ported to have said in a recent interview that Spaniards could successfully be employed as soldiers in our army. But the idea of engaging the same Spaniards, who but recently fought us and the Filipinos at the same time, to do the killing of the same Filipinos for us, or at least to terrorize them into subjection, because we want to possess their land, and to do this under the Stars and Stripes-this idea is at first sight a little startling. It may make the Hessians of our Revolutionary War grin in their graves. If anybody had predicted such a possibility a year ago, every patriotic American would have felt an impulse to kick him down-stairs.

However, this is imperialism. It bids us not to be squeamish. Indeed, some of our fellow-citizens seem already to be full of its spirit. If we take those new regions we shall be well entangled in that contest for territorial aggrandizement which distracts other nations and drives them far beyond their original design. So it will be inevitably with us. We shall want new conquests to protect that which we already possess. The greed of speculators working upon our Government will push us from one point to another, and we shall have new conflicts on our hands, almost without knowing how we got into them. It has always been so under such circumstances, and always will be. This means more and more soldiers, ships, and guns.

III.

RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND

A SINGULAR delusion has taken hold of the minds of otherwise clear-headed men. It is that our new friendship with England will serve firmly to secure the world's peace. Nobody can hail that friendly feeling between the two nations more warmly than I do, and I

fervidly hope it will last. But I am profoundly convinced that if this friendship results in the two countries setting out to grasp "for the Anglo-Saxon," as the phrase is, whatever of the earth may be attainable -if they hunt in couple, they will surely soon fall out about the game, and the first serious quarrel, or at least one of the first, we shall have will be with Great Britain. And as family feuds are the bitterest, that feud will be apt to become one of the most deplorable in its consequences.

No nation is, or ought to be, unselfish. England in her friendly feeling toward us is not inspired by mere sentimental benevolence. The anxious wish of many Englishmen that we should take the Philippines is not free from the consideration that, if we do so, we shall for a long time depend on British friendship to maintain our position on that field of rivalry, and that Britain will derive ample profit from our dependence on her. British friendship is a good thing to have, but, perhaps, not so good a thing to need. If we are wise we shall not put ourselves in a situation in which we shall need it. British statesmanship has sometimes shown great skill in making other nations fight its battles. This is very admirable from its point of view, but it is not so pleasant for the nations so used. I should be loath to see this Republic associated with Great Britain in apparently joint concerns as a junior partner with a minority interest, or the American navy in the situation of a mere squadron of the British fleet.

This would surely lead to trouble in the settling of accounts. Lord Salisbury was decidedly right when, at the last Lord Mayor's banquet, he said that the appearance of the United States as a factor in Asiatic affairs was likely to conduce to the interests of Great Britain, but might "not conduce to the interest of peace." Whether he had eventual quarrels with this Republic in mind I do not know. But it is certain that the ex

pression of British sentiment I have just quoted shows us a Pandora's box of such quarrels.

Ardently desiring the maintenance of the friendship between England and this Republic, I cannot but express the profound belief that this friendship will remain most secure if the two nations do not attempt to accomplish the same ends in the same way, but continue to follow the separate courses prescribed by their peculiar conditions and their history. We can exercise the most beneficent influences upon mankind, not by forcing our rule or our goods upon others that are weak by the force of bayonets and artillery, but through the moral power of our example, by proving how the greatest as well as the smallest nation can carry on the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, in justice, liberty, order, and peace without large armies and navies.

Let this Republic and Great Britain each follow the course which its conditions and its history have assigned to it, and their ambitions will not clash, and their friendship be maintained for the good of all. And if our British cousins should ever get into very serious stress, American friendship may stand behind them; but then Britain would depend upon our friendship, which, as an American, I should prefer, and not American on British friendship, as our British friends, who so impatiently urge us to take the Philippines, would have it. But if we do take the Philippines, and thus entangle ourselves in the rivalries of Asiatic affairs, the future will be, as Lord Salisbury predicted, one of wars and rumors of wars, and the time will be forever past when we could look down with condescending pity on the nations of the Old World groaning under militarism with all its burdens.

IV.

THE NATION'S CREDIT AT STAKE

WHEN the Cuban affair approached a crisis President McKinley declared in his message that "forcible annexation cannot be thought of," for "it would, by our code of morals, be criminal aggression." And in resolving upon the war against Spain, Congress, to commend the war to the public opinion of the world, declared with equal emphasis and solemnity that the war was, from a sense of duty and humanity, made specifically for the liberation of Cuba, and that Cuba " is, and of right ought to be, free and independent." If these declarations were not sincere, they were base and disgraceful acts of hypocrisy. If they were sincere at the time, would they not be turned into such disgraceful acts of hypocrisy by subsequently turning the war, professedly made from motives of duty and humanity, into a war of conquest and self-aggrandizement? It is pretended that those virtuous promises referred to Cuba only. But if President McKinley had said that the forcible annexation of Cuba would be criminal aggression, but that the forcible annexation of anything else would be perfectly right, and if Congress had declared that, as to Cuba, the war would be one of mere duty, humanity, and liberation, but that we would take by conquest whatever else we could lay our hands on, would not all mankind have broken out in a shout of scornful derision?

I ask in all candor, taking President McKinley at his word, will the forcible annexation of the Philippines by our code of morals not be criminal aggression-a self-confessed crime? I ask further, if the Cubans, as Congress declared, are, and of right ought to be, free and independent, can anybody tell me why the Porto

Ricans and the Filipinos ought not of right to be free and independent? Can you sincerely recognize the right to freedom and independence of one and refuse the same right to another in the same situation, and then take his land? Would not that be double-dealing of the most shameful sort?

We hear much of the respect of mankind for us having been greatly raised by our victories. Indeed, the valor of our soldiers and the brilliant achievements of our navy have won deserved admiration. But do not deceive yourselves about the respect of mankind. Recently I found in the papers an account of the public opinion of Europe, written by a prominent English journalist. This is what he says: "The friends of

America wring their hands in unaffected grief over the fall of the United States under the temptation of the lust of territorial expansion. Her enemies shoot out the lip and shriek in derision over what they regard as the unmistakable demonstration which the demand for the Philippines affords of American cupidity, American bad faith, and American ambition. We told you so,' they exclaim. That is what the unctuous rectitude of the Anglo-Saxon always ends in. He always begins by calling heaven to witness his unselfish desire to help his neighbors, but he always ends by stealing his spoons!

Atrocious, is it not? And yet, this is substantially what the true friends of America and what her enemies in Europe think-I mean those friends who had faith in the nobility of the American people, who loved our republican Government, and who hoped that the example set by our great democracy would be an inspiration to those struggling for liberty the world over, and I mean those enemies who hate republican government and who long to see the American people disgraced and humiliated. So they think; I know it from my own correspondence. Nothing has in our times dis