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I believe it to be almost an axiom that a people who will fight for their liberty, and who are willing to die for it, are capable of maintaining it when they get it.

I do not want to give up these islands. I do not want to surrender them to anybody in the world. I do not want to govern them in the spirit of the colonial governments of Europe, or as many of them are being carried on. I do not want to give them up, because to give them up would be to leave those people in a worse condition than they were when we took away the power of Spain. We may leave them a prey, perhaps, to their own vices. We leave them. to be a prey of all Europe. We must stand for them. We have put up our flag. There it is going to stay. It is going to stay there for their protection and our glory, for there can be no greater glory coming to any nation in the world than that they should take eight or ten million men, bound down by the power of a wicked government, and lift them up and put them on the plane of citizenship in a great republic and say to them, "So far as is consistent with safety to us, you shall be a part and a parcel of this great people." That does not mean that you must make States of them. It does not mean that you shall give them the elective franchise, but it does mean that you shall give them the protection of the flag; that you shall stand between them and foreign powers; that you shall give them that moral aid, that moral encouragement, which will enable them to take care of themselves.

If there was doubt I would not let constitutional questions prevent us from going on and doing what we started to do. There is no doubt of our power. The way is clear. is clear. The power is ample. It is not necessary to make them States. But the question of

statehood will be determined by the character of the men and not by their distance from our shores. I do not believe they will be States ever. The time may come when we can say "Accept full sovereignty. Take care of yourselves. Go to the world and proclaim your nationality, put up your own flag." But they can not do it now. They must have our fostering care for a time, with kindness and justice. The American flag to them should always represent something besides the majesty of this Government. It should represent that always, wherever it floats, but it should represent to those people freedom, protection, participation in the benefits of the greatest and freest people in the world.

I.

WHAT WILL THEY DO TO US?

BY HON. GEORGE FRANKLIN EDMUNDS,

EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM VERMONT.

These 1,200 islands, more or less, are in the heart of the tropics and occupy a region of seas nearly 1,000 miles long north and south and about 300 miles wide. They are about 7,000 miles distant from our Pacific coast and are about 14,000 miles distant from our Atlantic coast via the Suez Canal, controlled by a foreign power. Only a few of the islands are large enough to play any important part in the problem. These are Luzon, Camarines, Mindoro, Samar, Leyte, Panay, Mindanao and Palawan. The latest encyclopædias estimate the area at about 114,000 square miles and the population at 7,000,000.

2. They have all the climatic evils and diseases of tropical countries and are frequently afflicted by violent hurricanes and earthquakes. They are, as all human experience has proved, absolutely incapable of being colonized and built up into communities of Americans or of any of the people of cool climates.

3. They are already inhabited, as already stated, by about 7,000,000 of people-being more than sixty to the square mile of the whole area of all the islands. The population, therefore, is already denser than that of the State of Michigan. The population is composed of Spaniards, other Europeans, English and Americans, half-castes, Chinese, Malays, Japanese and aboriginal natives. Of the total of all this conglomerate of races the Europeans and Americans compose less.

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