Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/258

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

erals reported, and so Aguinaldo expressly de- clared. In stating this account of profit and loss I hardly know which to take up first, prin- ciples and honor, or material interests — I should have known very well which to have taken up first down to three years ago — what you call the sentimental, the ideal, the historical on the right side of the column; the cost or the profit in honor or shame and in character and in principle and moral influence, in true national glory; or the practical side, the cost in money and gain, in life and health, in wasted labor, in diminished na- tional strength, or in prospects of trade and money getting.

What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and your senti- mentalities. You have wasted nearly six hun- dred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives — the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have estab- lished reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out misera- ble lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwell- ings, and of the horror of the water torture. Your practical statesmanship which disdains to 222

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