Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/525

Rh significant circumstance that in this war with Spain the sympathies of the other American republics have, to say the least, been doubtful. One might have expected that the memories of their own struggles for independence from Spain would have revived, and that the Spanish-Americans would have been delighted to see the United States achieve for their Cuban brethren what they in times past had at the cost of much blood achieved for themselves. Yet the Southern sister republics not only remained remarkably undemonstrative of such delight, but there has been much to indicate that their sympathies have been rather on the side of Spain. The reason for this may be found partly in race prejudice—the antipathy of the Latin race to the Anglo-Saxon. But there is something more than that.

Various voices have reached us from that part of the world, informing us that many thinking men among the Spanish-Americans see in our war against Spain only the first step in the execution of a vast scheme of conquest embracing first the Spanish West Indies, then all the other adjacent islands that can be got, then Mexico and the other republics down to the inter-oceanic canal that is to be built and a sufficient stretch of land south of that canal to bring it well within the boundaries of the United States, and then nobody knows what more. This may seem a very foolish apprehension, although the scheme is spoken of by some of the new school of American imperialists as a glorious Anglo-Saxon conception. At any rate, will not the Spanish-Americans, who are gifted with a lively fancy, in case the United States, after this boasted war of liberation and disinterested benevolence, really annex Cuba and Porto Rico, or either of them, be apt to regard that act as a verification of such apprehensions? Will they not with a good show of reason argue that a nation capable of turning a war that was solemnly