Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/256

232 name of the great Republic sprung from the Declaration of Independence—the Republic of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Where is the American having the honor of his country truly at heart who will not hang his head in shame and contrite humiliation at this deep disgrace?

And now mark the ingenious reasons President McKinley gives in his letter of acceptance for doing this awful deed. With the air of saying something conclusive, he asks whether his opponents

would not have sent Dewey's fleet to Manila to destroy the Spanish sea-power; and whether they would have withdrawn Dewey's squadron after the destruction of the Spanish fleet; and if so, whither they would have directed it to sail? Where could it have gone? What port in the Orient was opened to it? Do you condemn the expedition under General Merritt to strengthen Dewey in the distant ocean and assist in our triumph over Spain? Was it not our highest duty to strike Spain at every vulnerable point? And was it not our duty to protect the lives and property of those who came within our control by the fortunes of war?

Admitting all this for argument's sake—although there is much to be said about what Dewey might have done—will the President assert that because Dewey could not use some other Oriental port for his convenience, or because Merritt with the land force had to assist in our triumph over Spain, or because it was our duty to protect the lives and property of those who came within our control by the fortunes of war, we had to betray our allies, to destroy the government they had created for them selves, to subjugate them to foreign rule under our sovereignty and to shoot them down because they insisted upon free and independent government like the Cubans, having under the principles proclaimed by ourselves the same right to freedom and independence that the Cubans