Page:Carl Schurz- 1900-05-24 For American Principles and American Honor.pdf/2



I have long been, and am now, firmly convinced that, if the facts and tendencies of the imperialistic policy carried on by our government were well inquired into and fully understood by the American people, and then submitted to a popular vote on their own merits for approval, that policy would be indignantly spurned by the intelligence as well as the moral sense of an overwhelming majority of our citizenship. Its defenders, well aware of this, therefore, make a special effort to mislead that intelligence and moral sense by the pretence that their opponents, the anti-imperialists, pusillanimously refuse to meet the responsibilities devolved upon us by the late Spanish war, and that those responsibilities can be discharged only by a virtual continuance of the present policy.

This I emphatically deny. Let us see what our true responsibilities are, and how they should be met. To this end we must first remember what has happened. In April, 1898, we went to war with Spain for the sole purpose, as Congress proclaimed to the world by a solemn resolution, of rescuing from oppressive misrule a population struggling for freedom and independence. Congress not only positively disclaimed any intention to annex to this republic the territory inhabited by that population, but declared that the people of Cuba “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent”—in other words, that Spain, by her oppressive misrule, had not only morally but actually forfeited her sovereignty over that country. This was the affirmation of a principle.

Then came Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay. The case of the Philippine Islands was in all essential respects