Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/200

176 the Filipino people,” it shows only how hopelessly blind he is to the true nature of the problem.

No, the Filipino people needed no impulse from the outside to encourage their resistance to subjugation by foreign arms. If they had needed such encouragement, they would have first had it from President McKinley himself when he told the world—it was before the snake of imperialistic ambition had bitten his heart—that “annexation by force could not be thought of, because, according to the American code of morals, it would be .” Nothing truer and nothing severer has been said by anybody in condemnation of his present policy. That, while the fight was going on, the Filipinos were pleased to hear of men in this country opposing their subjugation, was natural enough—just as natural as was the comfort the revolutionary American colonists took in the utterances of Chatham and Burke. But would the American colonists have ceased to struggle if Burke and Chatham had been silent?

And besides, what does it mean that no American citizen should permit himself to denounce a public wrong or to advocate the principles upon which this Republic is founded, lest people who feel themselves betrayed and oppressed find comfort in his words? If the Administration has led us into policies which cannot bear discussion in the light of the Declaration of Independence, of the Constitution of the United States and of the teachings of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, must we bury the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Washington's and Lincoln's teachings out of sight so that they may not interfere with the ambitions and schemes of our rulers? Is it not rather high time to bury such policies so that the great American Republic may dare to be itself again?

No, the shrewd trick of representing those who labored