artificial, learned and refined cruelty in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory." And it is now, at the end of this century, the century in which beyond any other in history knowledge hasincreased and the arts of peace have advanced, that America has been brought by politicians and writers for the press, faithless to her noble ideals, against the will of every right-minded citizen, to resort to these cruel arts, these arts of violence, thesearts which rouse the passions of the beast in man, before the resources of peace had been fairly tested and proved insufficient to secure the professed ends, which, however humane and desirable, afford no sufficient justification for resorting tothe dread arbitrament of arms.

There are, indeed, many among us who find justification of the present war in the plea that its motive is to give independence to the people of Cuba, long burdened by the oppressive and corrupt rule of Spain, and especially to relieve the suffering of multitudes deprived of their homes and of means of subsistence by the cruel policy of the general who exercised for a time a practical dictatorshipover the island. The plea so far as it is genuine deserves the respect due to every humane sentiment. But independence secured for Cuba by forcible overthrow of the Spanish rule means either practical anarchy or the substitution of the authorityof the United States for that of Spain. Either alternative might well give us pause. And as for the relief of suffering, surely it is a strange procedure to begin by inflicting worse suffering still. It is fighting the devil with his own arms. That the end justifies the means is a dangerous doctrine, and no wise man will advise doing evil for the sake of an uncertain good. But the plea that the better government of Cuba and the relief of the reconcentrados could only be secured by war is the pleaeither of ignorance or of hypocrisy.

But the war is declared; and on all hands we hear the cry that he is no patriot who fails to shout for it, and to urge the youth of the country to enlist, and to rejoice that they are called to the service of their native land. The sober counsels that were appropriate before the war was entered upon must give way to blind enthusiasm, and the voice of condemnation must be silenced by the thunders ofthe guns and the hurrahs of the crowd. Stop! A declaration of war does not change the moral law. "The ten commandments will not budge" at a joint resolve of Congress. Was James Russell Lowell aught but a good patriot when during the Mexican war he sent the stinging shafts of his matchless satire at the heart of the monstrous iniquity, or when, years afterward, he declared, that he thought at the time and that he still thought the Mexican war was a national crime? Did John Bright ever render greater service to his country than when, during the Crimean war, he denounced the Administration which had plunged England into it, and employed his magnificent power of earnest and incisive speech in the endeavor to repress the evil spirit which it evoked in the heart of the nation? No! the voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, morethan ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent, and spite of obloquy, misrepresentation and abuse, to insist on being heard, and with sober counsel to maintain the everlasting validity of the principles of the moral law.

So confused are men by false teaching in regard to national honor and the duty of the citizen that it is easy to fall into the error of holding a declaration of war, however brought about, as a sacred decision of the national will, and to fancy that a call to arms from the Administration has the force of a call from the lips of the country, of the America to whom all her sons are ready to pay the full measure of devotion. This is indeed a natural and for many a youth not a discreditable error. But if the nominal, though authorized, representatives of the country have brought us into a war that might and should have been avoided, and which consequently is an unrighteous war, then, so long as the safety of the State is not at risk, the duty of the good citizen is plain. He is to help to provide theAdministration responsible for the conduct of the war with every means that may serve to bring it to the speediest end. He is to do this alike that the immediate evils of the war may be as brief and as few as possible, and also that its miserable train of after evils may be diminished and the vicious passions excited by it be the sooner allayed. Men, money, must be abundantly supplied. But must he himself enlist or quicken the ardent youth to enter service in such a cause? The need is not yet. The country is in no peril. There is always in a vast population like ours an immense, a sufficient supply of material of a fighting order, often of a heroic courage, ready and eager for the excitement of battle, filled with the old notion that patriotism is best expressed in readiness to fight for our country, be she right or wrong. Better the paying of bounties to such men to fill the ranks than that they should be filled by those whose higher duty is to fit themselves for the service of their country in the patriotic labors of peace. We mourn the deaths of our noble youth fallen in the cause of their country when she stands for the right; but we may mourn with a deeper sadness for those who have fallen in a cause which their generous hearts mistook for one worthy of the last sacrifice.

My friends, America has been compelled against the will of all her wisest and best to enter into a path of darkness and peril. Against their will she has been forced to turn back from the way of civilization to the way of barbarism, to renounce for the time her own ideals. With grief, with anxiety must the lover of his country regard the present aspect and the future prospect of the nation's life. Withserious purpose, with utter self-devotion he should prepare himself for the untried and difficult service to which it is plain he is to be called in the quick-coming years.

Two months ago America stood at the parting of the ways. Her first step isirretrievable. It depends on the virtue, on the enlightened patriotism of her childrenwhether her future steps shall be upward to the light or downward to the darkness.

"Nil desperandum de republica."

Isolation and ImperialismBy George S. Boutwell

Speech before the Cantabrigia Club, Cambridge, Nov. 4, 1898.  When I accepted the invitation of the Cantabrigia Club, I resolved to ask the women of Cambridge whether they prefer a policy of isolation for the United States, as the policy of Washington is now characterized by its enemies, with peace as the general condition of the country, or a policy of territorial expansion such as has already been entered upon by war, and which can only be preservedand perpetuated by successive wars. If not to be so perpetuated, why the demand now made by those, or on behalf of those who are responsible for the present condition of affairs, for additions to the army and the navy at a cost of $100,000,000 or $150,000,000 a year? If the war with Spain and the acquisitions of territory now made, or already determined upon, do not menace the country with other wars, why the demand for additional armaments by sea and by land? At the meeting of the Massachusetts Club the twenty-second day of October, several statements were made by Mr. Boutelle of the House of Representatives, and by Mr. Woodford, our late minister to Madrid, that open a new chapter in thehistory of the war with Spain. I shall say something of that chapter, but I cannot assume to write it. First of all, I am to speak of the policy of isolation which we have favored for a century and more, and which we ascribe justly to Washington and his associates of the revolutionary and constitutional periods of our history. The policy of isolation, however, is not to be justified even by the name and counsel of Washington, although Washington's name and counsel ought always to have great value with the American people. The policy must find its justification in the experience of the country. We departed from the policy of isolation in the case of the Samoan islands, and in that case we have been involved already indisagreeable misunderstandings with Germany. Our policy of isolation has been a policy of avoidance of alliances with foreign nations, and the avoidance of policies in foreign affairs which would invite or provoke controversies with other governments. In fine, we have limited our discussions and actions, as a government, to matters which, primarily and unavoidably, concern ourselves. President Monroe limited the application of the principle set forth in his message of 1823, to cases in which the rights and interests of the United States might be involved. With the exception of the arrangement in regard to the Samoan islands, we had not passed beyond the rule so laid down until the annexation of Hawaii. The policy of isolation, which we have pursued, has been a policy of peace; the policy of expansion, as that policy is now presented to us, is a policy of war. That is the issue which I make. Our acquisitions on this continent have, as a policy and upon the facts, tended to peace. The treaties by which we acquired Louisiana and Florida saved us from controversies over undefined territorial claims. By the treaty of 1803 with France we quieted the then existing animosities between the authorities and the inhabitants of the two countries. It was provided by that treaty that the inhabitants of the ceded territory should be incorporated "in the union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States." A corresponding provision was incorporated in the treaty of 1819 with Spain by which we acquired Florida, and a like provision was incorporated in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, bywhich we acquired California and the then undefined territory between the Louisiana purchase and the Pacific ocean. The same provision is found in the treaty of 1867 with Russia, by which the territory of Alaska was ceded to the United States. All of these treaties were in the line of peace, and of the first three it may be asserted with entire confidence that the chances of war were diminished immensely. Our peaceful relations with France have continued from 1803, with only a slight interruption during the administration of General Jackson, and except for the unwise action of our authorities a condition of peace might have beenmaintained with Spain for an indefinite future. That our relations with Mexico, which were consummated by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, may be understood, I shall pass in review, briefly, the issue involved in the war of 1846, and the means by which the controversy was brought to a peaceful termination. When the state or province of Texas declared its independence of Mexico, the limits of the state were set forth in the declaration.The Rio Grande was named as the southern and western line. Following the declaration of independence, the new government of Texas was recognized by the United States, by Russia, by Great Britain and by France. Mexico claimed that the river Nueces, a river to the east of the Rio Grande, was the boundary of the province of Texas. When Texas was annexed to the United States, in March, 1845, that claim was unadjusted. The war opened upon that issue.

 General Taylor was sent to the Nueces at the head of a small army, knows first as an army of observation, then as an army of occupation, and finally it became an army of invasion. General Scott landed an army at Vera Cruz, and from there he marched to the city of Mexico, fighting several successful battles on the way, and levying contributions upon the conquered cities and provinces. Thus we had set up our flag on two lines, from the Rio Grande to the capital of Monterey on the one side, and from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico on the other, and everywhere by the month of July, 1848, the flag of the republic had been hauled down. What is the new doctrine? Only this: Wherever the flag of the republic has been set up, there it is to remain. Every nation has hauled down its flag when it has been set up as evidence of possession gained by war. In the war of 1812 England set up its flag at Eastport on our northern frontier, and in Washington, the capital of the country. We set up our flag in Canada, on the plains of Chippewa. Let us not be deluded by phrases. Under some circumstances the flag is a symbol of existing power only; in other circumstances it is a representation of actual and permanent right. The two conditions are distinct, and my complaint is that the friends of territorial expansion seek to confound them in the public mind, and so consequently to misdirect public opinion. We not only hauled down our flag on two lines on which we had penetrated Mexico, but we declined to take any territory as due to conquest. The strip of land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was treated as a part of Texas. A new boundary line was made. The territory ceded waspurchased, for which we paid $1 5,000,000, and we released Mexico from claims of American citizens amounting to $3,250,000 more. Thus by the treaty of 1848 we quieted all claims pending between Mexico and the United States, we paid for the territory acquired, we took nothing as the fruit of conquest, and we established a peace which has been undisturbed for a full half-century. In one particular the men of that period may have erred. It did not occur to them that the United States, by the act of conquest and temporary occupation, had become responsible for the future good government of the inhabitants of the cities and provinces along the lines traversed by the armies of General Taylor and General Scott. The cession of Alaska may have been due to a purpose on the part of Russia to rid itself of the burden of defending an unoccupied territory against Great Britain on the western Pacific coast, in case of hostilities arising out of conflicting policies in China and Chinese waters. Beyond such considerations, Russia was not unwilling to extend our jurisdiction on this continent as a menace to Great Britain. To us the cession was an indication of good will on the part of Russia, and it was so regarded by the Government and people of the United States. Thus, in a period of less than one hundred years, our territory has been augmented many times over, and from the proceedings and conditions some conclusions may be deduced: 1. Nothing has been taken by naked conquest. 2. The territories acquired are within the oceans, excepting only dependent islands always unimportant and for the most part uninhabited. 3. In each case the inhabitants were few in number, and in every case citizenship, self-government, and admission into the union of states upon the basis of the federal constitution were guaranteed to the inhabitants of the respective territories. 4. The countries acquired were immediately or easily accessible to the inhabitants of the states of the American Union. 5. With the exception of the northern parts of Alaska, the territories acquired were inviting to natives of the temperate zone -- say between the thirty-fifth degree and the fiftieth degree north latitude. 6. Immigrants from the United States and from other countries within the degrees named were not exposed to the perils of acclimation, nor to the necessity of any considerable change in their habits and customs of former life. 7. The proceedings were promotive of peace for the United States and promotive of a general policy of peace. 8. With the exception of the territory on the right bank of the Nueces, over which we claimed jurisdiction as I have stated, all the territory ceded was ceded by the voluntary acts of those in whose hands the sovereignty had been placed. Can these conclusions of fact, or can any one of them, be applied to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba or the Philippines? Can we, as a nation and in good faith, pledge the honor of the country that the inhabitants of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines shall be admitted into the American union of states upon an equality with the states of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the otherstates of the revolutionary era, or, if you please, are they to be accepted upon a plane of equality with the newer and least populous states of the Union? That was the pledge which we gave to France, to Spain, to Mexico, and to Russia. That pledge we have kept; that pledge we are keeping.

 Such a pledge to the Philippines would be only less burdensome than the policy into which we appear to be drifting; a policy of authority on the one side and of vassalage on the other, with a vain attempt at concealment under the term protectorate. Can any American, who voluntarily accepts the inhabitants of the Philippines as political equals or sanctions a policy of vassalage, defend himself to himself, failing which, is the "last infirmity of evil"? Thus have I attempted to pass in review the policy of the country from 1803 to 1893. It was a policy of continental expansion, a policy of progress, a policy of justice, a policy of peace. During the period of isolation we were not without influence, and it is not yet an assured fact that the nation has been advanced by this war, brilliant as some of its achievements were, beyond the point we occupied atthe close of the Civil War, when the volume of reconstruction had been written, and we were again a united people. It was not then possible for anyone to suggest even that the cause of the South had been lost, or that the cause of the North had been won, through the timidity or the incapacity of either party. What then happened, and without delay, even when our army of veterans had been disbanded, when our navy had become worthless? England recognized her liability for the depredations upon our commerce committed during the war by the Alabama and her associate corsairs. In 1873, every matter of difference between the United States and Great Britain had been adjusted, either by arbitration or by compromise, and new rules had been formulated that were calculated to promote and destined to promote the peace ofmankind. These were the achievements of the country under a policy of isolation, as it is called, and made at a time when our army was not adequate to aggressive undertakings, when our navy was incapable of defense against the then modernmodes of naval warfare. But we did more. In the administration of General Grant, and under the directing hand of Hamilton Fish, whose wisdom, whose positive greatness in public affairs are not appreciated by the country, the United States had a leading part in securing the abolition of slavery in the dominions of Spain and Portugal, and in the empire of Brazil, and thus the ocean slave trade was abolished and thetraffic in slaves on the continent of Africa was brought to an end. Has the present war secured, or does it give promise that it can secure, equivalent advantages for the country and for mankind? Or is our form of civilization to be carried around the world by navies and by armies and to be established in foreign lands by battles and by conquests? Are we to abandon the opinion that ultimately the world is to be ruled by ideas, and that it is most wisely guided and most safely protected by institutions that rest upon accepted ideas? Nor let us be deluded by the notion that the nation has been elevated in the opinion of the world by the events of the war with Spain. While I give full credit to the skill and valor of our navy at Manila and Santiago, and to the courage and endurance of our soldiers in battle and under tropical heats in pestilential climes, I am quite indifferent to the opinion of the world upon the question of ourgreatness. England sanctions and approves what we are doing, for we are imitating and justifying her policy of the entire century, and we may wisely inquire whether the adoption of that policy may not be followed by like evil consequences. An enumeration of the wars in which England has been engaged shows that there have not been two consecutive years of peace during the long reign of Queen Victoria. Is this an example to be imitated, and is it important for us to know that what we are doing is approved by Great Britain? Of other European countries I do not speak. With the exception of Russia their opinions are of no consequence to us. I have often said, and I have always thought, that Mr. Webster's conclusion of the Hayne speech was a great aid to the country in the Civil War. Thousands of young men have been touched and inspired by the patriotic sentiments contained in the peroration of that speech. I now very much fear that Mr. Webster has left a passage of descriptive, graphic, glowing eloquence which is an aid to those who wish us to take and to keep the islands of the sea the globe around. It is not more than three and a half centuries since Charles V. of Spain boasted that the sun never set on his dominions. Where now is the empire of Spain? Gone. Vanished utterly. Disappearing in blood, with no recollections for the inhabitants of old Spain of honorable dealings in its colonial policy. Spain had an empire. How was it maintained while it lasted? By wars -- wars in Europe, warsin South America, in Central America, in Mexico, in the islands of the Caribbean sea, in the islands of the northern Pacific ocean. There are incidents of any colonial policy from which no nation can escape. Some of them can be specified: armies, navies, wars, taxation and the unrequitable sacrifice of the young men of a state. It has been said that America cannot now name one statesman of influence abroad, or of commanding influence at home, nor one great orator, nor one lawyer of admitted supremacy the nation over, nor one great leader in any department of human thought or action. If we are forced to accept any part of this generalization my answer is this: The country, north and south, gave its young men, the hope of the future, to the contest of 1861, and our impoverishment, whatever it may have been, is due to the sacrifices thus made. The memorials in all the universities and colleges, in all the cities and towns of the country, may indicate, but they cannot measure the extent or the magnitude of the losses that the nation has thus been called to endure. This war has exacted sacrifices of a like sort, and like sacrifices will be exacted in every war. 

We entered upon the war with Spain for the liberation of Cuba, and upon a pledge that the inhabitants should have an opportunity to govern themselves, and in the belief entertained generally, but a belief in which I had no share, that theycould and would govern themselves. Incidentally, we were to relieve the miseries of masses of the inhabitants who had been driven into the cities and fortified towns that were controlled by the Spanish forces. If the miseries of the reconcentrados have been relieved in any considerable degree the evidence has not been given to the country. Next, are the expectations that were entertained as to the ability of the Cuban people to govern themselves to be realized by those who inaugurated the war? Let me read what Minister Woodford said on that subject at the Massachusetts Club dinner: Now I frankly say to you, from nothing that I saw in Spain and from nothing that I have been able to learn with regard to theCuban population, do I believe that it is possible for Cuba to establish a government that shall protect the insurgents againstthe Spaniards, or the Spaniards against the insurgents, or establish a secure and stable government. I do not believe that theinhabitants of Cuba are qualified to administer a home government either for their own advantage or for the protection ofour great and just American interests in the island of Cuba, and I am constrained to the personal belief that it will be necessary tomaintain the occupation -- the American occupation -- of the island of Cuba, until such time as Americans, Englishmen,Germans, Frenchmen, -- people acquainted with the methods and the theory of self-government, -- shall have gone into that islandin sufficient numbers to enable the fever to be stamped out on the one side and good order established on the other. Two things are to be accomplished before the main result – home government in Cuba -- can be realized: First, the fever is to be stamped out. How is that work to be done and by whom? The malarial fevers of the lowlands of the tropics have never been stamped out. Nor are they confined to the land. They prevail on our war vessels often, where the best of sanitary conditions exist. Upon a low estimate the inhabitants of Cuba number a million and a half. Who can say what time will be required for an inflow of immigrants from Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States equal to the present population, without considering the natural increase? In the meantime, the United States must police the island. We are to protect the Spaniards from the brutality of theinsurgents, and we are to protect the insurgents against the brutality of the Spaniards. Thus, we have the fruits of the war in the two particulars for which the war was waged. It was matter for regret with me to find in Senator Hoar's most excellent speech against imperialism, a declaration in favor of holding the Philippine Islands until the inhabitants were prepared for self-government, coupled with a suggestion that in an exigency we might invite the co-operation of other nations. On another occasion, I have declared my opposition to every form of alliance with othernations for purposes either of peace or of war. I adhere to the opinion then expressed. It is now said that the President disavows the imperialistic policy which Senator Hoar has so wisely and effectually denounced, but at the same time the President indorses Senator Hoar's plan for the government of the Philippines. Thus, the country is called to an examination of that plan. First of all, we are to expel Spain from the islands, not as a conquest for our advantage, but for the purpose of securing to the inhabitants an opportunity, at some time in the future, to engage in the work of self-government. Until that time arrives, the government is to be in our hands, and of that time we are to be the judge. Our relation to the Philippines will be that which England now sustains to Egypt. We are not conquering territory for ourselves, but for other people. We are to engage in the work of governing Cuba and the Philippines, not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of peoples in whom we have no interest. Let us consider the magnitude of the undertaking. Let us bring into view some of the difficulties that are before us: In territorial extent, Cuba is equal to six states of the area of Massachusetts. The Philippine Islands extend over sixteen degrees of latitude, the distance between Boston and San Augustine in Florida. The twelve hundred islands, more or less, are supposed to contain one hundred and fourteen thousand square miles, or fourteen times the area of Massachusetts. Of this vast territory only one-half is under the actual jurisdiction of Spain, and for the most part the exercise of powerby the officers and agents of Spain is dependent upon the good will and influence of the priests of the Catholic church. Nothing of what I say in this connection is to be treated as a criticism of the Catholic church, nor as an encomium upon it. I am to deal with the facts as they have been reported by the latest and most trustworthy authority. From the time of Philip II. the Catholic church has been engaged in missionary work in the islands. As a result, and in so far as they have penetrated the islands, the priests are supreme, not in matters of faith alone, but in public affairs as well. It has come to pass also that the church and the priests are large holders of the tillable and available lands of the islands. Thus has the church cometo be the dominating power. 

First, then, on that basis, what has been the policy of Spain? The local and tribal chiefs have been permitted to govern their clans and tribes as long as the chiefs recognized the sovereignty of Spain. The officers of Spain appear to have approached the chiefs with their exactions and measures of policy through the priests and the church. In fine, the church and the priesthood have been theinstrumentalities through and by which Spain has maintained its power in the Philippines. I cannot say whether the present insurrection is directed against the church as well as against Spain, but one event of the future can be predicted with more than common certainty. If we enter upon the work of governing the Philippines the time will come when we shall be compelled to co-operate with the Catholic church or to make war upon it. And is the country prepared to accept thealternative? The islands may contain eight million inhabitants, and in intellect and attainments they pass by rapid gradations from cultivated Europeans to the wild mountain negritos, undersized Malays, who are hardly more than the first remove from the walking but speechless inhabitants of Central Africa. The population of the city of Manila is the best which the islands can offer, and, fortunately, we have trustworthy information as to its magnitude and character. The total is 300,000. Of these there are 200,000 native Malays, 50,000 Chinese half castes, 40,000 Chinese; of Spaniards and Spanish creoles there are 5,000, of Spanish half-castes, 4,000; of white persons from all other countries thanSpain there are about 300. Of the latter, the number may vary with the seasons and the years. What are we proposing to do? Certainly this: We propose to carry our institutions into the Philippines and to set them up over a people who have never even heard of the ideas on which the institutions ought to rest. If American institutions of government are to be set up and established firmly in other countries, the ideas on which our institutions rest must, in anticipation,have been accepted by the people. Hence I condemn the attempt to extend American institutions by the sword. Let the institutions wait until the world is conquered by ideas. As the conquest of ideas goes on, the people who accept the ideas will create and protect corresponding institutions. In this aspect of the case we may be assured by someone, in whom the country may have confidence, that it is no part of our purpose to change the institutions of the Philippine Islands further than to give the people an opportunity to dictate their form of government. Assume this, and then let us ask ourselves this question: What form of government will the inhabitants of the Philippines set upat any time before the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century? That question can be answered without the help of prophet or statesman. It has been our boast that within this republic we had founded states freed from the domination of a church, and that we had founded a republic in which it was and is possible to establish a church freed from the domination of the state. This is the legacy which has come down to us alike from the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Catholics of Maryland. Let not the army, the navy and the young men of the republic be employed in setting up a state which must in the end fall under the domination of a church. Instructed by Senator Hoar's speech, I qualify the propositions with which I ended my address to the Twentieth Century Club. I reproduce them in this form: 1. Give to Hawaii a territorial government and upon a liberal basis. 2. Insist upon an independent government for Cuba, and give noencouragement to the project for annexation. 3. Abandon Puerto Rico and the Spanish islands of the Pacific ocean withoutcontroversy, debate or negotiations with anyone.   Note. -- Upon the information received during the last year my confidence inthe ability of the Filipinos for the work of self-government is much greater than itwas in November, 1899.

Democracy or MilitarismBy Jane Addams

Address before the Chicago Liberty Meeting, April 30, 1899 None of us who has been reared and nurtured in America can be wholly without the democratic instinct. It is not a question with any of us of having it or not having it; it is merely a question of trusting it or not trusting it. For good or ill we suddenly find ourselves bound to an international situation. The question practically reduces itself to this: Do we mean to democratize the situation? Are we going to trust our democracy, or are we going to weakly imitate the policy of other governments, which have never claimed a democratic basis?The political code, as well as the moral law, has no meaning and becomes absolutely emptied of its contents if we take out of it all relation to the world and concrete cases, and it is exactly in such a time as this that we discover what we really believe. We may make a mistake in politics as well as in morals by forgetting that new conditions are ever demanding the evolution of a new morality, along old lines but in larger measure. Unless the present situation extends our nationalism into internationalism, unless it has thrust forward our patriotism into humanitarianism we cannot meet it.We must also remember that peace has come to mean a larger thing. It is no longer merely absence of war, but the unfolding of life processes which are making for a common development. Peace is not merely something to hold congresses about and to discuss as an abstract dogma. It has come to be a rising tide of moral feeling, which is slowly engulfing all pride of conquest and making war impossible.Under this new conception of peace it is perhaps natural that the first men to formulate it and give it international meaning should have been workingmen, who have always realized, however feebly and vaguely they may have expressed it, that it is they who in all ages have borne the heaviest burden of privation and suffering imposed on the world by the military spirit.The first international organization founded not to promote a colorless peace, but to advance and develop the common life of all nations was founded in London in 1864 by workingmen and called simply "The International Association of Workingmen." They recognized that a supreme interest raised all workingmen above the prejudice of race, and united them by wider and deeper principles than those by which they were separated into nations. That as religion, science, art, had become international, so now at last labor took its position as an international interest. A few years later, at its third congress, held in Brussels in 1868, the internationals recommended in view of the Franco-German war, then threatening, that "the workers resist all war as systematic murder," and in case of war a universal strike be declared.This is almost exactly what is now happening in Russia. The peasants are simply refusing to drill and fight and the czar gets credit for a peace manifesto the moral force of which comes from the humblest of his subjects. It is not, therefore, surprising that as long ago as last December, the organized workingmen of America recorded their protest against the adoption of an imperialistic policy.In the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor, held that month in Kansas City, resolutions were adopted indorsing the declaration made by President Gompers in his opening address: "It has always been the hewers of wood and the carriers of water, the wealth producers, whose mission it has been not only to struggle for freedom, but to be ever vigilant to maintain the liberty of freedom achieved, and it behooves the representatives of the grand army of labor in convention assembled to give vent to the alarm we feel from the dangers threatening us and our entire people, to enter our solemn and emphatic protest against what we already feel; that, with the success of imperialism the decadence of our republic will have already set in."There is a growing conviction among workingmen of all countries that, whatever may be accomplished by a national war, however high the supposed moral aim of such a war, there is one inevitable result -- an increased standing army, the soldiers of which are non-producers and must be fed by the workers. The Russian peasants support an army of 1,000,000, the German peasants sow and reap for 500,000 more. The men in these armies spend their muscular force in drilling, their mental force in thoughts of warfare. The mere hours of idleness conduce mental and moral deterioration.

The appeal to the fighting instinct does not end in mere warfare, but arouses these brutal instincts latent in every human being. The countries with the large standing armies are likewise the countries with national hospitals for the treatment of diseases which should never exist, of large asylums for the care of children which should never have been born. These institutions, as well as the barracks, again increase the taxation, which rests, in the last analysis, upon producers, and, at the same time, withdraws so much of their product from the beneficent development of their national life. No one urges peaceful association with more fervor than the workingman. Organization is his only hope, but it must be kept distinct from militarism, which can never be made a democratic instrument.Let us not make the mistake of confusing moral issues sometimes involved in warfare with warfare itself. Let us not glorify the brutality. The same strenuous endeavor, the same heroic self-sacrifice, the same fine courage and readiness to meet death, may be displayed without the accompaniment of killing our fellow men. With all Kipling's insight he has, over and over, failed to distinguish between war and imperialism on the one hand and the advance of civilization on the other.To "protect the weak" has always been the excuse of the ruler and tax-gatherer, the chief, the king, the baron; and now, at last, of "the white man." The form of government is not necessarily the function itself. Government is not something extraneous, consisting of men who wear gold lace and sit on high stools and write rows of figures in books. We forget that an ideal government is merely an adjustment between men concerning their mutual relations towards those general matters which concern them all; that the office of an outside and alien people must always be to collect taxes and to hold a negative law and order. In its first attempt to restore mere order and quiet, the outside power inevitably breaks down the framework of the nascent government itself, the more virile and initiative forces are destroyed; new relations must in the end be established, not only with the handicap of smart animosity on the part of the conquered, but with the loss of the most able citizens among them.Some of us were beginning to hope that we were getting away from the ideals set by the civil war, that we had made all the presidents we could from men who had distinguished themselves in that war, and were coming to seek another type of man. That we were ready to accept the peace ideal, to be proud of our title as a peace nation; to recognize that the man who cleans a city is greater than he who bombards it, and the man who irrigates a plain greater than he who lays it waste. Then came the Spanish war, with its gilt and lace and tinsel, and again the moral issues are confused with exhibitions of brutality.For ten years I have lived in a neighborhood which is by no means criminal, and yet during last October and November we were startled by seven murders within a radius of ten blocks. A little investigation of details and motives, the accident of a personal acquaintance with two of the criminals, made it not in the least difficult to trace the murders back to the influence of war. Simple people who read of carnage and bloodshed easily receive its suggestions. Habits of self-control which have been but slowly and imperfectly acquired quickly break down under the stress.Psychologists intimate that action is determined by the selection of the subject upon which the attention is habitually fixed. The newspapers, the theatrical posters, the street conversations for weeks had to do with war and bloodshed. The little children on the street played at war, day after day, killing Spaniards. The humane instinct, which keeps in abeyance the tendency to cruelty, the growing belief that the life of each human being -- however hopeless or degraded, is still sacred -- gives way, and the barbaric instinct asserts itself.It is doubtless only during a time of war that the men and women of Chicago could tolerate whipping for children in our city prison, and it is only during such a time that the introduction in the legislature of a bill for the re-establishment of the whipping post could be possible. National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.Jane Addams (1860-1935) was one of the vice presidents of the Chicago Liberty Meeting that led to the formation of the Central Anti-Imperialist League in Chicago. She later served as a vice president of the national Anti-Imperialist League (1904-1919). In 1889, Addams co-founded Hull House, one of the country's first settlement houses. She was later a co-founder and first president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (1919-1935).