the American people a responsibility of which we did not dream, and which we cannot avoid. And considering conditions to which I shall advert more fully in a few moments, it was decided that we should demand, and we did demand and receive, the cession of the entire archipelago of the Philippines. We have taken that cession and the Cortes will soon ratify the treaty. We are already committed to the situation. We cannot put it aside or avoid it if we would. We cannot escape the responsibilities which events, evolutionary or providential, have imposed upon us. Will any American citizen advocate, under present conditions, that Dewey shall sail away from the harbor of Manila? That our troops shall evacuate Luzon? That we, with the armed forces of insurrection arrayed against the American flag, shall, in the face of the civilized world, evacuate those waters like mere trespassers and remit the Philippines to internal anarchy or foreign dismemberment? What would be the result?

The Filipinos are not at present qualified to govern themselves and establish that independent republic of which fond enthusiasts and theorists dream. I think no man in this audience who reads the newspapers will for a moment question that they are not. We cannot endure, in view of our past and coming interests in the Chinese Orient, that the Philippines shall be dismembered by foreign powers, as they will be if this Government removes itself from that situation. Above all things, my fellow-citizens, although appearing perhaps dimly before us now, I believe there is a profound perception in the minds of the American people that, back of all this force which has pushed and established us, there is an impetus which tells for civilization, for a better Christianity, and that the United States, as the great evangelist of the nations, is destined to play a leading part in the regeneration of the Asiatic Orient.

It has been asked, "Why did you not take a relin

quishment of sovereignty as in the case of Cuba, or establish a protectorate?" The conditions were not the same. We had pledged our faith that we would not acquire Cuba. We can establish a protectorate or exercise a vigilance over Cuba with comparative ease, but who wishes to establish at once and now a republic under our protectorate in the Philippines which can involve us in all sorts of complications with foreign powers, make us responsible for its diplomatic relations, for its failures, delinquencies, and its aggressions, and involve us in wars which we did not cause, but which we must inevitably enter into when once caused by another?

And

I would treat the Filipinos in this way, considering their present condition and their inconsiderate actions, stimulated, as I believe, by inconsiderate advice from the United States I would rear them with the hand of paternal affection whenever possible, and by the hand of paternal chastisement whenever necessary when the time shall come in the development of that people, as it has come by the handling and development by Great Britain of the people of the Straits Settlements, that, little by little, they can be admitted to local autonomy, I would grant it to the fullest extent possible; and in the due process of time, whenever they should be fit for it, I would adopt the policy that Great Britain has announced to her civilized colonies; and whenever, in that case, they should want to go, they should go; and I would rejoice if, in the process of time, an island republic could be established there in the Philippines over against, and in friendly comparison with, the island empire of Japan. But, until that time shall come, the interest, the honor, the security of the American people demand that we shall hold the Philippine Islands, not only under our protection but under our rule.

To us the acquisition of the Philippine Archipelago

is not the mere gratification of the lust or pride of conquest. Let us all endeavor to look beyond into a visiible future and mark certain great tendencies, proceeding with all the force and regularity of a great geological process, and see what is meant by that which has thus been transpiring on the surface of human affairs within the last fifty years, the tendency (shall I call it of humanity, or shall I call it the forces which move the human race?) toward the Chinese Orientthe Asiatic East. I am not in favor of the dismemberment of the great Chinese Empire-an empire which was old when Alexander watered his steed in the Indus; an empire so ancient that it has undergone all the great experiences of the human race, and has, in the process, survived. I am in favor of the integrity of that empire, and desire that it may become accessible to all the civilized world and to its commerce. Accordingly, I have said, and I think, that it would safeguard the peace of the world for fifty years if Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, as to all those Oriental waters, and the lands bordering upon them north of the equator, should declare that there should be no dismemberment of that immemorial empire.

But above all things before us for present consideration, I am interested that this country shall have its share of the trade of that great empire. California, Washington, and Oregon have scarcely more than two millions of people. I want to see the commercial development of that part of our country expand until there shall be twenty millions of people there; and I do honestly and sincerely believe, from all I have studied and thought on that subject, that the retention of the Philippine Islands, and their adjustment to our needs and destiny, is a necessary and indispensable step in the advancement of the great results to which I have so imperfectly alluded

The problem, what we shall do with the Philippine

Archipelago, is not now before us for immediate solution. We are actually now in the possession of all those islands. We own them, or shall own them when Spain ratifies the treaty of cession, and the question of their disposition ought not to be decided at once. Must we say now and at once that a territory, the possession of which may be necessary for our safety, for which we have paid twenty millions, for which American blood has been shed, and may be flowing to-day, shall, by a precipitate judgment, without any sufficient consideration of the future, be turned over to a body of men as to whom all authorities and observers agree, and who are demonstrating by their own acts, that they are not yet fit for self-government?

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

OUR NATIONAL GUARD

[A speech to the Forty-seventh New York Volunteers, at Fort Adams, Newport, R. I., August 7, 1898.]

WHEN a citizen has left behind him his home, his family and his business, and enlisted as a soldier, he has done his duty to his country. Whether he is ordered to Newport or Chickamauga, to Peekskill or Tampa, to Cuba or Porto Rico, his meed of praise, his performance of duty, is the same. He cheerfully obeys the command for the fort or the fight, but longs for the fight.

This war has demonstrated the inestimable value of the National Guard of the several States. Our country had been at peace for thirty-two years. Congress had annually thrown out the demands of the War Department as unnecessary and extravagant for a nation which could never be driven into war. The war itself came so suddenly and unexpectedly that, except for the navy, we were wholly unprepared. We had neither the guns, nor the uniforms, nor the camp-outfit to equip fifty thousand, much less two hundred thousand men. We had to prepare at once to meet the veteran army of Spain, numbering in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines two hundred and fifty thousand, armed with the latest and most perfect weapons. Our glorious, and always ready and reliable regular army mustered only twenty-seven thousand of all arms. In this emergency the citizen-regiments of the National Guard, with their discipline, their equipment and their