capital of their islands? Did we ask their consent to liberate them from Spanish sovereignty or to enter Manila Bay and destroy the Spanish sea power there? We did not ask these; we were obeying a higher moral obligation, which rested on us, and which did not require anybody's consent. We were doing our duty by them, as God gave us the light to see our duty, with the consent of our own consciences, and with the approval of civilization. Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sovereignty from their islands, and while the war that destroyed it was in progress we could not ask their views. Nor can we now ask their consent."

Pardon must be asked for comment on fallacies so bare as these. Our forcing Spain to take herself out of the Philippines was the "great act of humanity" alluded to. To have this done was the mighty 'aspiration and hope of their hearts,' and it was this aspiration and hope that gave consent to what we did, the capture of Manila, et cetera. McKinley justifies our course by the fact that we had this tacit consent. But then, by his own words, that consent extended no farther than the expulsion of Spain. That consent explicitly contradicted and forbade our taking Spain's place as sovereign. Even the consent to force Spain out did not exist if our entrance into her shoes was to be coupled with it. This is so undeniable that for McKinley to invoke God's sanction on our 'great act' after we have gone forward and stultified that act by taking the very place that Spain held, is raving blasphemy. “We were obeying a higher moral obligation”—was there anything higher or moral in our ousting Spain to seize her post of sovereignty? Neither our consciences nor civilization ever approved this.

Mr. McKinley knows well enough the logical thimblerigging in which he is engaged, always supposing that his mind has not failed. He seeks to make a fact which justifies one course justify a course that is the antithesis and overthrow of the first. The Filipinos wanted freedom that justified us in driving their master out; they wanted freedom; that justified us in becoming their master ourselves. Listen reverently to the mind which can evolve such marvels. It says: 'Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sov

ereignty from the islands.' This was true provided we ourselves had then claimed no sovereignty there, otherwise it was absolutely false. In fact McKinley had already, before making this extravagant speech, declared his sovereignty and a war had issued from it. We had broken our obligation to the islands by replacing one sovereignty with another, and by not withdrawing or expelling our own sovereignty.

The most wonderful logical break of this demented man remains to be told. 'While the war that destroyed Spanish sovereignty was in progress we could not ask the Filipinos' views,' he says. Very well, grant this. "Nor can we ask it now," he goes on.

"Indeed, can any one tell me in what form it could be marshaled and ascertained until after peace and order, so necessary to the reign of reason, shall be secured and established? A reign of terror is not the kind of rule under which right action and deliberate judgment are possible. It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers."

By this, McKinley the Magnificent informs us that immediately after the Spanish war ceased the Filipino war began, that there was no time or space between them for asking the views of the Filipinos on what they would like to have us do. O McKinley, do you think that we are all besotted with grandeur like yourself? Do you think that we have forgotten that there was a long period between those wars during which you might have 'marshaled and ascertained' the views of the islanders, and that you elected to cut the knot and settle the whole matter according to your own views, by proclaiming yourself their sovereign? After your carnival of murder is ended how else will you learn their views than by doing as you might and should have done prior to your proclamation? You did not wish to give them a chance to express their preferences, lest they might oppose your ambitions for empire, and that is the secret of your not inquiring. That is the secret of your insolent manifesto calling on them to obey you. And now, like a coward,

you would run away to evade even the memory of this interval and what happened in it, pretending that the 'misguided Filipinos,' as you arrogantly called them, began to 'shoot their rescuers down' as soon as Spain surrendered, and gave you no time to discover their will. But no one will be deceived, for all know that after your mind, under the dictation of corporation kings, was resolved to hold the Philippines as yours, there was no intention on your part of consulting them in good faith. Some farce of consultation may have gone through your mind for a later day-with their representative citizens, the whites and big property owners, in order to have them perform the mock-ceremony of voting authority for acts already done.

And you, Mr. McKinley, who out of a state of confidence and repose had brought a reign of terror and destruction in those islands, equalling and surpassing the terror and destruction under Spain, could say to the American people, "It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to be liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers"! Who was shooting the rescued down? What did the 'liberators' deserve for turning into masters and coercers but to be shot down? You, McKinley, having by voluntary unlawful act made the blood of two races flow, arouse unbounded compassion for your suffering when in stately melancholy you close your comfortable Boston feast by allusion to the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where 'every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart.'

The effusive sophistries of the national executive, whether the result of aberration or dishonesty, have a public effect. They impose on many, for raw and brutal though they are, the people have allowed this executive to continue his course. It can only follow that the people are themselves either dull or devoid of conscience.

Is a

people that follows such lead, accepts as guileless truth a shower of feathery fairy tales, takes a man seriously who says twice two are five, because he has political authority, is such a people any better in mind or character than its deceiver? The American people have changed since the ring of Expansion was put in their nose. The presence of this ring is public advertisement that the AngloSaxon race has already lost independence. To a people of independence and nerve a president could not have poured out a speech of bilge-water. The most hopeless sign for America is that that speech was not repudiated instantly by the whole continent.

9. The Honorable Solution of the Problem.

What ought we to have done, and what ought we to do? We ought to have signified unequivocally to the Filipinos that we had no intention of becoming their sovereigns in any form. As soon as Spain surrendered we should have made this irrevocable disclaimer. It cannot be said that this would have been impossible or impolitic, for the American Peace Commissioners had instructions from the Administration to require the cession of the island of Luzon. "The instructions of the President when we started out were to take Luzon,” admitted Mr. Frye, one of the peace commissioners, when cross-examined in the Senate by Mr. Vest. This developed into a demand for the whole Philippine group. Then was the time to have pledged ourselves to make the entire archipelago free. Congress ought to have taken this stand and compelled the shilly-shallying president to make it. Congress ought to have pledged itself and the country before the departure of the peace commission that all territory obtained from Spain by cession should be made free and independent.

It was also politic. We have labored from the first under the suspicion that the disinterestedness of our demands from Spain did not ring true. We could have removed the suspicion by Congressional declaration that

we should hold none of the territory as ours, and much friction would have been saved. We were prevented from this honorable course by the conspiracy of the president to keep everything he could get, and by the pitiful servility of Congress to the president's orders. The president listened to corporate commands, transmitted them to congress, and congress obeyed.

If congress had pledged that all acquired territory should be free, our dastardly war to enslave the Philippines would have been averted. McKinley, being properly muzzled by congressional act, could not have issued his aggrandizing proclamation of peaceable sovereignty or forcible conquest. Our course would have been plain from the beginning: we should have aided the Cubans, Porto Ricans, and Filipinos to set up independent governments of their own, and should have been spared the fatal complications which the aggression of the president has loaded upon us. The questions of Imperialism, Expansion and Militarism would not have been raised at all.

What should our relation to the independent nations have been after we had established them? If we could have trusted ourselves not to be seized with the grabbing epilepsy, a simple guardianship to extend no farther than keeping other Powers off and assisting the native governments to police themselves as they learned self-governing forms, would have answered. This was one course. was ruled out because we very early showed that we could not trust ourselves in the presence of property without itching to steal it, and that whatever we assumed to protect in the mask of philanthropy would soon be transformed into our private property by circumvention or force.

It

But another, far wiser, course was open-one which preserved us from the evils of Imperialism and secured to those concerned a higher good than our single guardianship. We should have formed, and should now form,