Author 
 
 Title 
 
 Imprint. 
 
 16— 47372-2 WO 
 
fHE PRESENT CRISIS 
 
 By EDWIN D. MEAD 
 
 Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; 
 
 Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, 
 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, 
 
 And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. 
 
 ■ Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand. 
 Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land.' 
 Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet . . amid the market's din 
 List the ominous stem whisper from the Delphic cave within.— 
 iThey enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin? ' 
 
 FROM ANTI-IMPERIALIST LE 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, 272 Congress Street 
 
 1899 
 
 e 5 Cents. 100 Copies, $3.00. 
 
ORGANIZE THE WORLD. 
 
 
 KANT'S -ETERNAL PEACE!' 
 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER'S MORE EXCEL- 
 
 
 LENT WAY. . 
 
 
 By Edwin D. Mead. Three Tracts in behalf of 
 
 
 permanent peace. 3 cents per copy, $1.50 per 
 
 
 hundred copies, $10 per thousand. Peace Crusade 
 
 
 Committee, I Beacon Street, Boston. 
 
 
 M^l 
 

 THE PRESENT CRISIS.* 
 
 By Edzvin D. Mead. 
 
 IT is imperative for a nation, as it is 
 for a man, when it finds itself in a 
 complex situation, with endless dis- 
 cussions of this and that raging in its 
 ears, to determine rightly what is the 
 important thing. This nation is to- 
 day in such a situation. The last year 
 has been one of the most congested 
 years in our history. We have been 
 compelled, month after month, to deal 
 with combinations of circumstances 
 such as we never dreamed of before. 
 Dramatic and pregnant events have 
 occurred so rapidly that it has been 
 hard for our mental operations to keep 
 up with them. Imperialism, expan- 
 sion, militarism, colonialism, new 
 spheres of influence and of trade, po- 
 litical competence, the rights and rela- 
 tions of races and a dozen other mo- 
 mentous subjects have been clamoring 
 every day for discussion and practical 
 settlement by this great democratic 
 lyceum ; and it is not strange that 
 good people have been confused. 
 
 We are of those who believe that 
 this nation is essentially a nation of 
 good people. Like every other na- 
 tion, it is very full of sinners, and 
 many of the sinners are in high places, 
 where they can blow loud blasts and 
 pull strong ropes and often exercise 
 the determining influence ; but noth- 
 ing shall shake us from the conviction 
 that the great majority of men in this 
 republic desire to know the truth and 
 to do the right, and that if they do 
 not do the right thing it is because 
 they do not know the truth or see 
 clearly what is the most important 
 question. 
 
 The American people decreed the 
 war with Spain for the liberation 
 of Cuba upon as high and noble 
 
 • A large part of this paper was printed in the Editor's 
 Table of the New England Magazine, July, 1899. 
 
 an impulse as ever moved a na- 
 tion to war. We speak simply of the 
 main impulse, for very bad impulses 
 were mixed with it. We believe, as 
 the President and the Secretary of 
 State and our minister to Spain be- 
 lieved, that the war was utterly unnec- 
 essary and that everything desirable 
 could have been achieved without it ; 
 we believe that the American people, 
 if they could have kept cool, would 
 have concluded the same ; the sin of 
 jingo politicians and hucksters in 
 keeping them hot — a sin more than 
 two years old — was flagrant ; and New 
 York newspapers had only too much 
 ground for boasting that it was "their 
 war." But newspapers and huck- 
 sters and politicans would all have 
 labored in vain but for the deep sense 
 of the American people that frightful 
 tyrannies and atrocities were being 
 perpetrated in Cuba, and that it was 
 their duty, as a neighbor and a 
 stronger brother, to lend a hand and 
 stop it. It was their duty ; and so far 
 as that motive was determining 
 among the mixed motives which 
 brought on the war with Spain, so far 
 that war helped every people to feel 
 more keenly that they are their 
 brothers' keepers and to hasten the 
 day when Bulgarian and Armenian 
 and Cuban horrors will be impossible 
 in a related and responsible world. 
 The war was wrong because there 
 was a better way. We state again 
 our position upon the war with 
 Spain, as we proceed to discuss the 
 present war with the Filipinos, in 
 which the nation has reversed its role 
 and turned itself from liberator into 
 subjugator, for the sake of doing 
 fullest justice to the motives of the 
 people in the earlier conflict. But we 
 also do it for the sake of saying that 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 although, since this is a government 
 of the people, the people themselves 
 are responsible in the present crisis, 
 and to them criticism is to be ad- 
 dressed, we firmly believe that when 
 the issues are comprehended by them 
 truly they will decree that the war 
 upon the people of the Philippines 
 shall cease. This is our feeling about 
 the intelligence and honor of the 
 American people. 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 The important question at the pres- 
 ent time is not the question of expan- 
 sion. We certainly do not need to 
 expand. Any man who told us a year 
 ago that we needed more territory 
 would have been laughed at. The de- 
 sire for more territory for the mere 
 sake of more territory, on the part of 
 the United States, is like the hunger 
 of the farmer for more land when he 
 is not able to cultivate properly what 
 he already has. No man of common 
 sense can believe that a hundred mil- 
 lion dollars put into the Philippines 
 would yield half the returns of the 
 same millions put into Oregon or 
 Texas ; we do not ourselves believe 
 that they would yield the Boston or 
 New York capitalists the returns of 
 the same millions put into Maine. New 
 Hampshire or Vermont. The possi- 
 ble profits which may accrue to a few 
 syndicates from operations in the Phil- 
 ippines cannot in a century equal the 
 expense which must be borne, not by 
 the syndicates, but by the whole peo- 
 ple, to maintain there an adequate 
 military establishment to support 
 those operations and keep the natives 
 in subjection. No fallacy is more fal- 
 lacious nor more pestilent than the 
 fallacy that in order to trade with a 
 people you have got to govern them — 
 the fallacy that trade follows the flag. 
 Trade has nothing to do with the flag 
 — or next to nothing to do with it. 
 If we owned the whole of South 
 America, w r e should not begin to have 
 the trade with her which we have with 
 Europe. Did we have to "conquer" 
 Russia, in order to sell her steel 
 
 rails? If there were no wall of 
 tariff, New England and New York 
 would trade with Canada as freely as 
 with Pennsylvania. If trade with 
 China and the Philippines is what we 
 want, all that we have to do is to send 
 to their markets what their people 
 need. If this be done at lower prices 
 than what England, France and Ger- 
 many do it for, then we shall get the 
 trade ; and the fewer battleships we 
 show, the more we shall be liked, the 
 more we shall be trusted, and the bet- 
 ter we shall get on. Benjamin Frank- 
 lin said a good thing in the last cen- 
 tury when, speaking of Great Britain's 
 foolish trade policy toward her colo- 
 nies, he said: "No tradesman out of 
 Bedlam ever thought of increasing 
 the number of his customers by 
 knocking them in the head, or of en- 
 abling them to pay their debts by 
 burning their houses." 
 
 The Hon. John Barrett, late min- 
 ister of the United States to Siam, gave 
 an address before the Boston Cham- 
 ber of Commerce in June, on "Amer- 
 ica's Interests in the Far East." Mr. 
 Barrett, earlier in the year, had paid 
 high tribute to Aguinaldo and the 
 political capacity of the Philippine 
 people, especially emphasizing our 
 obligations to them for their assist- 
 ance in the capture of Manila. He 
 had warned us against the policy of 
 ingratitude and violence upon which 
 we have since entered — "a most un- 
 happy conflict," he foretold, "which 
 would mean the loss of hundreds of 
 good lives, the expenditure of large 
 sums of money, and the development 
 of a feeling of hatred and revenge to- 
 ward Americans which the kind treat- 
 ment of a hundred years cannot re- 
 move." Mr. Barrett, in addressing 
 the Chamber of Commerce, carefully 
 steered clear of the morals of the sit- 
 uation against which he had sounded 
 warning. "In regard to the Philip- 
 pines," he said, "I speak from the 
 commercial and not from a moral 
 standpoint." His address was an ex- 
 travagant painting of the commercial 
 advantages of an aggressive policy in 
 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 the East, saying much that was true 
 and much that was not true. Every 
 real advantage pointed out could be 
 vastly better secured by a policy of 
 simple fraternity than by conquest 
 and slaughter. The unrealities of the 
 address were keenly exposed by Mr. 
 Atkinson in the Boston Herald. The 
 habit of men to look far afield for op- 
 portunity when there is far better op- 
 portunity at their own doors was 
 thus touched: 
 
 "There are several areas of very sparsely 
 occupied territory within the limits of the 
 United States open to the labor of white 
 men as the Philippines are not. in which, 
 taken in the aggregate, $500,000,000 of 
 American capital will be required every 
 year for the next twenty-five years for even 
 the partial development of greater values, 
 greater variety and greater quantity in 
 minerals, timber and agriculture than are 
 within the remotest possibility of develop- 
 ment in the Philippines in the next cen- 
 tury. The central or mountain section of 
 the South, including the Piedmont and 
 Cumberland plateaus, now sparsely occu- 
 pied and only beginning to develop, is 
 greater in area than the whole of the 
 Philippine Islands, Cuba and Porto Rico 
 combined, and offers safer, surer oppor- 
 tunities for the investment of capital than 
 either of these islands, especially the Phil- 
 ippine group, can ever offer. Texas alone 
 can take up $500,000,000 capital in one 
 year, whenever her legislators protect 
 creditors on even terms with debtors. 
 Why divert American capital into the 
 tropics, where American labor cannot go, 
 when these vast home fields for American 
 labor are open to both?" 
 
 The same consideration had been 
 urged, supported by striking statis- 
 tics, by Mr. J. Russell Smith, in his 
 article on "The Philippine Islands 
 and American Capital," in the June 
 number of the Popular Science 
 Monthly. And with reference to 
 tropical products, Mr. Smith shows 
 the vastly stronger claims of the West 
 Indies upon us, if it is a business 
 question that we are discussing. 
 
 "The inhabitants of the West Indies and 
 Central America are idle for lack of em- 
 ployment: they will respond to our capital. 
 The United States is the natural market 
 for the West Indies; they lie close to our 
 shores, and when the Nicaragua Canal 
 
 comes they will be but islands in an Amer- 
 ican lake — parts of the industrial unit of 
 Greater America. They can give us the 
 things that are needed to round out our 
 consumption, and we can do the same for 
 them. It is illogical and unlike American 
 shrewdness to go seven thousand miles for 
 tropic lands when an equally valuable, a 
 more valuable, area is within seven hun- 
 dred miles of us. The comparison be- 
 comes even more striking when it is re- 
 membered that the control of the Philip- 
 pines brings to us a burden of problems 
 from which industrial development in this 
 country is free." 
 
 Above all, let the plain people of 
 America remember always that 
 whether or not there are peculiar 
 profits from commercial ventures in 
 the Philippines, for which ventures, 
 under the present policy, they are 
 asked to provide the armies and 
 navies and taxes, there are no profits 
 for them ; they have only to do the 
 fighting and dying and paying. This 
 point is thus strikingly stated by 1 
 student of eastern commerce in Ore- 
 gon, quoted by Mr. Atkinson: 
 
 "In all the years of Britain's occupation 
 of India she has not given one day's labor 
 to a white laborer in India. Not one 
 home has been made by a British immi- 
 grant, and the only white population of 
 India is the civil service and the military 
 service. The British capitalist and the 
 British nobility reap the profit of coolie 
 labor. The sons of the poor go out and 
 do the fighting. In the Hong Kong dock 
 yards are 8,000 laborers, every one Asi- 
 atic. They are governed by six over- 
 seers-in-chief. Holland. in colonizing 
 Java and the Straits Settlements, has not 
 given to a Dutch laborer one day's labor. 
 There is not a white man's farm or settle- 
 ment in any of the islands. They are 
 worked by the native Asiatic population 
 for the benefit of the home capitalists, and 
 are governed in Java by sixteen local gov- 
 ernors at large salaries. There is no place 
 for the poor and ambitious young white 
 man except as manager for the companies 
 who work the coffee and sugar planta- 
 tion-., mt as a member of the civil service, 
 appointed by the home government. The 
 Philippines, like Hawaii, are filled with a 
 native population, only the Filipinos are 
 industrious and docile. There is no 
 chance for a white man to compete with 
 them in their own homes and in that 
 climate. What the Philippines do offer is 
 a tremendous chance for capitalists and 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 corporations to acquire great plantations 
 and work them with the cheap native 
 labor, and for the politicians to enlarge 
 their field of spoils and fill the places with 
 carpet-bag henchmen. The army and navy 
 will be greatly increased; the patronage 
 and power of the politicians will be in- 
 creased; but if the plain American citizen 
 is to be bettered in his condition, or made 
 more free in his liberty, let some one point 
 out how this is to be done. He may go 
 out to die in uniform, protecting the inter- 
 ests of the capitalists, but there is no other 
 opening for him." 
 
 We urge these considerations not 
 for the sake of discouraging any legit- 
 imate Pacific commerce or enterprise 
 — that would indeed be poor business 
 for New England blood — but to prick 
 some of the bubbles which in this exi- 
 gency, as in every similar exigency, 
 men blow, seeking by foreign diver- 
 sions to escape or postpone the re- 
 sponsibility for just and efficient in- 
 dustrial organization. 
 
 But when this is said, we repeat 
 what we have said before in the mag- 
 azine and said very often elsewhere, 
 that we have no dread of any expan- 
 sion of the republic for which there is 
 any natural or sufficient reason. The 
 proper limits of expansion for any na- 
 tion, as we said a year ago, are hard 
 to define; the sagacious practical 
 statesmanship of each time has got to 
 determine them for that time as best 
 it can. Each push of our own — to the 
 Mississippi, the Rocky Mountains, the 
 Pacific, Alaska — has been through 
 controversy. Geographically there is 
 no reason why we should taboo 
 islands — why we should take in Alas- 
 ka and refuse to take in Cuba and 
 Hawaii ; such reasons as there once 
 were cease to exist. "Great empires 
 commonly die of indigestion," Napo- 
 leon said, and said truly; and Glad- 
 stone has warned England of the in- 
 digestion which has already attacked 
 her and is weakening her to-day. But 
 great and small are relative terms. 
 The French philosophers of the last 
 century believed that republics must 
 always be small, that large republics 
 never could be strong and stable, be- 
 cause public spirit and opinion could 
 
 not make themselves felt freshly and 
 unitedly over great areas ; but this was 
 because they could not foresee those 
 means of communication and relation 
 which have made our United States 
 smaller for political purposes than the 
 dozen states along the Atlantic coast 
 which elected George Washington 
 president. North America will be 
 smaller for such purposes a genera- 
 tion hence than the United States to- 
 day ; and we are of those who believe 
 that this republic will in due time be 
 co-extensive with North America. 
 With the victory of Wolfe at Quebec, 
 says Green, the English historian, 
 with true discernment, began the his- 
 tory of the United States ; and Quebec 
 will by and by be a happy city in the 
 United States, finding there its natural 
 place. Until it does find its place 
 there happily and naturally, of its own 
 free will, we do not want it there at 
 all. Until then — for we have no fears, 
 either, of adjacent islands, archipela- 
 goes of them, on the basis of a "square 
 deal" — we do not want San Salvador, 
 where Spain first stepped ashore, nor 
 Cuba nor Porto Rico, where her flag 
 last flew. "Expansion" for expan- 
 sion's sake, the thirst for conquest by 
 a nation suddenly made drunk and 
 heady by startling and sensational 
 military successes, national highway 
 robbery, are things for every sober 
 man to set the seal of his damnation 
 on, as the temptations to public sin 
 and the sure ways to national disaster 
 and doom. 
 
 It is not a question of "world 
 power" and world influence, with 
 which we have to do. If it were that, 
 as some very noisy people seem 
 suddenly to have discovered, then 
 it would be important to remind all 
 troubled souls that "world power" does 
 not depend in the least upon the num- 
 ber of square miles in the national do- 
 main. If it is a question of intellectual 
 or spiritual influence, Palestine and 
 Greece were small tracts compared 
 with Tartary and Turkey. If it is a 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 question of commercial power, which 
 is what the Philistines are really 
 thinking about nowadays when they 
 talk of world power, then Venice 
 was just a city ; Holland, which suc- 
 ceeded her in commercial supremacy, 
 was at the height of her power almost 
 the smallest country in Europe; and 
 Britannia, who now rules the wave, is 
 smaller than Oregon. The student 
 who does not know may be surprised 
 to learn how little of her commerce, 
 even with her colonies, depends upon 
 any political dominance or connec- 
 tion. How much greater would her 
 commerce with ourselves be to-mor- 
 row if we put a prayer for the Queen 
 into our prayer-books in the place of 
 the prayer for the President? If, as 
 Gladstone predicted, we supplant her 
 some day as the world's chief carrier, 
 we shall not do it because we supplant 
 her in formal sovereignty over her 
 present colonial possessions or be- 
 cause of sovereignty over any new 
 possessions, but simply because of su- 
 perior enterprise and efficiency. 
 
 It is only because of superior effi- 
 ciency that we can acquire valid 
 primacy anywhere in the world's mar- 
 kets or become commercially a world 
 power. It is ridiculous to say that we 
 are not that to-day ; and it is reckless 
 to throw away or to trifle with that 
 peculiar advantage which most helps 
 us to become so in ever higher and 
 higher degree. Does America forget 
 the eloquence with which John Bright 
 used to point out to her this great 
 advantage, an advantage which, while 
 particularly her own, also, unlike most 
 particular advantages, pushed on the 
 general progress and welfare of the 
 world? America, not burdened by 
 taxes for the support of great armies 
 and navies, was free to devote all her 
 resources and energies to the devel- 
 opment of her industries. This gave 
 her an incalculable advantage over the 
 burdened countries of Europe, an ad- 
 vantage which every one of them was 
 feeling keenly. Let her maintain this 
 advantage in the industrial competi- 
 tion, and they would all soon be forced 
 
 to disarmament for sheer economy 
 and self-protection. Did not the re- 
 cent word of Prince Radziwill, a word 
 so nervously explained away, mean 
 the same thing? It cannot be that 
 America will recklessly abandon a po- 
 sition in which she can steadily com- 
 mand the world to peace and efficient 
 industrial organization, and consent to 
 meet old tyrannies on their own terms 
 and in their service. She has been a 
 preeminently great commercial and 
 industrial power during the last gener- 
 ation, putting the strain upon com- 
 peting nations at the very point where 
 strain is to be desired, precisely be- 
 cause of that wise and virtuous policy 
 which shallow and ambitious adven- 
 turers are to-day urging her to aban- 
 don. We believe that there is wit 
 enough in our great democracy to see 
 that the course of wickedness is here 
 in the short run the course of weak- 
 ness, as in the long run it is always. 
 
 To-day one of the greatest of com- 
 mercial powers, her commerce hin- 
 dered and confined only by her own 
 foolish and barbarous tariff laws, she 
 exercises also a political, educational 
 and religious influence upon the world 
 at large not second to that of any 
 other nation. Who shall say how 
 much of the growth of democracy and 
 liberal institutions in Europe during 
 the century has been provoked and 
 fostered by her example and by the 
 words flying across the sea from the 
 millions of struggling men who, com- 
 ing thence, have here found liberty 
 and opportunity? Sacred, thrice sa- 
 cred, the responsibility to keep the 
 great republic, whatever she does or 
 leaves undone, true to this leavening 
 and inspiring task, true to her own 
 genius, — the honest incarnation, the 
 honest representative and instrument 
 of the liberty which enlightens the 
 world and whose light the dark world 
 still so sadly needs. 
 
 America not a world power? Who 
 knows the educational and religious 
 history of the Pacific Ocean, of India ♦ 
 and China and the isles of the sea, and 
 says it? What part of the miraculous 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 renaissance of Japan in the lifetime of 
 this generation has been due to Amer- 
 ican influence? Would the world's 
 old fashion — our new fashion — bom- 
 bardment, slaughter, subjugation — 
 have effected better results than the 
 education, the fraternity, the political 
 advice and the political training which 
 we gave? Is this record of Japan a 
 condemnation of the old method of 
 America as a world power, and an 
 appeal for gunboats as the better tools 
 of civilization? Has Robert College 
 on the Bosphorus been so great a 
 failure that in our new thirst for world 
 power we must reverse the influences 
 which it represents? One in high 
 place has said, and truly said, that the 
 leaders who have given law and lib- 
 erty in so high measure to Bulgaria 
 in these days are men who learned 
 what law and liberty are at Robert 
 College. Can as high services be 
 chronicled of all the fleets of all the 
 "powers" which in the same decades 
 have darkened the Bosphorus? "I 
 remember," wrote an American 
 scholar who travelled in the East just 
 after the Armenian atrocities, "how in 
 Constantinople the English compan- 
 ions of our voyage almost winced 
 when they came to realize what a shin- 
 ing record America, by her schools, 
 churches and colleges, had made in 
 the last sixty years in the Ottoman 
 Empire, set over against the measure- 
 less shame and cruel, diabolic selfish- 
 ness of the European powers, who 
 have been plunging from one depth 
 of infamy down into those lowest 
 deeps where now all the devils hiss 
 and riot and applaud." This Ameri- 
 can scholar is John Henry Barrows; 
 and the book from which the word is 
 taken is "The Christian Conquest of 
 Asia." The last chapter of that book, 
 "Success of Asiatic Missions; Amer- 
 ica's Responsibility to the Orient," is 
 a noteworthy picture of American 
 educational and religious work in the 
 East to-day, and a sharp answer to 
 ' the man who thinks that America has 
 no power or influence in the world at 
 large. In everything which consti- 
 
 tutes true and uplifting influence, it 
 shows that there is no other power 
 equal to hers; and it shows — this is 
 the chief thing — that that influence is 
 great precisely because it has been 
 exercised by the methods of freedom 
 instead of the methods of force; be- 
 cause the American missionary and 
 schoolmaster have not heretofore 
 gone out with bayonets and bullets, 
 but simply in the panoply of truth and 
 love; because they have believed not 
 in the Mohammedan method of car- 
 rying gospel, but in the Christian 
 method; because they have not been 
 suspected by those to whom they have 
 gone of ulterior motives and of being 
 the mere Sancho Panzas of political 
 and commercial adventurers. The 
 American missionary has often been a 
 man with a narrow theology and with 
 a poor appreciation of the religious 
 history and thought of those to whom 
 he went — although this not half so 
 often as his disparagers like to be- 
 lieve ; but he has been a man of great 
 devotion and unselfishness ; and in the 
 whole story of modern missions — a 
 story not second in glory or in ro- 
 mance to the story of the Crusades — 
 his part has been the most glorious 
 and most important. The man who 
 talks about "world power" should ask 
 himself whether this kind of power is 
 less great, less noble and less real or 
 abiding than that represented by Clive 
 and Warren Hastings, that dreamed 
 of to-dav by Joseph Chamberlain, 
 Cecil Rhodes, Whitelaw Reid and 
 Charles Denby, and which numbers 
 among its brilliant episodes the 
 Opium War, the Jameson Raid and 
 the slaughter of the Filipinos. 
 
 "I have come back from a voyage 
 around the world," wrote Dr. Bar- 
 rows, "with a new feeling of the moral 
 glory which belongs to our beloved 
 land. I met numerous evidences that 
 American missionaries have an espe- 
 cial advantage over their brethren 
 from other nations ;" and his story 
 makes it plain that that advantage 
 was the absence of ulterior political 
 motives and the absence of the sword. 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 "After all," he says, "there is a selfish 
 look about much of England's pre- 
 dominance in the Orient and in the 
 southern waters. England's dealings 
 with subject populations, like our 
 dealings with the Indians, have some- 
 times shocked the. moral sense of man- 
 kind. . . . Her domineering ways, 
 her fierce jingoism, have kept from 
 her the completer confidence which a 
 better England would surely have 
 gained." He might have put it 
 stronger. He might have said with 
 the good man who is now writing let- 
 ters to the Congrcgationalist from 
 Manila to whitewash our wickedness 
 in inaugurating a British policy there: 
 "England is fiercely hated in the 
 Orient. It is beyond a question that 
 every educated Hindu is a rebel." 
 "Why?" asks this good man. "Be- 
 cause England treats India with great 
 arrogance. Americans, on the other 
 hand," he adds sweetly, "are not arro- 
 gant, and are willing to give free, just 
 rights to all." 
 
 Two years ago America was not 
 represented in the Orient by the 
 sword, but only by her better self. 
 The American merchant was there, 
 and it was pleasant to see him there, 
 and to see American trade everywhere 
 spreading. "But it is more inspir- 
 ing," Dr. Barrows wrote, "to feel the 
 presence of American teachers and 
 missionaries, bent on relieving the 
 human mind from error and on laying 
 the foundations of an ethical civiliza- 
 tion. Other lands," he said, "are rep- 
 resented by the sword. In India, 
 Great Britain stands for military 
 power and commercial gain, as well 
 as for justice, education, progress and 
 civilization. Germany is stretching 
 out her strong military hand for the 
 subjugation of the Pacific Seas. . . . 
 France has planted herself on the 
 island of Madagascar and on the fer- 
 tile lands of Tonquin. The American 
 voyager in the East does not see the 
 American flag in the harbors of the 
 Orient as often as he might wish ; but 
 I have found the American name be- 
 loved and trusted where other names 
 
 failed to awaken any happy and affec- 
 tionate feeling." 
 
 In the two years which have passed, 
 things have indeed changed. \\ e, too, 
 like the other lands, are now "repre- 
 sented in the Orient by the sword;" 
 we, too, have come to stand there, 
 like Great Britain, for "military power 
 and commercial gain" ; we, too, like 
 Germany, are "stretching out our 
 strong military hand for the subjuga- 
 tion of the Pacific Seas" ; our name, 
 too, then "beloved and trusted," has 
 ceased to "awaken happy and affec- 
 tionate feelings." Do we stand 
 higher on account of this, or do we 
 stand lower? Are we a greater or a 
 less "world power"? Is our prospect 
 brighter or darker for spreading 
 among peoples less fortunate than 
 ourselves the truths and sentiments 
 which make for freedom, for frater- 
 nity, and for the real progress of the 
 world? After all, was the old Chris- 
 tian way of expansion through honest 
 trade and gospel and schoolmaster 
 less fruitful and promising than the 
 new Mohammedan way of slaughter, 
 subjugation and the sword? 
 
 It is not, we say, the question of ex- 
 pansion ; it is not the question of 
 world power; neither is it the question 
 of missionary opportunity. We have 
 seen how great and how unique were 
 America's missionary opportunity and 
 her achievement ; and we have seen 
 that this was precisely because her 
 missionaries were suspected of no ul- 
 terior political motives and bore no 
 sword but the sword of the spirit. 
 This indeed has been hitherto her 
 proudest boast. That the Christian 
 way is better than the Mohammedan 
 way has been the veriest common- 
 place of the missionary convention. 
 It fortifies the soul to know that in the 
 missionary circle itself it is still the 
 boast and commonplace. Ministers 
 in pulpits like men in pews have been 
 swept off of their feet by the new 
 craze for conquest which has swept 
 over the nation ; and there have been 
 
8 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 those who have even defended impe- 
 rialism on "missionary principles" 
 and applauded the booming cannon as 
 the fitting announcement of the 
 Prince of Peace. "Give them bullets 
 first," said a famous clergyman in 
 Boston the other day, speaking of 
 our conquest of the Philippines, "and 
 Christ afterwards!" — and in words 
 less brutal and offensive, but to the 
 same purport, a hundred clergymen 
 have spoken. But they are all stay- 
 at-home clergymen. In the circle of 
 the devoted workers themselves, the 
 same high word spoken when Amer- 
 ica was not "represented by the 
 sword" in the Orient is spoken to- 
 day. The greatest of American mis- 
 sionary organizations, that by far 
 most representative of New England, 
 is the American Board of Commis- 
 sioners for Foreign Missions. Its two 
 foreign secretaries are Rev. Judson 
 Smith and Rev. James L. Barton. 
 Replying publicly to an assertion that 
 the men interested in foreign missions 
 sympathize with the new American 
 imperialism, Dr. Barton recently 
 wrote : 
 
 "I know the opinion of a large number 
 of the missionaries of our board and of 
 others, and I do not know one who is in 
 favor of an imperialistic policy. I have 
 never heard this policy advocated by the 
 officers of our board or of any other. On 
 the other hand, I have constantly heard 
 the officers and missionaries of the Ameri- 
 can Board express regret that the policy 
 of imperialism was likely to prevail. 
 Hitherto our missionaries have gone to 
 the ends of the earth carrying on their 
 work, and it has never been charged 
 against them that they were the forerun- 
 ners of colonies to be planted, which, in 
 turn, were to lead to a protectorate from 
 the home country, if not annexation. 
 Missionaries from England, Germany and 
 France have been open to these charges, 
 and thereby their influence has been great- 
 ly narrowed and their efforts misinter- 
 preted, while our own missionaries have 
 been entirely unhampered. I think I 
 state what would be most generally re- 
 ceived by the officers and members of our 
 own board when I say we should be most 
 loath to ask the extension of an American 
 protectorate over any non-Christian coun- 
 try on the ground that our missionaries 
 
 would be more free to carry on their 
 work. We believe that it would be most 
 disastrous to our work to have this step 
 taken, for it would be impossible to sepa- 
 rate in the minds of the people missionary 
 enterprise from government interference." 
 
 The sympathy w^th this point of 
 view among the missionaries working 
 under the auspices of the American 
 Board is, we are informed, almost 
 unanimous; and Dr. Barton's word 
 has been the occasion of most em- 
 phatic expressions of that sympathy. 
 
 A few mornings ago we sat with 
 Dr. Judson Smith in his high room, 
 close to the sky, above the old Gran- 
 ary burial ground, and talked on this 
 great question. We wish that every 
 citizen of America who indeed loves 
 his country and would be true to 
 her could see the flash of his clear 
 eye and hear the noble irony with 
 which he speaks of this new doctrine 
 of subjugation instead of invitation as 
 the means of spreading Christianity 
 and American civilization, the democ- 
 racy of Washington and Lincoln. We 
 wish that every one could hear his 
 burning words, based upon recent 
 travels and a lifetime of devoted 
 study, upon the character and possi- 
 bilities of China — that China in whose 
 seizure and partition the President's 
 Philippine commissioner has just been 
 suggesting that America should take 
 a hand, failing in the alternative hold- 
 ing of the Philippines. No man com- 
 ing down from that watch-tower 
 could come with any feeling longer 
 that the question of the conquest of 
 the Philippines or the subjection of 
 any people is the question of mission- 
 ary opportunity. 
 
 It is not a question of the com- 
 petence of this republic to do any 
 work which it ought to do. If there 
 is any language more offensive to the 
 honest American democrat than the 
 language even of the imperialist, it is 
 the language of the American pessi- 
 mist and unbeliever who answers 
 that the proposed policy would be well 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 enough for some other nation, be- 
 cause others have the capacity, the 
 training and machinery and political 
 purity, but that we have not the capac- 
 ity and would simply open new flood- 
 gates of corruption. First cast the 
 beam out of your own eye, they say 
 to each proposition that America 
 should go beyond herself; and they 
 revel in no rhetoric so much as that 
 in which they iterate the census of the 
 beams in our eyes. They talk of In- 
 dians and negroes, of lynchings and* 
 lawlessness and Standard Oil, of 
 Quay in the Senate and Croker in 
 New York. The Indian record is, 
 God knows, red enough ; but single 
 years of England in Asia and Africa 
 have shown a greater sum-total of 
 savagery than our whole "century of 
 dishonor." The negro record is, God 
 knows, black enough ; but the Ameri- 
 can people have done more for the 
 negro every year since his emancipa- 
 tion than the English people in any 
 corresponding year for the forty times 
 as many poor of India. If there is 
 lawlessness in America, America pro- 
 poses to end it; if there is mammon- 
 ism, she proposes to trample it under 
 foot; and she proposes to put both 
 Quay and Croker behind prison bars. 
 And primarily she believes that no 
 law of parsimony rules her soul. If 
 some great duty calls her, she will not 
 decline it because she sees that she 
 has done but poorly this other lesser 
 duty or that larger one ; she will turn 
 to it as the strong man answers the 
 call to heroism, not thinking of his 
 failures and his falls, of which in every 
 heart there is so long a list, or if 
 thinking of them then knowing well 
 that every new response to duty 
 makes the doing of every duty surer 
 and the neglect of any a greater and 
 more conscious shame. If America 
 has authentic call to new and distant 
 responsibilities, then America will 
 learn, as England has learned, to keep 
 the spoilsman in his place, and she 
 will show that she has not one General 
 Wood or Colonel Waring, but a hun- 
 dred. America refuses to believe that 
 
 a republic has not wisdom or capacity, 
 such as kings and kaisers have, for 
 dealing with peoples lower than its 
 own and for lending them the honest 
 hand that shall help them up and on. 
 That were a fatal impeachment of 
 democracy — an impeachment from 
 which, could it be sustained, democ- 
 racy could not recover. That were to 
 gainsay the first principles of educa- 
 tion and of neighborhood, to make 
 the half-wise man a better teacher of 
 the ignorant than the wise man. If 
 the republic cannot stoop without 
 danger to its back, if we alone cannot 
 take risks for civilization, then are we 
 of all men most miserable. 
 
 We are not of those who think that 
 Admiral Dewey should have been 
 ordered to sail away from Manila har- 
 bor the moment he had sunk the 
 Spanish fleet. We are of those whose 
 blood stirs at the great new visions of 
 opportunities for carrying western 
 civilization into the Orient. But it is 
 western civilization and not western 
 wickedness that we want to see enter 
 there ; and the great visions make us 
 the more jealous that these eastern 
 men, men yet in the making, shall be 
 treated like brothers, not like brutes. 
 We believe that we might easily have 
 had the glad fellowship and partner- 
 ship of the Filipinos, profitable to 
 both, instead of their enmity. We 
 have made them hate us ; we might 
 have made them love us. We can 
 even yet make them love and trust us, 
 if we will : but it can onlv be by abso- 
 lute abandonment of the policy of 
 tyranny and greed, which always 
 overreaches itself, and acting like 
 men and Christians. 
 
 If our guiding, helping and De- 
 tecting band is needed in the Phil- 
 ippines, if Cuba needs it, then let us 
 freely give it ; and let us know that it 
 means danger to our democracy onlv 
 when it means danger to theirs! The 
 instant that it does mean that, the in- 
 stant that it ceases to be the fraternal 
 hand and begins to be the grasping 
 hand, that instant the gods detect it 
 and trip us; that instant some voice 
 
10 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 is heard in the very midst of our own 
 body politic speaking with new bold- 
 ness the accent of oppression here, 
 sounding the fatal warning that a 
 democracy cannot serve two masters. 
 When a democracy finds that for this 
 task or that it has no natural or proper 
 tools, it may not be always true, but 
 it is almost always true, that it is not 
 a task proper for a democracy nor 
 •proper for any men who love liberty 
 and are really concerned with the wel- 
 fare and progress of their fellow men. 
 Our present question, we repeat, is 
 not a question of our capacity ; it is 
 a question of our duty,— of what we 
 ought to do. 
 
 Not a question of expansion, of 
 world power, of missionary opportu- 
 nity, nor of political capacity; not 
 these, but simply this, — whether 
 America is to turn from a work like 
 that of the "Christian conquest of Asia" 
 to a work like the British conquest of 
 India; whether military power and 
 commercial gain are to become the 
 dominant marks and motives of our 
 democracy ; whether we are to stretch 
 out a military hand for the subjuga- 
 tion of the Pacific seas ; whether mili- 
 tarism and mammonism are to be al- 
 lowed to grow up and determine the 
 policies of this republic and finally 
 choke its life, as they have choked 
 the lives of so many republics in the 
 past, or whether they are themselves 
 to be checked and choked — and that 
 now. It is, in a word, the simple 
 question, whether the people of the 
 United States love liberty, love it for 
 themselves and love it for others; 
 whether the republic really stands for 
 the advancement of liberty in the 
 world or stands for the advancement 
 of its own power and gain. "Where 
 liberty is," once said Thomas Jeffer- 
 son, "there is my country!" — empha- 
 sizing his fellowship with every free- 
 man. "Where liberty is not," re- 
 sponded Thomas Paine, striking a yet 
 deeper note, "there is mine!" — em- 
 
 phasizing his fellowship with every 
 man and the obligation of the free- 
 man to help the whole world up to 
 freedom, lhat was the great vision 
 and imperative which commanded the 
 founders of the American republic, 
 and which made its founding an 
 epoch-making event in human his- 
 tory. 
 
 * * 
 
 That was the inspiration of our 
 •great Monroe Doctrine ; for the Mon- 
 roe Doctrine was great. The sub- 
 stance of the Monroe Doctrine was 
 not, as so many like to preach, that 
 this world is to be regarded not as one 
 sphere, but as two hemispheres. That 
 was the accident of the doctrine ; that 
 was temporary history. The sub- 
 stance of the doctrine was that this 
 republic would not permit anywhere 
 within the sphere of its natural and 
 vital influence anything that was hos- 
 tile to the republic and the republican 
 idea, anything that made against lib- 
 erty in the world, or at least in that 
 part of it, that American world, which 
 in that year 1823 was within easy 
 reach of its republican hand. The 
 South American republics might be 
 very poor republics ; they might be 
 full of rudeness and crudeness and 
 confusion and revolution ; but they 
 should have their chance ; they should 
 be secure in the privilege to make 
 their own mistakes and profit by them, 
 and in the right through mistakes and 
 through slowly multiplying successes 
 to struggle upward. That was what 
 James Monroe meant, and John 
 Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jeffer- 
 son. They proposed to keep this re- 
 public intact, "uninfected by conta- 
 gion" — those are Jefferson's words — 
 until it grot its growth and could face 
 the world ; and they proposed to see 
 that the other American republics had 
 the same chance. They therefore 
 served notice upon the sovereigns of 
 Russia, Prussia and Austria, — that 
 "Holy Alliance," whose real object 
 was. as the historian well nuts it. "to 
 lend a hand wherever possible in sup- 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 pressing republican movements," — 
 that they would never suffer Europe 
 to intermeddle with affairs on this side 
 of the Atlantic. By way of etiquette 
 and makeweight they said, "We will 
 never entangle ourselves in the broils 
 of Europe." But that, we say, was the 
 rhetoric and accident of it. They 
 talked about America and Europe, 
 about this hemisphere and that ; but 
 what they were really talking about 
 was liberty and tyranny, for which at 
 that moment this hemisphere and that 
 respectively stood. 
 
 It was true, in high degree, in 1823, 
 that there were two hemispheres in 
 the political world. But a good many 
 things have happened since 1823. 
 The world is no longer two hemi- 
 spheres ; it is one round world. The 
 oceans are no longer barriers, but 
 bridges ; and we have no longer any 
 interests or obligations in connection 
 with Uruguay or Paraguay different 
 from what we have toward England, 
 Italy, Greece or Japan. Liberty has 
 developed faster in Europe during 
 the century than in America; and 
 England, France and Germany are 
 to-day truer republics than Vene- 
 zuela^ Chili and Peru, For us to in- 
 terfere in boundary disputes between 
 England and Venezuela is ' vastly 
 more absurd than interference in dis- 
 putes between Venezuela and Brazil. 
 Our responsible relations with Europe 
 and with all the world multiply daily ; 
 and to-morrow our duty to help police 
 Armenia, if in Armenia there is devil- 
 try, will be as great as England's 
 duty; to-morrow our duty will be, if 
 England or Germany or France 
 wishes, without injustice or wrong to 
 others, to plant people within the 
 teeming forests and upon the million 
 empty acres of South America, to wel- 
 come them and lend the helping hand. 
 
 It was reserved for a Boston orator, 
 on the Fourth of July, to invoke the 
 Monroe Doctrine as something that 
 we might extend to Asia as a sanction 
 for preventing European nations 
 from monopolizing the "spoils" of 
 China and for standing out for an 
 
 equal share ourselves, if it comes to a 
 partition, enforcing that policy "by 
 the establishment of colonies and 
 naval stations and, if necessary, by 
 armed intervention." Is it not within 
 the memory of men now living that 
 the partition of Poland by the pro- 
 spective "Holy Alliance" was spoken 
 of as a crime, even to children in the 
 schools ; and is it on record that Prus- 
 sia was exonerated for her part in it 
 because Russia and Austria also took 
 part? 
 
 The test of the American statesman 
 is his power to interpret the Monroe 
 Doctrine in the light of to-day, and 
 to see which part of it is accident and 
 which eternal truth ; to determine 
 whether he will appeal to it to make 
 himself a "dog in the manger" and 
 whether, when he chooses to go out- 
 side of his own hemisphere, it shall 
 be for the sake of proclaiming liberty 
 and helping men struggling for inde- 
 pendence and a freer life, or for the 
 sake of joining some unholy alliance 
 in the work of "partitioning" other 
 people's lands and of lending a hand 
 in "suppressing republican move- 
 ments." 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 A century ago our fathers brought 
 forth upon this continent a new na- 
 tion/ conceived in liberty and dedi- 
 cated to the proposition that all men 
 — not simply all Americans — are cre- 
 ated equal, are God's children and to 
 be treated everywhere and always as 
 God's children. Now we are en- 
 gaged in testing whether that nation, 
 or any nation so conceived and so 
 dedicated, can endure in the high ser- 
 vice of that truth, or whether our 
 great pioneering work for freedom is 
 to take the second place, and the new 
 standard raised a hundred years ago 
 to duck itself before those hoary old 
 standards of military power and com- 
 mercial greed at whose fatal reappear- 
 ance the hearts of hopeful men have 
 again and*again grown sick and na- 
 tions called by God to leadership and , 
 
12 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 high emprise again and again decayed 
 and died. 
 
 We are doing no new thing, men 
 plead. England again and again has 
 done it, and England was never so 
 strong as to-day. Yes, again and 
 again England has done it, and Eng- 
 land is yet strong; but Rome did it 
 oftener than England, and Rome was 
 stronger than England, — and the 
 present officials of the Roman Empire 
 are not catalogued in this year's 
 Gotha Almanac. Two years ago 
 every American said Amen as Glad- 
 stone showed how all this was Eng- 
 land's weakness, not her strength ; 
 and Gladstone's friend and biog- 
 rapher, John Morley, writing yester- 
 day the programme of one of Eng- 
 land's latest enterprises, wrote our 
 programme too: 
 
 "First, you push on into territories 
 where you have no business to be, and 
 where you had promised not to go: sec- 
 ondly, your intrusion provokes resent- 
 ment, and, in these wild countries, resent- 
 ment means resistance; thirdly, you in- 
 stantly cry out that the people are rebel- 
 lious and that their act is rebellion (this 
 in spite of your own assurance that you 
 have no intention of setting up a perma- 
 nent sovereignty over them); fourthly, 
 you send a force to stamp out the rebel- 
 lion; and, fifthly, having spread bloodshed, 
 confusion and anarchy, you declare, with 
 hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral 
 reasons force you to stay, for if you were 
 to leave, this territory would be left in a 
 condition which no civilized power could 
 contemplate with equanimity or com- 
 posure. These are the five stages in the 
 Forward Rake's progress." 
 
 Commerce is the great civilizer, the 
 great sapper and miner for progress, 
 the great stimulator and minister of 
 men. "Theworld was made for honest 
 trade," sings Emerson ; and the heart 
 of every strong man in Emerson's 
 America swells and exults to see the 
 busy railroads multiply upon the land 
 and the ships upon the sea. Free 
 trade with all the world is the desire 
 of civilization in all lands. But com- 
 merce has its place, and its place is 
 second, and not first ; it is the servant, 
 
 not the king, of worthy nations and of 
 worthy men. When it becomes king, 
 then the man and the nation cease to 
 be worthy and to be the salt and the 
 light of the world. 
 
 "And where they went on trade intent, 
 
 They did what freemen can; 
 Their dauntless ways did all men praise; 
 The merchant was a man." 
 
 This is the picture of the merchants 
 whom New England loves to praise. 
 When the merchant is only the mer- 
 chant, when he does what freemen 
 may not do, when he makes his trade 
 subversive of freedom itself, then his 
 trade becomes a curse and not a bless- 
 ing. 
 
 "For what avail the plough or sail 
 Or land or life, if freedom fail?" 
 
 The baleful definition and the threat 
 of the present crisis is the word, Com- 
 merce is king. The interests of free- 
 dom are subordinated to the interests 
 of trade. Decadent and anaemic men 
 talk of our seizure and subjugation of 
 the Philippines for philanthropic and 
 missionary purposes ; but Mr. Frye 
 and Mr. Reid and Mr. Davis talk of 
 indemnity and China trade. The 
 President's Philippine commissioner, 
 Mr. Denby, believes in holding the 
 Philippines only because he "cannot 
 conceive of any alternative to our 
 doing so except the seizure of terri- 
 tory in China." He scouts the pious 
 sentimentalists. If the conquest of 
 the Philippines will not help us to en- 
 large our markets, then "set them free 
 to-morrow, and let their people, if 
 they please, cut each other's throats." 
 There is nothing in the present situ- 
 ation more melancholy than the easy 
 acceptance of Mr. Denby as the rep- 
 resentative of the national policy in 
 the Philippines, and the general in- 
 difference to the ideals and ambitions 
 which through him dominate our op- 
 erations there. For Mr. Denby, our 
 former minister to China, a zealous 
 student of Oriental trade and politics, 
 is the real head and hand of the Presi- 
 dent's commission, the only man of 
 political,_^diplomatic . or commercial 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 fi 
 
 experience, the man of purpose and of 
 power, the man who will settle the 
 commission's policy and was chosen 
 for that purpose. Were the people of 
 the republic alive as they ought to be 
 to their vital interests and their honor, 
 they would learn by heart the words 
 which commended this man to the 
 government as the fittest instrument 
 for its work in the Philippines. In 
 truth, how many remember well those 
 words, uttered only seven months 
 ago? Here are a few of them: 
 
 "We have become a great people. We 
 have a great commerce to take care of. 
 We have to compete with the commercial 
 nations of the world in far-distant 
 markets. Commerce, not politics, is king. 
 The manufacturer and the merchant dic- 
 tate to diplomacy and control elections. 
 The art of arts is the extension of com- 
 mercial relations — in plain language, the 
 selling of native products and manufac- 
 tured goods. I learned what I know of 
 diplomacy in a severe school. I found 
 among my colleagues not the least hesi- 
 tation in proposing to their respective 
 governments to do anything which was 
 supposed to be conducive to their inter- 
 ests. There can be no other rule for the 
 government of all persons who are 
 charged with the conduct of affairs than 
 the promotion of the welfare of their re- 
 spective countries. . . . 
 
 "We have the right as conquerors to 
 hold the Philippines. We have the right 
 to hold them as part payment of a war in- 
 demnity. This policy may be character- 
 ized as mnjust to Spain, but it is the re- 
 sult of the fortunes of war. All nations 
 recognize that the conqueror may dictate 
 the terms of peace. I am in favor of hold- 
 ing the Philippines, beacuse I cannot con- 
 ceive of any alternative to our doing so, 
 except the seizure of territory in China, . . . 
 and I prefer to hold them rather than to 
 oppress further the helpless government 
 and people of China. I want China to 
 preserve her autonomy, to become great 
 and prosperous; and I want these results 
 not for the interests of China, but for our 
 interests. I am not the agent or attorney 
 of China: and, as an American. I do not 
 look to the promotion of China's interests, 
 or Spain's, or ny other country's, but 
 simply of our own. The whole world sees 
 in China a splendid market for our native 
 products — our timber, our locomotives, 
 our rails, our coal oil. our sheetings, our 
 mining plants and numberless other 
 things. . . . 
 
 "Dewey's victory is an epoch in the af- 
 fairs of the far East. We hold our heads 
 
 higher. We are coming to our own. We 
 are stretching out our hands for what 
 nature meant should be ours. We- are 
 taking our proper rank among the na- 
 tions of the world. We are after markets, 
 the greatest markets now existing in the 
 world." (Article in the Forum, November, 
 1898.) 
 
 Three months later, Mr. Denby re- 
 peated this preaching in its crassest 
 form: 
 
 "The cold, hard, practical question 
 alone remains: Will the possession of 
 these islands benefit us as a nation? If it 
 will not, set them free to-morrow, and let 
 their people, if they please, cut each 
 other's throats, or play what pranks they 
 please. To this complexion we must 
 come at last, that, unless it is beneficial 
 for us to hold these islands, we should 
 turn them loose." (Forum, February, 
 1899.) 
 
 Crasser, more grasping and more 
 brutal still were the words of the 
 President's commissioner in the inter- 
 views published in the San Francisco 
 newspapers on the eve of his sailing; 
 and the newspapers of latest date 
 bring the advices of the Denby inter- 
 est in the great American syndicate 
 which is already laying out railroads 
 in China — that China whose conquest 
 and partition, as we have remarked, 
 the ex-minister proposes, failing the 
 alternative holding of the Philippines. 
 But yesterday we read its representa- 
 tives were in Washington urging the 
 administration to "back up" its de- 
 mands upon the Chinese government, 
 making the republic a partner to en- 
 forcing concessions from an unwilling 
 but helpless people. 
 
 Honest Tom Reed, whom New 
 England loves, and who has chosen 
 to leave public life while present poli- 
 cies obtain, once in his heat, we have 
 been told, dubbed the administration 
 a "syndicated administration." It is 
 not strange that many said it was 
 a harsh word ; but it would be 
 strange and it would be melan- 
 choly if any man, whatever his party, 
 any man save him who believes that 
 indeed "commerce is king" and 
 ought to be, ought to "control elec- 
 
14 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 tions," "dictate to diplomacy," and 
 direct the dogs of war, should feel 
 that even Mr. Reed could find too 
 harsh a term for the proposals and 
 the purposes of the politician sent to 
 represent and help determine the 
 policy in the East of the republic of 
 Washington and Lincoln. 
 
 But why do we lay stress on Mr. 
 Denby? There is nothing unusual in 
 his position, that it should be re- 
 marked upon ; the brutality of the ex- 
 pression of it is all that is unusual. It 
 is the position of thousands. The po- 
 sition is that of Mr. Barrett before the 
 Boston Chamber of Commerce, — who 
 in the intoxication of his vision of 
 China trade had no word of mercy, 
 but only deprecation of mercy, for the 
 struggling Filipinos whose virtues he 
 had himself not half a year before 
 painted so brightly. Tyranny, slaugh- 
 ter and falseness to democracy were 
 not even remembered when balanced 
 against China trade. They were not 
 remembered in the Fourth of July 
 oration in Boston. 
 
 We are not here arraigning the 
 American people. We believe in the 
 American people, and believe that, 
 with time for thought and second 
 breath, they will repudiate the present 
 policy upon the first possible occasion. 
 Our desire is to help arouse the Amer- 
 ican people to the real character and 
 purpose and to the natural results of 
 what is being done in their name and 
 with their sanction. The policy we 
 arraign ; and the inspiration of it, the 
 determiner of it, the silent force, the 
 administrator of administrations, is an 
 imperious commercial greed, which 
 has no thought of justice nor of the 
 lives and liberties of men. 
 
 It is this absorbing and merciless 
 commercialism which has betrayed us 
 into the militarism and indifference to 
 the rights and aspirations of men 
 lower than ourselves struggling for 
 freedom, which two years ago or one 
 year ago we should all have united to 
 
 decry, and which, in any other nation, 
 we should all decry to-day. For none 
 of us surely in cool blood can doubt 
 what we would say were England, 
 Germany or Russia acting our part in 
 the Philippines,— had either of these 
 powers taken the islands as indemnity 
 at a time when their people, after 
 years of oppression and heroic resist- 
 ance, had almost achieved success 
 and independence, and then, refusing 
 even to discuss with them, proposing 
 to them the sole alternative of un- 
 questioning submission or "ruin," 
 dubbing them "rebels" when they had 
 never owed allegiance and the only 
 claim to their allegiance was that of 
 conquest or purchase — there is no 
 doubt, we say, what America would 
 have said to England or Germany 
 playing this part. Should we have 
 thought worse of the Philippine 
 people, or better, for resisting to the 
 death in such a situation? Should we 
 not have said that their resistance was 
 the best proof of their character and 
 of their right to a chance? Certainly 
 we should have said it ; it is a menace 
 to our freedom, it is a menace to our 
 souls, for any of us to say that we 
 should not have said it. If some 
 Under Foreign Secretary had replied 
 to an interpellation in the House of 
 Commons, that the purpose of the 
 government was simply to train these 
 people rightly to self-government, 
 America would have reminded Eng- 
 land that she was destroying the pres- 
 tige and power of precisely that body 
 of the people which had evinced ca- 
 pacity for government, capacity to 
 organize and lead, to rise against op- 
 pression, to command enthusiasm, to 
 command money, to maintain armies, 
 and to wage long war against over- 
 whelming odds. She would have re- 
 minded her that to the disinterested 
 and impartial eye her course seemed 
 calculated only to make sure her own 
 supremacy, not to promote in this 
 people self-reliance, self-help, a free 
 spirit and a hopeful growth. She 
 would have mocked her efforts to 
 minimize and vulgarize the struggle 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 15 
 
 by dubbing it a "Tagal riot" or what 
 not ; and she would have told her that 
 it was more creditable to herself and 
 to her armies to recognize that the 
 force which proved a match for them 
 so long, so successfully and with such 
 ever-growing energy was a large 
 thing than to label it a little thing, a 
 force that had strong popular support 
 rather than a force that could give but 
 half its attention to the enemy in 
 front. 
 
 Let us not juggle with ourselves. 
 All that is vital in this unhappy peo- 
 ple, all that commands the future, 
 all that we should name were the 
 case not our own, is animate with the 
 passion for liberty and independence. 
 The question is not of them ; the ques- 
 tion is of us. The question is, how 
 has it become possible that the specta- 
 cle of such a passion and such a strug- 
 gle should fail to stir any American 
 heart? How is it possible that this 
 democracy, a century after Washing- 
 ton, should prostitute itself to the 
 mouldy and poisonous doctrine that 
 "sovereignty" — sovereignty over un- 
 consulted, unconsenting and protest- 
 ing millions of men— is something to 
 be bought and sold? 
 
 The sole defence or apology, which 
 even makes claim to respectability, 
 for this assertion of despotism oyer 
 our fellow men, refusing political 
 conference with them, proposing the 
 one tyrannous alternative of unques- 
 tioning submission to our pleasure or 
 "ruin," is the theory that they are 
 "savages," political children. Civ- 
 ilized "men are no more under obli- 
 gation to consult them about their 
 political interests than we are to 
 consult our boys and girls about 
 going to school. "Government de- 
 rives its just powers from the con- 
 sent of the governed," truly enough ; 
 but that dictum has to do with 
 political men, not political chil- 
 dren. This theory that the men of 
 Luzon are "savages" appears to be 
 the theorv of the administration; if 
 it is not its policy is without a 
 shadow of excuse. The theory is 
 
 ridiculous ; it is iniquitous ; every in- 
 formed man knows it is false. The 
 books are in the libraries for every 
 man to read who cares to know what 
 the Philippine people are. But as to 
 their political capacity, as to their 
 title at least to consultation concern- 
 ing their own fate, we need no other 
 word than that of Mr. Barrett himself, 
 who is now engaged in the fine busi- 
 ness of holding Senator Hoar up for 
 scorn in chambers of commerce, for 
 speaking in the Senate for justice to- 
 ward these struggling people. Mr. 
 Barrett last autumn visited Malolos, 
 where the Philippine congress was in 
 session. The hundred men who com- 
 posed it, he writes, 
 
 "would compare in behavior, manner, 
 dress and education with the average men 
 of the better classes of other Asiatic na- 
 tions, possiblv including the Japanese. 
 These men, whose sessions I repeatedly 
 attended, conducted themselves with great 
 decorum, and showed a knowledge of de- 
 bate and parliamentary law that would not 
 compare unfavorably with the Japanese 
 parliament. The executive portion of the 
 government was made up of a ministry of 
 bright men who seemed to understand 
 their respective positions. Each general 
 division was subdivided with reference to 
 practical work. There was a large force 
 of under-secretaries and clerks, who ap- 
 peared to be kept very busy with routine 
 labor." 
 
 We know that a score of the mem- 
 bers of this parliament were men who 
 had studied in European universities. 
 The constitution adopted by this bodv 
 is in all our hands, and we are not in 
 any manner dependent upon Senator 
 Hoar's praises for our judgment of it. 
 This government— we have Mr. Bar- 
 rett's word for it last January — "has 
 practically been administering the 
 affairs of that great island since the 
 occupation of Manila, and is certainly 
 better than the former administra- 
 tion." General Miller pays the same 
 tribute to the efficiency of the native 
 government as he found it at Iloilo; 
 and Consul Wildman says: "Aguinal- 
 do has made life and property safe, 
 preserved order, and encouraged a 
 continuation of agricultural and in- 
 
i6 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 dustrial pursuits. He has made brig-, 
 andage and loot impossible, respected 
 private property, forbidden excess, 
 either in revenge or in the name of the 
 State, and made a woman's honor 
 safer in Luzon than it has been in 
 three hundred years." 
 
 The Filipinos, indeed, have always 
 done all the real work of their 
 Spanish masters, and all the valuable 
 political experience on the island was 
 theirs. Even sixty years ago, as 
 shown in Gironiere's book, "Twenty 
 Years in the Philippine Islands," an 
 efficient system of local government, 
 resembling in some features the town 
 meeting government of New Eng- 
 land, was in operation throughout 
 Luzon. Every township, he says, 
 was a little republic. This strong self- 
 reliance and passion for independence 
 was what chiefly impressed Dr. Lan- 
 man, who has recently come home 
 to Boston from Luzon to tell us of 
 th? terrible misconception of the 
 character of the Philippine people 
 upon which it is clear to him our gov- 
 ernment is acting. Commander 
 Ford, the fleet engineer of the Asiatic 
 squadron, who has lately arrived at 
 his home in Baltimore, speaks even 
 more strongly: 
 
 "The Filipinos pictured in the senti- 
 mental papers are not the men we are 
 fighting. The fellows we deal with out 
 there are not ignorant savages, fighting 
 with bows and arrows, but are intelligent, 
 liberty-loving people, full of courage and 
 determination. The idea that the Filipino 
 is an uncivilized being is a mistaken one. 
 They have the intellect and the stamina to 
 govern themselves, and have done it for 
 300 years, although under the rule of 
 Spain. They were the clerks, the book- 
 keepers, the assessors, and managed the 
 entire machinery of government. While 
 they fight for entire freedom, all they ask 
 is a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit 
 of happiness, and they care not whether it 
 be a republic of their own or some form 
 devised for them by the United States." 
 
 To the same effect writes General 
 Charles A. Whittier, late of General 
 Merritt's staff in the Philippines. He 
 went to Manila with many of the 
 
 common notions about the Philip- 
 pine people. 
 
 "But after a little while, with my 
 changed estimate of the Filipino charac- 
 ter, seeing their order, industry, frugality, 
 temperance, tolerance of danger and fa- 
 tigue, and when I reviewed their struggle 
 for independence, the brutalities inflicted 
 upon them for years by the Spaniards, 
 their dignity and skill, it seemed to me 
 our duty to use them and our own credit 
 and resources in making a great country, 
 as I believe it could have been made. I 
 felt, and still feel, sure that, with a little 
 tact and diplomacy, the people would have 
 accepted our protectorate — my idea being 
 to intrust them with the administration of 
 all the local offices, to admit them to 
 subordinate places in our army, by which 
 in a short time a force of 5,000 men would 
 have been adequate, and, after a fair trial, 
 in case they developed a capacity for gov- 
 ernment and the devotion to the best in- 
 terests of their country (of which I have 
 not the slightest doubt), to extend their 
 functions; and should have been glad, in 
 proper time, to have turned over the whole 
 country to them. Such a course would 
 have involved no loss of life or of money." 
 
 Here is clearly stated what, in our 
 opinion, was our true policy in Janu- 
 ary, and remains our true policy to-day 
 — the policy which we believe the 
 American people, protesting against 
 the renewal in the autumn of costly, 
 murderous and fruitless war, will im- 
 peratively decree. General Whittier 
 spoke warmly in behalf of this view 
 before the Peace Commission at 
 Paris; and he says to-day: 
 
 "I think that the qualities shown by 
 Aguinaldo and his people fully justify all 
 that I said before the commission. ... I 
 don't think there was a necessity for the 
 loss of a single life in battle at Manila 
 since the first day of May, 1898 — the day of 
 Dewey's naval battle — and I grieve every 
 day over the new recitals of this wicked 
 fighting and its attendant results." 
 
 But do the people of the United 
 States ask for any more authoritative 
 word upon this subject than 'that of 
 Admiral Dewey? On June 23, 1898, 
 Admiral Dewey telegraphed to the 
 Navy Department at Washington: 
 "These people are far superior in 
 their intelligence and more capable of 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 17 
 
 self-government than the natives of 
 Cuba ; and I am familiar with both 
 races." Two months later, August 
 29, he referred the Department back 
 to this word, and added: "Further in- 
 tercourse with them has confirmed 
 me in this opinion." 
 
 If our people do ask for more con- 
 clusive evidence, then they have it in 
 Mr. Barrett's speech to the Boston 
 Chamber of Commerce. In that 
 speech Air. Barrett said that on the 
 day after Mr. Hoar made his great 
 speech in the Senate against the poli- 
 cy of our government in the Philip- 
 pines, he met in the corridor of his 
 hotel at Hong Kong one of the resi- 
 dent Filipino agents, who had re- 
 ceived a telegram from Washington 
 giving an abstract of the speech. 
 " 'What are you going to do with it?' 
 I asked. He replied: T have ordered 
 twenty thousand copies to be struck 
 off, and I am going to send them to 
 Aguinaldo.' I telegraphed to Dewey 
 what was going to be done ; but my 
 despatch did not reach Manila in 
 time, and within twenty-four hours 
 after it arrived the Filipino presses 
 were working night and day striking 
 off copies of the Senator's speech, 
 which were circulated all through the 
 Philippine Islands." Incidentally Mr. 
 Barrett here reveals what at the time 
 was hotly denied, that express effort 
 was made to keep Senator Hoar's 
 speech from reaching the Philippine 
 Islands and to prevent the people 
 from knowing what American senti- 
 ment was. The significant thing is 
 his own absolute witness that the men 
 for whom Senator Hoar was demand- 
 ing justice, demanding some consid- 
 eration as to their own fate, were 
 worthy of consideration and of his 
 great and noble effort. A people for 
 whom presses must work night and 
 day to strike off copies of Senator 
 Hoar's speeches, with the assurance 
 that those speeches will be everywhere 
 circulated and read and appreciated, 
 a people with agencies at home and 
 abroad so efficiently organized as im- 
 mediately to secure this result, are 
 
 not the race of "savages" with which 
 our administration assumes itself to 
 be dealing. Among the many things 
 which will be remembered to the 
 glory of our great Massachusetts sen- 
 ator, preeminent among all men in 
 public life for his true insight in the 
 present crisis from beginning to end, 
 it will be remembered, not only that 
 he' never forgot what law and liberty 
 are and what the American republic 
 stands for, not only that he told us of 
 the shame to a democracy of traffick- 
 ing in "sovereignty" over uncon- 
 sulted, silenced millions of men, but 
 that he mastered the facts concerning 
 the Philippine people and acted upon 
 them, while other men manufactured 
 and imposed upon the country the- 
 ories to match and sanction tyranny. 
 Mr. Barrett, like every other intelli- 
 gent man who has come into contact 
 with him, pays the highest personal 
 tribute to Aguinaldo as the universally 
 popular leader. Most interesting of 
 these many tributes is that by the 
 young Filipino, Rodriguez, now liv- 
 ing in New Orleans, a former school- 
 mate of Aguinaldo's. His picture of 
 the serious, student, who "used to 
 literally turn day into night" in 
 his studies of philosophy and law 
 at the San Juan Seminary at 
 Manila, but good-hearted, charita- 
 ble to the poor, and liked by 
 everybody, is the picture of the boy 
 who was the natural father of the man 
 described by Mr. Barrett. "It was at 
 the college that he acquired his pro- 
 nounced ideas on republicanism. 
 When he was only sixteen years old 
 he started a little paper, a boy's paper, 
 called La Rcpublica." There was the 
 seed of the present struggle for inde- 
 pendence. The most touching word 
 of this Rodriguez is this: 
 
 "It cannot last a great while. The re- 
 sources of the Filipinos are limited, and 
 they will become exhausted. They are 
 making a terrible mistake; but it is not due 
 to wickedness. They are simply ignorant 
 of this country, its resources and its pol- 
 icy. They imagine that the Americans 
 want to drive them away and take their 
 
iS 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 country. They are not used to dealing 
 with honest people. You must remember 
 they have never come in contact with any- 
 body except the Spaniards." 
 
 Oh, the terrible irony of it! What 
 have we done that they should not 
 think we wanted to dominate them? 
 What have we done to make them feel 
 that we were "honest people?" In 
 what single point have we shown to 
 them our superiority to the Spaniards 
 whom we supplanted, — going to them 
 with the appeal to fear and not to love, 
 refusing even to confer with them as 
 political men and brothers, proposing 
 to them simply "sovereignty" or 
 "ruin," slaughtering more of them in 
 four months, when they refused dumb 
 submission to such tyranny, than 
 Spain had done in four decades ? 
 
 We have noticed Mr. Barrett's 
 judgment of Aguinaldo's parliament. 
 Here is his picture of Aguinaldo's 
 army : 
 
 "The army, however, of Aguinaldo was 
 the marvel of his achievements. He had 
 over twenty regiments of comparatively 
 well-organized, well-drilled, and well- 
 dressed soldiers, carrying modern rifles 
 and ammunition. I saw many of these 
 regiments executing not only regimental, 
 but battalion and company drill, with a 
 precision that astonished me. Certainly 
 as far as dress was concerned, the com- 
 parison with the uniform of our soldiers 
 was favorable to the Filipinos. They were 
 officered largely, except in the higher po- 
 sitions, with young men who were ambi- 
 tious to win honors and were not merely 
 show fighters. The people in all the dif- 
 ferent towns took great pride in this army. 
 Nearly every family had a father, son, or 
 cousin in it. Wherever they went they 
 roused enthusiasm for the Filipino cause. 
 The impression made upon the inhabitants 
 of the interior by such displays can be 
 readily appreciated. Aguinaldo and his 
 principal lieutenants also made frequent 
 visits to the principal towns, and were re- 
 ceived with the same earnestness that we 
 show in greeting a successful President." 
 
 This "Tagal mob," which we are 
 told from Washington in no way rep- 
 resents general Philippine sentiment, 
 — eighty per cent of the people op- 
 
 posed to it is, we think, Dean Worces- 
 ter's guess, a mere fraction sustain- 
 ing the successful opposition to the 
 armies of the United States! — flocks 
 to Aguinaldo's standard, according to 
 Mr. Barrett, because "the impression 
 went abroad that Aguinaldo had ar- 
 rived to establish an independent gov- 
 ernment and that the Americans, 
 would assist him." What grounds, 
 had we given them for that impres- 
 sion? 
 
 Consul-General Pratt of Singapore- 
 has recently brought suit against cer- 
 tain newspapers for publishing "in- 
 terviews" with him, which he pro- 
 nounces false and injurious. There is. 
 one significant newspaper article, 
 however, which he will not assail. It is 
 an article published in the Singapore 
 Free Press of May 4, 1898, which he 
 himself forwarded the next day to the- 
 State Department as giving "in the- 
 main correctly" the facts concerning 
 his discussion with Aguinaldo and 
 Aguinaldo's departure, after reaching 
 an understanding with him, to 
 join Commodore Dewey at Manila. 
 Aguinaldo, at Consul Pratt's request,, 
 had been brought to him for a secret 
 interview a few days before by Mr. 
 Bray, an English gentleman of high 
 standing, who had lived as a mer- 
 chant and planter in the Philippines 
 for fifteen years, and sympathized 
 with the revolutionary movement as 
 promising order and welfare for the 
 islands. "Being aware of the great 
 prestige of General Aguinaldo with 
 the insurgents, and that no one could 
 exert over them the same influence 
 that he could," Consul Pratt writes 
 the Department, he arranged this in- 
 terview and, coming to an agreement 
 with Aguinaldo, secured his passage 
 to Manila, for "general cooperation"' 
 with Commodore Dewey, as he tele- 
 graphed the Commodore, — who, on 
 learning the facts, had telegraphed,, 
 "Tell Aguinaldo to come as soon as. 
 possible." The policy of Aguinaldo,. 
 considered and accepted in this inter- 
 view, as stated in the account sent the 
 Department, "embraces the inde- 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 19 
 
 pendence of the Philippines, whose 
 internal affairs would be controlled 
 under European and American ad- 
 visers. American protection would 
 be desirable temporarily, on the same 
 lines as that which might be instituted 
 hereafter in Cuba." This, we say, 
 Consul Pratt will hardly deny. More- 
 over, this is one of the things "estab- 
 lished by the mouth of two or three 
 witnesses," — Mr. Bray, who was 
 present at the interview and acted as 
 interpreter, having also published an 
 account of it, coinciding strictly with 
 that sent by Mr. Pratt to Washington. 
 That Commodore Dewey had author- 
 ity to act in this matter is established 
 by the published state documents., 
 which show that he had instructions to 
 use his discretion. How he received 
 Aguinaldo appears from his official 
 despatch to the Secretary of the Navy, 
 June 27, 1898: 'T have given him to 
 understand that I consider insurgents 
 as friends, being opposed to a com- 
 mon enemy. He has gone to attend 
 a meeting of insurgent leaders for the 
 purpose of forming a civil govern- 
 ment." Here follows Dewey's well- 
 known tribute to the political capacity 
 of the Filipinos, greater in his judg- 
 ment than that of the Cubans. The 
 despatch proceeds entirely on the as- 
 sumption that the Filipinos are to be 
 entrusted with their own government, 
 which must have been his assumption 
 in dealing with Aguinaldo. 
 
 But it is unnecessary to quote mes- 
 sages and letters and interviews. The 
 language of the fact is all the language 
 necessary. Aguinaldo went to Manila 
 and organized an army to cooperate 
 with us on the strength of some ex- 
 plicit arrangement with Commodore 
 Dewey and Consul Pratt — at a time 
 when such a policy as the present one 
 toward the Philippines had never been 
 mentioned by our government, and 
 the only policy apparent to us was 
 that declared by Congress toward 
 Cuba. Is it reasonable to suppose 
 that the promised arrangement was 
 that which, when declared in Janu- 
 ary. Aguinaldo and his people in- 
 
 stantly denounce and take arms 
 against? It is not reasonable. 
 
 Consul Wildman of Hong Kong, 
 upon Aguinaldo's return to Manila 
 for "general cooperation" with Ad- 
 miral Dewey, "under the promise of 
 independence," supplied him with sev- 
 eral cargoes of arms and ammuni- 
 tion. We presume nobody questions 
 this. Consul Williams of Manila re- 
 ported, June 16, 1898, that the insur- 
 gent forces under Aguinaldo had been 
 "most active and almost uniformly 
 successful in their many encounters" 
 with the Spanish ; that since his return 
 "his forces had captured nearly 5,000 
 prisoners, 4,000 of whom were Span- 
 iards, and all of whom had rifles when 
 taken. The insurgents have defeated 
 the Spaniards at all points except at 
 fort near Matate, and hold not only 
 North Luzon to the suburbs of Ma- 
 nila, but Batanyes Province also and 
 the bay coast entire, save the city of 
 Manila." We presume nobody ques- 
 tions this. Hon. John Barrett does 
 not question it. He is on record last 
 January to the effect that Aguinaldo 
 had "organized an army out of noth- 
 ing," and had "captured all Spanish 
 garrisons on the island of Luzon out- 
 side of Manila, so that when the Amer- 
 icans were ready to proceed against 
 the city they were not delayed and 
 troubled by a country campaign." 
 "You must understand," wrote Agui- 
 naldo to General Merritt, August 2~, 
 "that without the blockade maintained 
 by my forces you would have obtained 
 possession of the ruins of the city, but 
 never the surrender of the Spanish 
 forces, who would have been able to 
 retire to the interior towns." General 
 Merritt did not question this. We pre- 
 sume nobody questions it. 
 
 This brief statement of facts is true, 
 or it is not true. If it is true, then 
 had Aguinaldo and his "savages" kept 
 faith with us in their "general coop- 
 eration" with us against the Spanish 
 forces, "under the promise of inde- 
 pendence"? Did we keep faith with 
 them when, the moment that the 
 Spanish power had by their active and 
 
20 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 successful cooperation been crushed, 
 our general and admiral, under ex- 
 press instructions from Washington, 
 refused to "recognize" them, and this 
 proclamation by President William 
 McKinley was promulgated in the 
 Philippines, January 5, 1899: "The 
 military government heretofore main- 
 tained by the United States in the city, 
 harbor and bay of Manila is to be ex- 
 tended with all possible dispatch to 
 the whole of the ceded territory"? 
 The date of this first gun in the pres- 
 ent war with the Philippines was, it 
 will be noted, a month before the rati- 
 fication by the Senate of the treaty by 
 which Spain relinquished her sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 Here begins the impressive story of 
 Rev. Clay MacCauley of Japan. Mr. 
 MacCauley was in Manila when Gen- 
 eral Otis issued, in the President's 
 name, "the fateful proclamation of 
 January 4." His straightforward ac- 
 count, carrying in every line the stamp 
 of simple truth, of the incredulity, 
 amazement, and then dismay and 
 wrath, with which the Filipinos saw 
 our friendship suddenly change to 
 hostility, saw themselves ignored, ex- 
 cluded and ordered to "fall back" and 
 to "fall back" again ; of the bitter sense 
 which he found among almost all our 
 officers of the failure at Washington to 
 appreciate the Filipinos at their worth 
 and of the great wrong which was be- 
 ing done ; of the facts which cumulate 
 so inexorably to show that the admin- 
 istration at this point, waiving all care 
 for pacification, had elected a policy 
 of conquest and subjugation and did 
 not seek to avoid collision, — this ac- 
 count will pass into history. The cen- 
 tral point of interest in the story will 
 remain the interviews which show that 
 General Otis accepted this mistaken 
 and cruel policy with heavy-hearted 
 resignation, and Admiral Dewey re- 
 sented it with hot indignation. "I was 
 ordered to this post from San Fran- 
 cisco," General Otis said. "I did not 
 believe in the annexation of these is- 
 lands when I came here, nor do I be- 
 lieve in their annexation now." 
 
 "Rather than make a war of conquest 
 of this people," said Admiral Dewey, 
 "I would up anchor and sail out of the 
 harbor." Admiral Dewey is the most 
 popular man in America to-day. 
 Every American loves and admires 
 him for his courage, his daring, his 
 keenness, his thoroughness, his pru- 
 dence, his diplomacy, his modesty, his 
 simplicity, his common sense, his 
 power to hold his tongue. America 
 waits to welcome the hero of Manila. 
 P>ut history will say, if this story 
 stands unimpeached, that when Dewey 
 the silent spoke on that January day, 
 the American citizen in him leaping 
 before the admiral, he did a nobler and 
 more memorable deed than that on 
 the famous May morning. 
 
 The remarkable reception of this 
 letter by the press of the country is 
 a refreshing attestation that what men 
 want, in this complex situation, is 
 simply the truth. It has at once put 
 an end to apologies for the Philippine 
 policy of the administration in many 
 columns where there had been long 
 and painful struggle to apologize. 
 The Boston Herald, the most conspic- 
 uous instance in New England, 
 stated the situation justly and con- 
 vincingly when it declared that, with 
 the writer of this letter, it was 
 
 "fully persuaded that our power and glory- 
 could have achieved all substantial tri- 
 umph and all real advantages in the East 
 by a different course, more in harmony 
 with our national principles and life, and 
 not in violation of the precepts of Chris- 
 tianity and the dictates of humanity. The 
 facts which he presents regarding the sit- 
 uation in January last establish the conten- 
 tion of the Herald, that the responsibility 
 for the war rests on the administration and 
 not on the opponents of the Paris treaty. 
 It was the administration which ungrate- 
 fully cast off the allies it had courted, by 
 iwhose aid it had captured Manila and 
 its Spanish garrison. The United States 
 might have continued the master of the 
 Philippines, the respected and trusted 
 protector of their people, stronger, we be- 
 lieve, in that quarter of the world than it 
 can ever make itself by alienating the 
 sympathy of those teeming populations, 
 without provoking this dreadful war and 
 its century-long train of rankling disap- 
 pointment and hate. It becomes more and 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 more evident that, after the overthrow of 
 Spanish dominion, we might by judicious 
 courses have securely won what we may 
 never securely conquer. Expansion with- 
 out subjugating war, and without infidel- 
 ity to our great charter of liberty, would 
 have been an achievement of unparalleled 
 glory and honor. The President, sur- 
 rounded by impatient speculators and 
 shallow jingoes, missed his grandest op- 
 portunity." 
 
 When things have come to the pass 
 described, the question as to the de- 
 tails of the first skirmish is a trivial 
 question ; the story of the Boston 
 Massacre well teaches us that. War 
 is inevitable. The real first gun was 
 the Presidents proclamation of Janu- 
 ary 4, asserting "sovereignty" over a 
 people who expected fraternity, and 
 had a right to expect it. There was 
 then no disorder in the island. The 
 talk about our staying in the island 
 to ''prevent anarchy" is insolence and 
 nonsense, as every talker knows. Our 
 own consul at Hong Kong, who 
 from the beginning understood the 
 whole situation so well, and who a 
 year ago wished to be put "on record 
 as stating that the insurgent govern- 
 ment of the Philippine Islands cannot 
 be dealt with as though they were 
 American Indians," also put himself 
 on record as believing that the "spirit 
 with which they fought the Spaniards" 
 was sufficient guarantee that the Phil- 
 ippine people, if we withdrew, would 
 be quite able to defend themselves 
 against any other power seeking to 
 master them. Our own Wilcox and 
 Sargent, the two young American of- 
 ficers who last autumn, in behalf of 
 Admiral Dewey, made a journey 
 through the island of Luzon, and 
 whose report issued from Washington 
 in January was pronounced the "clear- 
 est and most accurate picture of con- 
 ditions as they exist in the interior," 
 show us conclusively that there is no 
 anarchy there to-day except that 
 which we ourselves have carried. Ser- 
 geant Andrea? and Mr. Reeves of our 
 own Signal Corps, who made several 
 similar journeys, at the same period, 
 taking them one hundred and fifty 
 miles from Manila, describe the same 
 
 conditions of peace and simple toil 
 among the peasantry, of universal hos- 
 pitality and kindness, — they travelled 
 everywhere unarmed, — of universal 
 enthusiasm for their new government, 
 of universal trust in us as their libera- 
 tors and their friends. 
 
 Every condition favored for making 
 these people our friends and partners. 
 It is not a debatable question. But it is 
 also not a debatable question that our 
 government had no care for pacifica- 
 tion, but thought only of subjugation. 
 The appeal is to facts. The attempt 
 of the two Filipino soldiers to cross 
 our lines, which led to the altercation 
 of February 4 between the pickets, 
 was entirely unauthorized and at once 
 disclaimed. It is a matter of official 
 record that all the higher Filipino of- 
 ficers were in conference in their 
 headquarters at the time. It is also 
 a matter of record that as soon as 
 Aguinaldo got news of the conflict he 
 sent a messenger begging the Ameri- 
 cans to desist, declaring that whatever 
 a few of his soldiers had done was 
 without authority. This we have 
 upon the authority of our own mili- 
 tary chief of police at Manila at the 
 time, General C. McC. Reeve of Min- 
 nesota, who wrote: 
 
 "On Sunday, February 5, the day after 
 the fighting began, General Torres of the 
 insurgents came through the lines under a 
 flag of truce and had a personal interview 
 with General Otis, in which, speaking for 
 Aguinaldo, he declared that the fighting 
 had been begun accidentally, and was not 
 authorized by Aguinaldo; that Aguinaldo 
 wished to have it stopped, and that to 
 bring about a conclusion of hostilities he 
 proposed the establishment of a neutral 
 zone between the two armies, of any width 
 that would be agreeable to General Otis, 
 so that during peace negotiations there 
 might be no further danger of conflicts 
 between the two armies. To these repre- 
 sentations of General Torres, General Otis 
 replied that the fighting, having once be- 
 gun, must go on to the grim end." 
 
 This situation is recognized in Gen- 
 eral Otis's own telegram to Washing- 
 ton, February 9: "Aguinaldo now 
 applies for a cessation of hostilities 
 and conference ; have declined to 
 answer." He was instantlv furnished 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 with his answer from Washington ; 
 and the grim work began, and has 
 gone on, and is going on. Who is 
 responsible for it? 
 
 * * 
 Abraham Lincoln once said: 
 
 "No man is good enough to govern 
 another man without that other's consent. 
 When the white man governs himself, that 
 is self-government; but when he governs 
 himself and also governs another man, 
 that is more than self-government — that is 
 despotism. Our reliance is in the love of 
 liberty which God has planted in us; our 
 defence is in the spirit which prizes liber- 
 ty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, 
 everywhere. Those who deny freedom to 
 others deserve it not for themselves, and 
 under a just God cannot long retain it." 
 
 No word was ever truer, nor more 
 immediately true. No democracy can 
 play the emperor and remain democ- 
 racy ; the mere temptation to it is evi- 
 dence of taint. The moment that it 
 exercises an outside oppression, that 
 moment oppression asserts preroga- 
 tives within. Doubly threatening to 
 ourselves is our denial of rights and 
 of recognition to the Malays of 
 Luzon ; for it will be believed — and 
 be believed for it is true — that had it 
 been not Luzon but Bermuda, white 
 men and not brown, we would have 
 shown a different hand. The nation 
 has come in 1899 to act upon the 
 principle which it took up arms to 
 suppress in 1861, that liberty belongs 
 of right only to white men, and that 
 black and brown men must take what 
 white men give. The Civil War was 
 a life-and-death struggle between 
 "Black men down!" and "All men 
 up!" It was, as the thronging spirits 
 over Gettysburg and Vicksburg and 
 the Wilderness are still solemnly 
 chanting, whether or not we listen, "to 
 settle once for all that men are men." 
 The logic of events was making this 
 the common gospel of the nation. 
 The logic of Luzon has brought back 
 to new life the warring philosophies of 
 1861. Not in these thirty years — is 
 this not clear to all — has there been in 
 the South such denial of the black 
 
 man's rights as in these months since 
 the nation has denied the brown 
 man's rights; there has in the thirty 
 years been no such assertion of the 
 doctrines which 1861 called treason 
 and which in those terrible four years 
 shook the very pillars of the state. 
 Never has the spirit of the "lost 
 cause" been so rampant in the Con- 
 federate reunions. Only a fortnight 
 before General Wheeler, on Memorial 
 Day, came to Charles Sumner's Bos- 
 ton to glorify war as the true gran- 
 deur of nations, he declared in the 
 meeting of the Confederate veterans 
 that "the South did not surrender one 
 iota of its belief in the truth and jus- 
 tice of its cause." No less a man than 
 Dr. Curry, the dispenser in the South 
 of the great Peabody fund for the edu- 
 cation of the freedmen, followed with 
 a vigorous plea for the more ex- 
 press assertion of the constitutional 
 right of secession. But most signifi- 
 cant were the general resolutions, 
 giving thanks that the nation by its 
 attitude in the Philippines had come 
 to the position of the South in the 
 Civil War, that we were done hearing 
 the generalities of the Declaration of 
 Independence, and that hereafter, 
 when New England and the North 
 come to the South to discuss ques- 
 tions of race, it will be with the 
 accents not of rebuke but of inquiry. 
 No one surely will ever suspect us 
 of "waving the bloody shirt" ; our 
 friendship for the South, our feelings 
 upon suffrage, upon education, upon 
 the white man and the black, are we 
 think well enough known. But the 
 time has not yet come when it is safe 
 for any of us to believe that the Civil 
 War was about nothing, or that its 
 issue was the triumph of the wrong. 
 The time has not yet come for New 
 England to be silent when these doc- 
 trines are preached and when events 
 and public policies make them natural 
 and popular. The cause which Grant 
 laid low at Appomattox and in the 
 struggle with which Lincoln lived and 
 died is not, in our judgment, the cause 
 whose badge the President of the na- 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 23 
 
 tion should yet wear upon his breast. 
 But if it is to be so worn, then it is 
 fitting that it should be in that year 
 when the nation views the brown man 
 as the Carolina and Virginia of 1861 
 viewed the black man. 
 
 We refer to this sudden renaissance 
 of secession sentiment and race hatred 
 in the South only as illustrative and 
 symptomatic, the quick and natural 
 home fruitage of false doctrine applied 
 in the antipodes, the warning to pa- 
 triots in South and North alike of the 
 crop inexorably sure in the whole 
 domain if the seed is sowed in any 
 corner. Mr. Fiske has surveyed the 
 cause of Rome's decay for us in vain 
 if he has not shown us that that which 
 taints % the blood at the extremities 
 sooner or later taints it at the heart. 
 If there be such a thing as treason 
 still, then treason to this republic is 
 still what it was in 1861, the Protean 
 devil then donning the mask of 
 State Rights, the denial of the 
 equal rights of men ; it is not in 
 the circulation, if afl over the Pacific 
 seas, of pamphlets upon "Criminal 
 Aggression" and "The Hell of War," 
 pamphlets with no word in them 
 which was not elemental truth to 
 every enlightened American from 
 Benjamin Franklin to Charles Sum- 
 ner. We laugh at the feeble hys- 
 teria of a cabinet frightened by such 
 tracts ; we say with the western jour- 
 nalist that the theatrical proceedings 
 against Mr. Atkinson remind us of 
 "government in comic opera" ; we 
 think how ridiculous poor George the 
 Third and Lord North would have 
 appeared even to the England of a 
 century ago trying to keep Chatham's 
 speeches from getting to Hutchinson 
 and Sam Adams. Yet after all such 
 things are not chiefly farcical. These 
 cheap and easy resorts to petty des- 
 potism — the Napoleonic concealment 
 from the people of the facts in the 
 Philippines is another illustration — 
 are the debasing effects of the sud- 
 den militarv habit, even upon the 
 
 best of men ; they are wholesome re- 
 minders of what militarism means, 
 when fully grown ; reminders too that 
 liberty and law are not safe in any na- 
 tion for a moment when men grow 
 careless about the proper forms and 
 methods of liberty and law. 
 
 We say that the attitude which our 
 government has taken is a deadly 
 blow at the New South. Dr. Noble 
 observed with sagacity, in his sermon 
 last autumn before the American 
 Missionary Association, that the 
 times when the white men of the 
 North and South have "drawn to- 
 gether" have too often been bad times 
 for the black man ; and the truth in 
 the remark is one which commands 
 us, in considering every such "har- 
 mony," to determine well how far it 
 is indeed a mutual harmony with 
 those fundamental principles of our 
 democracy which condemn respect of 
 persons, black or white, and how far 
 a harmony between colonels at din- 
 ner-tables, where recognition of "un- 
 pleasantnesses" is bad form. It is 
 true that our war for the liberation of 
 Cuba cfid help to consolidate the 
 country, for men from the North and 
 the South stood shoulder to shoulder 
 in the ranks, under the old flag, sing- 
 ing with one voice the song of free- 
 dom. But the war for the subjuga- 
 tion of the Philippines has set back 
 for a decade the interest of every ef- 
 fort in the South which had hope in 
 it and relish of salvation ; it has set the 
 "lost cause" in the saddle in the South 
 once more for just so long as the gov- 
 ernment keeps the nation upon the 
 present platform. 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 But it is not only a blow to liberty 
 and progress in the South ; it is a 
 menace to the whole cause of indus- 
 trial development in the country, a 
 blow to every American workin^man. 
 The sudden abnormal growth of mili- 
 tarism in the country must not be dis- 
 sociated for a moment from the .gen- 
 eral growth of mammonism and plu- 
 tocracy. It is plutocracy's surest 
 
24 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 symptom and, if it is not immediately 
 checked, will rapidly become its most 
 fertile soil and most fatal agency. 
 We are seeing in the Philippines and 
 in our own politics in connection with 
 the war in the Philippines simply an- 
 other campaign in the great industrial 
 struggle in which the Civil War was 
 but one campaign. We are seeing 
 militarism rapidly saddled upon the 
 nation, at enormous cost and to no 
 good purpose, at the precise juncture 
 in our industrial history when the 
 plain people — who are about all the 
 people there are — have special reason 
 to be jealous of militarism. It is with 
 true instinct that the workingmen of 
 America have unanimously, so far as 
 is known to us, denounced the present 
 war ; as it is with true instinct that the 
 workingmen of every land are becom- 
 ing above others international men, 
 hating war and all that has to do with 
 it, and loving the ways of reason and 
 of peace. Let the voice of the plain 
 people of America be lifted up to-day 
 as it was never lifted up before, in 
 their own interest and in the interest 
 of mankind. Let the people register 
 the high decree that this republic, in 
 the hopeful morning of the new indus- 
 trial era, shall not become a military 
 nation; that not another battery or 
 battalion shall be added to its army; 
 nor to its navy — too large already for 
 any possible righteous need — another 
 gunboat or another gun. Let no eye 
 fail to see in the Pacific simply a bat- 
 tle in the long war of Men with 
 Money ; let no ear fail to hear the 
 thunder of the gods against the Amer- 
 ican freeman consenting to this wrong 
 against his poorer brother: Inasmuch 
 as ye do it unto the least of these 
 your brethren, ye do it to yourselves! 
 
 A poorer, younger brother he is. 
 He is not the man who stood at Mars- 
 ton Moor or Bunker Hill ; his Agui- 
 naldo is not Washington or Cromwell. 
 The mud from which he pushes his 
 way up still clings to him ; the ape and 
 tiger are stronger in him than in some 
 
 of us. But he is a man, he loves liber- 
 ty, he will die for his country. How 
 earnest and strong he is to fight forher 
 is told by the long line of coffins, the 
 long list of certificates of coffins, com- 
 ing day by day to California and Ore- 
 gon, to Kansas and Nebraska. Dr. 
 McQuestion comes home with his ter- 
 rible story of suffering and death, his 
 high estimate of the determination 
 and strength, so foolishly underesti- 
 mated by our government, of the 
 Philippine people, his certainty that 
 only a hundred thousand men can 
 overcome them. General King speaks 
 with his strong emphasis. Mr. 
 Knapp's impressive letter comes with 
 its rebukes and warnings. Com- 
 mander Ford declares that "they are 
 stronger, more determined and more 
 skilled in the art of war than when the 
 fighting started ; they certainly *do not 
 think theirs a hopeless fight, nor does 
 any one else who knows anything 
 about it." It will cost a billion dol- 
 lars, says Captain Wilde of the "Bos- 
 ton," to carry out to a successful is- 
 sue our present policy. And now 
 comes the "round* robin" of the news- 
 paper correspondents at Manila, pro- 
 testing against the censorship which 
 keeps our public ignorant of the real 
 strength and character of the Philip- 
 pine army, of the extent of the losses 
 and hardships and disaffection of our 
 men, and the general gravity of the 
 situation. What are the limits to the 
 right to sacrifice these splendid men 
 of ours? How many shall we let fall 
 before deciding whether the cause is 
 one in which it is right to let any fall? 
 For surely more splendid fellows, 
 braver, more patient, more heroic fel- 
 lows, never went out to battle. Their 
 fearlessness and competence for every 
 trying task are the witness that the 
 sufficient school for every neces- 
 sary war is the great school of peace. 
 All war is hell ; but the facts will show 
 that no charges of uncommon hellish- 
 ness on the part of these soldiers 
 of ours will stand. They demand now 
 our consideration. It is cruelty on our 
 part if one more dies in vain. 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 If the subjugation of these people 
 and the crushing of their aspirations 
 for liberty and independence are forthe 
 real good of America — not syndicatic 
 America, but democratic America — 
 and of the world, then let the work go 
 on ; let the hundred thousand men be 
 made ready for the autumn battles 
 and death ; let no line of coffins move 
 us. But if the crushing of such aspira- 
 tions is not good work for a repub- 
 lic ; if the word which comes to us 
 from the gallant Funston at Manila — 
 "Big syndicates and capitalists will be 
 greatly benefited by the retention of 
 these islands, but outside a few excep- 
 tional cases I can see no advantage 
 in their possession by the United 
 States." — be a well grounded word; 
 if our soldiers are dying to no pur- 
 pose — then let the coffins speak to 
 us. Yet let it not be the coffin's voice 
 which turns the republic back from 
 wrong,— not the cost of wrong, the 
 piling millions of debt, the hundred 
 thousand men, — not the coffin, but 
 the conscience, the voice of her own 
 soul within her, coming to itself. 
 
 To the nation's aroused conscience, 
 complex questions will become simple 
 and rough places plain. She will not 
 pause to discuss whether we drifted 
 into tyranny or strode into it: stop 
 tyranny now. She will not stay to 
 damn or to vindicate the reputation or 
 intentions of this or that man in high 
 place: her concern is the public weal, 
 and to stop wrong, and stop it now. 
 There shall be no autumn campaign 
 — that is the vow which the roused 
 conscience of the nation is rolling up ; 
 there shall be no new harvest of 
 wrong, but a harvest time of sanity 
 and right. Democracy shall return 
 to the "service of democracy ; and the 
 menace of mammon and the sword be 
 checked — and be checked now. 
 
 It cannot be done? It is only the 
 hucksters and the pagan clerics who 
 say that — the clerics who, in this great 
 crisis, have in such appalling propor- 
 tions abdicated their function and ig- 
 nominiously failed to lead the con- 
 science of the people or to give it 
 
 voice. The manly fighters say it can 
 be done, and name the way, the sim- 
 ple Christian way. "A little less gun- 
 powder and a little more diplomacy!" 
 — that is Funston's word. "Give them 
 some assurance and actual demonstra- 
 tion of our good will and friendship 
 for them and thought of their welfare. 
 Win them into our confidence. It can 
 be done." "Strange as it may seem," 
 says this fearless soldier, while the 
 pulpits preach powder, "I am almost 
 a 'peace at any price' man. When life 
 and property can be saved, it is almost 
 crime not to follow that rule, whatever 
 circumstances be arguing against it." 
 It is the great question of national 
 character. When we entered upon 
 war with Spain, we solemnly declared 
 before the nations of the world that it 
 was with no thought of conquest, and 
 that, when Cuba was once freed from 
 Spain, she should elect her own fu- 
 ture. It is the question of whether we 
 will respect that pledge — not because 
 it was a pledge, although that were 
 duty, but because it is right. "Forci- 
 ble annexation," our President de- 
 clared, — and we all said Amen, — 
 "cannot be thought of. That by our 
 code of morality would be criminal 
 aggression." It is the question 
 whether crime to us is less criminal in 
 actual operation than in vague pros- 
 pect. Shall the present tyranny, when 
 once clearly understood by the people, 
 go to history with the stamp of their 
 approval or of their disapproval? The 
 fate of American democracy itself 
 hangs on that question. Shall the 
 great temple of our honor and our 
 hope, reared by the labors and devo- 
 tion of the long generations, be vio- 
 lated by this hoary innovation, be 
 shaken by the recklessness of shallow 
 jingoism and remorseless greed? 
 
 When General Wheeler, in 1861, 
 felt that his country was wrong, he 
 took up arms against her, — and still 
 declares his cause was true and just. 
 His text in Boston on Memorial Day 
 was, "My country, right or wrong!" 
 
26 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 He was a nobler figure far in 1861 
 than as the preacher of this devil's 
 doctrine. There is no doctrine which 
 is poisoning the blood of this republic 
 to-day like this. There is no man 
 so hopeless as he who knows nothing 
 higher than his country and who feels 
 it his duty to stand by his country 
 in any cause to which she is com- 
 mitted, whether it be right or wrong. 
 This republic is full to-day of this 
 paralyzing fatalism, full of men who 
 believe the country is in error, even in 
 sin, but who believe it must still be 
 kept on its course, because the course 
 has been decreed. It is the ultimate 
 political scepticism; but it speaks in 
 the home and on the street, with the 
 preacher's tongue and the editor's 
 pen. It speaks from the chair where 
 George William Curtis used to sit, in 
 this number of Harper's Weekly which 
 lately came to our table. There is no 
 journal better known through all the 
 land, and so it serves our purpose 
 well. This "journal of civilization" 
 felt at the outset that our course in 
 the Philippines was uncivilized and 
 wrong, but it has supported the ad- 
 ministration. It sent out an intelli- 
 gent and able man, Mr. Bass, as its 
 special correspondent at Manila, a 
 sturdy imperialist and so to be trusted 
 to say the right things. But Mr. Bass 
 has become converted by what he has 
 seen, and is suddenly playing the part 
 of Balaam the son of Peor to Balak 
 the son of Zippor. He "has an- 
 nounced that he has learned to be an 
 ardent anti-expansionist," the editor 
 savs; and the editor himself writes 
 this extraordinary article upon "The 
 Country and Its War." He thinks 
 that "a great mistake has been made," 
 that thinking people are more clearly 
 recognizing that we can stay in the 
 Philippines only by maintaining "a 
 most autocratic rule— a rule directly 
 hostile to the genius of our institu- 
 tions." "We should have recognized 
 at once," he declares, "the long strug- 
 gle which these people had made for 
 independence, and we should have as- 
 sured them in advance that we had 
 
 no intention of defeating their hopes 
 of freedom by taking up the govern- 
 ment which we had forced Spain to 
 lay down." The government instead 
 saw fit to "turn its back upon Ameri- 
 can traditions and American princi- 
 ples and professions." The writer an- 
 nounces himself "a firm believer in 
 the folly of imperialism and the injus- 
 tice of governing a people against 
 their wills." All this, and then — the 
 paralyzing fatalism. We have made a 
 great mistake, we are wronging the 
 people of the Philippines, we are false 
 to ourselves, we have turned our 
 backs upon American principles ; but 
 we must stand by the administration 
 in fighting it through. "The country 
 is at war. When that is said,'.' — this 
 is the monstrous conclusion, — "the 
 duty of every citizen is at once evi- 
 dent. He must support the govern- 
 ment, whether he differed from it or 
 not as to the propriety of the conduct 
 which brought on the war. It is im- 
 moral to do otherwise." 
 
 There are men in this country who 
 believe that our course in the Philip- 
 pines is thoroughly right ; that, going 
 there by accident or sudden military 
 need, we found an unforeseen oppor- 
 tunity to destroy Spanish rule, and it 
 was a good thing to do it; that the 
 Aguinaldo government is not com- 
 petent to govern well, and so it is a 
 good thing to destroy that and subject 
 the people to ourselves, not simply in 
 the interests of our industry and trade, 
 but in the interests of general peace 
 and progress. The leaps in the logic 
 of this position, the astigmatism of its 
 look at facts, its sense of what is great 
 and what is small, of what progress 
 is and of what right and wrong are, 
 are to us appalling; but we can re- 
 spect the position ; we do at least re- 
 spect a hundred noble men who hold 
 it. They seem to us faithful blind 
 men. The position of Colonel Roose- 
 velt seems to some of us rude, barbar- 
 ous and un-American ; but who of us 
 does not believe in his red blood and 
 in his truth, and that the things we do 
 not like can be safelv left to the cor- 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 27 
 
 rection of the next few years? The 
 interval between such a" man and the 
 Machiavelians and Mephistophelians 
 is immense. 
 
 But the position of this "journal of 
 civilization," the position of the multi- 
 plying thousands of men in the re- 
 public for whom this journal speaks 
 with a boldness and brutality only one 
 degree greater than what is common, 
 is the position of faithless men who 
 see. It is faithlessness to civiliza- 
 tion, faithlessness to humanity, faith- 
 lessness to our democracy itself, — 
 to that higher law through love of 
 which and fear of which and obedi- 
 ence to which alone can this democ- 
 racy or any state continue to stand at 
 all." It is a state of mind, says Rus- 
 kin, greatly to be dreaded, not to 
 know the devil when you see him. 
 More dreadful is the state of the mind 
 whose "immorality" is obedience to 
 the higher law. 
 
 Immoral to turn back from recog- 
 nized error and undo confessed wrong 
 — immoral to do right! It is expedi- 
 ent, it is hard necessity, it is some- 
 times solemn duty, when in some 
 dreadful strait the very life of the state 
 is at stake, for the citizen to be silent 
 when he would else protest, because 
 diversion to a little wrong might 
 weaken a great right. But such occa- 
 sions are rare indeed in history'; it is 
 impious even to remember them in 
 the vicious escapades of nations revel- 
 ling in insolent power. Immoral not 
 to "support the government" in wrong 
 and folly! Say it to Chatham and to 
 Burke, to the great company of the 
 English immortals who rejoiced in 
 London at the news from Bunker Hill 
 and Saratoga! Say it to Victor Hugo 
 when to "support the government" 
 meant to support Napoleon the Little 
 in subjugating Mexico! Say it to 
 Charles Sumner when the govern- 
 ment meant the Quays and Platts and 
 Hannas of James K. Polk! 
 
 Support the government! We, the 
 people, are the government. "The 
 People is the sovereign of this coun- 
 trv," — how often we need to remember 
 
 that great word of Edward Everett 
 Hale's ; — "the People is sovereign 
 here, the People is the fountain of 
 honor here; the President is the ser- 
 vant of the People." This is not a 
 government by presidents; it is a 
 government by the people, a govern- 
 ment by public opinion; and to the 
 making of that government wise and 
 righteous it is the duty of every citi- 
 zen to contribute. Were our admin- 
 istration, like the English ministry, 
 subject each day to the popular ma- 
 jority, it could not abide an appeal to 
 the country on the present policy. As 
 it is, let not the people wait for this 
 to become a party issue, but let their 
 voice be heard. Men say with 
 a self-suppression which would be 
 pathetic were it not so pusillanimous, 
 that their "government" has "facts" 
 which they have not, and therefore 
 must not be meddled with. The Presi- 
 dent has no knowledge of important 
 facts which every citizen may not 
 have. As the chief servant of the peo- 
 ple, he has no right to important 
 knowledge which he does not share 
 with them ; and in the present crisis 
 he has frankly told us that he has not 
 any. In the great town meeting oi 
 democracy the responsibility comes 
 home to every man alike, to the se- 
 lectman and the other; and no man 
 can atone for what he confesses to be 
 sin and shame by any maudlin talk 
 about "supporting the government." 
 
 Consistency is truly the hobgoblin 
 of little minds ; and its sway is 
 stronger over nations than over indi- 
 vidual men. It is a fearful proverb, 
 that corporations have no souls, — 
 though every member of the corpora- 
 tion be a deacon. Men are more willing 
 to do wrong, and less willing to repent, 
 in their corporate capacity than by 
 themselves. Men have tolearn that the 
 ethics of the citizen, the ethics of the 
 state, is simply the ethics of the gen- 
 tleman — to confess mistake or wrong, 
 and to undo it, the moment that he 
 finds it out. Gladstone knows but 
 one law for Hawarden and for Down- 
 ing Street. Noblesse oblige — that is 
 
28 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 the doctrine and the test alike of the 
 gentlemanly nation and the gentle- 
 manly man ; and the "white man's 
 burden," if his whiteness is whiteness 
 of soul and not simply of skin, is to 
 be quicker to undo a wrong to an 
 inferior than to an equal. 
 
 Having"forced a peace"by fighting 
 to the bitter end in consistency with 
 the policy upon which we have en- 
 tered, our duty then — such is the last 
 word of the article of the "journal of 
 civilization" — is, "possessing some 
 evidence of the terrible cost of this 
 policy, to discuss the future not only 
 in the light of our recent experience, 
 but in the calm contemplation of our 
 happy past, which is mainly, if not 
 wholly, due to our adherence to the 
 wise, the ever-wise, counsels of the 
 great and prophetic Washington." 
 
 History is kind to us in making this 
 year, so big with fate to the country, 
 the centennial of the death of the 
 father of the country. We stand 
 at the point just a century after 
 Washington. Let us not keep the 
 feast in desecration of his mem- 
 ory; let us keep it by the manly ceas- 
 ing from wrongdoing and the hum- 
 ble, proud return to his approving 
 smile ; let us keep it by listening with 
 new anxiety and reverence to his 
 word. Could the voice of Washing- 
 ton reach us to-day, it would not 
 speak to us with the accent of any 
 selfish, smug parochialism, but with 
 the accent of the citizen of the world. 
 No man in his great day saw so far 
 west as he; to-day his vision would 
 sweep round the globe. He was the 
 great expander of the republic; he 
 would be the great expander of the 
 republic's true influence among men. 
 He would tell the republic that it was 
 no longer boy, but man, and that it 
 must now quit itself like a man. He 
 would remind us that while he was 
 yet with us he foresaw the time 
 "when, our institutions being firmly 
 consolidated and working with com- 
 plete success, we might safely and 
 
 perhaps beneficially take part in the 
 consultations held by foreign states 
 for the advantage of the nations ;" 
 and he would tell us that a hundred 
 "entanglements" are expedient and 
 imperative for us to-day which were 
 not to be considered a century ago. 
 But he would tell us also that there 
 are truths which do not change with 
 the centuries and with which the na- 
 tion that measures its power on a 
 continental scale may no more trifle 
 with impunity than the new man- 
 child. 
 
 "There exists in the economy and 
 course of nature," he would say, "an indis- 
 soluble union between duty and advan- 
 tage, between the genuine maxims of an 
 honest and magnanimous policy and the 
 solid rewards of public prosperity. The 
 propitious smiles of Heaven can never be 
 expected on a nation that disregards the 
 eternal rules of order and right. Mo- 
 rality is a necessary spring of popular gov- 
 ernment. Who can look with indiffer- 
 ence upon attempts to shake the founda- 
 tion of the fabric? It will be worthy of a 
 free, enlightened and great nation to give 
 to mankind the magnanimous and too 
 novel example of a people always guided 
 by an exalted justice and benevolence. 
 The experiment, at least, is recommended 
 by every sentiment which ennobles human 
 nature." 
 
 The # year is a century after the 
 death of Washington ; it is three cen- 
 turies after the birth of Oliver Crom- 
 well. It is a didactic coincidence. 
 Washington completed what Crom- 
 well began. The American Revolu- 
 tion was the echo of the struggle for 
 the English Commonwealth. The 
 conflict between the Boston town 
 meetings and King George was that 
 same old conflict between the Com- 
 mons and King Charles. It was 
 right that it should centre in the 
 Puritan city. Puritanism was New 
 England's corner stone. Bradford 
 and Winthrop and Cotton and 
 Hooker and Roger Williams, the men 
 who planted New England, were 
 doing one work with Cromwell and 
 Hampden and Eliot and Pym and 
 Milton and Vane, the men who es- 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 29 
 
 tablished the Commonwealth. You 
 cannot tell whether their Puritanism 
 was most religion or most politics. 
 Church and State, to the Puritan, were 
 alike instruments whereby to advance 
 on earth the kingdom of God. What- 
 ever other voices are silent, or what- 
 ever other voices say, let the voice of 
 Puritan New England ever be heard 
 declaring that that is forever the 
 duty of the State ; and let New Eng- 
 land and America be devoutly thank- 
 ful that this centennial of the greatest 
 of the Puritans comes in this year of 
 temptation, to command attention 
 with new power to Puritanism's ever- 
 lasting truth. 
 
 The year is that when, in the hos- 
 pitable land from which the Pilgrims 
 sailed to lay the corner stone of this 
 nation, the representatives of all civil- 
 ized nations are gathered about the 
 sacredest round-table of history, 
 called by a higher and a holier call 
 than any which ever came to Galahad 
 or Arthur. It is the year which 
 strikes the first stroke of the hour of 
 Universal Peace, the year for which 
 prophets have yearned and of which 
 poets have sung, when the nations of 
 the world first echo the strain of the 
 Christmas angels of God. Is democ- 
 racy to choose this year of years to 
 put on the old armor which even 
 sickened despotism seeks to cast 
 away? Is this Great Republic, where- 
 to waiting, praying Europe has 
 looked for leadership, to choose this 
 year to turn her face from the future 
 back toward the blood-rusted past 
 and make it the Year One of her era 
 of armies and navies, conquest and 
 subjugation, partitions of Poland and 
 Opium wars? Tragical was the irony 
 by which the hour of the Peace 
 Congress found her hands blood- 
 stained, and which made the song of 
 her poet an "Ichabod." * 
 
 Why is she late at the Tryst of the Peace- 
 Makers? 
 Where is the youngest and fairest of all, 
 
 *"At the Peace Congress," by William C Gannett. 
 
 Last-born of Liberty, darling of Destiny, 
 Star of the stricken and hope of the 
 thrall? 
 
 Russia has come from her plains and her 
 river-gates; 
 England has come from her isles of the 
 sea; 
 Italy hastens a-leap on the hill-tops; 
 Germany, France — they forget and 
 agree. 
 
 Why lags America? Still at her chivalry, 
 Saving some little one pressed by the 
 foe? 
 Spending her treasure and sharing her 
 privilege, 
 Loosing a captive from hunger and 
 woe? 
 
 Ah, she comes radiant! Ah, she comes 
 beautiful ! 
 Welcome and praise for her! Hail to 
 her deed! 
 Place for the Selfless One! Room for the 
 Succorer — 
 "Rights of the People" banner and 
 
 creed! 
 
 Red is her robe — she is Land of the After- 
 glow. 
 Red-lit her c^cek — it is heart-glow her 
 own. 
 Red on her hands? It is blood? Does 
 America 
 Mock the White Muster, red-handed 
 alone? 
 
 All of the rest of them doffing war's gar- 
 niture, 
 Stainless and swordless, one-minded for 
 peace — 
 She alone sitting unwashed of her battle- 
 smoke, 
 Streaked with the death-gush of victims' 
 release? 
 
 Crownless she sits there, unstarred of her 
 radiance. 
 Blood on her hands, the old greed in 
 her heart: 
 Blood that young patriots lavished for 
 liberty, 
 Greed of the conqueror, wile of the 
 mart. 
 
 This, for the snlendor with which she 
 faced Godward! 
 This, for the vision that heavened her 
 eyes ! 
 Body's expansion for soul-growth impe- 
 rial — 
 Oh. the mad barter of 'sin and surprise! 
 
30 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 How can she sing of it, "Sweet Land of 
 Liberty," 
 She with her banner-words changed into 
 ban? 
 Hushed be that song till the silence re- 
 teaches her 
 Faith that makes faithful to God and to 
 Man! 
 
 Have not the Fathers pledged her to 
 righteousness? 
 Have not the Sons once redeemed from 
 eclipse? 
 Vision shall star once again the sweet 
 brows of her, 
 Song be reborn on the beautiful lips! 
 
 Yes, reborn. The faces of Whittier 
 and Lowell and Emerson are turned 
 to the wall to-day, to remind us 
 solemnly how "false is the war no poet 
 sings" and that no line of theirs can 
 be made to keep step with the situa- 
 tion. But to-morrow — who dare 
 doubt it — her step shall be set once 
 again to song; to-morrow — who dare 
 doubt it — the nightmare shall end and 
 
 she shall come to herself. Things 
 present and things past shall not per- 
 suade us that the heart of the people 
 is not sound and that the nation shall 
 not rise triumphant over every pas- 
 sion and temptation of the hour, dis- 
 ciplined by the hour's heart-search- 
 ings to better fitness for the imperial 
 task to which God has called her in 
 the family of nations. Imperial shall 
 sh,e rise? Yes, imperial; but an "im- 
 perial Salem, crowned with light." 
 She shall go out into all the world, 
 with new dreams, larger ambitions 
 and bolder venture, conquering and to 
 conquer. But she shall not go with 
 lust or greed or cruelty or oppression 
 in her heart. She shall go the herald 
 still of liberty, proclaiming liberty to 
 all the earth. She shall found an em- 
 pire that shall be a universal common- 
 wealth, an empire based not upon the 
 fears, but upon the aspirations and the 
 hopes of men. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 t llll Ill 
 0013 
 
 744 827