The attempt to subjugate a people striving for freedom, not the American soldier, responsible for cruelties in the Philippine Islands : speech of Hon. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, in the Senate of the United States, May 22, 1902

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THE ATTEMPT TO SUBJUGATE A PEOPLE STRIVING FOR FREEDOM.
NOT THE AMERICAN SOLDIER, RESPONSIBLE FOR CRU-
ELTIES IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

SPEECH

OF

OF MASSACHUSETTS,

IN’ THE

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,

May 22, 1902.

W.A.SIIi:NrGTOI^.

1902.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016

https://archive.org/details/attempttosubjugaOOhoar

SPEECH

OP

HON, GEOEGE E. HOAR.

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, havin<j under consideration
the bill (S. 22i»5) temporarily to provide for the administration of the affairs
of civil government in the Philippine Islands, and for other purposes —

Mr. HOAR said:

Mr. President: I have something to say upon the pending bill.
I will say it as briefly and as compactly as I may. We have to
deal with a territory 10,000 miles away, 1.200 miles in extent, con-
taining 10,000,000 people. A ma.jority of the Senate think that
people are under the American flag and lawfully subject to oirr
authority. We are not at war vuth them or with anj'body. The
country is in a condition of profound peace as well as of unex-
ampled pro.sperity. The world is in profound peace, except in one
quarter, in South Africa, where a handful of republicans are fight-
ing for their independence, and have been doing better fighting
than has been done on the face of the earth since Thermopyl®,
or certainly since Bannockburn.

Yet the Filipinos have a right to call it war. They claim to be a
people and to be fighting for their rights as a people. The Sena-
tor from Ohio [Mr. Forakee] admits that there is a people there,
although he says they are not one people, but there are several.
But we can not be at war under the Constitution without an act
of Congress.

We are not at war. We made peace with Spain on the 14th
day of February, 1809. Congress has never declared war with
the people of the Philippine Islands. The President has never
asserted nor usurped the power to do it. We are only doing on a
large scale exactly what we have done at home within a few
years past, where the military forces of the United States have
been called ofit to suppress a riot or a tumult or a lawless assem-
bly, too sti'ong for the local authorities. You have the same
right to administer the water torture, or to hang men by the
thumbs, to extort confession, in one case as in the other. You have
the same right to do it in Cleveland or Pittsburg or at Colorado
Springs as you have to do it within the Philippine Islands. I
have the same right as an American citizen or an American Sen-
ator to discuss the conduct of any military officer in the Philip-
phie Islands that I have to discuss the conduct of a marshal or a
constable or a captain in Pittsburg or in Cleveland if there were
a labor riot there.

That duty I mean to perform to the best of my ability, fear-
lessly as becomes an American citizen, and honestly as becomes
an American Senator.

But I have an anterior duty and an anterior right to talk about
the action of the American Senate, both in the past and in the
present, for which, as no man wiU deny, I have my full share of
personal respon.sibility.

The Senator from Ohio, in his very brilliant and forcible speech,
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which I heard with delight and instruction , said that we were
bound to restore order in the Philippine Islands, and we can not
leave them till that should be done. He said we were bound to
keep the faith we pledged to Spain in the treaty, and that we
were bound, before we left, to see that secured. He said we were
bound, especially, to look out for the safety of the Filipinos who
had been our friends, and that we could not, in honor, depart
until that should be made secure.

All that, Mr. President, is true. So far as I know, no man has
doubted it. But these things are not what we are fighting for;
not one of them. There never was a time when, if 'sve had de-
clared that we only were there to keep faith with Spain, and
that we only were tliere to restore order, that we were only there
to see that no friend of ours should sulTer at tlie hands of any
enemy of ours, that the war would not have ended in that
moment.

You are fighting for sovereignty. You are fighting for the
principle of eternal dominion over that people, and that is the
only question in issue in the conflict. W e said in the case of
Cuba that she had a right to be free and independent. We af-
firmed in the Teller resolution, I think ^vithout a negative voice,
that we would not invade that right and would not meddle with
her territory or anything that belonged to her. That declaration
was a declaration of peace as well as of righteousness; and we
made the treaty, so far as concerned Cuba, and conducted the
war and have conducted ourselves ever since on that theory — that
we had no right to interfere with her independence; that we had
no right to her territory or to anything that was Cuba’s. So we
only demanded in the treaty that Spain should hereafter let her
alone. If you had done to Cuba as you have done to the Philip-
pine Islands, who had exactly the same right, you would be at
this moment, in Cuba, just where Spain was when she excited
the indignation of the civilized world and we compelled her to
let go. And if you had done in the Philippines as you did in
Cuba, you would be to-day or would soon be in those islands as
you are in Cuba.

But you made a totally different declaration about the Philip-
pine Islands. You undertook in the treaty to acquire sovereignty
over her for yourself, which that people denied. You declared
not only in the treaty, but in many public utterances in this
Chamber and elsewhere, that you had a right to buy sovereignty
with money, or to treat it as the spoils of war or the booty of bat-
tle. The moment you made that declaration the Filipino people
gave you notice that they treated it as a declaration of war. So
your generals reported, and so Aguinaldo expressly declared.
The President sent out an order to take forcible possession, by
military power, of those islands. General Otis tried to suppress
it, but it leaked out at Iloilo through General MiUer. General
Otis tried to suppress it and substitute that they should have all
the rights of the most favored provinces. He stated that he did
that &cause he knew the proclamation would bring on war.
And the next day Aguinaldo covered the walls of Manila with a
proclamation stating what President McKinley had done, and
saying that if that were persisted in he and his people would fight,
and General MacArthur testified that Aguinaldo represented the
entire people. So you deliberately made up the issue for a fight
for dominion on one side and a fight for liberty on the other.

Then when you had ratified the treaty you voted down the res-
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ohition in the Senate, known as tlie Bacon resolution, declaring
the right of that people to independence, and you passed the Mc-
Enery I’csolution, which declared that you meant to dispose of
those islands as should be for the interest of the United States.
That was the origin of the war, if it be war. That is what the
war is all about, if it be war; and it is idle for my brilliant and
ingeniotis friend from Ohio to undertake to divert this issiie to a
contest on our part to enable us to keep faith with our friends
among the Filipinos, or to restore order there, or to carry out the
provisions of the treaty with Spain.

Now, Mr. President, when you determined to resort to force for
that purpose, you took upon yourself every natural consequence
of that condition. The natural result of a conflict of arms be-
tween a people coming out of subjection and a highly civilized
people — one weak and the other strong, with all the powers and
resoiirces of civilization — is inevitably, as everybody knows, that
there will be cruelty on one side and retaliation by cruelty on the
other. Yoir knew it even before it happened, as well as you know
it now that it has happened; and the responsibility is yours.

If, in a conflict between a people fighting for independence and
liberty, being a weak people, and a people striving to deprive
them of their independence and liberty, being a strong people,
always, if the nature of man remains unchanged, the war is con-
verted in the end into a conflict in which bushwhacking, treach-
ery, and cruelty have to be encountered, the responsibility is
with the men who made the war. Conflicts betw’eeu white races
and brown races or red races or black races, between superior
races and inferior races, are always cruel on both sides, and the
men who decree with full notice that such conflict shall take place
are the men on whom the responsibility rests. When Aguinaldo
said he did not desire the conflict to go on, and that it went on
against his wish, he was told by our general that he would not
parley with him without total submission. My friend from Wis-
consin declared in the Senate that we would have no talk with
men with arms in their hands, whether we were right or wrong.
The responsibility of everything that has happened since, which
he must have foreseen if he knew anything of history and human
nature, rests upon him and the men who acted with him.

We can not get rid of this one fact, we can not escape it, and
we can not flinch from it. You chose war instead of peace. You
chose force instead of conciliation, with full notice that every-
thing that has happened since would happen as a conseqiience of
your decision. Had you made a declaration to Aguinaldo that
you would respect their title to independence, and that all you
desired was order and to fulfill the treaty and to protect your
friends, you would have disarmed that people in a moment. I
believe there never has been a time since when a like declaration
made by this Chamber alone, but certainly made by this Cham-
ber and the other House, with the approval of the President,
would not have ended this conflict and prevented all these horrors.

Instead of that gentlemen talked of the wealth of the Philip-
pine Islands, and alxiut'the advantage to our trade. They sought
to dazzle our eyes with nuggets of other men’s gold, ^nators
declared in the Senate Chamber and on the hustings that the flag
never shall be hauled down in the Philippine Islands, and those
of you who think otherwise keep silent and enter no disclaimer.
The Senator from Ohio saj^s our policy has not been in the dark,
but it has been a policy published to the world. Has it? Has it?

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I ■want to ask, What was it which created the war, which keeps it
up, and which created and keeps up the hatred, and -will make
war break out again and again for centuries to come, unless hu-
man nature be changed or be different in their bosoms from what
it is in oiu’s? It is because our policy has not been published to
the world. It is because you keep a padlock on your bps.

This debate for the last three years has contained many audaci-
ties. One thing, however, no Senator ha? been audacious enough
to affirm, and that is that if he were a Filipmo, as he is an Ameri-
can, he would not do exactly, sa-ving only acts of cruelty, as the
Filipino has done.

I find myself beset ■with one difficulty whenever I undertake to
debate this question. I am to discuss and denounce what seems

me one of the most foolish and ■wicked chapters in history.
Yet I am compelled to admit that the men who are responsible
for it are neither foolish nor ■wicked. On the contrary, there are
no men on the face of the earth with whom on nearly all other
subjects I am in general more in accord, to whose sound judg-
ment or practical sagacity I am more willing to defer, or to whose
patriotism or humanity I am more ■willing to commit the honor
or the fate of the Republic.

It may be that it is presumption to act on my o'wn judgment
against that of my valued and beloved political friends. But we
do not settle questions of righteousness or justice on any man’s
authority. StiU less do we settle them by a show of hands. Each
man is responsible only to his own conscience, which is the only
authority he must obey. Besides, Mr. President, I have on my
side in this great debate the fathers of the Republic, the states-
men who adorned its first century, the founders of the Repub-
lican party, every one of whom declared and lived by and died by
the doctrine you are now repudiating. I have also your o^wn
authority, your o^wn declaration, made only three years ago, at
the begiiming of the Spanish war. When you declared that Cuba
of right — of right — ought to be a free and indei)endent State, and
that the United States would not acquire her teiritory as the re-
sult of the war ■with Spain, you settled as p, matter of duty and
of justice this whole Pliilippine qiiestion.

I have,' however, at least, to congratulate my friends who differ
from me on an increased sobriety in dealing with this matter.

We are not flourishing nuggets of gold in the Senate just now.
The devil imperialism is not promising us all the kingdoms of
this world and the glory thereof, if we will fail down and wor-
ship him. You have just hauled down the American flag in
China where it once floated, and you have just hauled it do^wn
day before yesterday in Cuba where it has floated for three
years.

For the words, “ interests of the United States,” which the
McEnery resolirtion declared were to determine our actions in
goveraing these islands, you substitute in this bill the declaration
that “the rights acquired in the Philippine Islands under the
treaty with Spain are to be administered for the benefit of the
inhabitants of those islands.”

Sec. 10. Teat all the property and rights which may have been aeqnired
in the Philippine Islands by the United States under the treaty of peace with
Spain, 18U8, are hereby placed under the control of the government of the
Philipijine Islands, to be administered for the benefit of inhabitants of the
islands.

Sec. 7. There are to be municipal and provincial governments as far and
as fast as the governments are capable, fit, and ready for the same, ■with pop-
ular representative government
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The share to which yon propose to admit these people in your
scheme of government, is an admission that a large number of
them are fit for self-government. You propose for them — to take
effect in the near future — a constitution, not very different from
that of Canada, where the Crown of England appoints the
Governor-General, and the Governor-General appoints the senate,
and there is a veto on every provincial law by the Governoz’-
General, and a veto on every law of the Canadian congress, not
only by the Governor-General, but by the Government at home.

The Senator from New Hampshire called a witness the other
day to the effect that evei-y Filipino would take a bribe. Sir Rob-
ert Walpole said that of England. I acquit the majoiity of the
Senate and the committee who report this bill from believing the
charge made by my lionoi'able friend from New Hampshii-e.
They affirm that there are many Filipinos who are sincerely our
friends. They admit, if I understand them, that there are in
those islands many citizens accomplished and well educated, law-
yers and merchants, conducting large affairs in trade, and they
themselves propose to commit to these people at once, as soon as
may be, lai’ge powers of government, retaining for us little moi'e
than the power of a veto.

What you have been fighting for all this time as your I’ight, if
you expect to enact this bill into law and to carry it out in prac-
tice, is to szibstitute a constitution of your making for one of
their making; to have a dependency, which is what you want,
instead of a I’epublic, which is what they want; to have fitness
for the elective franchise detei-mined by an authority which has
its soui’ce 10,000 miles away, instead of with the people at home;
and to deny them independence, even if they are fit for it, so long
as you please, without any regard to their desire.

This investigation, I suppose, is yet upon the threshold. Your
chief witnesses, so far, have been soldiers and governors who are
committed to policies of subjzzgation. The investigation has
been conducted by a committee of that way of thinking.

Yet we have got already some pregnant admissions, and some
remai’kable facts have already come to light. Governor Taft,
if I understood him, concedes that nothing so far indicates that
the existing policy has been good for the United States. It is
only the benefit of the people of the Philippine Islands, in saving
them from anarchy, or from foreign nations, in establishing
schools for them, that ^undicates what you have done so far.
What yozz have done so far has been to get some few thousand
children actually at school in the whole Philippine dominion. To
get this result, you have certainly slain many times that number
of pai’ents.

It would be without avail to i-epeat in the Senate to-day what
was said at the time of the Spanish treaty, and afterwards when
you determined to reduce the Philippine people by force to sub-
mission.

What your fathers said when they founded the Republic; the
declarations of the gz'eat leaders of every generation; our cen-
tzzry of glorious histoi-y , wei'e appealed to in vain. Their lessons
fell zzpon the ears of men dazzled by military glory and deliidous
with the lust of conquest. I will not repeat them now. My de-
sire to-day is simply to call attention to the practical working of
the two doctrines — the doctrine of buying sovereignty or con-
quering it in battle, and the doctrine of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. For the last three years you have put one of them in
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force in Cuba and the other in the Philippine Islands. I ask you
to think soberly ■vrhich method, on the whole, you hke better. I
ask you to compare the cost of war with the cost of peace, of jus-
tice with that of injustice, the cost of empire -with the cost
) f republican liberty, the cost of the way of America and the
way of Europe, of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independ-
ence with the doctrine of the Holy Alliance. You have tried both,
I hope, to your heart's content. But before I do that I want to
call attention to one important fact in our history not generally
known. It is very interesting in its connection with this debate.

John Quincy Adams, as everybody knows, was the father of
what wo call the Monroe doctrine. He secured its adoption
through the weight of his great influence, by a hesitating Presi-
dent, and a reluctant Cabinet. It is not so well known that he
placed the Monroe doctiane solely upon the doctrine that just
governments must rest upon the consent of the governed. That,
he declared to be its only foundation, and that so founded it rested
upon the eternal principle of righteousness and justice.

A thorough examination has lately been made by an accom-
plished historical scholar, Mr. Worthington C. Ford, aided by
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams,
of the unpublished Adams manuscripts at Quincy, the archives
of the Department of State, and the papers of President Monroe,
lately published by Congress.

I can relate this story in a moment. I think it an important
contribution to this debate.

Mr. President, I discussed some time ago, and more than once,
this attempt to buy sovereignty with money of a dispossessed ty-
rant, or to get it as booty or spoils of battle. I showed that it is
in contradiction of the great American doctrine that just govern-
ments rest only on the consent of the governed — in flat contra-
diction of the doctrine on which this Government is founded and
of the uniform tradition of all our statesmen from 177G to the
adoption of the Spanish treaty. I do not mean to repeat that ar-
gument now. It was met by the affirmation tliat Jefferson disre-
garded it when we bought Louisiana, and that John Quincy
Adams disregarded it when we acquired Florida, and that Abra-
ham Lincoln disregarded it when he put down the rebellion, and
that Charles Simmer disregarded it when he urged the purchase
of Alaska.

It was never denied th.at we could acquire territory and that
we could govern it after it was acquired. Tlie doctrine was that
if the territory be inhabited by that vital and living being we call
a people, as distinct from a few scattered and unorganized inhab-
itants, neither controlling it nor governing themselves, that peo-
ple have a right to govern themselves and to determine their ov.m
destiny after their own fashion. This is the American exposition
of the law of nations. Thomas Jefferson never departed from it.
He regarded the Louisiana Territory as something not worth tak-
ing. He declared that it would not be inhabited for a thousand
j’ears. He only wanted New Orleans. The rest of the Territory
was forced upon him by Napoleon. There was no people, in the
sense of the law of nations, either in New Orleans or in the
Louisiana Territoiy. There was no people there that could make
a government or a treaty.

Abraham Lincoln put down the rebellion, because by his and
our interpretation of the Constitution we were one people and
not two — to which doctrine the Southern people had consented
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when they adopted the Constitution; and besides, if you had
counted the whole people, black and white, there was never a
majority on the side of secession in any single Southern State.
Suirmer again and again declared that there was nothing in
Alaska which could be called a people, and that if there were the
United States would never be willing to acquire them without
their consent; and that we would never take Canada, if we could
get it, except with the full approbation of her people. If my
friends of the press or in the Senate who still stick to this ten
h'ondred times refuted fallacy are not content, they will never
be persuaded, though Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams
and Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner rise from the dead.

I do not wish to detain the Senate by renewing that debate.
But I wish to cite a chapter of the history of this country, which
shows that your present policy is in contradiction of the Monroe
doctrine, as it is in contradiction of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. It is well known that John Quincy Adams was the
author of the Monroe doctrine. He carried has point over the
opposition of the Cabinet and reluctance on the part of the Presi-
dent.

When Canning proposed that the United States join England
in asserting that the Holy Alliance should not reduce any South
American coimtry under the dominion of Spain, Mr. Adams said
that we would not join England, although she asked us to do it.
He said we were not to be a little cockboat in the wake of the
British man-of-war. He counseled the President, and his advice
was taken, that this country should make its declaration to
Russia, the head and strength of the Holy Alliance, and he put
that declaration expressly and solely on the doctilne of the con-
sent of the governed, affirmed in our Declaration of Independence.
He declared that doctrine was a doctrine of absolute right and
righteousness.

It will take but a moment to tell the story as it appears in the
archives in our Department of State, in the Monroe papers lately
published, in Adams's Diary, and in the Adams manuscripts at
Quincy, which have been made public within a few days.

In August, September, and October, 1823, there came to the
State Department of Washington from Mr. Rush dispatches con-
taining letters from Mr. Canning. These letters suggested de-
signs of the Holy Alliance against the independence of the South
American colonies; and proposed cooperation between Great
Britain and the United States against that alliance.

President Monroe asked the advice of Mr. Jefferson and Mr.
Madison, and suggested that we should make it known that we
.should view an attack by the European powers upon the colonies
of Spain as an attack upon ourselves. But in the meantime the
Russian minister, Baron Tuyll, on the 16th of October, commu-
nicated to the Secretary of State a declaration of the Emperor of
Russia that the political principles of that Power •would not
permit him to recognize the independence of the revolted colonies
of Spain.

Mr. Adams saw and seized his opportunity. He gave this ad-
■vice to President Monroe, as appears by his diary, on November
7, 1823:

I remarked that the communications recently received from the Eussian
minister, Baron Tuyll, afforded, as I thought, a very suitable and convenient
opportunity for ns to take our stand against the Holy Alliance, and at the
same time decline the overtures of Clreat Britain. It would be more candid
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and more dignified to avow our principles explicitly to Baron Tuyll than to
go in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war. This idea was
acquiesced in on all sides.

At the Cabinet meeting of November 15, 1823, the subject was
again discussed.

Letters were read from Mr. Jefferson, who was for acceding to the pend-
ing proposal. Mr. Madison was less decisively pronounced, but thought the
movement on the part of Great Britain impelled more by her interest than
by a principle of general liberty. President Monroe was quite despondent.

Adams proceeds:

I soon found the source of the President’s despondency with regard to
South American affairs. Calhoun is perfectly moonstruck by the surrender
of Cadiz, and says the Holy Allies, with 10,(XX) men, will restore all Mexico
and all South America to the Spanish dominion. 1 did not deny that they
might make a temporary impression for three, four, or five years, but I no
more believe that the Holy Allies will restore the Spanish dominion upon the
American continent than that Chimborazo will sink beneath the ocean. But,
I added, if the South Americans were really in a state to be so easily sub-
dued, it would be but a more forcible motive for us to beware of involving
ourselves in their fate. I set this down as one of Calhoun’s extravaganzas.
He is for plunging into a war to prevent that which, if his opinion of it is
correct, we are utterly unable to prevent. He is for embarking our lives
and fortunes in a ship which he declares the very rats have abandoned. Cal-
houn reverts again to his idea of giving discretionary power to our minister
to accede to all Canning’s proposals, if neces.sary, blit not otherwise. After
much discussion, I said I thought we should bring the whole answer to Mr.
Canning’s proposals to a test of right and wrong. Considering the South
Americans as independent nations, they themselves, and no other nation, had
the right to dispose of their condition. We have no right to dispose of them,
either alone or in conjunction with other nations. Neither have any other
nations the right of disposing of them without their consent. This principle
will give us a clue to answer all Mr. Canning's questions with candor and
confidence, and I am to draft a dispatch accordingly. (Adams’s Memoirs,

p. 186.1

Before Mr. Adams prepared the draft, t'wo more dispatches
\vere received from Rush, dated the 2d and 10th of October, indi-
cating a decided change in Canning's tone, and almost an indiffer-
ence on his part to pursue his project of united action. Meantime,
there came a new communication from Russia, ■which gave Adams
his opportunity. He put his reply on the express and impregnable
gi’ound of the consent of the governed, as declared in our Decla-
ration of Independence. On the 25th of November, he made, for
the President’s use. a draft of observations upon the communica-
tions recently received from the Russian minister. The paper
begins as follows:

The Government of the United States of America is essentially republican.
By their Constitution it is provided that “the United States shall guarantee
to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall
protect them from invasion.”

The principles of this polity are; 1. That the institution of government to
be lawful, must be pacific, that is, founded upon the consent and by the agree-
ment of those U'ho are governed; and 2. that each nation is exclusively the
judge of the government best suited to itself, and that no other nation can
justly interfere by force to impose a different government upon it. The
first of the principles may be designated as the principle of liberty, the
second as the principle of national independence; they are both principles of
peace and of good will to men.

A necessary consi^uence of the second of these principles is that the
United States recognize in other nations the right which they claim and ex-
ercise for themselves of establishing and modifying their own governments,
according to their own judgments and views of their interests, not encroach-
ing upon the rights of others. (Ford, p. 38.)

ISIr. Adams states later in the same document:

In the general declarations that the allied monarchs will never compound
and never will even treat with th revolution, and that their policy has only for
its object by forcible interposition to guarantee the tranquiUity of all the
States of whic’a the civilized world is composed, the President wishes to per-
ceive the sentiments, the application of which is limited, and intended in
‘heir results to be limited to the affaii's of Eui-ope. (Ford, p. 40.)

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11

Mr. Monroe and Mr. Calhonn hesitated in regard to the inser-
tion of this paragraph in the answer to Eussia, bnt neither of
them, as appears from the full narrative in Mr. Adams’s diai-y,
objected to the doctrine. They thought it might be offensive to
Russia. Accordingly Mr. Adams read the paper to Baron Tuyll,
omitting that paragraph, but received a letter from the Presiden.
a little later, j-ielding his objections and consenting to its reten-
tion.

Mr. Worthington C. Ford, in an interesting paper contained in
the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for Jan-
uary, 1902, narrates the whole story, and says in conclusion:

Tliat the timidity of the President was awakened, that record shows: hut
the persistence of Adams and the very weighty arguments he advanced in
its favor induced Monroe to yield, but not until it was too late for the pur-
pose intended. (Ford, p. 40.)

Mr. Ford adds, after citing the Russian minister’s communica-
tion:

This gave Adams his opening. If the Emperor set up to be the mouth-
piece of Divine Providence it would be well to intimate vhat this counti'y did
not recognize the language spoken and had a destiny of its own, also under
the guidance of Divine Providence. If Alexander could exploit his political
principles, those of a brutal repressive policy, the United States could show
th.at another sy.stem of government, remote and separate from European
traditions and administration, could give rise to a new and more active polit-
ical principle— the consent of the governed— between which and the Emperor
there could not exist even a sentimental sympathy. (Ford, p. 15.)

So, Mr. President, if you have your own way, and keep on in
the path you are treading, you have not only repealed the l)e.' la-
ration of Independence, but you have left for the klonroe doctrine
only the principle of brutal selfishness. You have taken Horn
that doctrine, which is the chief glory of this country, from the
time of the treaty of peace in 1783 till the inauguration of Abra-
ham Lincoln in 1861, its foundation in righteousness and freedom,
and you found.it only upon selfishness. You say not that it is
right, but only that it is for our interest. If hereafter you go
to war for it — if you have your waj' — it will not be for the glory
of the liberator or for the principle on which the Republic is
founded. You will only have Ancient Pistol’s solace:

I shaU sutler be unto the camp.

And profits will accrue.

John Quincy Adams lived to see the great doctrine he had been
taught from his cradle, which he had di’awn in with his mother’s
milk, derided and trampled under foot by a people drunk with
conquest and dazzled by military glory. He lived to see the
President take soldiers and not statesmen for his counselors.
He lived to see slavery entrenched in every department of the
Government — in the White House, in court, in Congress, in trade,
and in the pulpit. But he never wavered nor faltered in liis sub-
lime faith. He faced the stormy and turbulent waves of the
House of Representatives at eighty. He took for his motto:
Alter! Seculo — a motto which his son inscribed at his burial place
at Quincy.

But the new age came sooner even than the faith of John Quincy
Adams had predicted. In less than thirteen years from his death,
Abraham Lincoln, whom the people sent to the White House, had
declared on his way thither the sublime doctrine of the consent
of the governed to be that on which the Republic is founded, and
for which, if need be, he was willing to be assassinated. I think,
therefore, modestly I hope and humbly, that the men who differ
from their political associates, and even from majorities, may find
5298

12

sometliing of consolation and something of hope in the company
of John Quincy Adams and in the company of Abraham Lincoln.

When we ratified the treaty of Paris we committed ourselves
to one experiment in Cuba and another in the Philippine Islands.
We had said already that Cuba of right ought to be free and in-
dependent. So when in the treaty Spain abandoned her sover-
eignty the title of Cuba became at once complete. We were only
to stay there to keep order until we could hand over Cuba to a
government her people had chosen and established.

By the same treaty we bought the Philippine Islands for $20,-
000,000 and declared and agreed that Congress shall dispose of
them. So, according to those who held that treaty valid, it be-
came the duty of the President to reduce them to submission, and
of Congress to govern them.

Here the two doctrines are brought into sharp antagonism.

In Cuba, of right, just government, according to you. must rest
on the consent of the govenied. Her people are to “institute a
new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

In the Philippine Islands a government is to be instituted by a
power 10.000 miles away, to be in the beginning a despotism, es-
tablished by military power.

It is to be a despotism where there is treason without an overt
act and elections, if they have them, without political debate, and
schools where they can not teach liberty. It is to be established
by military power, and to be such, to iise the language of the
McEnery resolution, such as shall seem “ for the interest of the
United States.”

You have given both doctrines a three years’ trial. Three years
is sometimes a very long time and sometimes a very short time in
human affairs: I believe the whole life of the Savior, after He
first made His divine mission knovm, lasted but three years.
Three years has wrought a mighty change in Cuba, and it has
wrought a mighty change in the Philippine Islands. We have
had plenty of time to try both experiments.

Pre.sident Roosevelt a day or two ago very truly and eloquently
recited the story of what we had done for Cuba, and claimed, and
sm’ely he was right, that it was one of the chief glories of the Re-
piiblic in all our glorious history. When he had finished the re-
cital he said, “ That is onedeed consummated to-day; andnow for
the other.” I do not believe that brave and honest man will con-
tent himself to match this glorious instance of self-denial and good
faith, which has so stirred his enthusiasm, by putting against it
the gift of $200,000 from the Treasury to relieve suffering Marti-
ni<iue, a gift which, in proportion to oiir resources, is as if a man
with $60,000 had given a two-dollar bill. There can be but one
other deed which his Administration can do which can match the
glories of the liberation of Cuba, and that will be the liberation
of the Philippine Islands.

Now, what has each cost you. and what has each profited you?

In stating this account of profit and loss I hardly know whfich
to take up first, principles and honor or material interests — I
should have known very well which to have taken up first down
to three years ago — what you call the sentimental, the ideal, the
historical on the right side of the cohimn; the cost or the profit
in honor or shame and in chai'acter and in principle and moral
influence, in true national glory; or the practical side, the cost
62'.)8

13

in money and gain, in life and health, in wasted labor, in dimin-
ished national strength, or in prospects of trade and money getting.

I shoTild naturally begin where our fathers used to begin. But
somehow the things get so inextricably blended that we can not
keep them separate. This world is so made that yoxi can not keep
honesty, and sound policy, and freedom, and mateiial property,
and good government, and the consent of the governed, apart.
Men who undertake to make money by cheating pay for it by
failure in business. If you try to keep order by military despot-
ism you siiffer from it by revolution and by barbarity in war.
If a strong people try to govern a weak one against its will, the
home government will get despotic, too. You can not maintain
despotism in Asia and a republic in America. If you try to de-
prive even a savage or a barbarian of his just rights you can
never do it without becoming a savage or a barbarian yourself.

Gentlemen talk about sentimentalities, about idealism. They
like practical statesmanship better. But, Mr. President, this
whole debate for the last four years has been a debate between
two kinds of sentimentality. There has been practical states-
manship in plenty on both sides. Your side have carried their
sentimentalities and ideals out in your practical statesmanship.
The other side have tried and begged to be allowed to carry theii’S
out in practical statesmanship also. On one side have been these
sentimentahties. They were the ideals of the fathers of the Eev-
olutionary time, and from their day down till the day of Abraham
Lincoln and Charles Sumner was over. The sentimentalities
were that all men in political right were created equal; that gov-
ernments derive their just povrers from the consent of the gov-
erned, and are instituted to secure that equality; that every peo-
ple— not every scattering neighborhood or settlement without
organic life, not every portion of a people who maybetemporainly
discontented, but the political being that we call a people — has
the right to institute a government for itself and to lay its
foundation on such principles and organize its powers in such
form as to it and not to any other peoijle shall seem most likely
to effect its safety and happiness. Now, a good deal of practica.1
statesmanship has followed from these ideals and sentimentalities.
They have builded forty-five States on firm foundations. They
have covered South America with republics. They have kept
despotism out of the Western Hemisphere. They have made the
United States the freest, strongest, richest of the nations of the
world. They have made the word republic a name to conjure
by the round world over. By their virtue the American flag —
beautiful as a flower to those who love it; terrible as a meteor to
those who hate it — floats everywhere over peaceful seas, and is
welcomed everywhere in friendly ports as the emblem of peaceful
supremacy and sovereignty in the commerce of the world.

Has there been any practical statesmanship incur dealing with
Cuba? You had precisely the same problem in the East and in
the West. You knew all about conditions in Cuba. Ifiiere has
been no lack of counselors to whisper in the ear of the President
and Senate and House the dishonorable cmmsel that we should
hold on to Cuba, without regard to our pledges or our principles,
and that the resolution of the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Teller]
was a great mistake. “Ye shall not surely die, ” said the serpent —
Squat like a toad, close at tlie ear of Eve.

I do not know how other men may feel, but I think that the
statesmen who have had something to do with bringing Cuba into
5298

14

the family of nations, when they look hack on their career, that
my friends who sit around me, when each comes to look back
ui)on a career of honorable and brilliant public service, will count
the share they had in that as amo:ig the brightest, the greenest,
and the freshest laurels in their crown.

I do not think I could honestly repeat all the compliments
■which the Senator from Wisconsin is in the habit of paying to
the Senator from Colorado. The Senator from Colorado has gone
against my grain very often, especially when he voted for the
Spanish treaty and when his vote defeated the Bacon resolution.
But I doxibt whether any man who has sat in this Chamber since
Charles Sumner died, or whether all who sit here now put together,
have done a more important single service to the country than he
did in securing the passage of the resolution w'hich pledged us to
deal with Cuba according to the principles of the Declaration of
Independence.

You also, my imperialistic friends, have had your ideals and
your sentimentalities. One is that the flag shall never l)e hauled
do'mi where it has once floated. Another is that you •will not
talk or reason with a people with arms in their hands. Another
is that sovereignty over an unwilling people may be bought with
gold. And another is that sovereignty may be got by force of
arms, as the booty of battle or the spoils of victory.

What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from
your ideals and your sentimentalities? You have wasted six hun-
dred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly 10,000 Amer-
ican lives — the flower of our youth. You have devastated prov-
inces. You nave slain uncounted thousands of the people you
desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps.
Your generals are coming home from their harvest, bringing
their sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick
and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in
body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a
numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches,
and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the
water torture. Your practical statesmanship, •which disdains to
take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of
the Revolution or of the civil war as models, has looked in some
cases to Spain for your example. I believe — nay, I kno’w — that
in general our officers and soldiers are humane. But in some
cases they have carried on your warfare ■with a mixture of Ameri-
can ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.

Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a
people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the
garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who
thronged after your men when they landed on those islands ■with
benediction and gratitrrde, into sullen and irreconcilable ene-
mies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate.

Tlie practical statesmanship of the Declaration of Independ-
ence and the G olden Rule would have cost nothing but a few land
words. They would have bought for you the great title of lib-
erator and benefactor, which your fathers won for your country
in the South American Republics and in Japan and ■which you
have won in Cuba. They would have bought for you the undy-
ing gratitude of a great and free people and the undying glory
which belongs to the name of liberator. That people would
have felt for you as Japan felt for you when she declared last
£298

15

summer that she cured everything to the United States of
America.

What have your ideals cost you, and -what have they bought
for you?

1. ' For the Philippine Islands you have had to repeal the Decla-
ration of Independence.

For Cuba yoxi have had to reaffirm it and give it ne'w luster.

2. For the Philippine Islands you have had to conveii; the Mon-
roe doctrine into a doctrine of mere selfishness.

For Cuba you have acted oh it and vindicated it.

3. In Ci’.ba you have got the eternal gratitude of a free people.

In the Philippme Islands you have got the hatred and sullen

submission of a subjugated people.

4. From Cuba jmu have brought home nothing btit glory.

From the Philippines you have broiight home nothing of glory.

5. In Cuba no man thinks of counting the cost. The few sol-
diers who came home from Cuba wounded or sick carry about
their wounds and their pale faces as if they were medals of honor.
What soldier glories in a wound or an empty sleeve which he got
in the Philippines?

6. The conflict in the Philippines has cost you $600,000,000,
thousands of American soldiers — the flower of j'our youth — the
health and sanity of thousands more, and hundreds of thousands
of Filipinos slain.

Another price we have paid as the result of your practical
statesmanship. We have sold out the right, the old American
right, to speak out the sympathy which is in our hearts for peo-
ple who are desolate and oppressed everyv'here on the face of the
earth. Has there ever been a contest between power and the
spirit of liberty, before that now going on in South Africa, when
American Senators held their peace because they thought they
were under an obligation to the nation in the wrong for not in-
terfering with us? I have heard that it turned out that we had
no gi’eat reason for gratitude of that Mnd. But I myself heard
an American Senator, a soldier of the civil war, declare in this
Chamber that, while he sympathized with the Boers, he did not
say so because of our obligation to Great Britain for not meddling
with us in the war with Spain. Nothing worse than that was
said of us in tlie old slavery days. A great English poet before
the civil war. in a poem entitled “ The Curse,” taunted us by say-
ing that we did not dare to utter our sympathy with freedom so
long as we were the holders of slaves. I remember, after fifty
years, the sting and shame I felt in my youth when that was
uttered. I had hoped that we had got rid of that forever before
1865.

Ye shall watch while kings ccn.spire
Round the people’s smouldei ing fire.

And, warm for your part,

Shall never dare, O, shame!

To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.

Ye shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds — die or survive —

Drop faint from their jaws.

Or throttle them backward to death.

And only under your breath
Shall ye bless the cause.

Sometimes men are affected by particular instances who are
not impressed by statistics of great numbers.

5298

16

Sterne’s starling in its cage has moved more hearts than were
ever stirred by census tables.

Let me take two examples out of a thousand with which to con-
trast the natiiral result of the doctrine of your fathers with yours.

I do not think there ever was a more delightful occurrence in
the history of Massachusetts since the Puritans or the Pilgrims
landed there, than the visit to Harvard two years ago of the
Cuban teachers to the Harvard Summer School. The old Uni-
versity put on her best apparel for the occasion. The guests were
manly boys and fair girls, making you think of Tennyson’s sweet
girl graduates, who came to sit at the feet of old Harvard to
learn something which they could teach to their pupils, and to
carry back to their country and teach their own children undy-
ing gratitude to the great Republic. It was one of the most de-
lightful lessons in all history of the gratitude of a people to its
liberator, and of the affection of the liberator-Republic to the
people it had delivered. Was there ever a more fitting subject
for poetry or for art than the venerable President Eliot, sur-
rounded with his staff of learned teachers and famous scholars,
the foremost men in the Republic of letters and science, as he
welcomed them, these young men and women, to the delights of
learning and the blessings of liberty?

Contrast this scene with another. It is all you have to show,
that you have brought back, so far, from the Philippine Islands.
You have no grateful youth coming to sit at your feet. You do
not dare to bring here even a friendly Filipino to tell you, with
unfettered lips, what his people think of you, or what they want
of you. i read the other day in a Nebraska paper a terrible story
of the passage through Omaha of a carload of maniacs from the
Philippine Islands.

The story, I believe, has been read in the Senate. I telegraphed
to Omaha to the editor of a paper, of high rei)utation; I believe,
a zealous supporter of the policy of Imperialism, to learn if the
story was authentic. I am told in reply, and I am glad to know
it, that the picture is sensational and exaggerated, but the sub-
stantial fact is confirmed that that load of young soldiers passed
through that city lately, as other like cargoes have i>assed through
before, maniacs and broken in mental health as the result of serv-
ice in the Philippine Islands.

It is no answer to tell me that such horrors exist everywhere;
that there are other maniacs at St. Elizabeth, and that every
State asylum is full of them. Tho.se unhappy beings have been
visited, without any man’s fault, by the mysterious Providence
of God, or if their affliction comes from any man’s fault it is our
duty to make it known and to hold the party guilty responsible.
It is a terrible picture that I have drawn. It is a picture of men
suffering from the inevitable result which every reasonable man
mtist have anticipated of the decisions made in this Chamber
when we elected to make war for the principle of despotism in-
stead of a policy of peace, in accordance with the principles of
the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. President, every one of these maniacs, every one of the
many like freights of horror that come back to us from the Phil-
ippine Islands, every dead soldier, every wounded or wrecked
soldier was once an American boy, the delight of some Ameri-
can home, fairer and nobler in his young promise, as we like
to think, than any other the round world over. Ah! Mr. Presi-
6298

17

dent, it was not $20,000,000 tliat we paid as the price of sov-
ereignty. It was the souls of these hoj-s of oui's that entered into
the cost. When you determined by one vote to ratify the Span-
ish treaty; when you determined by one vote to defeat the Bacon
resolution; when you declared, in the McEnery resolution, that
we would dispose of that people as might be for the interest of
the United States; when the Senator from Wisconsin said we
would not talk to a people who had arms in their hands, although
they begged that there should be no war, and that we would at
least hear them; when some of you went about the coimtry de-
claring that the flag never should be hauled down where it once
floated, you did not know, because in your excitement and haste
your intellectual vision was dazzled with empire, you did not know
that this was to come. But you might have known it. A little
reflection and a little reason would have told you. I wonder if
the Republican editor who made that knorvn was attacking the
American Army. I wonder if those of us who do not like that
are the friends or the enemies of the American soldier.

I can not understand how any man, certainly how any intelli-
gent student of history, could have failed to foretell exactly what
has happened when we agreed to the Spanish treaty. Everything
that has happened since has been the natural, inevitable, inexora-
ble result of the policy you then declared.

If yon knew anything of human nature you knew that the great
doctrine that just government depends on the consent of the gov-
erned. as applied to the relation of one people to another, has its
foundation in the nature of man itself. No people will submit, if
it can be helped, to the rule of any other people. You must have
known perfectly well, if you had stopped to consider, that so far
as the Philippine people were like us they would do exactly what
we did and would do again in a like case. So far as they were
civilized they would resist you with all the power of civilized
war. So far as they were savage they woidd resist you by all the
methods of savage warfare.

You never could eradicate from the hearts of that people by
force the love of liberty which God put there.

For He that worketh high and wise.

Nor pauseth in His plan,

Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man.

This war, if you call it war, has gone on for three years. It
will go on in some form for three hundred years, unless this policy
be abandoned. You will undoubtedly have times of peace and
quiet, or pretended submission. You trill buy men with titles,
or office, or salaries. You will intimidate cowards. You will
get pretended and fawning submission. The land will smile and
smile and seem at peace. But the volcano will be there. The
lava vull break out again. You can never settle this thing until
you settle it right.

I think my friends of the majority, whatever else they may
claim — and they can rightly claim a great deal that is good and
creditable for themselves — will not claim to be prophets. They
used to prophesy a good deal two years ago. \Ye had great
prophets and minor prophets. All predicted peace and submis-
sion. and a flag followed by trade, with wealth flowing over this
land from the Far East, and the American people standing in the
Philippine Islands looking over vuth eager gaze toward China.

5298 2

18

Where are now yonr prophets which prophesied unto yon? I fear
that we must make the answer that was made to the children of
Is rael: “ They prophesied falsely, and the prophets have become
wind, and the word is not in them.”

An instance of this delusion, which seems to have prevailed
everj- where, is stated by Mr. Andrew Carnegie in the May num-
ber of the North American Review. He says:

The writer had tlie honor of an interview with President McKinley before
war broke out with our allies, and ventured to predict that if he attempted
to exercise sovereignty over the Filipinos — whom he had bought at $2.50 a
head — ^he would be shooting these people down within thirty days. He smiled,
and, addressing a gentleman who was present, said: “Mr. Carnegie doesn't
ur.dersfand the situation at all.” Then turning to the writer, he said: “ Wo
will be welcomed as their best friends.” “So little,” says Mr. Carnegie, “did
dear, kind, loving President McKinley expect ever to be other than the
fi'iendly cooperator with those people.”

A guerrilla warfare, carried on by a weaker people against a
stronger, is recognised and legitimate. Many nations have re-
sorted to it. Our war of the Revolution in many parts of the
country differed little from it. Spain carried it on against Napo-
leon when the French forces overran her territory, and mankind
sympathized with her. The greatest of English poets since Milton ,
William Wordsworth, described that warfare in a noble sonnet,
which will answer, with scarcely the change of a word, as a de-
scription of the Filipino people:

Hunger, and sultry heat, and nipping blast
From bleak hilltop, and length of march by night
Through heavy swamp or over snow-clad height—

These hardshiijs ill-sustained, these dangei's past.

The roving Spanish bands are reached at last,

Ch,T,rged, and dispersed like foam; but as a flight
Of scattered quails by signs do reunite.

So these — and, heard of once again, are chased
With combination of long-practiced art
And newly kindled hope; but they are fled.

Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead:

Where now? Their sword is at the foeman’s heartl
And thus from year to year his walk they thwart,

And hang like dreams aroimd his guilty bed.

I believe the American Army, officers and soldiers, to be made
tap of as brave and humane men, in general, as ever lived. They
have done what has always been done, and until human nature
shall change, always will be done in all like conditions. The chief
guilt is on the heads of those who created the conditions.

One thing, however, I am bound to say in all frankness. I do
not know but my statement may be challenged. But I am sure
that nearly every well-infonned man who will hear it or read it
will know that it is true. That is, that you will never get officers
or soldiers in the standing Army, as a rnle, to give testimony
which they think will be disagreeable to their superiors or to the
War Department.

I have letters in large numbers myself. I believe eveiy Sena-
tor in this body, who is expected to do anything to inquire into
these atrocities, has had abundant letters to the effect which I
state. The same evil of which we are all conscious, which leads
men in p’ublic life to be unwilling to incur unpopularity or the
displeasure of their constituents by frankly uttering and acting
upon their opinions, applies with a hundredfold more force when
you summon a soldier or an officer to tell facts which will bear
heavily on the administration of the war. I have had letters
ihown me by members of this body who vouched personally for
the absolute trustworthiness of the wwiters, who detailed the hor-
5298

19

rors of the water torture and other kindred atrocities, which no
inducement would lead them to make public.

The private soldier who has ended his term of service or who
expects to end it and return to private life, is lender less restraint.
Blit when he tells his story he is met by the statement of an offi-
cer, in some cases, that it is well known that private soldiers are
in the habit of “ drawing the long bow,” to use the phrase of one
general whose name has been brought into this discussion. In
other words, these generals are so jealoiis of the honor of the
Army, and their own, that they confine their jealousy to the honor
of the officers, and expect you to reject these things on the asser-
tion that the soldier is an habitual liar, and then they reproach
the men who complain with being indifferent to the honor of the
Army.

Was it ever heard before that a civilized, humane, and Chris-
tian nation made war upon a people and refused to tell them what
they wanted of them? You refuse to tell these people this year or
next year or perhaps for twenty years, whether you mean in the
end to deprive them of their independence, or no. You say you
want them to siibmit. To submit to what? To mere military
force? But for what purpose or what end is that military force
to be exerted? You decline to tell them. Not only you decline
to say what you want of them, except bare and abject surrender,
but you will not even let them tell you what they ask of yo\i.

The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Forajser] says it is asserted with
a show of reason that a majority of the people favor our cause.
General Mac Arthur denies this statement, and says they were
almost a unit for Aguinaldo. Mr. Denby and Mr. Schurman, two
of the three commissioners of the first Filipino Commission, deny
the statement. General Bell, in his letter of December 13, 1901,
says “ a majority of the inhabitants of his prorince have persist-
ently continued their opposition during the entire period of three
years, and that the men who accept local office from the governor
and take the oath of allegiance do it solely for the purpose of im-
proving their opportunity for resistance.” That statement is
concurred in by every department commander there. Certainly
Major Gardener's apparently temperate and fair statement — about
which we are to have no opportunity to examine him until Con-
gress adjourns — does not say any. such thing as that suggested by
the Senator from Ohio.

But what is your cause? What is your cause that they favor?
Do you mean tha,t a majority of the Filipino people favor your
killing them? Certainly not. Do you mean that a majority of
the Filipino people, or that any one man in the Philippine Islands,
according to the evidence of Governor Taft himself, favors any-
thing that you are willing to do?

The evidence is that some of them favor their admission as an
American State and others favor a government of their own un-
der your protection. Others would like to come in as a Territory
under our Constitution. But is there any evidence that one
human being there is ready to submit to your government with-
out any rights under our Constitution, or without any prospect
of coming in as an American State? Or is there any evidence
that any single American citizen, in the Senate or out of it, is
willing that we should do anything that a single Filipino is ready
to consent to?

I have no doubt they will take the oath of allegiance. Un-
6298

20

doubtedly they ■\rill go through the form of submission. Un-
doubtedly you have force enoiigh to make the ■whole region a
ho-wilng -wilderness, if you think fit. Undoubtedly you can put
up a form of government in -which they -will seem to take some
share, and they -\^i.ll take your offices and your salaries. But
■when you come to getting anjd;hing wliich is not merely tempo-
rary; -when you come to announce anytlring in principle, such as
those on which governments are founded, you have not any evi-
dence of any considerable number of people there ready to sub-
mit to yom* -will unless they are compelled by sheer brutal force.

I do not -wish to dwell at length on the circumstances which
attended the capture of Aguinaldo. But as they have been
elaborately defended in this body, and it is said that the officer who
captured him had a good record before, and especially as he has
been decorated by a promotion by the advice and consent of the
Senate, I can not let it pass in silence.

I understand the facts to be that that officer disguised the men
under his command in the dress of Filipino soldiers; wrote, or
caused to be written, a forged letter to Aguinaldo, purporting to
come from one of his ofiicers, stating that he was about to bring
him some prisoners he had captured, and in that way got access to
Aguinaldo’s headquarters. As ho approached he sent a message
to Aguinaldo that he and his friends were hungry; accepted food
at his hands, and when in his presence threw do-v\Ti and seized him;
shot some of the soldiers who were about Aguinaldo, and brought
him back a prisoner into our lines. That is the transaction wliich
is so highly applauded in imperialistic quarters.

I do not believe that the Senate knew what it was doing when
it consented to General Funston’s promotion. The nomination
came in -with a list of Army and Na-vy appointments and promo-
tions— 2,038 in all — and the Senate assented to that at the same
time -with 1 ,828 others. I doubt very much whether there were
10 Senators in their seats or whether one of them listened to the
list as it was read. It is, I suppose, betraying no secret to say that
these lists are almost never read to the Senate when they come in
or when they are reported from the committee; that the only
reading they get is at the time of the confinnation, when they
commonly attract no attention whatever. I do not mean to say
that if the Senate had had its attention called to the transaction
the result would have been different. I only mean to say that I
believe many Senators did not know it. I suppose the question
whether the Senate would have approved it might have depended
on the character and the quality of the general service of that
officer and not on the estimate we formed of this particular trans-
action, which seems to have been done under orders. I did not
know myself that the nomination had been made till long after
the Senate had assented. But I incline to think, with General
MacArthur’s testimony before the investigating committee that
the act was done by his direction and with his approval, I should
not have thoiight it fair to hold the officer responsible for it by
denying him an other-wise deserved promotion.

I think we are bound in justice to General Funston to take the
declaration of General MacArthur that he ordered and approved
everj’thing that officer did. If that be true we have no right to
hold the subordinate responsible, however odious the act. If it
turn out that that still higher authority has approved the act,
then it becomes still more emphatically our duty to point out its
enormity.

5208

21

The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Forakee] . whom I do not now
see in his seat, asked me day before yesterday whether I did not
believe that the reports of the military officers were to be trusted.
If he were m his seat, I would ask liim to put me that question
again, and if he should I would put this question to him: When
Theodore Roosevelt, an officer of volunteers, told his story about
the canned beef and the military supplies, and every officer in the
Regular Army, who knew the facts just as he did. coiitradicted
him in the investigatioii , does he believe that Theodore Roosevelt
or the officers of the Regular Aiuny told the truth?

Mr. President, I want to say something on the circumstances
which attended the capture of Aguinaldo. They have been elabo-
rately defended in this body, and the officer who did it has been
decorated with a promotion. I do not suppose 10 Senators knew
what they were doing. The name came in with several thousand
names of sailors and soldiers in one day, and nearly 2,000 were
confii-med the next day. As everybody knows, they are never
read except at the time of the confirmation. But although I did
not know anything about it myself, I am bound to say, in all fair-
ness, that since General MacAidhur, the superior officer, has testi-
fied that he approved the act and takes the responsibility for the
act, the subordinate is acquitted so far as that act is concerned;
and I do not see how we could have refused General Funston his
promotion if his record in other respects entitled him to it, if he
acted as General MacArthur says he did, under orders. But the
higher the responsibility for the act the more it is our duty to ex-
amine it.

Mr. President, we have two guides for the conduct of military
officers in such circumstances. They apply not only to this act
of General Fumston, but they apply to most of the conduct of
our military officers, of which complaint has been made. One of
these is Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United
States in the Field, prepared by Dr. Francis Lieber and promixl-
gated by order of Abraham Lincoln.

The other is the convention at The Hague, agreed upon by the
representatives of this Goveimment with the others on the 29th
day of July, 1899, and ratified by the Senate on the 14th of
March, 1902.

Obseiwe that this convention was agreec] upon before all these
acts happened, and was unanimously adopted after they had all
happened.

I extract from the Instructions for the Government Regulation
of Armies in the Field the follovfing paragraphs:

Paragraph 148 is this:

The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging
to the hostile army or a citizen or a subject of the hostile government an out-
law, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modem
law of peace allows such intentional' outlawry. On the contrary, it abhoi’S
such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed
in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civi-
lized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination
of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

Now. Mr. President, is it denied that hundreds upon hundreds
of Filipinos have been put to death without trial? Has any soldier
or officer been brought to trial by our authority for these offenses?
Now, if it be an outrage upon which “ nations look with hoiTor.”
to use the language of that paragraph, and which “ the law of war
* * * abhors,” is it any less a crime to be abhorred when it is
done without such proclamation? The proclamation does not,
5298

22

according to this authority, justify the officer or soldier who acts
in obedience to it. On the contrary, his conduct is abhorrent to
all civilized manhind. And j^et these thbigs pass without con-
demnation, without punishment, without trial. Gentlemen seem
to be impatient when they are asked to investigate them, or even
to hear the story told in the Senate of the United States.

Paragi-aph IG is:

Military necessity does not admit of cruelty —that is, the infliction of suf-
fering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding
except in fight, nor of torture to extort confession. It does not admit of the
use of poison in any way nor of the wanton devastation of a district. Itadmits
of deception, but disclaims acts of xierfidy, and, in general, military neces-
sity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace
unnecessarily difficult.

The rule says:

It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy.

That also follows the prohibition of the use of poison, with
which it is associated.

Now, perfidy is defined later in paragraph 117, which declares:

It is justly considered an act of bad faith, of infamy, or fiendishness to de-
ceive the enemy by flags of protection. * * »

Paragraph 65 is:

The use of the enemy’s national standard, flag, or other emblem of na-
tionality for the purpose of deceiving the enemy in battle is an act of per-
fidy. * * *

Is not the uniform an emblem of nationality? If it be an act of
perfidy — the use of that emblem of nationality to deceive the
enemy in battle— is it any less an act of perfidy to use it to steal
upon him and deceive him when he is not in battle and is in Ms
own quarters?

This is also prohibited by the convention of The Hague, which
must have been well known to all our officers, which had been
signed by the representatives of this Government, although its
foimal approval by the Senate took place this winter.

I suppose if it be perfidy now, according to the unanimous opin-
ion of the Senate, and was perfidy before, according to the con-
current action of 24 great nations, the question when we formally
ratified the treaty becomes unimportant.

Article 23 of the convention declares:

(f) To make improper use of a flag of trace, the national flag, or milit.ary
eu-signs, and the enemy’s uniform—

is specially prohibited. That is classed in that article also with
the use of poison and poisoned arms.

So, Mr. President, the act of General Funston — not General
Funston himself, if he acted under orders of Ms superior — but
the act of General Funston is stamped with indelible infamy by
Abraham Lincoln’s articles of war, to which the Secretary of
War appeals, and the concurrent action of 24 great nations, and
the unanimous action of the Senate tMs winter.

Let me repeat a little: What is an act of perfidy, as distinguished
from the deception which General MacArthur thinks appropriate
to all war, as defined by both these great and commanding au-
thorities?

That is defined in paragraph 65, which declares that —

The use of the enemy’s national standard, flag, or other emblem of nation-
ality for the purpose of deceiving the enemy in battle is an act of perfidy, by
which they lose all claim to the protection of the law of war.

If that be true, is it less an act of perfidy to use the uniform of
the enemy — ^his emblem of nationality — to steal upon him when
no battle is going on?

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23

One hundred and seventeen is to like effect:

It is justly considered an act of bad faith, of infamy, or fiendishnoss to de-
ceive the enemy by a flag of protection. Such act of bad faith may be good
cause for refusing to respect such flag.

Such deception is of the same ’ kind as that practiced on the
unsuspecting Aguinaldo, which the rule “ justly,” as it declares,
“ considers an act of infamy or fiendishness.”

Eule 60 is:

It is against the usage of modern war to resolve, in hatred and revenge, to
give no quarter.

Observe this is not justified even by revenge.

No body of troops has the right to declare that it will not give, and there-
fore will not accept, quarter.

56. Aprisonerof waris subject to no punishment for beingapublic enemy,
nor is any revenge wi'eaked upon him by the intentional infliction of any suf-
fering or disgrace, by cruel imprisonment, want of food, by mutilation, death,
or any other barbarity.

So, Mr. President, in this attempt to force your sovereignty by
this process of benevolent assimilation, we have been brought to
the unexampled dishonor of disregarding our own rules for the
conduct of annies in the field and to disregard the rules to which
our national faith has just been pledged to substantially all the
civilized powers of the earth.

I understand the facts to be that this officer, with the approval
of his superior officer, disguised himself or some of his men in the
Filipino uniform, stole upon Aguinaldo unawares under that
guise, deceived him by a forged letter representing that they were
hungry, received food at his hands, and then threw him down and
made him captive.

Now, if that be not the perfidy twice denounced and expressly
ranked with poisonmg and other like barbarities I can not under-
stand the meaning of hmnan language or the force of human
conduct.

But this act of General Funston's, approved by his superior offi-
cer, was in violation, not only of the laws of war, but of thrvt law
of hospitality which governs alike everywhere the civilized Chris-
tian or pagan wherever the light of chivalry has penetrated. Ho
went to Aguinaldo under the pretense that he was ahungered,
and Aguinaldo fed him. Was not that an act of perfidy? It vio-
lated the holy rite of hospitality which even the Oriental nations
hold sacred?

In Scott's immortal romance of the Talisman, the Sultan Sala-
din interposes to prevent a criminal who had just committed a
treacherous murder from partaking of his feast by striking off
his head as he approached the banquet. “ Had he murdered my
father,” said the Saladin to Eichard Coeur de Lion, “ and after-
wards partaken of my bowl and cup, not a hair of his head could
have been injured by me.”

In this case it was not the host sparing the guest, it was not
Conrad de Montserat partaking of the bowl and the cup of Saladin,
but it was the guest who had partaken of the hospitality of the
host who betrajud his benefactor, and in doing it represented
the United States of America in the Philippines.

Mr. President, the story of what has been called the water
torture has been, in part, told by other Senators. I have no incli-
nation to repeat the story. I can not help believing that not a
twentieth part of it has yet been told. I get letters in large num-
bers from officers, or the friends of officers, who repeat what they
tell me, all testifying to these cruelties. And yet as in the case
5298

24

cited by the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Bacon] the other day the
officer, or the officer's friends or kindred, -who send the letters to me,
send them under a strict injunction of secrecy. Other ^nators tell
me they have a like experience. These brave officers, ■who -would
go to the cannon’s mouth for honor, who never flinch in battle,
flinch before what they deem the certain ruin of their prospects
in life if they give the evidence which they tliink would be dis-
tasteful to their superiors. I do not undertake to judge of this
matter. Other Senators can judge as well as lean. The Ameri-
can people can do it better.

I suppose, Mr. President, that those of us who are of English
descent like to think that the race from which we come ■will com-
pare favorably with most others in the matter of humanity. Yet
history is full of the terrible cruelties committed by Englishmen
when men of other races refused to submit to their authority. I
think my friends who seek to extenuate this water torture, or to
apologize for it, may perhaps hke to look at the precedent of the
dealings with the Insh rebels in 1799.

In Howell’s State Trials there -will be foimd the proceedings in
a suit by Mr. Wright against James Judkin Fitzgerald, a sheriff,
who ordered a citizen to be flogged for the purpose of extorting
information. I believe 50 lashes were administered and then 50
more by Fitzgerald, and in many other cases the same course was
taken. It was -wholly to extract information, as this water tor-
ture has been to get information, Fitzgerald, the sheriff, told his
own story. He pointed out the necessity of his system of terror.
He said he got one man he had flogged to confess that the plain-
tiff was a secretary of the United Hishmen, and this information
he could not get from him before; that Mr. Wright himself had
offered to confess, but his memory had been so impaired by the
flogging that he could not command the faculty of recollection.
Notwithstanding he had by the terror of his name and the sever-
ity of his flogging succeeded most astonishingly, particularly in
one instance, where, by the flogging of one man, he and 30 others
acknowledged themselves United Irishmen.

Now, that was abundantly proved; and the sheriff who had
tortured and flogged these men who were only fighting that Ire-
land should not be ruled without the consent of the governed
had the effrontery to ask for an act of indemnity from the
House of Commons against the damages which had been re-
cover(?il against him, and that claim found plenty of advocates.
The ministry undertook to extenuate the action of this monster
by citing the cruelties which the Irish people had inflicted in
their turn, and by sajmg that very material discoveries were
made relative to concealed arms as the result of these tortures.
The defenders of the administration said the most essential
sei’vice had been rendered to the State and to the country by
Mr. Fitzgerald. The attorney-general trusted the House would
cheerfully accede to the prayer of the petition. Mr. Wright,
the man who had been tortured, was a man of excellent char-
acter and education, and a teacher of the French language. As
soon as he knew there were charges against him he went to
the house of the defendant to give himself up and demand a trial.
I will not take the time of the Senate to read the debates. The
argument for the Government would do very well for some of
the arguments we have heard here, and the arguments we have
heard here would have done very well there. The House passed
5298

25

a general bill to indemnify all sheriffs and magistrates who had
acted for the suppression of the rebellion in a way not warranted
by law, and to secure them against actions at law for so doing.
The sole question at stake was the right of torture to extort infor-
mation. The bill passed the House, and afterwards Fitzgerald
got a considerable pension, and was created a baronet of the
United Kingdom.

Now, I agree that this precedent, so far as it may be held to
have set an example for what has been done in the Philippine
Islands, may be cited against me. I cite it only to show that such
things are inevitable when you undertake by brute force to re-
duce to subjection an unwilling people, and that, therefore, when
you enter upon that undertaking you yourselves take the respon-
sibility for everthing that follows.

Mr. President, it is said that these horrors which never would
have come to the public knowledge had not the Senate ordered
this investigation, were rmknown to our authorities at home. I
hope arrd believe they were unkrrown to the War Department. I
know they were rmknown to President Roosevelt, and I Imow they
were rmknown to President McKinley. But I can not think, per-
haps I am skeptical, that the recent declaration of that honorable
gentleman, the Secretary of War, made on a memorable occasion,
that the war on our part has been conducted with imexampled
humanity, will be accepted by his cormtrymen.

Let us not be diverted from the true issue. We are not tailring
of retaliation. We are not talking of the ordinary brutalities of
war. We are not talking about or inquiring into acts of ven-
geance committed in the heat of battle. We are talking about tor-
tm-e, torture — cold-blooded, deliberate, calculated torture; tortui-e
to extort information. Claverhouse did it to the Scotch Covenant-
ers with the boot and thumb-screw. It has never since till now been
done by a man who spoke English except in Ireland . The Spanish
inquisition did it with the slow fire and the boiling oil. It is said
that the water torture was borrowed from Spain. I am quite ready
to believe it. The men who make the inquiry are told that they
are assailing the honor of the American Army. How do the de-
fenders of the American Army meet the question? * By denying
the fact? No. By saying that the offenders have been detected
and punished by military power? Some of these facts were re-
ported to the War Department more than a year ago. So far as
I can find there have been but two men tided for torture to ex-
tort information. They were two officers who hung up men by
the thumbs, and they were found guilty. The general officer
who approved the finding said “that they had dishonored and de-
graded the American Army,” and then they were sent back to
their command with a reprimand. I agree with the Senator from
Wisconsin that the men who have stolen, and committed assaults
for the gratification of brutal lusts have been punished, and pun-
ished severely.

My honorable friend from Wisconsin [Mr. Spooner] said some-
thing about this matter the other day. That is the only case of
a punishment to be foimd in our records so far as I have seen
them. I agree with my friend from Wisconsin that the men who
have stolen and committed assaults for the gratification of brutal
lusts have been punished, and punished severely, but what we are
talking about is torture.

Mr. SPOONER. Did I say anything about the number?

6298

26

Mr. HOAR. The Senator said there were two or three hundred
cases, quoting the record before him.

Mr. CARMACK. Was it not the Senator from Iowa [Mr.
Dolliver]?

Mr. HOAR. Ho; it was the Senator from Wisconsin, unless
my memory deceives me. I will change it if I am mistaken, but
I think I am not mistaken.

We are talking about torture committed in the open day by
men who were not drunk, but sober: men who had not just come
out of battle, but torture for the purpose of getting information,
on which, according to one of this committee, the tribunals acted.

What we are talking about is the torture committed in the
presence of numerous witnesses for the purpose of extorting in-
formation, and orders from high authority to depopulate whole
districts, and to slay all inhabitants, including all boys over 10
years old.

Is it denied that these things have been done? Is it denied that
although you are still on the threshold of this inquiry, and have
only called such witnesses as you happen to find 10,000 miles
away from the scene, that these things have been proved to the
satisfaction of the majority of the committee, and that no man
has yet been punished, although they were going on considerably
more than a year ago? Now, how do oiir friends who seek, I will
not say to defend, but to extenuate them, deal with the honor of
the American Army? Why, they come into the Senate and say
that there have been other cruelties and barbarities and atrocities
in war. When these American soldiers and officers are called to
the bar oirr friends summon Nero and Torquemada and the Span-
ish inquisition and the sheeted and ghostly leaders of the Ku
Klux Klan and put them by their side. That is the way you de-
fend the honor of the American Army. It is the first time the
American soldier was put into such company by the men who
have undertaken his defense.

It has been shown, I think, in the investigation now going on
that the secretary of the province of Batangas declared that one-
third of the 300,000 of the population of that province have died
within two^ears — 100,000 men and women.

The Boston Journal, an eminent Republican paper and a most
able supporter of the imperialistic policy, printed on the 3d of
May, 1901, an interview with Gen. James M. Bell, given to the
New York Times — not the General Bell who has been discussed
here, but Gen. James M. Bell is his name, an officer who came
back from the Philippines in May, 1901.

Mr. SPOONER. James F. Bell is the one there now.

Mr. LODGE. James Franklin Bell.

IMr. HOAR. This one is James M. Bell, unless I have the in-
itials wrong. I have taken great pains to make inquiry. I have
heard from the man to whom the interview was given, a news-
paper correspondent of high character, and I have applied to the
gentlemen of the Boston Journal to know if they ever heard it con-
tradicted. He said in May, 1901, and he advocated the policy in
the interview, too, that one-sixth of the natives of Luzon have
either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last
iwo years. Now, what is the population of Luzon? It is about
3,000,000, is it not?

Mr. ALLISON. That or thereabouts.

Mr. HOAR. Then one-sixth is 500,000.

6298

27

I suppose that this dengue fever and the sickness which depopu-
lated Batangas is the dii-ect result of the war, and comes from
the condition of starvation and bad food which the war has
caused. The other provinces have not been heard from. If this
be true we have caused the death of more human beings in the
Philippines than we have caused to our enemies, including in-
surgents in the ten-ible civil war, in all oui- other wars put to-
gether, The general adds that —

the loss of life by killing alone has been very CTeat, but I think not one man
has been slain except where his death served the legitimate purposes of war.
It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be
thought harsh measures, for the Filipino is tricky and crafty and has to be
fought in his own way.

I have made careful inquiry and I am satisfied that this inter-
view is genuine. Now, all this is because you will not tell what
you mean to do in the future, as I understand it.

Where did this order to make Samar a howling wilderness
originate? The responsibility unquestionably, according to the
discipline of armies in the field, rests with the highest authority
from which it came.

We used to talk, some of us, about the horrors of Anderson-
ville, and other things that were dona during the civil war. We
hope, all of us, never to hear them mentioned again. But is there
anything in them worse than that which an officer of high rank
in the Army, vouched for by a Senator on this floor, from per-
sonal knowledge, as a man of the highest honor and veracity,
writes about the evils of these reconceutrado camps in the Phil-
ippine Islands? Now all this cost, all these young men gone to
their graves, all these wrecked lives, all this* national dishonor,
the repeal of the Declaration of Independence, the overthrow of
the principle on which the Monroe doctrine was placed by its
author, the devastation of provinces, the shooting of captives, the
torture of prisoners and of unarmed and peaceful citizens, the hang-
ing men up by the thumbs, the carloads of maniac soldiers that
you bring home are all because you would not tell and vnll not
teU now whether you mean in the future to stand on the princi-
ples which you and your fathers alwa3's declared in the past.

The Senator from Ohio saj’s it is not wise to declare what we
will do at some future time. Mr. President, we do not ask you to
declare what you will do at some future time. We ask you
to declare an eternal principle good at the present time and good
at all times. We ask j ou to reaffirm it , because the men most clam-
orous in support of what juu are doing deny it. That principle,
if you act upon it, prevents you from crushing out a weak nation,
because of your fancied interest now or hereafter. It prevents
you from undertaking to judge what institutions are fit for
other nations on the poor plea that yon are the strongest. We
are asking you at least to go no further than to declare what
you would not do now or hereafter, and the reason for declaring
it is that half of j'ou declare you will hold this people in subjec-
tion and the other half on this matter are dumb. You declared
what you would not do at some future time when yon all voted
that you would not take Cuba against the will of her people, did
you not? We ask you to declare not at what moment you will
get out of the Philippine Islands, but only on what eternal prin-
ciple you will act, in them or out of them. Such declarations are
made in all history. They are made in every important treaty
between nations.

6298

28

The Constitution of the United States is itself but a declaration
of what this country will do and what it will not do in all future
times. The Declaration of Independence, if it have the practical
meaning it lias had for a hundred years, is a declaration of what
this country would do through all future times. The Monroe
Doctrine, to which sixteen republics south of us owe their life and
their safety, was a declaration to mankind of what we would do
in all future time. Among all the shallow pretenses of imperial-
ism this statement that we will not say what we will do in the
future is the most shallow of all. Was there ever such a flimsy
pretext flaunted in the face of the American people as that of gen-
tlemen who say. If any other nation on the face of the earth or
all other nations together attempt to overthrow the independence
of any people to the south of us in this hemisphei'e, we will flght
and preveiit them, and at the same time think it dishonorable
to declare whether we will ever overthrow the independence of
a weaker nation in another hemisphere.

If we take your view of it we have cruSied out the only repub-
lic in Asia and put it under our heel and we are now at war with
the only Christian people in the East. Even, as I said, the Sena-
tor from Ohio admits they are a people, he only says there are
several peoples and not one, as if the doctrine that one people has
no right to buy sovereignty over another, or to rule another
against its will, did not apply in the plural number. You can
not crush out an unwilling people, or buy sovereignty over them,
or treat them as spoils of conquest, or booty of battle in the singu-
lar, or at retail, but you have a perfect right to do it by whole-
sale. Suppose there are several peoples in the Philippines. They
have population enough to make a hundred and twelve States of
the size of Rhode Island or Delaware when they adopted the Con-
stitution.

I suppose, according to this modern doctrine, that if, when the
Holy Alliance threatened to reduce the colonies which had thrown
off the yoke of Spain in South America, not a wit more com-
pletely than the Philippine people had thrown off the yoke of
Spain in Asia, if they had undertaken to subdue them all at once,
John Quincy Adams and James Monroe would have held their
peace and would at least have said it was not wise to say what we
would do in the future. If we had the right to protect nascent
republics from the tyranny of other people and to declare that
we would do it in the future, and if need be would encounter the
whole continent of Europe single-handed in that case, is it any
loss fitting to avow that we will protect such peoples from our-
selves? How is it that these gentlemen v/ho will not tell you
what they will do in the future in regard to the Philippine Islands
were so eager and greedy to tell you what they would do and
what they would not do in the case of Cuba when we first declared
war on Spain? You can make no distinction between these two
cases except by having a motive, which I do not for one moment
impute, that when you made war upon Spain you were afraid of
Europe, if you did not make the declaration.

These people are given to us as children, to lead them out of
their childhood into manhood. They were docile and affection-
ate in the beginning. But they needed j^our kindness and justice,
and a respect in them for the rights we claimed for ourselves, and
ihe rights we had declared always were inherent in all mankind.
You preferred force to kindness, and power to justice, and war to
peace, and pride to generosity.

29

Yon said yon vronld not treat \vith a man -Rnth aims in his
hands. Yon have come, instead, to tortnre him ivhen he -was nn-
aimed and defenseless. Yet yon said you vronld make his conduct
the measure of your oivn; that if he lied to yon, yon would lie
to him; that if he were cruel to you, yon would he cniel to him;
that if he were a savage, yon would he a savage also. Yon held
an attitude toward him which yon hold to no strong or to no
civilized power. Y'on decorate an officer for the capture of
Agninaldo by treachery, and the next week ratify The Hague con-
vention and denounce such action, and classify it with poisoning
and breaking of faith.

Yon tell ns, Mr. President, that the Philippine people have
practiced some cruelties themselves. The investigation has not
yet gone far enough to enable you to tell which side begun these
atrocities. One case which one of the members of the majority
of the committee told the Senate the other day was well estab-
lished by proving that it occurred long before April, 1901, and
was so published, far and wide, in the press of this country at
that time. I do not learn tiiat there was any attempt to investi-
gate it, either by the War Department or by Congress, mitil the
beginning of the present session of Congress. But suppose they
did begin it. Such things are quite likely to occur when wealmess
is fighting for its lights against strength. Is their conduct any
excuse for ours? The Philippine people is but a baby in the hands
of our Republic. The yoimg atldete, the giant, the Hercules, the
Titan, forces a fight upon a boy 10 years old and then blames
the little fellow because he hits below the belt. ,

I see that my enthusiastic friend from North Carolina seeks to
break the force of these revelations by saying that they are only
what some Americans are wont to do at home. It is benevolent
assimilation over again. It is just what the junior Senator from
Indiana predicted. He thought we should conduct affairs in the
Philippine Islands so admirably that we should pattern our do-
mestic administration on that model. But did I understand that
the Senator from North Carolina proposes, if his charge against
the Democrats there is true, to make North Carolina a howling
wilderness, or to burn populous towns of 10,000 people, to get the
people of North Carolina into reconcentration camps, and to slay
every male child over 10 years old? I know nothing about the
timth of the Senator's charges. They have never been investi-
gated by the Senate so far. We had some painful investigations
years ago by committees in this body and of the other "House,
notably one of which the senior Senator from Colorado was chair-
man. But I never heard that you undertook to apply to Ameri-
cans the methods which, if not justified, at least are sought to
be extenuated, in the Philippine Islands.

Mr. President, if the stories which come to me in private from
officers of the Army and from the kindred and friends of sol-
diers are to be tnisted; if the evidence which seems to be just
beginning before the Senate Committee can be trusted, there is
nothing in the conduct of Spain in Cuba worse than the conduct
of Americans in the Philippine Islands. If this ertdence be true,
and nobody is as yet ready to deny it, and Spain were strong
enough, she would have the right to-morrow to wrest the Philip-
pine Islands from our grasp on grounds as good, if not better,
than those which justified us when we made war upon her. The
United States is a strong and powerful country — the strojigest
and most powerful on earth, as we love to think. But it is the
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first time in the history of this people for nearly three hundred
years when we had to appeal to strength and not to the righteous-
ness of our cause to maintain our position in a great debate of
justice and liberty.

Gentlemen tell us that the Filipinos are savages, that they
have inflicted torture, that they have dishonored our dead and
outraged the living. That very likely may be true. Spain said
the same thing of the Cubans. We have made the same charges
against our ovm counti’j-men in the disturbed days after the war.
The reports of committees and the evidence in the documents in
our library are full of them. But who.ever heard before of an
American gentleman, or an American, who took as a rule for his
own conduct the condiict of his antagonist, or who claimed that
the Republic should act as savages Ijecause she had savages to
deal with? I had supposed, Mr. President, that the question,
whether a gentleman shall lie or murder or torture, depended on
his sense of his ovm character, and not on his opinion of his
victim. Of all the miserable sophistical shifts wMch have at-
tended this wretched business from the beginning, there is none
more miserable than this.

You knew — men are held to know what they ought to know in
morals and in the conduct of States — and you knew that this peo-
ple would resist you; you knew you were to have a war; you knew
that if they were civilized, so far as they were civilized and like
you, the war would be conducted after the fashion of civilized
warfare, and that so far as they were savage the war would be
conducted on their part after the fashion of savage warfare; and
you knew also that if they resisted and held out, their soldiers
would be tempted to do what they have done, and would yield to
that temptation.

And I tell you, Mr. President, that if you do not disregard the
lessons of human nature thus far, and do not retrace your steps
and set an example of another conduct, you will have and those
who follow you will have a like experience hereafter. You may
pacify this country on the surface; you may make it a solitude,
and call it peace; you may burn towns; yoii may exterminate
populations; you may kill the children or the boys over 10, as
Herod slew the firstborn of the Israelites. But the volcano will
be there. You will not settle this thing in a generation or in a
centiiry or in ten centuries, until it is settled right. It never
■wdll be settled right until you look for your counselors to George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and
Abraham Lincoln, and not to the reports of the War Department.

There is much more I should like to say, but I have spoken too
long already. I have listened to what many gentlemen have
said — gentlemen whom I love and honor — with profound sorrow.
They do over again in the Senate what Burke complained of to
the House of Commons.

In order to prove that the Americans have no right to their liberties we
are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole
spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free we are
obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain
a paltry advantage over them in debate without attacking some of those
principles or deriding some of those feelings for which our ancestors have
shed their blood.

I wish to cite another weighty maxim from Burke:

America, gentlemen say, is a noble object — ^it is an object well worth
fighting for. Cea-tainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining
them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by
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their complesions and their hahits. Those who understand the military art
will of conrse have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder
of the state may have more confidence in the efiScacy of arms. Bat I con-
fess, possibly for the want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in
favor of prudent management than of force — considering force not as an
odious, hut a feeble instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so
active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable connection with us.

There is nothing —

Says Gibbon, the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Ro-
man Empire —

more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote coun-
tries and foreign nations in opposition to their inclination and interest. A
torrent of barbarians may pass over the earth, hut an extensive empire must
be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the center, an
absolute power, prompt in action and rich in resources; a swift and easy
communication with the extreme jjarts; fortifications to check the first
effort of rebellion; a regular administration to protect and punish; and a
weU-discipiined army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and
despair.

Lord Elgin, Governor-General of India and formerly Governor-
General of Canada, vrell known and highly esteemed in the United
States, declared as the result of his experience in the East: “ It
is a terrible business, however — this living among inferior races.
I have seldom from man or woman since I came to the East heard
a sentence which was reconcilable with the hypothesis that Chris-
tianity had ever come into the world. Detestation, contempt,
ferocity, vengeance, whether Chinamen or Indians he the ob.ject.
One moves among them with perfect indifference, treating them
not as dogs, because in that case one would whistle to them and
pat them, hut as maebiues with which one can have no commun-
ion or sjunpatby. When the passions of fear and hatred are in-
grafted on this indifiference, the result is frightful — an absolute
callousness as to the sufferings of the objects of those passions,
which must be witnessed to be understood and believed.”

The glowing narrative of Macaulay, the eloquence of Burke
and Sheridan have made the crimes committed in India under the
rule of Warren Hastings familiar to mankind. Yet I believe the
verdict of history has acquitted Hastings, as the tribunal that tried
him acquitted him. He was dismissed, exculpated, from the bar
of the House of Lords, and decorated. He was swoni of the Privy
Council and received at cofirt. A large purse was made up for
him by the East India Company. Yet no man doubts the truth
of Burke's ten-ible indictment. He was acquitted because Eng-
land, and not he, was the criminal. When England undertook to
assei*t her rule in India what followered was the inevitable con-
sequence of the decision.

Lord Erskine, the foremost advocate who ever spoke the Eng-
lish tongue on English soil, placed with xmerring sagacity the
defense of Hastings on this ground alone. He admitted that
Hastings, in i*uling India, “may, and mnst, have offended against
the laws of God and nature.” “If he WeXS the faithful viceroy
of an empire wi-ested in blood from the people to whom God and
nature had given it, he may and must have preserved that unjust
dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying snper-
iority.” “A government having no root in consent or affection,
no foxmdation in similarity of interests, nor support from any
one principle which cements men in society together could only
be upheld by alternate stratagem and force.” Erskine adds: “To
be governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron: and
oni- empire in the East would long since have been lost to Great
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32

Britain if ci^^l sltill and militarj’ prowess had not nnited their
efforts to support an authority which Heaven never gave — by
means which it never can sanction.”

Mr. President, this is the eternal law of human nature. You
may struggle against it, you may try to escape it, you may
persuade yourself that your intentions are benevolent, that your
yoke will be easy and your burden will be light, but it will
assert itself again and again. Government without the consent
of the governed — an authority which Heaven never gave — can
only he supported by means which Heaven never can sanction.

The American people have got this one question to answer.
Tliey may answer it now; they can take ten years, or twenty
years, or a generation, or a century to think of it. But it will
not dovm. They must answer it in the end — Can you lawfioUy
buy with money, or get by brute force of anns, the right to hold
in subjugation an unwilling people, and to impose on them such
constitution as yoii, and not they, think best for them?

We have answered this qiiestion a good many times in the past.
The fathers answered it in 177C, and founded the Republic upon
their answer, which has been the corner stone. John Quincy
Adams and James Monroe answered it again in the Monroe doc-
trine, which John Quincy Adams declared was only the doctrine
of the consent of the governed. The Republican party answered
it when it took possession of the forces of Government at the
beginning of the most brilliant period in all legislative history.
Abraham Lincoln answered it when, on that fatal journey to
Washington in 18G1, he announced that the doctrine of the con-
sent of the governed was the cardinal doctrine of his political
creed, and declared, with prophetic vision, that he was ready to
be assassinated for it if need be. You answered it again your-
selves when you said that Cuba, who had no more title than the
people of the Philippine Islands had to their independence, of
right oiight to be free and independent.

The question will be answered again hereafter. It will be an-
swered soberly and deliberately and quietly as the American peo-
ple are wont to answer great questions of duty. It will be an-
swered, not in any turbulent assembly, amid shouting and clapping
of hands and stamping of feet, where men do their thinking with
their heels and not with their brains. It will be answered in the
churches and in the schools and in the colleges; and it will be
answered in fifteen million American homes, and it will be an-
swered as it has always been ans^wered. It will be answered right.

A famous orator once imagined the nations of the world unit-
ing to erect a column to Jurispradence in some stately capital.
Each country was to bring the name of its great jurist to be in-
scribed on the side of the column, wdth a sentence stating what
he and his country through him had done toward establishing the
reign of law in justice for the benefit of mankind.

Rome said, “Here is Numa, who received the science of law
from the nymph Egeria in the cavern and taught its message to
his countrymen. Here is Justinian, w^ho first reduced law to_ a
code, made its precepts plain, so that all mankind could read it,
and laid down the rules which should govern the dealing of man
with man in every transaction of life.”

France said, “Here is D’Aguesseau, the gi’eat chancellor, to
whose judgment seat pilgrims from afar were wont to repair to
do him reverence.”

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England said, “ Here is Erskine, wlio made it safe for men to
print the truth, no matter what tyrant might dislike to read it.”
Virginia said, “ Here is IMarshall, who breathed the vital princi-
ple into the Constitution, infused into it, instead of the letter that
killeth. the spirit that maketh alive, and enabled it to keep State
and nation each in its appointed bounds, as the stars abide in their
courses.”

I have sometimes fancied that we might erect here in the cap-
ital of the country a column to American Liberty which alone
might rival in height the beautiful and simple shaft which we
have erected to the fame of the Father of the CSuntry. I can
fancy each generation bringing its inscription, which should recite
its own contribution to the great structure of which the column
should be but the sjunbol.

The generation of the Puritan and the Pilgrim and the Hugue-
not claims the place of honor at the base. ” I brought the torch
of Freedom across the sea. I cleared the forest. I subdued the
savage and the wild beast. I laid in Christian liberty and law
the foundations of empire.”

The next generation says: “ Wliat my fathers founded I builded.
I left the seashore to penetrate the wilderness. I planted schools
and colleges and courts and churches.”

Then comes the generation of the great colonial day. “ I stood
by the side of England on many a hard-fought field. I helped
humble the power of France. I saw the lilies go down before
the lion at Louisburg and Quebec. I carried the cross of St.
George in triumph in Martinique and the Havana. I knew the
stormy pathways of the ocean. I followed the whale from the
Arctic to the Antarctic seas, among tumbling mountains of ice
and under equinoctial heat, as the great English orator said, ‘No
sea not vexed by my fisheries ; no climate not witness to my toils. ’ ’ ’
Then comes the generation of the Revolutionary time. “ I en-
countered the power of England. I declared and won the Inde-
pendence of my country. I placed that declaration on the eternal
principles of justice and righteousness which all mankind have
read, and on which all mankind will one day stand. I affirmed
the dignity of human nature and the right of the people to govern
themselves. I devised the securities against popular haste and
delusion which made that right secure. I created the Supreme
Court and the Senate. For the first time in history I made the
right of the people to govern themselves safe, and established in-
stitutions for that end which will endure forever.”

The next generation says, I encountered England again. I
.indicated the right of an American ship to sail the seas the wide
world over without molestation. I made the American sailor as
safe at the ends of the earth as my fathers had made the Ameri-
can farmer safe in his home. I proclaimed the Monroe doctrine
in the face of the Holy Alliance, under which 16 Republics have
joined the family of nations. I filled the Western Hemisphere
with Republics from the Lakes to Cape Horn, each controlling its
own destiny in safety and in honor.”

Then comes the next generation : “ I did the mighty deeds which
in yonr younger years you saw and which your fathers told. I
saved the Union. I put down the rebellion. I freed the slave.
I made of every slave a freeman, and of every freeman a citizen,
and of every citizen a voter.”

Then comes another who did the great work in peace, in which
52S8 3

34

so many of you had an honorable share: “ I kept the faith. 1
paid the debt. I brought in conciliation and peace instead of
war. I secured in the practice of nations the great Doctrine of
Expatriation. I devised the Homestead system. I covered the
prairie and the plain -with happy homes and with mighty States.
I crossed the continent and joined together the seas with my
great railroads. I declared the manufacturing independence \>f
America, as my fathers affirmed its political independence. I
built up our vast domestic commerce. I made my country the
richest, freest, strongest, happiest peopleonthe faceof the earth.”
And now what have we to say? 4^at have we to say? Are
we to have a place in that honorable company? Must we engrave
on that column, “We repealed the Declaration of Independence.
We changed the Monroe doctrine from a doctrine of eternal
righteousness and justice, resting on the consent of the governed,
to a doctrine of brutal selfishness, looking only to our own ad-
vantage. We crushed the only republic in Asia. We made war
on the only Christian people in the East. We converted a war
of glory to a war of shame. We vulgarized the American flag.
We introduced perfidy into the practice of war. We inflicted
torture on unarmed men to extort confession. We put children
to death. We established reconcentrado camps. We devasted
provinces. We baffled the aspirations of a people for liberty.”
No, Mr. President. Never! Never! Other and better counsels
will yet prevail. The hours are long in the life of a great peo-
ple. The irrevocable step is not yet taken.

Let us at least have this to say: We too have kept the faith of
the Fathers. We took Cuba by the hand. We delivered her from
her age-long bondage. We welcomed her to the family of na-
tions. W’e set mankind an example never beheld before of
moderation in -victory. We led hesitating and halting Europe to
the deliverance of their beleaguered ambassadors in China. We
marched through a hostile country — a country cruel and barbar-
ous— without anger or revenge. We retumed benefit for injury,
and pity for cruelty. We made the name of America beloved in
the East as in the West. We kept faith with the Philippine
people. We kept faith -with our own history. We kept our
national honor unsullied. The flag which we received -without a
rent we handed do-wn without a stain. [Applause on the floor
and in the galleries.]

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