Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/134

110 people at large. As to people of our race, tropical countries like the Philippines may be fields of profit for rich men who can hire others to work for them, but not for those who have to work for themselves. Taking a general view of the Philippines as a commercial market for us, I need not again argue against the barbarous notion that in order to have a profitable trade with a country we must own it. If that were true, we should never have had any foreign commerce at all. Neither need I prove that it is very bad policy, when you wish to build up a profitable trade, to ruin your customer first, as you would ruin the Philippines by a protracted war. It is equally needless to show to any well-informed person that the profits of the trade with the islands themselves can never amount to the cost of making and maintaining the conquest of the Philippines.

But there is another point of real importance. Many imperialists admit that our trade with the Philippines themselves will not nearly be worth its cost; but they say that we must have the Philippines as a foothold, a sort of power station, for the expansion of our trade on the Asiatic continent, especially in China. Admitting this, for argument's sake, I ask what kind of a foothold we should really need. Coaling-stations and docks for our fleet, and facilities for the establishment of commercial houses and depots. That is all. And now I ask further, whether we could not easily have had these things if we had, instead of making war upon the Filipinos, favored the independence of the islands. Everybody knows that we could. We might have those things now for the mere asking, if we stopped the war and came to a friendly understanding with the Filipinos to-morrow.

But now suppose we fight on and subjugate the Filipinos and annex the islands—what then? We shall then have of coaling-stations and commercial facilities no more than