Uncle Sam has lately gone abroad after an entirely new fashion—new at
least to him.
He went to Hawaii only after repeated and urgent invitation; hesitating
because he thought it was against his principles.
He went to Cuba to help the people to get rid of their rubbish.
He went to Porto Rico because he thought that he was needed.
He went to the Philippines on a business trip, and is there yet. He will
probably make up his mind to stay there though he is still halting a
little. In less than a year he will have decided, and in the meantime he
will do some hard thinking about it, just as he has been doing since May
1, 1898.
It is to this problem that we will now address ourselves—for it is still
a problem with some—not to questions of method in administration, which
should be determined by experience, but to the ethical, political and
practical considerations involved in the term expansion, or if you
please, imperialism.
First of all, the occupation of the Philippines by the United States is
regarded by the average American citizen as a moral question. “Is it
right to extend our authority over the Philippines, even, if necessary,
by force of arms”? This is the question we all have been asking
ourselves, the question that the “anti-imperialists” have promptly
answered in the negative, while the great majority of opinion seems to
be slowly swinging in the opposite direction, in agreement with the
present administration.
But the answer to this question, startling as it may seem, is that it is
not primarily an ethical question, whatever ethical phases it may have.
“What,” you ask, “do not all governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed?” Well, let us see about that; and in order
to see clearly and dispassionately let us get outside of America as it
were, so that we may look at this proposition from a convenient
distance.
People sometimes make mistakes. Whole nations sometimes make the same
mistake. Indeed, on a fundamental proposition a whole civilization
during successive periods of history covering many centuries has been
known to swing from one extreme to the other and backward again. Such
movements are often likened to the swing of a mighty pendulum, or better
still, to the rising and narrowing coils of a spiral.
Naturally, one of the subjects upon which men have thought the most and
disagreed the most and therefore made the most mistakes is the relation
of the individual to the state. Less than three centuries ago one of the
fundamental maxims of government was that the individual exists for the
state and not the state for the individual. This is one extreme. Up to
the time of Rousseau there was no marked philosophical change upon this
subject on the continent of Europe. With him and those after him began
that marvelous reaction—that tidal wave of philosophic thought and
popular conviction away from absolutism and in the direction of the
rights of man. If this movement should reach its climax in the opposite
extreme it would mean anarchy—and that is what it reached in the French
Revolution.
It was but a few years before its climax, however, that our own
Declaration of Independence was written, the writers whereof were
thoroughly in sympathy with the movement toward the rights of man. Hence
we hear in America the calm statement, “We believe that all men are by
nature free and equal”, while in France we hear the frenzied cry,
“Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!”
The individual has at last secured his long coveted freedom. But it is
only to be confronted with a still greater question, namely: What is he
to do with his freedom? How is he to use it?
Well, what has he done with it? In America, as elsewhere,
notwithstanding his political creed, he has wisely decided that the
insane must not enjoy either freedom or equality with other men. No more
can criminals; no more do women. Why? If all have a right to these
things, who dares take it away?
This brings us to a point beyond the statement of the Declaration, a
point, however, that must have been in the minds of the writers, namely,
that