Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/377

 moral courage, of manly independence and of civic virtue. He would have to be an excessively dull man not to understand that this was, and will remain, the principal element of his strength, and this can hardly fail to have a most healthy influence upon his Administration. I therefore think that the fullest recognition of the moral value of his act on the part of the Independents is just and wise, and I have, for these reasons, expressed my personal appreciation of it as promptly as possible. 



&emsp; I am sorry I cannot attend your meeting on August 1st. The American people of to-day—indeed, almost all that have not sunk their moral natures in the grossest selfishness of commercialism—glory with just pride in the fact that this Republic, after having driven the Spanish Power out of Cuba, has faithfully aided the Cuban people in establishing a free and independent commonwealth of their own.

The day will come—and I think it is near—when the American people will, with equal unanimity, frankly deplore that dark page of their history which records the other fact that, instead of treating the Philippines as we have treated Cuba, we turned our arms against the Filipinos, who were, and are now, almost universally recognized to have been our allies in the war against Spain, in order to beat down their efforts for independence and to make them our subjects. I am confident that the day of the general revival of the true national pride would already have come had not the excessive party spirit stood in the way, which so frequently induces men to permit their reason and their conscience to be overruled by the command of party discipline. 