Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/286

262 strongly opposed to his policy of high protection. But the first thing Mr. McKinley's party claimed was that his election was a popular indorsement of his high protective policy, and the first thing Mr. McKinley did was to call an extra session of Congress, not for the purpose of giving the country a sound-money law, but for the purpose of constructing the highest protective tariff we had ever known.

In the same way Mr. McKinley, if reëlected, will claim, and the bulk of his adherents, especially the most reckless and unscrupulous of them, will also claim, that his reëlection was a clear popular indorsement of all he had done and an encouragement to go on in the same direction. To that apparent approval and real encouragement I, for my part, can never conscientiously contribute.

I have laboriously and carefully studied what has happened in all its details and bearings, and that study has profoundly convinced me that the story of our “criminal aggression” upon the Philippines is a story of deceit, false pretense, brutal treachery to friends, unconstitutional assumption of power, downright betrayal of the fundamental principles of our democracy, wanton sacrifice of our soldiers in a wicked war, cruel slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people, and that of horrible blood-guiltiness, without a parallel in the history of republics, and that such a policy is bound to bring upon this Republic evils infinitely more disgraceful and disastrous in their effects than anything that has been predicted as likely to result from Mr. McKinley's defeat. This is my honest conviction. I, for one, cannot, therefore, conscientiously cast a vote of constructive approval and of real encouragement of that policy, and I can only advise others not to do so.

I repeat, however, that I cheerfully join you in admonishing anti-imperialists who take a different view con-