Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/553

 McKinley's mind, but as early as June 1, Schurz outlined and powerfully sustained, in a letter to the President, the policy on which the anti-imperialistic movement was developed. The pledge to leave Cuba free must be interpreted, Schurz argued, as an announcement of a general attitude in reference to territory brought under our control by the incidents of war. Porto Rico, like Cuba, must be made independent; and the Philippines must be disposed of to some power like Holland or Belgium. Thus the burden and responsibility of troublesome dependencies would be escaped, and the United States would occupy the proud and most advantageous position of “the great neutral power of the world.” Thus, also, our trade would receive its utmost expansion with the minimum risk, and our republican institutions would escape the peril that lies in political connection with alien and inferior peoples.

Schurz urged McKinley to make strong and repeated representations to the American people and to the world in the sense of this policy and thus lead the public conscience to insist upon its adoption. But the President was by nature a follower rather than a leader of popular opinion, and the whole trend of events, when the negotiations for peace began, was toward the acquisition of all the Spanish dependencies save Cuba. Remembering how earnestly Schurz had opposed the annexation of Santo Domingo a generation earlier, it is not hard to imagine his feeling about acquiring so remote and alien a possession as the Philippines. The anguish he suffered was shared by a considerable group of his surviving associates of early Republican days, and was strikingly expressed in a letter from John B. Henderson, Schurz's predecessor in the Senate: “Almost every magazine I read, every newspaper coming into my hands … and every act of the administration of the government for the success of which I worked