should have thrown away in Paris what Dewey had won in Manila. The
public servant who, without instructions, should in a gush of
irresponsible sentimentality abandon great possessions to which his
country is justly entitled, whether by conquest or as indemnity for
unjust war, would be not only an unprofitable but a faithless servant.
It was their obvious duty to hold what Dewey had won, at least till the
American people had time to consider and decide otherwise.
Is there any need to debate whether the American people will abandon it
now? Those who have a fancy for that species of dialectics may weigh
the chances, and evolve from circumstances of their own imagination,
and canons of national and international obligation of their own
manufacture, conclusions to their own liking. I need not consume much
of your time in that unprofitable pursuit. We may as well, here and
now, keep our feet on solid ground, and deal with facts as they are.
The American people are in lawful possession of the Philippines, with
the assent of all Christendom, with a title as indisputable as the
title to California; and, though the debate will linger for a while,
and perhaps drift unhappily into partizan contention, the generation is
yet unborn that will see them abandoned to the possession of any other
Power. The Nation that scatters principalities as a prodigal does his
inheritance is too sentimental and moon-shiny for the Nineteenth
Century or the Twentieth, and too unpractical for Americans of any
period. It may flourish in Arcadia or Altruria, but it does not among
the sons of the Pilgrims, or on the continent they subdued by stern
struggle to the uses of civilization.
Nevertheless, our people did stop to consider very carefully their
constitutional powers. I believe we have reached a point also where the
result of that consideration may be safely assumed. The constitutional
arguments have been fully presented and the expositions and decisions
marshaled. It is enough now to say that the preponderance of
constitutional authorities, with Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, and
Thomas H. Benton at their head, and the unbroken tendency of decisions
by the courts of the United States for at least the last fifty years,
from Mr. Chief Justice Waite and Mr. Justice Miller and Mr. Justice
Stanley Matthews, of the Supreme Court, down to the very latest
utterance on the subject, that of Mr. Justice Morrow of the Circuit
Court of Appeals, sustain the power to acquire "territory or other
property" anywhere, and govern it as we please.[9] Inhabitants of such
territory (not obviously incapable) are secure in the civil rights
guaranteed by the Constitution; but they have no political rights under
it, save as Congress confers them. The evidence in support of this view
has been fully set forth, examined, and weighed, and, unless I greatly
mistake, a popular decision on the subject has been reached. The
constitutional power is no longer seriously disputed, and even those
who raised the doubt do not seem now to rely upon it.
[9] Some of these authorities have already been briefly presented
in the address at Miami University, pp. 107-158. It may be
desirable to consult a few additional ones, covering the main
points that have been disputed. They are grouped for convenience
in the Appendix.
[Sidenote: Contributions to International Law and Morality.]
In thus summarizing what has been already settled or disposed of in our
dealings with the questions of the war, I may be permitted to pause for
a moment on the American contributions it brought about to
international morality and law. On the day on which the American Peace
Commissioners to Paris sailed for home after the ceremonial courtesy
with which their labors were concluded, the most authoritative journal
in the world published an interview with the eminent President of the
corresponding Spanish Commission, then and for some time afterward
President also of the Spanish Senate, in which he was reported as
saying: "We knew in advance that we should have to deal with an
implacable conqueror, who would in no way concern himself with any
pre-existing International Law, but whose sole object was to reap from
victory the largest possible advantage. This conception of
International Law is absolutely new; it is no longer a case of might
against right, but of might without right.... The Americans have acted
as vainqueurs parvenus."[10]
[10] London "Times," December 17, 1898.
Much may be pardoned to the anguish of an old and trusted public
servant over the misfortunes of his native land. We may even, in our
sympathy, endeavor to forget what country it was that proposed to defy
the agreements of the Conference of Paris and the general judgment of
nations by resorting to privateering, or what country it was that
preferred to risk becoming an asylum for the criminals of a continent
rather than revive, even temporarily, that basic and elementary
implement of modern international justice, an extradition treaty, which
had been in force with acceptable results for over twenty years. But
when Americans are stigmatized as "vainqueurs parvenus," who by virtue
of mere strength violate International Law against a prostrate foe, and
when one of the ablest of their American critics encourages the Spanish
contention by talking of our "bulldog diplomacy at Paris," it gives us
occasion to challenge the approval of the world--as the facts amply
warrant--for the scrupulous conformity to existing International Law,
and the important contributions to its beneficent advancement that have
distinguished the action of the United States throughout these whole
transactions. Having already set these forth in some detail before a
foreign audience,[11] I must not now do more than offer the briefest
summary.
[11] See (pp. 70-105) article from "The Anglo-Saxon Review."
The United States ended the toleration of Privateering. It was
perfectly free to commission privateers on the day war was declared.
Spain was equally free, and it was proclaimed from Madrid that the
Atlantic would soon swarm with them, sweeping American commerce from
the ocean. Under these circumstances one of the very first and noblest
acts of the President was to announce that the United States would not
avail itself of the right to send out privateers, reserved under the
Declaration of Paris. The fast-thickening disasters of Spain prevented
her from doing it, and thus substantially completed the practice or
acquiescence of the civilized world, essential to the acceptance of a
principle in International Law. It is safe to assume that Christendom
will henceforth treat Privateering as under international ban.
The United States promoted the cause of genuine International
Arbitration by promptly and emphatically rejecting an insidious
proposal for a spurious one. It taught those who deliberately prefer
War to Arbitration, and, when beaten at it, seek then to get the
benefit of a second remedy, that honest Arbitration must come before
War, to avert its horrors, not after War, to evade its penalties.
The United States promoted peace among nations, and so served humanity,
by sternly enforcing the rule that they who bring on an unjust war must
pay for it. For years the overwhelming tendency of its people had been
against any territorial aggrandizement, even a peaceful one; but it
unflinchingly exacted the easiest, if not the only, payment Spain could
make for a war that cost us, at the lowest, from four to five hundred
million dollars, by taking Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. It
requires some courage to describe this as either a violation of
International Law, or a display of unprecedented severity by an
implacable conqueror, in the very city and before the very generation
that saw the Franco-Prussian War concluded, not merely by a partition
of territory, but also by a cash payment of a thousand millions
indemnity.
The United States promoted the peaceful liberalizing of oppressive rule
over all subject peoples by making it more difficult to negotiate loans
in the markets of the world to subdue their outbreaks. For it firmly
rejected in the Cuban adjustments the immoral doctrine that an
ill-treated and revolting colony, after gaining its freedom, must still
submit to the extortion from it of the cost of the parent country's
unsuccessful efforts to subdue it. We therefore left the so-called
Cuban bonds on the hands of the Power that issued them, or of the
reckless lenders who advanced the money. At the same time the United
States strained a point elsewhere in the direction of protecting any
legitimate debt, and of dealing generously with a fallen foe, by a
payment which the most carping critic will some day be ashamed to
describe as "buying the inhabitants of the Philippines at two dollars a
head."[12]
[12] There has been so much misconception and misrepresentation
about this payment of twenty millions that the following exact
summary of the facts may be convenient.
When Spain sued for peace in the summer of 1898, she had lost
control of the Philippines, and any means for regaining control.
Her fleet was sunk; her army was cooped up in the capital, under
the guns of the American fleet, and its capture or surrender had
only been delayed till the arrival of reinforcements for the
American Army, because of the fears expressed by foreigners and
the principal residents of Manila that the city might be looted
by natives unless American land forces were at hand in strength
ample to control them. The Spanish army did so surrender, in
fact, shortly after the arrival of these reinforcements, before
the news of the armistice could reach them.
In the protocol granting an armistice, the United States exacted
at once the cession of Porto Rico and an island in the Ladrones,
but reserved the decision as to the control, disposition, and
government of the Philippines for the treaty of peace, apparently
with a view to the possibility of accepting them as further
indemnity for the war.
When the treaty came to be negotiated, the United States required
the cession of the Philippines. Its Peace Commissioners stated
that their Government "felt amply supported in its right to
demand this cession, with or without concessions," added that
"this demand might be limited to the single ground of indemnity,"
and pointed out that it was "not now putting forward any claim
for _pecuniary_ indemnity, to cover the enormous cost of the
war." It accompanied this demand for a transfer of sovereignty
with a stipulation for assuming any existing indebtedness of
Spain incurred for public works and improvements of a pacific
character in the Philippines. The United States thus asserted its
right to the archipelago for indemnity, and at the same time
committed itself to the principle of payment on account of the
Philippine debt.
When it became necessary to put the Philippine case into an
ultimatum, the Peace Commissioners did not further refer to the
debt or give any specific reason either for a cession or for a
payment. They simply said they now presented "a new proposition,
embodying the concessions which, for the sake of immediate peace,
their Government is, under the circumstances, willing to tender."
But it was really the old proposition (with the "Open Door" and
"Mutual Relinquishment of Claims" clauses added), with the
mention for the first time of a specific sum for the payment, and
without any question of "pacific improvements." That sum just
balanced the Philippine debt--40,000,000 Mexican, or, say,
20,000,000 American dollars.
All these are acts distinctly in accord with International Law so far
as it exists and applies, and distinctly tending to promote its humane
and Christian extension. Let me add, in a word, that the peace
negotiations in no way compromised or affected the Monroe Doctrine,
which stands as firm as ever, though much less important with the
disappearance of any probable opposition to it; and that the prestige
they brought smoothed the way for the one hopeful result of the Czar's
Conference at The Hague, a response to the American proposal for a
permanent International Court of Arbitration.
A trifling but characteristic inaccuracy concerning the Peace
Commission may as well be corrected before the subject is left. This is
the statement, apparently originating from Malay sources, but promptly
indorsed in this country by unfriendly critics, to the effect that the
representative of Aguinaldo was uncivilly refused a hearing in Paris.
It was repeated, inadvertently, no doubt, with many other curious
distortions of historic facts, only the other day, by a distinguished
statesman in Chicago.[13] As he put it, the doors were slammed in their
faces in Washington as well as in Paris. Now, whatever might have
happened, the door was certainly never slammed in their faces in Paris,
for they never came to it. On the contrary, every time Mr. Agoncillo
approached any member of the Commission on the subject, he was
courteously invited to send the Commissioners a written request for a
hearing, which would, at any rate, receive immediate consideration. No
such request ever came, and any Filipino who wrote for a hearing in
Paris was heard.
[13] General Carl Schurz, at the Chicago Anti-Expansion
Convention, October, 1899.
[Sidenote: The Present Duty.]
Meanwhile we are now in the midst of hostilities with a part of the
native population, originating in an unprovoked attack upon our troops
in the city they had wrested from the Spaniards, before final action on
the treaty. It is easy to say that we ought not to have got into this
conflict, and to that I might agree. "I tell you, they can't put you in
jail on that charge," said the learned and disputatious counsel to the
client who had appealed from his cell for help. "But I _am_ in," was
the sufficient answer. The question just then was not what might have
been done, but what can be done. I wish to urge that we can only end
this conflict by manfully fighting through it. The talk one hears that
the present situation calls for "diplomacy" seems to be mistimed. That
species of diplomacy which consists in the tact of prompt action in the
right line at the right time might, quite possibly, have prevented the
present hostilities. Any diplomacy now would seem to our Tagal
antagonists the raising of the white flag--the final proof that the
American people do not sustain their Army in the face of unprovoked
attack. Every witness who came before the American Peace Commission in
Paris, or sent it a written statement, English, German, Belgian, Malay,
or American, said the same thing. Absolutely the one essential for
dealing with the Filipinos was to convince them at the very outset that
what you began you stood to; that you did not begin without
consideration of right and duty, or quail then before opposition; that
your purpose was inexorable and your power irresistible, while
submission to it would always insure justice. On the contrary, once let
them suspect that protests would dissuade and turbulence deter you, and
all the Oriental instinct for delay and bargaining for better terms is
aroused, along with the special Malay genius for intrigue and
double-dealing, their profound belief that every man has his price, and
their childish ignorance as to the extent to which stump speeches here
against any Administration can cause American armies beyond the seas to
retreat.
No; the toast which Henry Clay once gave in honor of an early naval
hero fits the present situation like a glove. He proposed "the policy
which looks to peace as the end of war, and war as the means of peace."
In that light I maintain that the conflict we are prosecuting is in the
line of national necessity and duty; that we cannot turn back; that the
truest humanity condemns needless delay or half-hearted action, and
demands overwhelming forces and irresistible onset.
[Sidenote: Eliminate Temporary Discouragements.]
But in considering this duty, just as in estimating the Treaty of
Paris, we have the right to eliminate all account of the trifling
success, so far, in the Philippines, or of the great trouble and cost.
What it was right to do there, and what we are bound to do now, must
not be obscured by faults of hesitation or insufficient preparation,
for which neither the Peace Commissioners nor the people are
responsible. I had occasion to say before a college audience last June
what I now repeat with the additional emphasis subsequent events have
warranted--that the difficulties which at present discourage us are
largely of our own making; and I repeat that it is still not for us,
here and now, to apportion the blame. We have not the knowledge to say
just who, or whether any man or body, is wholly at fault. What we do
know is that the course of hesitation and inaction which the Nation
pursued in face of an openly maturing attack was precisely the policy
sure to give us the greatest trouble, and that we are now paying the
penalty. If the opposite course had been taken at the outset--unless
all the testimony from foreign observers and from our own officers is
at fault--there would have been either no outbreak at all, or only one
easily controlled and settled to the general satisfaction of most of
the civilized and semi-civilized inhabitants of the island.
On the personal and partizan disputes already lamentably begun, as to
senatorial responsibility, congressional responsibility, or the
responsibility of this or that executive officer, we have no occasion
here to enter. What we have a right to insist on is that our general
policy in the Philippines shall not be shaped now merely by the just
discontent with the bad start. The reports of continual victories, that
roll back on us every week, like the stone of Sisyphus, and need to be
won over again next week, the mistakes of a censorship that was
absolutely right as a military measure, but may have been
unintelligently, not to say childishly, conducted--all these are beside
the real question. They must not obscure the duty of restoring order in
the regions where our troops have been assailed, or prejudice our
subsequent course.
I venture to say of that course that neither our duty nor our interest
will permit us to stop short of a pacification which can only end in
the establishment of such local self-government as the people are found
capable of conducting, and its extension just as far and as fast as the
people prove fit for it.
[Sidenote: Pacification and Natural Course of Organization.]
The natural development thus to be expected would probably proceed
safely, along the lines of least resistance, about in this order:
First, and till entirely clear that it is no longer needed, Military
Government. Next, the rule of either Military or Civil Governors (for a
considerable time probably the former), relying gradually more and more
on native agencies. Thirdly, the development of Dependencies, with an
American Civil Governor, with their foreign relations and their highest
courts controlled by us, and their financial system largely managed by
members of a rigidly organized and jealously protected American Civil
Service, but in most other respects steadily becoming more
self-governing. And, finally, autonomous governments, looking to us for
little save control of their foreign relations, profiting by the
stability and order the backing of a powerful nation guarantees,
cultivating more and more intimate trade and personal relations with
that nation, and coming to feel themselves participants of its fortunes
and renown.
Such a course Congress, after full investigation and deliberation,
might perhaps wisely formulate. Such a course, with slight
modifications to meet existing limitations as to his powers, has
already been entered upon by the President, and can doubtless be
carried on indefinitely by him until Congress acts. This action should
certainly not be precipitate. The system demands most careful study,
not only in the light of what the English and Dutch, the most
successful holders of tropical countries, have done, but also in the
light of the peculiar and varied circumstances that confront us on
these different and distant islands, and among these widely differing
races--circumstances to which no previous experience exactly applies,
and for which no uniform system could be applicable. If Congress should
take as long a time before action to study the problem as it has taken
in the Sandwich Islands, or even in Alaska, the President's power would
still be equal to the emergency, and the policy, while flexible, could
still be made as continuous, coherent, and practical as his best
information and ability would permit.
[Sidenote: Evasions of Duty.]
Against such a conscientious and painstaking course in dealing with the
grave responsibilities that are upon us in the East, two lines of
evasion are sure to threaten. The one is the policy of the upright but
short-sighted and strictly continental patriot--the same which an
illustrious statesman of another country followed in the Sudan:
"Scuttle as quick as you can."
The other is the policy of the exuberant patriot who believes in the
universal adaptability and immediate extension of American
institutions. He thinks all men everywhere as fit to vote as himself,
and wants them for partners. He is eager to have them prepare at once,
in our new possessions, first in the West Indies, then in the East, to
send Senators and Representatives to Congress, and his policy is: "Make
Territories of them now, and States in the American Union as soon as
possible." I wish to speak with the utmost respect of the sincere
advocates of both theories, but must say that the one seems to me to
fall short of a proper regard for either our duty or our interest, and
the other to be national suicide.
Gentlemen in whose ability and patriotism we all have confidence have
lately put the first of these policies for evading our duty in the form
of a protest "against the expansion and establishment of the dominion
of the United States, by conquest or otherwise, over unwilling peoples
in any part of the globe." Of this it may be said, first, that any
application of it to the Philippines probably assumes a factional and
temporary outbreak to represent a settled unwillingness. New Orleans
was as "unwilling," when Mr. Jefferson annexed it, as Aguinaldo has
made Manila; and Aaron Burr came near making the whole Louisiana
Territory far worse. Mr. Lincoln, you remember, always believed the
people of North Carolina not unwilling to remain in the Union, yet we
know what they did. But next, this protest contemplates evading the
present responsibility by a reversal of our settled policy any way. Mr.
Lincoln probably never doubted the unwillingness of South Carolina to
remain in the Union, but that did not change his course. Mr. Seward
never inquired whether the Alaskans were unwilling or not. The historic
position of the United States, from the day when Jefferson braved the
envenomed anti-expansion sentiment of his time and bought the territory
west of the Mississippi, on down, has been to consider, not the
willingness or unwillingness of any inhabitants, whether aboriginal or
colonists, but solely our national opportunity, our own duty, and our
own interests.
Is it said that this is Imperialism? That implies usurpation of power,
and there is absolutely no ground for such a charge against this
Administration at any one stage in these whole transactions. If any
complaint here is to lie, it must relate to the critical period when we
were accepting responsibility for order at Manila, and must be for the
exercise of too little power, not too much. It is not Imperialism to
take up honestly the responsibility for order we incurred before the
world, and continue under it, even if that should lead us to extend the
civil rights of the American Constitution over new regions and strange
peoples. It is not Imperialism when duty keeps us among these chaotic,
warring, distracted tribes, civilized, semi-civilized, and barbarous,
to help them, as far as their several capacities will permit, toward
self-government, on the basis of those civil rights.