Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/523

Rh to the respect of mankind. The American people were greatly incensed at the cruel oppression suffered by the Cuban people at the hands of Spain. The Congress of the United States resolved “that the people of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent”; and it directed the Government of the Republic to make them so, expressly disclaiming any disposition or intention to exercise any control over Cuba, except for the purpose of pacification, and emphatically promising that, such pacification achieved, such control should be left to the Cuban people themselves. It was to be simply a war of liberation, of humanity, undertaken without any selfish motive. This we solemnly promised. The whole world was so to understand it. If a republican nation can undertake any war without injury to the prestige of democracy as an agency of peace, it is such a war of disinterested benevolence.

But how if this war of humanity and disinterested benevolence be turned into a war of conquest? How if Cuba or any other of the conquered islands be kept by the United States as a permanent possession? What then? And here let me remark that, from the moral point of view, it matters nothing whether the conquest be that of Cuba, or of Porto Rico, or of the Philippines, or of all of them. The resolution adopted by Congress was meant to be understood as heralding this war to the world, distinctly and emphatically, as a war of liberation, and not of conquest. Only Cuba was mentioned in the resolution, because only Cuba could be mentioned. To say that we may, without breaking the pledge involved in our proclamation, take and keep Porto Rico or the Philippines because they were not mentioned by name in the resolution, while it was in the nature of things that they could not be so mentioned—would this not be a mean piece of pettifogging to cover up a breach of faith? Can a