Page:Carl Schurz- 1900-05-24 For American Principles and American Honor.pdf/3

 identical with that of Cuba. Their people had also been struggling against Spanish oppression, like the Cubans, and if the Cubans, according to the declaration of Congress, “were, and of right ought to be, free and independent,” so surely were the Philippine Islanders; and if Spain had, according to our proclaimed doctrine, morally and actually forfeited her sovereignty over Cuba, so she had forfeited her sovereignty over the Philippines.

But the claims of the Philippine Islanders as to their independence was in fact even much stronger than that of the Cubans. Dewey invited and brought the chief leader of the Philippine insurgents to the scene of action. With Dewey’s aid and under his eyes that chief organized a Filipino army of 30,000 men; he proclaimed the Philippine republic, hoisted the flag of that republic on his armed vessels, and set up a civil government which, according to the imperialist Barrett's testimony, compared in some of its important parts favorably with that of Japan. The Filipino army then, while our land forces were gradually arriving, quickly cleared the interior of the country of the Spaniards, taking many thousands of them prisoners, and so hemmed in on the land side the Spanish garrison of Manila that it could neither receive reinforcements nor escape into the interior. In other words, the Filipinos acted most efficiently as our allies, crippling the Spanish power as we could not have crippled it with our force then at hand; and they were practically recognized as our allies even to the extent of having turned over to them Spanish prisoners taken in a common enterprise.

And while so profiting from their action as our allies, we—I do not say officially promised them their independence—but we did what morally amounted to the same thing; we permitted them to believe that in fighting on the same side with us they were fighting for their own independence; we permitted them to believe this until we had troops enough on the field to make us masters of the situation.

What happened then? We took Manila, summoning