Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/261

 HOAR

the sympathy which is in our hearts for people who are desolate and oppressed everywhere on the face of the earth.

This war, if you call it war, has gone on for three years. It will go on in some form for three hundred years, unless this policy be abandoned. You will undoubtedly have times of peace and quiet, or pretended submission. You will buy men with titles, or office, or salaries. You will intimidate cowards. You will get pretended and fawning submission. The land will smile and seem at peace. But the volcano will be there. The lava will break out again. You can never settle this thing until you settle it right.

Gentlemen tell us that the Filipinos are sav- ages, that they have inflicted torture, that they have dishonored our dead and outraged the liv- ing. That very likely may be true. Spain said the same thing of the Cubans. We have made the same charges against our own countrymen in the disturbed days after the war. The reports of committees and the evidence in the documents in our library are full of them. But who ever heard before of an American gentleman, or an American, who took as a rule for his own con- duct the conduct of his antagonist, or who claimed that the Republic should act as savages because she had savages to deal with? I had supposed, Mr. President, that the question, whether a gentleman shall lie or murder or tor- ture, depended on his sense of his o^vn character, and not on his opinion of his victim. Of all the X— IS 225

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