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the smali expense of our standing army are now making light of the objections
which are urged against a large increase in the permanent military establish-
ment ; Republicans who gloried in our independence when the nation was less
powerful now look with favor upon a foreign alliance; Republicans who three
years ago condemned “forcible annexation as immoral and even criminal are
now sure that it is both immoral and criminal to oppose forcible annexation.
That partisanship has already blinded many to present dangers is cer-
tain: how a large portion of the Republican party can be drawn over to the
new policies remains to be seen.
REPUBLICANS EVADE PHILIPPINE ISSUE.
For a time Republican leaders were inclined to deny to opponents the
rieht to crticise the Philippine policy of the administration, but upon investi
gation they found that both Lincoln and Clay asserted and exercised the right
to criticise a president during the progress of the Mexican war. : :
Instead of meeting the issue boldly and submitting a clear and positive
plan for dealing with the Philippine question, the Republican convention adopt-
ed a platform the larger part of which was devoted to boasting and seli-congrat-
ulation. ;
In attempting to press economic questions upon the country to the ex-
clusion of those which involve the very structure of our government, the Republi-
can leaders give new evidence of their abandonment of the earlier ideals of the
party and of their complete subserviency to pecuniary considerations. ;
3ut they shall not be permitted to evade the stupendous and far-reaching
issue which they have deliberately brought into the arena of politics. When the
president, supported by a practically unanimous vote of the House and Senate,
entered upon a war with Spain for the purpose of aiding the struggling patriots
of Cuba, the country, without regard to party, applauded.
Although the Democrats recognized that the administration would nec-
essarily gain a political advantage from the conduct of a war which in the very
nature of the case must soon end in a compiete victory, they vied with the Re-
publicans in the support which they gave the president.
When the war was over and the Republican leaders began to suggest the
propriety of a colonial policy, opposition at once manifested itself. When
the president finally laid before the Senate a treaty which recognized the inde-
pendence of Cuba, but provided for the cession of the Philippine Islands to the
United States, the menace of imperialism became so apparent that man. pre-
ferred to reject the treaty and risk the ills that might follow rather than take the
chance of correcting the errors ot the treaty by the independent action of this
country.
I was among the number of those whe believed it better to ratify the
treaty and end the war, release the volunteers, remove the excuse for war ex-
penditures, and then give to the Filipinos their independence, which might be
forced from Spain by a new treaty.
In <1ew oi the criticism which my action aroused in some quarters, [ take
this occasion to restate the reasons given at that time. I thought it safer to trust
the American people to give independence to the Filipinos than to trust the ac-
complishment of that purpose to diplomacy with an unfriendly nation. Lincoln
embodicd an argument in the question when he asked, “Can aliens make treaties
easier than friends can make laws?”
I believe that we are now in a better position to wage a successful con-
test against imperialism than we would have ow had the treaty been rejected.
With the treaty ratified, a clean-cut issue is presented between a government’
by consent and a government by force, and imperialists must bear the respon-
sibility for all that happens until the question is settled.
If the treaty had been rejected, the opponents of imperialism would have
been held responsible for any international complications which might have
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