Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/258

234 bilities” for all sorts of things, and to all sorts of people, which our victory over Spain in the Philippines devolved upon us, and that those “responsibilities” inspired his sense of duty to adopt the course he did. I will not inquire here what kind of responsibilities under the rules of international law such a victory as ours creates for the victor. I will only ask this simple question: Did our victory at Manila create for us responsibilities essentially different from those which were created for us by our victory at Santiago in Cuba? Nobody will pretend that it did. But nobody finds that our Cuban responsibilities make it impossible for us to tolerate and recognize the independence of Cuba. Can anybody tell me why our Philippine responsibilities, which are essentially the same, should oblige us, in law or in morals, to subjugate the Philippines to our sovereignty and to flood those islands with the blood of people who ask for nothing but what we recognize as the right of the Cubans? Is not therefore this solemn responsibility talk as an excuse for our policy of “criminal aggression” the shallowest of false pretenses?

Such are the reasons put forth by Mr. McKinley in his letter of acceptance to justify that betrayal of our Filipino allies which—I deliberately repeat it—has, as an act of cold-blooded, cruel and disgraceful treachery, no parallel in the history of republics.

This is the character of the Filipino war, in which the President wantonly involved us—I say “wantonly,” for there is no candid man living who will not admit that had the President instructed our Peace Commissioners to embody in the peace treaty the same provisions with regard to the Philippines as to Cuba, and had he treated the Filipinos accordingly, not a gun would have been fired, and not a drop of blood would have been shed as no blood has been shed in Cuba since her liberation.

And what a war it is, this war carried on to subjugate