Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/248

224 while he knew that Spain had not only morally forfeited her sovereignty over the Philippines by her misrule, as we had held in the case of Cuba, to the inhabitants of the country, but that Spain had actually lost that sovereignty in the war carried on in great part by the Filipinos, and could not deliver it. Nobody can deny this. It is history.

What? Such a thing was done by the President of this great American Republic, the child of the Declaration of Independence, the champion of liberty and justice in the world, the guiding star of liberty-loving mankind? In the name of this Republic he bought a people like a herd of cattle from a defeated “common enemy,” against whom by the side of our flag those people had victoriously fought for their freedom and independence? Yes, he did that very thing, without even listening to them, and he now asks the American people to declare by their solemn votes that it was well done, and that they approve it.

American citizens, I appeal to you in all soberness—what would you have said three years ago, before the imperialistic poison had corrupted your blood—what would you have said if anybody had predicted such a thing as possible? There is not a man among you who would not have declared such a prophet fit for the madhouse.

And how do the President's defenders excuse this atrocity? By saying that we owe the Filipinos no moral consideration that should have kept us from doing it. This excuse is almost, nay fully as mean as the original misdeed itself. The Filipinos were in fact our allies in the war against Spain. They had been called by Dewey to our assistance to do military work, which at the time with the forces we had we could not have done ourselves. They were not a mere little band of barbaric auxiliaries to hover about the flanks of the enemy. They had an