Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/255

Rh the safety of our free institutions. There were times when a President daring to do such a thing would hardly have escaped impeachment.

In the second place, that order was such an insult to the Filipino people, our late allies, so direct a provocation of immediate and violent trouble, that General Otis, fearful of its effect, found himself compelled to assume a most extraordinary responsibility for a military officer—the responsibility of suppressing a proclamation of his chief, and of substituting one of his own. But in spite of the General's precautions, the President's order, his direct declaration of war against the Filipinos standing for freedom and independence, did become public, and soon the bloody conflict was on. And now Mr. McKinley blandly tells his countrymen that the disturbance was all owing to the pestilent Filipinos fiercely assailing a most benevolent and considerate ruler. And in pursuance of his order our Army under President McKinley's direction proceeded to destroy in blood a well-ordered native government, to carry desolation into peaceful and orderly communities recognizing and obeying that government and to kill by the thousands innocent people who had never harmed us, who, on the contrary, had effectively fought as our allies by the side of the Stars and Stripes against the common enemy, and whose only sin was that they wanted to be free and independent, while we coveted their land. And we still go on killing.

I have again and again challenged the imperialists to show me in the whole history of the world a single act of perfidy committed by any republic more infamous than that committed by Mr. McKinley's Administration against our Filipino allies, and I have received no answer but a sickly sneer. Not one of the imperialists has been able to point out in the history of any republic a single act surpassing in treacherous villainy this thing done in the