Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/279

Rh in the papers, constantly recurring for many months, of fights in the Philippines in which one or two American soldiers were killed and a few wounded, while the number of Filipinos killed amounted to 100 or 150 or 200, and some villages or towns burned down. The aggregate of the Filipinos killed is computed largely to overrun 30,000, not counting the wounded. Now, no one having the slightest knowledge of war, even guerilla warfare, can fail to understand what all this means. It means the gradual extermination of the weaker party—that weaker party fighting for freedom and independence. This is horrible—doubly horrible considering the way it began. And this, my countrymen, is done under the flag of the great American Republic. I ask you solemnly, can we as a civilized nation postpone the stopping of this dreadful and wanton bloodshed when the American people have the means of stopping it by an act of justice in their hands?

Fellow-citizens, I have given to this matter many days and nights of anxious thought, much troubled by the perplexing alternative before us in the impending election. The more I think of it, the more does every drop of my blood revolt at the monstrous wrong we have done and continue to do; and the more clearly does my reason tell me that the policy of imperialism has brought upon our Republic the greatest peril to the integrity of its free institutions, its peace, its honor and its true greatness, that has ever befallen it; that conscientiously I can never, never consent to uphold that policy by helping to keep in power those who wantonly originated it and are now carrying it on; and that as an honest man and an American patriot I am in duty bound to contribute my humble aid to whatever gives us an assurance, or even only a reasonable hope, of its overthrow. That duty calls on us all aloud. Let us, then, come what may, stand together