Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/254

230 provocation of hostilities and thus precipitated that abominable conflict.

And here we have also a specimen of the candor with which Mr. McKinley in his letter of acceptance tells his countrymen what has happened. Of that fateful order he quotes only one paragraph, full of assurances of his sweet and benevolent intentions as to the welfare of the islanders; but there he stops. He does not tell his confiding countrymen that in other paragraphs he assumed, in pursuance of the treaty concluded, full sovereignty over the whole Philippine archipelago whether the inhabitants liked it or not, and that “the actual occupation and administration of the entire group of the Philippine Islands became immediately necessary, and the military government heretofore maintained by the United States in the city, harbor and bay of Manila, is to be extended with all possible despatch to the whole of the ceded territory.”

Here we have a most extraordinary performance. President McKinley pretends to give in his letter of acceptance to his countrymen a truthful, candid and complete account of what has happened; and out of the account of one of the most important transactions he leaves out the most important part. Is that good faith?

And what a transaction it was! In the first place, the order was issued six weeks before the treaty of peace was confirmed—that is, six weeks before the United States acquired even a technical title of sovereignty over the islands. The assumption of that sovereignty by the President of his own motion and the order to the Army to enforce it constituted therefore one of the clearest, most barefaced usurpations of power that can be imagined—a usurpation of power striking so flagrantly at the very foundation of Constitutional Government that, if it passes into a ruling precedent, we may well tremble for