AND IBERTY l::;..::F:-Y II Y; {: 7E '^-::T 3 i4 7 71 - '1%;~ 0r '%R %. E. 713, q 7S I IMPERIALISM AND LIBERTY BOOKS BY MORRISON I. SWIT IMPERIALISM AND LIBERTY 5oo0pages. Cloth, $ri.o A LEAGUE OF JUSTICE Paper, $.25 THE RONBROKE PRESS LOS ANGELES, CAL. IMPERIALISM AND LIBERTY BY MORRISON I. SWIFT LOS ANGELES THE RONBROKE PRESS CALIFORNIA I899 .OPYRIGHT 1899, BY dORRISON I. SWIFT CONT-ENT'S. CHAPTER I. IMPERIALISM TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. CHAPTER II. IMPERIALISM FOR THE SAKE OF MANKIND i.ANGLO-SAXON CLAIMS.. -. 9 2. ENGLISH PROTESTS AGAINST IMPERIALISM Io1 3. BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS -..1 4. ONLY CASH-PAYING PHILANTHROPY WANTED 20 5. IS INDIA HAPPY?.. - 22 6. BRITISH HUMANITY IN THE SOUDAN.. 28 CHAPTER Ill. OUR CRIME IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS I. THE NEW POLICY OF CORRUPTION. -. 34 2. McKINLEY'S PROCLAMATION OF WAR... -39 3. ALL OUR RIGHTS FORFEITED. - 41 4. COULD SPAIN SELL US SOVEREIGNTY? - -43 5. OUR GREAT DEBT TO THE FILIPINOS. -.45 6. SUPERLATIVE TREACHERY.-. - 48 7. THE AMERICAN LIE OF LOVE - - - - - 5 8. FOOLING ALL THE PEOPLE. - 55 9 THE HONORABLE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM -.59 VI. CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. OURSELVES AS ENGLAND'S TOOL i. A KIND CAT'S-PAW.....66 2. THE SHAM GLORY OF WHIPPING SPAIN..74 3. BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER....79 CHAPTER V. BUSINESS ENTERPRISE OF GENERALS...87 i. THE NEW TREASON...... 89 2. MILITARY HUCKSTERS..... 92 3. THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL.....96 CHAPTER VI. WAR FOR SALE i.A WIND-BAG WAR FACTORY...104 2. PRESIDENTIAL PULP....15 CHAPTER VII. NADIR OF INFAMY i. IN THE NAME OF GOD I20 2. WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT I 25 3. THE DEVIL IN US... 135 CHAPTER VIII. THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES..139 CHAPTER IX. THE BANDIT PRESS i. AS GENERAL HELL-MAKER I 51 2. CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS.155 3. REPTILE PROPRIETORS. 64 4. EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP T 68 CONTENTS. VII CHAPTER X. THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES... 176 CHAPTER XI. THE MILITARY CURSE i. LIBERTY MUST FALL....~ 86 2. THE AMERICAN IDEA.... 196 3. STANDING ARMY DAMNATION.... 199 4. THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY 206 CHAPTER XII. WHO PAYS THE MILITARY BILLS? I. MILKING THE PEOPLE WITH ARMAMENTS.. 216 2. THE ENDLESS ROBBERY OF WAR DEBTS. 222 3 PAYING THE RICH FOR THE RIGHT TO DO 'GOOD'.225 4. THE PATRIOTISM OF DRAWING INTEREST TO KILL THE INNOCENT.... 228 5. THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA-BLOOD AND MONEY 230 6. MILLIONAIRE SCREWS..... 236 7. THE ROYAL FAMILY OF CAPITALISTS.. 242 CHAPTER XIII. ADMINISTRATION WAR-BLUFF TO GAIN AN ARMY I. THE CHATTER OF MILITARY FOOLS....246 2. DUM DUMS AND THE ANGLO-SAXON HOG. 250 3. AN EVER WELL-IN-HAND WAR.... 253 4. WORRYING DESTINY INTO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.258 5. A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION.. 264 CHAPTER XIV. THE WASHINGTON MAGAZINE OF LIES I. STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS..... 271 2. SOLDIER CIPHERS.... 279 3. THE PHILIPPINES ARE A PERMANENT SLAUGHTERHOUSE..... 287 4. THE BUTCHER MUST BE KING... 293 VIII. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. THE DIGNITY OF THE FLAG I. FLAGS AND BUSINESS SIGNS.. 298 2. DE NEGRIER DYER... 304 3. THE PEACE COMMISION'S DEATH-RATTLE.. 309 4. GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES 3. 312 CHAPTER XVI. A WAR TO ENSLAVE AMERICA I. PRESS-CENSORSHIP ON A JAG.... 319 2. "POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS" 322 3. WHO SHALL PAY FOR THIS LOSS OF LIFE?. 329 4. THE GREATEST LITERATURE SINCE PLATO. 332 CHAPTER XVII. THE KING AT LARGE i. HIS MOTIVE......336 2. CONGRESS SLAPPED... 338 3 McKINLEY'S BED OF JUSTICE. 341 4. IMPERIALISM BY FRAUD 344 5. A TRAITOR'S ACT... 346 6. IMPEACH AND IMPRISON THE PRESIDENT 352 CHAPTER XVIII. TURNING-POINT FOR MANKIND I. DO NOT GO ON..... 356 2. WITHDRAW FROM THE PHILIPPINES.. 359 3. "SOVEREIGNTY" THE BILLIONAIRE WHELP 363 4. PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. 368 CHAPTER XIX WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNED 375 i. THE POLICY OF " WAIT".. 379 2. "TRUST THE PRESIDENT"...... 393 3. DESTROY TO REDEEM... 406 4 WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER ENSLAVES HIMSELF 412 CONTrENTS. IX. CHAPTER XX. THE DOLL OF TRADE 422 CHAPTER XXI. SEDUCED BY DESTINY 436 I. DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. 444 CHAPTER XXII. GRANDCHI[DREN OF ISRAEL.. 455 CHAPTER XXIII. IS LIBERTY TO DIE?. 466 I CHAPTER I. Imperialism To Bless the Conquered. The demand for absorbing the Philippines is so gross a departure from American principles, a revolution of our national purposes so singular and complete, tlat it is well to probe down to its real cause. Three motives are offered to sanction the change: Blessing for the peoples absorbed, Duty to the World, and Markets. It can be shown that the first two are but forms of the third -avarice for markets. The commercial market-seekers are adroitly using philanthropic sentiments to win the philanthropic over to their side in order to secure new fields to exploit. Let us realize the reach of this. It is the culminating stroke of Plutocracy. Even so late as a few years ago it could not have been safely proposed. But Plutocracy is master now, and makes no pause. Imperialism cancels the Constitution and takes the life of popular government: the very ends that plutocracy aims at. The fact of plutocracy has worked enfeeblement of the general mind. Expansion will create the formerly dreaded standing army: Plutocracy foresees and desires it, universal monopoly will need an army against the people. Would this army have been voted five years ago? Let us consider the three grounds for expansion. Blessing to the people annexed. The leading feature of the blessing will be our capitalists. Do capitalists go out to bless? We have had some opportunities to lift the lowly. Here are our southern blacks. Our blessing there takes the form of denials of the ballot and of ballotbox massacres. What degree of friendly assimilation 2 TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. have we achieved? Is there not ground to fear a general race war one of these days? Whites of opposite political creeds are obliged to bury their divergences and vote together to prevent negro domination. Current events in the South indicate that there is to be no compromise: "The North Carolina Democrats are trying to find a way to constitutionally disfranchise the negro. A new election law will be passed next year, and the Democrats of the State are endeavoring to frame a constitutional amendment restricting the suffrage as the result of the race strife at the last election. These Democrats are studying the bill for the annexation of the Hawaiian islands. That bill does not grant universal suffrage. By imposing property qualifications, it practically disfranchises the natives, and places the government in the hands of the whites and a few others. The North Carolina Democrats say if Congress can constitutionally adopt this legislation in independent States, they can do the same." This state of things does not suggest that we are gifted to raise inferior peoples. It would be a delicate question to ask if we shall prepare the Cubans and Filipinos for self-government-the high purpose of which our statesmen are ever speaking-by ballot restrictions denying them a vote. But why not? We do it with "childish" races nearer home. And if we refuse them the practice of self-government how many centuries will it take them to learn it? Our Indians, too, are a second lesson. Our rule of them has bloomed in robbery and progressive extermination, and behind the swindling officials have stood the moral and military forces of the nation. We may say that it is good for the world that the breath of civilization exterminates such races-some assert this-but it shakes the argument of philanthropy. Is it good for tlzcm to be exterminated? Does blessing them mean exterminating them? Is this what we mean by saying that we shall lift them up and confer free institutions upon them? Why not be clear on this point before we go out TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. 3 to reclaim the Filipinos? We should then prove to them, in the altered words of William McKinley, 'that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent extermination, substituting the mild sway of civilizing extinction for arbitrary rule.' They have a very searching right to know what form our blessing is to take, one would think, and to decide whether they care to be blessed in our way. There is another side-the effect of extermination upon the exterminator. It may be well meant, but is the consciousness of dealing civilizingly with lower human beings in order to obliterate them without crime morally healthy? Surely not. Slave owners were degraded by their relation to the slave; it made them brutal in character and domineering in other relations of life. Any form or degree of domination has a like tendency. It fosters the degrading sense of superiority, contempt, arrogance, aloofness, the domineering spirit, all of which canker the superior man's nature. It prevents the growth of brotherliness-the highest idea of civilization; of equality-the basis of Democratic evolution; of the American spirit-the essence of the American spirit being equal opportunity of development for all. The influence of an alien race upon the growth of American liberty and the success of our weighty trial in popular government is therefore grave. We ought to see from experience that we have no fitness for governing, assimilating, or uplifting 'derelict' races, and that contact with them in the alleged attempt to do so depraves us. Hawaii carries the demonstration another step. Have we consulted the will of the native, the real Hawaiian? No. We have listened to the voice of American capitalists who grasped the Hawaiian government and insolently claimed to represent the population of the islands. The will and well-being of the native have influenced our decisions no more than the will of the beasts roaming the Hawaiian jungles. With this record our solemn concern for the good of 4 TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. the native Filipinos is hollow and fraudulent. There will be grandiloquent vaporings from the pulpit, press and platform, from Congress and President,-already their pious sound has encircled the globe-but the shaping force below rhetoric and piety will be financial desire. Nothing will have any real weight but that. This argument of our duty to lower races has been cunningly handled by those whose motive is commercial gain. They first appeal to the conscience of the nation, but when conscience and human instincts have been roused and the people have adopted their counsels for the good of humanity, another side of the case is brought out to congeal the public conscience again and restore apathy, whereupon the commercial class can go ahead and do what they please. They have gained their point, the laws they wanted have been passed, and the people forget to repeal them when the commercialists correct themselves and announce that humanity in that instance would be wasted. To make the case concrete apply it to Cuba or the Philippines. The first act dwells with ostentation upon the inhumanity of leaving a meritorious race in galling servitude; a passion of sympathy is stirred and the oppressed are freed; the second act discovers and bruits abroad the degradation of the liberated people, the public retires into the shell of its disappointed virtue, turning over the worthless savages to the wise men of commerce to discipline and use according to their deserts. The farce is now finished. A protectorate is established, or annexation, and the unworthy race is taken in tutelage for a nameless period. To nervous objections the reply is that it is improper to consider the preferences of semi-savages. This pious buncoing is proceeding for the confiscation of Porto Rico, the Philippines, and possibly Cuba -for Hawaii the work is already done. The moral and religious 'gag' of elevating the natives is being worked in the usual way to obtain the vote of the churches. When we have absorbed or established our guardianship TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. 5 of the islands, the inciting commercial class will lay religion and humanity aside and resume its native shape of proprietor, speculator and capitalist. The critical question is whether this will be opposed by the moral and religious uplifters. If the aims of the moral and religious were intelligent and serious, were they people of character and force, the commercial exploiters would be sternly faced and held to their promises: but this will not happen. Adjustment will happen. The rapacious commercialists will pronounce the doctrine of total savage depravity, the lifters-up will appreciate that this is reasonable and will gracefully go about saving the souls of the natives whose bodies the capitalists will break. The principles proceeded upon by the capitalists will be those always applied to inferior labor by employers -long hours, petty remuneration, and no consideration of their well-being. What is left of the natives after this will be turned over to the missionaries to be prepared for death. And the religious party will accept these fag ends of humanity and recite their formulas of doing good, soul-saving and lifting up, showing that the destroyers and the saviors understood each other from the beginning of the annexation drama. The Hawaiian planters have protested that our government must not prevent the importation of alien labor there because their prosperity depends upon an inflow of cheap coolies. What about the well-being of our American citizens, the Hawaiian natives, who must compete with these coolie importations? Will they develop into the kind of men that we like to imagine our citizens are? And was not one of the strong public motives for Hawaiian annexation-before the war motive dispensed with subterfuge-our concern for the good of the natives? Consider then the prospects of the Philippine natives if our commercial exploiters exhaust them so rapidly as to require a new stream of coolie Chinese! Laying aside cant, let us admit that our commercial 6 TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. classes are magnificently indifferent to the well-being of any natives, and will resent and thwart the first move to hinder them from consuming the natives as 'labor' and reducing their strength and life to, 'profits.' The position of the moral and religious would be mordantly humiliating if they were serious and honest about saving the natives. Events relating to the Philippines have already transpired to establish these facts. The National Christian Citizenship Convention that was called to meet at Washington, D. C., last December, issued the following remarkable subjects for the convention's work: "Should suffrage be limited by educational tests or otherwise in the new island territories? Should civil service reform be extended to the new island offices? Should the national laws forbidding prize-fights and bull-fights, restricting divorce, and forbidding bigamy and related evils, be extended to our new island territories? Should the American civil Sabbath be also extended to these islands? Should the canteen be abolished? Should the policy of prohibition be maintained in Alaska and the Indian Territory and extended to our new island territories?" Could anything be more delicately ludicrous than this program for reaching the great industrial evil, which we shall legally foster and protect in every island that we grab! We shall set up a system for legally robbing the natives of all their valuable possessions; capitalists will secure every fertile spot and hire the work done by native gangs at just savage subsistence wages; they will plant factories and use the cheap labor to undersell white labor in our own country and other parts of the world. But this outlook does not affront our Christian Citizens, for they are accustomed to see white men in their own country dealt with on the same TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. 7 principles, and to recognize it as a wise ordination of providence. What troubles them is whether these savages will keep the Sabbath, whether they can be cut off from the few brutal pleasures accessible to their kindprize-fights, bull-fights, etc.,-whether to prohibit them from drinking (it would make them more serviceable workmen and ought to be done), and whether the pagans can be restrained by our purifying law from the sin of wives and free divorces. Excellent fun indeed! Heroic work to do while the American people through their army and navy are assisting the capitalists to change the natives into that broken-down, wrung-out, off-scouring of civilization, the wage-worker. But while we are enforcing our sexual hypocrisy upon them will not our Christian Citizens prepare a convention against the palaces of prostitution that will enter with the white man's civilization, and forestall them by forbidding prostitution in the Philippines by law? How much weight, then, should the plea of annexing savages to bless them have? Simply none. The altruists who are praying for a new chance to do good are deferential supplicators of capitalists for funds to paint over the deep wounds which capitalism will inflict. In timorous hope of contributions they have to creep before these great men with anxious circumspection. They can champion no reform that is odious to the lords of the purse. They may amuse themselves debating questions of the canteen, prohibition, bull-fights, divorce, educational and property tests of citizenship that would disfranchise the natives and give the capitalists legislative control, and even civil service reform to which only the professional politician could demur, but they will religiously let the great abuses alone: they will never utter a sound against the capitalist methods of employment, the irresistible processes of capitalism that sponge up wealth into a central hoard and debauch the population to a servile dependence equal to slavery. The religious gentlemen who should speak of these outrages would lose their nice comfort. For com 8 TO BLESS THE CONQUERED. fort's sake they hold their peace. But the division of spoils is suitable. The capitalists take the loaf and give the religionists the crumbs. There is a much meaning lesson here: even the forces of tyrannical selfishness are leagued against religious sycophants. Canting religion has grown too weak to longer exact payment. But let others realize the fraud. Let them beware of making themselves the equally degraded instruments of capitalist usage and contempt. Let them close their ears to the cry for expansion which these pious persons are so starvingly paid to raise. CHAPTER II. Imperialism for the Sake of Mankind. 1. Anglo-Saxon Claims. The plea of duty to the world involves a wider outlook. We are solicited to extend our proprietorship and rule in order to disseminate our free institutions over the earth. Wherever our liberal institutions go they are presumed to convey enlightenment and elevation. We are told that it is a critical moment for mankind, that England has for some generations been bucking against the entire world alone, that her strength is failing, and that destiny calls us to the rescue. She has nobly carried the Anglo-Saxon habits of freedom to darkened peoples, and now, her generous task incomplete, she falters under the strain, her envious rivals block the path and nibble ferociously at the fair slices of the world she has already benignly carved out. The great prize at stake for mankind is Anglo-Saxon lordship of the globe. Anglo-Saxonism is set forth to be a higher form of civilization than any other race can bring to the conquered continents, and it is plaintively alleged that England's struggle is ours and that the spread of Anglo-Saxonism, its lofty realities and loftier ideals, is the sacred affair of every English speaking man. They reproach us with standing idly apart from the great world's affairs too long, shirking our magnanimous responsibilities in the stupendous drama of international evolution, and Senator Lodge sadly discerns the "humiliation of the United States in the eyes of civilized mankind" if we do not pluck the ripe fruit of imperialism, and the stain upon us of being "in IO PROTESTS AGAINST IMPERIALISM. capable of great affairs or of taking rank where we belong as one of the greatest of the great world powers." With all this pathos the trade-bedizened prize of China is mixed up. Let her not become Russianized, they implore, to annihilate Anglo-Saxon prestige. These are evidently high matters needing subtle study. 2& English Protests Against Imperialism. In moments and destinies so critical, nothing must be taken for granted. What is this princely, gift that England is seeking to bestow upon humanity? Why is it so necessary for Anglo-Saxons to rule mankind? Much depends on the answer to this. The answer given by English statesmen is certainly dim, doubting and obscure. In fact, we shall be greatly surprised by the persistance with which the good and self-interest of the Anglo-Saxons enters into the disinterested creed of universal good to mankind. But in England there is far from that contented and assured agreement that we should expect in an unselfish nation devoted to the great policy of ameliorating mankind. The Liberal party is on the verge of wreck over this beautiful ideal of an Anglo-Saxon world. On the 15th of December a great conference of Liberals was held at Birmingham to face the crisis occasioned by Harcourt's resignation. In the evening Mr. Asquith made what the Liberal press called a "great speech" in the course of which he said: "Gentlemen, we are not Jingoes, we repudiate that pinchbeck imperialism which regards the whole world as its legitimate provinces, and which flaunts its flag and challenge in the face of every power in turn. We base the title of Great Britain in India, in Egypt, and wherever we are exercising our supremacy, over the populations of any country or race, not upon brute force, not upon the authority of disciplined strength over the scattered resources of the untrained intelligence of the undeveloped races. (Hear, hear.) We base it upon the work which we do, upon the benefits which we confer, and, above all, PROTESTS AGAINST IMPERIALISM. I I upon that which is, or ought to be, the predominant purpose of our policy, upon the slow, but in course of time the effective association with those to whom we came in the character of strangers and conquerors-the task of helping them work out for themselves a higher and a better political and social ideal. (Hear, hear.)" If Mr. Asquith dbes not know, there are many in England who do know that there is a wide distance between "that which is," and "that which ouglL to be, the predominant purpose" of English policy. But on the whole, this sounds noble and good, and is very different from the imperialism which is at present in the saddle in England. Moderate as it is, what was the general sentiment of the conference as compared with it? That sentiment will possibly stagger the benevolent people whose clarion voice is now calling us to England's rescue. At the afternoon session the Rev. Mr. Jowett-note the "Reverend" and "a man of great note in Birmingham"-'attacked "Imperialism" in all moods and tenses, in a strong speech.' 'He said an infection was in the air which seemed to have tainted the historic party which had hitherto been the party of peace. It was a tendency which was one of the most perilous of modern days. That word imperialism had become so tainted with suspicion that he was not sure that any self-respecting statesman would aspire to be thought in favor of it., (Cheers.) Imperialism was only a synonym for jingoism-(cheers)-against which they foughlt and conquered twenty years ago. (Cheers.) He announced the daringly logical conclusion that England was at present playing the part of Stiggins in Europe, "seizing slices of the globe" and glozing it over with "religious posturings." '* Sir Wilfrid Lawson said, the only people who liked war were statesmen, music-hall singers, aldermen, bishops, and newspaper editors. (Laughter and cheers.) *London Daily Chronicle report, Dec. 17, I898. 12 PROTESTS AGAINST IMPERIALISM. Mr. Hirst Hollowell declared that 'it was not a battle of persons or private jealousies that was going on inside the Liberal party, but of principles. The party was not going to be led into jingoism by anybody, and if its leaders or those of any other party were to be disparaged or shunted because they stood up against jingoism, then the members of the party throughout the country would have something to say on the matter. (Loud cheers.) There were two things with which the Liberal party would never make any terms, and these were sectarianism in education and jingoism in foreign politics. (Cheers.)' "The net result of the whole fwas summned up by the observers as a demnonstration of unlexpected strength against the Liberal Imperialists."* It seems, then, that many Englishmen have not the slightest toleration for the talisman by which we are being conjured to expansion-that Anglo-Saxon Imperialism is a blessing to the world. But no British statesman can speak on this subject with the weight of John Morley, because of his known probity, and Mr. Morley has broken with the new Liberalism because of its "imperialistic jingo policy," which he thus defines: "First, that territory is territory, and all territory is worth acquiring. "Second, that all territory, especially if anybody happens to want it, is worth paying any price for. "Third, that the country possesses the purse of Fortunatus, and is free to fling millions here and millions there, with the certainty that benignant fairies will, by magic, make them good. "Fourth, do not show the slightest regard for the opinions of other nations. You have no share whatever in the great collective responsibility of civilized peoples as the winged guardians of peace and good order in the state system of Europe. *London Daily Chronicle report, Dec. 17, I898 BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. I3 "Fifth, the interests of the people of this country, and advancement in all the arts of civilized life and well-being, are completely and utterly secondary and subordinate questions." * Mr. Labouchere had already spoken in notable language on some of these points before the Manchester Reform Club. He had said: "The great illusion of the present day was to suppose that an increase of territory meant an increase of trade. As a matter of fact, as could easily be proved by figures, it did not mean any such thing. All the annexations we had made of late were a commercial fallacy, and even the doctrine of the open door had been much exaggerated. The mania at the present time was to spend money in any place excepting England. Instead of spending money in irrigation works in Bahr-el-Ghazal he, as a Londoner, maintained that they ought to spend it rather in providing a good water supply for the inhabitants of the metropolis. When he saw the proposal for the establishment of a school at Khartoum to teach little Arab boys English, he could not help thinking what a wonderful people his countrymen were to spend money on such an object as that instead of supplying food and clothing and education to the thousands of poor little English boys at home." t 3. British Imperial Bathos. These unequivocal protests give the noble mission of England a very different hue. Bathos dances behind all the magnificently generous phrases. We find it in Lord Rosebery's eulogy of the awful Sirdar of the Soudan. "Our task," said the Lord, "is the task of our empire all over the world, not merely to erect a standard of civil government for those who have not hitherto had that standard, but to enable the people gradually, at a lonlg distance perhaps, but in time at any rate, to take some part in their own administration, and to have a distinctive share in the 'Speech at Montrose, Jan ICgg. See London correspondence of New York Post, Jan. 25 tLondon Chronicle, Dec. 14, I898. I4 BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. moulding of their own future." (Cheers.) "Gradually," "at a long distance," "some part," "a distinctive share," these are not the aims that make it worth while for the freedom-loving American people to sustain England's conquering arm. The difficulty these Imperialist politicians have in making selfishness seem noble makes one pinch oneself to be sure that they are not on a stage acting for the amusement of mankind. Mr. G. W. Balfour, M. P., Chief Secretary for Ireland, a representative Conservative, wrestling to hide the secrets, gave them away bravely. "Was the Imperial spirit a spirit to be encouraged, or a spirit to be repressed? In a general way, within reasonable limits and within the limits of our strength, he thought the policy of what Lord Rosebery described as pegging out claims to posterity was a wise and sound one.. Had we moral justification for pursuing this policy? If these dependencies were not under the control of this country, they would, for the most part, undoubtedly fall under the control of some other country, and we had at least this to say at the bar of the world's judgment, that wherever we occupied a territory that territory was opened to the enterprise and the trade of all the world. (Cheers.) No doubt we sought our own advantage, but the peculiarity was that our advantage did not exclude the advantage of other people. The second justification which we could plead for this policy was that it was in our power to show that the countries over which our rule had extended had gained by means of that rule the blessings of order, of good government, and of a higher civilization than that which they previously knew." (Cheers.) * If we don't steal every country that is not already stolen some other Power will steal it-our stealing is therefore righteous. Disraeli established this for us by stealing Cyprus. We seek our own advantage, but we find it to our greater advantage to share our trade advantages with others-therefore we are unselfish. And *Speech at Keighley, Dec. 20, 1898. BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. I5 surely you can't say that we don't bless and civilize and keep a splendid police system over the conquered and govern them in a more orderly manner than they governed themselves-therefore if we take their country away from them and rob them of independence it is justified. Yes, but this is unmitigated bathos and rot, and Englishmen who are not muzzled know it and say so. The Saturday Review says this flatly in referring to a paper by Dr. Bonar on the Empire, read before the British Association: "Dr. Bonar, at any rate, has a quaint notion of the altruistic mission of the Empire. Wealth does not always give power, as he truly says. But he asks us to believe that we hold Egypt, and even India, 'not from avarice, but from love of governing.' 'Our own colonies,' he adds, 'are not bound to us by a nexus of cash payments.' Does Dr. Bonar really imagine that we hold India and Egypt primarily because we think that we can govern them better than any one else can? The plain unvarnished truth is that the Empire was built up as the result of the pursuit of gain, and if we do not attempt to exact immediate cash payments or their equivalent from the Colonies today, we abstain because rude experience warns us of the certain consequences." * The canting utterances of Lord Salisbury confirm this. Said he: t "The Empire is advancing and must advance. (Hear, hear.) The great strength you have must be used unfailingly, unsparingly, but still prudently, for the advancement of the interest of the Empire, and for the benefit of mankind. (Cheers.) And happy will be the Minister in future days who will be able to render you as good an account as I think we can render you today-(loud and prolonged cheers) —that we have used the force that is entrusted to us not violently, not sentimentally, but with calm and courageous calculation for the advancement of the interests of the Empire and the benefits of the civilization of mankind. (Loud cheers.)" *Sept. 17, I198 fSpeaking at a dinner of the Constitutional Club, London, Dec. 16, I898. BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. The words of Mr. Chamberlain confirm this. Taunted by Mr. Asquith with 'inconsistency in.having at one moment boasted of Britain's glorious isolation and at another advocated an alliance, he replied that England is "gloriously isolated" in her ability to defend her own exclusive interests; but she needs an ally when she is called upon to assist in the promotion of the interests of others.' * The speech of the new Lord Curzon at the luncheon given in his honor by the directors of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company on the eve of his departure to rule India confirms it.t The occasion was significant, he was speaking to great commercial men. 'Among the chief advantages of the imperial connection between England and India he included the possibility of the improved development of India. [The usual flourish of duty and disinterestedness.]... The chairman had incidentally referred to India in the interests of business men as a field for commercial enterprise. [Transition to the motive of avarice begins.] He could not help thinking, although desirous to avoid prophecy. that there would be great developments in that respect. (Hear, hear.) [Warm commercial response.]... If we could establish in India anything like stability of exchange-a great problem to which any outgoing Viceroy must turn his attention-he believed that confidence would revive, and that British capital would flow more freely to India. It might perhaps be regarded as a counsel of perfection to look at the case from any other point of view than that of expediency and self-interest, but in all matters connected with India he believed the point of view of duty and of obligation was paramount. (Hear, hear.) [Another blast on the trumpet of pharisaism with fine commercial appreciation.]... But here, as business men, they might pardon and sympathlize kith him if he looked at the matter also from *Saturday Review, Dec. io, I898. tSee the London Chronicle, Dec. 3, 1898. BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. IT the sordid point of viewz of the ~ s. d. [Nowpreliminaries are over and Curzon gets down to business.] Let them look at the trade of India, and compare it with the trade of our colonies. He found that the total sea-borne trade of India for I896-7, which was an unprosperous year, almost equalled that of the whole of our Australian colonies, and was much greater than that of our South African and North American colonies combined; indeed, it constituted nearly onetenth of the trade of the whole British Empire, and was more than one-third of the trade of the whole Empire outside of the United Kingdom. (Hear, hear.) These were astounding figures, and if any deduction was to be drawn from them, it was certainly not the conclusion that, even regarded from the point of view of self-interest, India was a matter in which we had little or no concern. On the contrary, India was of vital interest. (Cheers).' [The commercial skeleton of England's civilizing philanthropy is at length completely bared.] The determination of England to monopolize education in Africa confirms it. Conveying to Kitchener the approval of "Her Majesty's Government" of the Khartoum College project Lord Salisbury said: "The reconciliation of the races which inhabit the Nile Valley to a government which, in its principles and its methods, must be essentially Western, is a task of the extremest difficulty. It will tax the resources of the present generation, and of those who come after them, for many years before the wall of prejudice can be thrown dlown which separates the thoughts of the European and the thoughts of the Egpytian and the Soudanese races, and until it is to a considerable extent accomplished we cannot count securely upon their co-operation, either in the duties of government or in the promotion of industrial progress. The only method by which this reconciliation can be attained is to give to the races whom you have conquered access to the literature: and knowledge of Europe. i8 BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. "Your scheme, therefore, for establishing a machinery by which European knowledge can be brought to the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile is not only in itself most admirable, but it represents the only policy by which the civilizing mission of this country can effectively be accomplished." The general attitude of the nation is mirrored in the following editorial opinion: "For this College at Khartoum would be a new departure in Africa. There we have lavished millions in attempts to teach Christianity, with and without material improvements in the condition of the people. In spite of widely circulated annual reports, the political observer can see no great results-none at any rate commensurate with the outlay. And here would be a new line, the only line possible, as the Prime Minister, whose Christianity no one will suspect, has very properly said, by which the civilizing mission of Great Britain can be thoroughly accomplished in the Nile basin." All this seems very innocent and disinterested. But about this time France began to talk of assisting in the arduous task of 'reconciling' African with European civilization by founding two colleges in the Nile Valley, one at Khartoum and one at Fashoda. M. Deloncle in a letter to the "Temps" said: "Will you be so kind as to inform your readers that, anxious not to be left behind in this work of education, a French group has in its turn taken the initiative for the foundation of two establishments for native education and instruction-in the first place, 'The French School' at Khartoum, and, later on, 'The Marchand School' at Fashoda. greater part of the funds required for this double project is already assured by generous donations." We may presume that England thankfully welcomed this offer to share the burden of civilizing the Soudanese races, a task in Salisbury's words of "extremest difficulty," but she did nothing of the sort. English papers scorned the offer and called it an "amusing pro BRITISH IMPERIAL BATHOS. I9 ject." Why amusing? If England's purpose is the good of the Nile people why will she not co-operate gladly with a highly civilized nation like France to educate them? Educators and scientists of all nations of the earth are loyally co-operating to advance science and education irrespective of race and political rivalry. But we can understand very well why England will not cooperate or share if her 'civilization' is domination and supremacy in the Nile region for commercial ends, and the fact that she will not brook assistance in educating and civilizing establishes our contention that her ruling purpose is not civilization at all but commercialism, that she would not be held in Africa or India a day by the good she can do there, and that what holds her is the gain she gets or expects to get. The New York Tribune, referring to Lord Cromer's announcement to the Soudanese of the civilization that is ahead of them, expressed a great thought very suavely. "Of course," it remarked, "it may be objected that this action of the British is criminal aggression, rank imperialism, et cetera, and that it is a shameful thing to set up a government at Omdurman without a favorable plebiscitum in Dem Bekir. But we doubt whether such considerations will undo or defeat the convention which has been made or will turn back the rising tide of civilization in the Dark Continent." The rising of European commercial rule and the falling tide of African independence, would be true. Call "criminal aggression " by the name of "civilization " and its sins are all forgiven; it is redeemed, purified and ready to enter heaven. The curious reader will find in the British and Foreign State Papers for the year I854-5,* the following words: 'In 1854 a grand jury in the Williamsburg district [South Carolina] declared,' "as our unanimous opinion, that the Federal law abolishing the African Slave Trade is a public grievance. We hold this trade has been and *Page II56, quoted by W. E. B. Du Bois: "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States," p. I69. 20 ONLY CASH-PAYING PHILANTHROPY. would be, if re-established, a blessing to the American people, and a benefit to the African himself." The idea that slavery was a benefit to the African himself was made a corner stone of the institution of slavery. It brought inward consolation to the good man who held slaves or upheld slavery. Now, the enslaving of lower nations is good for the nation that enslaves and a benefit to the nation that is enslaved. The good of our time find peace and perfection in this doctrine. 4. Only Cash-Paying Philanthropy Wanted. But there are two final forms of proof with which we:clinch the foregoing argument. First, England shows no inclination to go adventuring in those countries where there is magnificent opportunity for unselfish philanthropy and little or none for profit. Secondly, English dealing with the subjugated races shows that commerce and profit are primary, and that civilization and upbuilding are desired and fostered just in so far as they promote commerce and profit. Let us give examples. Leonard Courtney in his recent presidential address before the Royal Statistical Society on "An Experiment in Commercial Expansion," gave a study of the Congo Free State. Europe placed the Congo State in the hands of the King of Belgium for "commercial and philanthropic exploitation." The net commercial result was that " the Congo trade represented but little more than 0.7 per cent of the total trade of Belgium." This, said Mr. Courtney, "was sadly disproportionate to the anticipations of the enterprise." He said that "if ase wished to think accurately about such enterprises as the Congo experiment, philanthropy andlt comlrlmerce must be separated froml one another in our thoughts. As a philanthropic adventure the Congo had certainly been a very mixed success. An extremely chequered record of owar, enforced labor, and exacted tribute might, after long years, effect a certain transfor ONLY CASH-PAYING PHILANTHROPY. 21 nation of the social condition of the inhabitants.... As for the commercial success of the Congo,... enough had been said to show that it was disputable whether the resources of the country were such as to sustain a permanent trade, even with the help of the railway.... The immense development of wealth and comminerce, and of civilized populations following the establishment of some of the colonies of Europe, had encouraged the belief that all adventures to which the same name could be given must be crowned with the same success. Yet the conditions which had secured this success in the past could be easily indicated, and it became a simple inquiry whether like conditions were to be found iln any land offered for newc enterprise... We were justified in saying that nothing could be deduced from the history of American colonization or Indian domination to justify hopes of a lZcrative conmmercial expansion in Central Africa. Missionary and philanthropic labor might be spent there with approval, and with some measure of slow success, but the foundation of healthful colonies furnishi', outlets for population and commerce was not hopeful. "Sir R. Giffen moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Courtney for his valuable paper, which was seconded by Sir F. S. Powell, who thought this coiuntry ought to be cotngratulated that the Congo State did not belong to us.,( Cheers.)" Here was an instance where a gathering of very influential and representative Englishmen put itself on record as being highly gratified that England did not own the Congo, because there was no money in it, although the opportunities for civilization and philanthropy there were recognized as immense. If civilizing were the actual as it is the feigned object of England this is the very kind of country that she would choose to, own and to colonize, on account of its unbounded needs. The law of imperialistic colonizing is this: No outlay shall be made for 'civilizing' purposes which does not promise to return, sooner or later, the usual rate of IS INDIA HAPPY? 22 returns on invested capital. The corollary of this law is that civilization is not an end in itself but a means to an end-a means for increasing and firmly establishing commerce. This simple principle is the key to the entire mighty network of imperialist dogmas concerning duty, religion, humanity, unselfishness and civilization. Lord Rosebery skilfully admitted and used this principle in his eulogy of the Sirdar's college, when he said that 'if our civilization was to prevail against other contending European civilizations, etc.,... he [Kitchener] saw that a beginning must be made in the way of a center of education.' 5. Is India Happy? The dealings of England with her lower subject races are a sturdy proof that civilizing and uplifting are not her ends excepting as they increase and strengthen her sources of income. Of the recent terrific slaughter of the Soudanese by machine guns, I shall not speak here, but shall take the illustration that is most favorable to England-the Indian Empire. One word first, however, as to what civilization and race upbuilding is. It is the boast of English Imperialists that England 'brings into the minds and into the lives of the subject people, not as phantoms of the imagination, but as solid, vivid realities, the ideas of order, justice and humanity.' (Mr. Asquith.) But these ideas alone are very far from civilizing. The dog in distinction to the wolf has these ideas, learned from contact with civilized man. He is tender, kind, orderly, and true, he is even just, but he lacks that which the concept of civilization demands. He lacks independent development, self-development, the power of standing alone and going forward without leaning or being led. Order, justice, and humanity are developed in chattel slaves, but they lack a prime requisite of civilization, without which civilization is not. They are not free. Now the glib lords and lawyers, bishops *Dec 28, I898. Reported in the London Daily Chronicle. IS INDIA HAPPY? 23 and parliamentarians and prophets of England are fiery in praise of the order and security that England establishes, but they do not explain to us just what these are worth without freedom, self-government, and self-development, a thing that we should very much like to know. To what extent is England developing the Indians, strengthening their character, training them to be selfsustained, independent, and free? As to this none can speak better than Indians themselves. The London Indian Society held its annual conference for I898 not long ago* and the members gave very vigorous expression to their opinion of British treatment of India. The chairman, Mr. D. Naoroji, moved a resolution: "That in accordance with the oft-declared and pledged policy of the British people, through Acts and Resolutions of Parliament and Proclamations of Her Majesty the Queen, to treat Indians exactly as the British subjects in this country;... this conference is of opinion and urges upon the government in the name of British justice and honor, that Indians should be allowed commissions and command in the Indian army in the same manner and through the same methods as are open to Englishmen.... Mr. Naoroji referred to the bravery and heroism shown by the native soldiers... They ought by rights to be treated as British citizens, but the practice of the authorities was the very reverse. The chairman quoted opinions which showed that the native soldiers had remained true to their salt, even to the extent of fighting bravely against their owun kith and kin.... He claimed something more than justice from the British people; he claimed their gratitude. (Cheers.) It was the money and blood of India which had built up the British Empire there. (Cheers.)... The present system was not only an injustice; it was a gross insult to the whole Indian nation. (Cheers.) He had been in communication with the War Office on the matter, and had been told that the Queen's Warrant forbade Indian subjects holding commissions in the Indian army.' 24 IS INDIA HAPPY? It would be unnecessary to read further to learn the degradation of Indian character under British rule. Although debarred of all promotion and compelled to serve in the lowest rank against their own countrymen, against their own flesh and blood, they obey. True to their salt, less manly and chivalrous than common mercenaries or bandits, they slaughter fathers, brothers, sons at the command of foreigners. They are proud of it. The fashion of their grievance is that they want a share of the military offices. And on the other hand the civilizing English cannot spare them-they want all good things for themselves. And yet the British people through acts of Parliament and other means 'had often pledged themselves to treat Indians exactly as British subjects in England.' Seconding the resolution, Mr. Mahtab Singh said that 'as loyal subjects they wanted to warn the British Government of the danger of its present policy, which if not altered would turn a nation of patriotic and loyal subjects into rebels, whose aim would be to destroy the British. rule. (Cheers.)' The resolution was carried unanimously. Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt moved a resolution 'deploring all legislation restricting self-government in India.' Under Northbrook's vice-royalty, he said, 'representative government was first introduced into India, which conferred upon the rate payers of Calcutta the right to select two-thirds of their municipal councillors. Since then this measure has worked extremely well, and the new municipal council had transformed Calcutta into one of the healthiest places in India. The time had now come for the extension of municipal government to other municipalities, but the present Government was no friend of municipal government. It had been striving to curtail the powers of the London County Council, and therefore there was no wonder that it was trying to abrogate Lord Northbrook's valuable measure. (Shame.) Never within his metmory had there been such a state of alarm through IS INDIA HAPPY? 25 out the whole of Bengal as had been caused by this nleasure. The impressionl zvas spreading that it was not possible to obtain any nerw rig1hts by constitutional methods. There had been forty years of peace and loyalty, and now the Government by its action was teaching a very dangerous lesson to the people of India. (Cheers.)' Mr. R. C. Sen said 'it was a mistake to trust too much to the generosity of the English people.' Mr. Bipin Chunder Pal moved: "That this meeting condemns the new Sedition Law of India, (I) which makes invidious distinctions between different classes of her Majesty's subjects; (2) which seeks to restrict the free discussion of Indian measures by her Majesty's Indian subjects in England, by threats of prosecution on their return to India; (3) which takes away the liberty of the press that has been enjoyed in India for over half a century, and substitutes a method of repression, unworthy of the British government; (4) which empowers magistrates in India, who are heads of the police, to demand security for good behavior from editors of newspapers, to refuse such security when offered, and to send the editors to jail with hard labor without trial for any specific offense;..." No people in the world have said more in censure of the French methods of justice exposed by the case of Dreyfus, or of the German gag laws and Imperial prosecutions for the terrible crime of speaking as you think, called lese majestat, than the English, yet here is England jailing Indian editors without trial, through her Dogberry police magistrates and depriving her Indian subjects of the right of free speech. This is the England that, as Mr. Asquith says, makes the ideas of order, justice and humanity, 'solid, vivid realities' in the minds and lives of the people dependent on her. Mr. Pal enforced his resolution by declaring that 'those who had drawn it up had committed sedition under the new law over and over again. (Laughter and cheers.) Further the people who had been speaking that afternoon IS INDIA HAPPY? could be prosecuted in India for their speeches-that is, if they were Indian natives. If they were English-born they could say what they liked. The freedom of the Press had been the bulwark of English rule in India for the past forty years. The speech of the previous speaker was only an indication of the spirit which was growing up amongst the young men in India. There was a spirit of unrest and discontent which was spreading in quarters of which Government knew little. Sedition was present in India, and if the Government shut up the mouths of the educated Indians, who alone could explain to their fellow-countrymen what British rule meant to India, and how necessary it was that it should continue, it must be prepared for an outburst which would shake the British Empire to its foundations. (Cheers.) ' It would plainly seem that England has brought herself to a grave dilemma. She is convinced that if she does not enforce harsh sedition laws which shut the mouths of the educated Indians and prevent them from 'explaining to their fellow-countrymen what British rule means in India,' there will be a sedition, and here is a body of highly intelligent Indians assuring her that if she does not repeal those obnoxious laws and give the educated a chance to smooth the situation over to the masses of their countrymen there will be 'an outburst that will shake the British Empire to its. foundations.' In other words British rule is neither safe if it is explained nor if it is not explained: it will not bear investigation and it will not bear not being investigated. 'Having this expression of opinion from the Hindus, let us consider the words of a candid Englishman, Mr. Goldwin Smith. He believes that India "has been steadily administered in the interest of the Hindu." Granting for a moment only that this is so-we do not grant it any longer-the incapacity of England to civilize is even more shown by the results, for her efforts to help have 'reduced the population to human sheep, without aspirations, without spur to self-improvement of any kind.' This climax IS INDIA HAPPY? 27 of seventy-five years of civilizing effort thoroughly discredits the principle of Imperialism. "If," Mr. Smith says, "empire is to be regarded as a field for philanthropic effort and the advancement of civilization, it may safely be said that nothing in that way equals, or ever has equalled, the British Empire in India. For the last threequarters of a century at all events, the Empire has been steadily administered in the interest of the Hindu. Yet what is the result? Two hundred millions of human sheep, without native leadership, without patriotism,without aspirations, without spur to self-improvement of any kind; multiplying, too many of them, in abject poverty and in infantile dependence on a government which their numbers and necessity will too probably in the end overwhelm. Great.Britain has deserved and won the respect of the Hindu; but she has never won, and is perhaps now less likely than ever to win, his love. The two races remain perfectly alien to each other. Lord Elgin sorrowfully observes, that there is more of a bond between man and dog than between Englishman and Hindu. The natives generally, having been disarmed, cannot rise against the conqueror; and their disaffection is shown only in occasional and local outbreaks, chiefly of a religious character, or in the impotent utterances of the native press."* Of such periodic phenomena as Indian plagues and famines, their conduciveness to Hindu happiness, and British responsibility for them, I shall say but littleJulian Hawthorne and Lee Merewether, after personal investigations in India during the famine plague of I897, agreed that not less than "eight million persons had already died of famine and disease directly caused thereby "-"eight times the population of New York; nearly twice that o'f London,"t and the famine had not then run its course. Mr. Hawthorne tried lamely to exculpate the English government and then said: "It is true that at *"The Moral of the Cuban War," in the Forum, Nov. 1898. tThe Cosmopolitan Magazine, 1897, pp. 372-3, and 658. 28 SPECIMENS OF BRITISH HUMANITY. the moment when millions of Indians were starving, there was paid in London for seats to see the Jubilee money~ enough to avert all that inconceivable suffering-yes, and much of it was paid by Americans; and the rest was. paid by other foreigners and by the English themselves. It was a vain and selfish expenditure no doubt; but it was, spent, not by the Government, but by private persons. They were like other persons all over the world." As if the waste of these resources at such a time by private persons in the slightest degree mitigated the responsibility and crime of the English nation! And that these vain and selfish spenders, ourselves included, 'were like other persons all over the world,' is the very thing that shows conclusively that these civilized people 'all over the world' cannot rule a subject race unselfishly. 6. British Humanity in the Soudan. The facts, we believe, warrant this statement: That lower races under Imperial rule are dealt with on a code of principles specially framed for them, and differing widely from the principles that white races observe toward one another. The codes for the lesser races vary. Take as instance the Belgian code toward the Congo Free State. This Free State "is not," says the Saturday Review,* "free in any sense of the word. The Belgians have replaced the slavery they found by a system of servitudle at least as objectionable. Of what certain Belgians can do in the way of barbarity Englishmen are painfully aware. Mr. Courtney [in the address already quoted] mentions an instance of a Captain Rom who ornamented his flower-beds with the heads of twenty-one natives killed in a punitive expedition. This is the Belgian idea of the most effectual method of promoting the civilization of the Congo. Exports from the State fall seriously short of the imports; such as they are, they are maintained not by legitimate commerce, but by raids made an the ivory stores of luckless native chiefs where *December 17, I898. * SPECIMENS OF BRITISH HUMANITY. 29, tribute is said to be in arrears. The tax-gatherer, as we know from consular reports, follows every step of life in the Congo State. Yet expenditure is something like a quarter of a million sterling beyond its income, and the King of the Belgians has to bear the burden of ~40,00o a year in order that Belgium may increase her trade by 0.7 per cent." England claims that her code is better than this, and thence makes the dizzy jump that it approaches the stainless and perfect. In truth it is a code for lower races, framed to keep them dependent for unknown periods, and framed with the intent to give the English trade benefits. Her code, as already indicated, is. shrewder business policy. But is the English page so clean and white? Was Captain Rom an exceptional brute to the wretched Africans? It would not seem so if we contemplate the British Soudan campaign. There seem to have been atrocities there well nigh unheard of in 'civilized' warring before. Mr. E. N. Bennett, an eye-witness, tells of these in the January Contemporary Review.* ' "On our left along the lower slopes of Gebel Surgham a large number of camp-followers and native servants were already busy among the white-clad figures which lay stretched in little groups as our shell fire or the long-range volleys of the Lee-Metfords had struck them down. These looters had armed themselves somehow or other with rifles, spears, and even clubs, and made short work of any wounded man they came across. Poor wretches who in their agony had crawled under the scanty shade of a rock or shrub were clubbed to death or riddled with bullets by the irresponsible brutality of these native servants, who were in such wholesome dread of a Dervish, even when prostrate, that they frequently fired several shots into bodies already dead before they advanced to strip the corpse of its gibbeh of arms.... This wholesale *Of Mr. Bennett's title to a hearing the N. Y. Tribune says: "He is not to be coughed down as a credulous schoolmaster, who ought to have confined his energies to entomology and archaeology, and to have kept at a safe distance from the battle-field." 30 SPECIMENS OF BRITISH HUMANITY. slaughter was not confined to Arab servants. It was stated that orders had been given to kill the wounded. Whether this was so or not I do not know, but certainly no protest was made when the Soudanese dispatched scores, of wounded men who lay in their path. The Dervishes who were stretched on the sand within a few yards were bayoneted, or, in some instances, stabbed with their own spears... Arabs who lay further out in the desert at some little distance from the line of march, and happened, unfortunately for themselves, to move or turn over in their agony, were immediately pierced by rifle bullets. On some occasions shots were fired into the bodies of wounded men at such close quarters that the smell of burning flesh was positively sickening." Justification is pleaded because the wounded Arab sometimes treacherously slaughters his enemy. But Mr. Bennett replies that the instances of this 'are, after all, extremely few in number,' and that 'the wounded Dervish has become dangerous because he fully expects to be killed.' He continues: "But no justification whatever exists for the butchery of unarmed or manifestly helpless men lying wounded on the ground. This certainly took place after the battle of Omdurman. Dervishes who lay with shattered legs or arms, absolutely without weapons, were bayoneted and shot without mercy. This unsoldierly work was not even left to the exclusive control of the black troops; our own British soldiers took part in it. At one place, on the western slopes of Surgham, I noticed a fine old Dervish with a gray beard, who, disabled by a wound in his leg, lay pr.ostrate beside a small bush. 'He had apparently attempted to escape toward Omdurman with the rest of the Khalifa's forces who survived, but his wound had prevented this, and the fugitive had sunk down on the ground, about eight yards behind his son, a boy of seventeen, whose right leg had also been lacerated by a bullet. Neither the father nor son had any weapons at all, yet a Highlander stepped out of the ranks and drove his bay SPECIMENS OF BRITISH HUMANITY. 31 onet through the old man's chest. The victim of this needless brutality begged in vain for mercy, and clutched the soldier's bayonet, reddening his hands with his own blood in a futile attempt to prevent a second thrust. No effort was made by any comrade or officer to prevent this gratuitous bit of butchery, nor, of course, could any officer have interfered very well, if the soldier-as was said to be the case-was only acting in accordance with the wishes of the general in command." The general in command was the Sirdar, that Lord Kitchener who has been making the noble appeals to the British purse to found a college near the site of these slaughters, for the advancement of humanity. Let us follow Mr. Bennett's description of British humanity a little farther. "No attempt was made, either on the day of the battle or next day, to do anything for the wounded Dervishes.... To lie for two days without water in the heat of a Soudan August is bad enough, but when the natural thirst is augmented by the fever which invariably accompanies gunshot wounds the torture must be terrible.... Hundreds of wounded Dervishes who had failed to escape from the field were left to perish miserably within easy reach of our succor had it been forthcoming." The story of unspeakable British barbarism continues: "There was another feature in our capture of Omdurman which was truly deplorable. By the time we had repulsed the last Dervish attack and were rapidly advancing upon Omdurman, the streets leading to the southern exits of the town were crowded with fugitives. In addition to mounted Baggaras and Dervish infantry, a chaotic mass of non-combatants, men, women and children, dragging after them camels, horses, and donkeys, laden with goods and chattels-all this confused stream of human beings and animals was pressing madly forward in panic-stricken flight. Orders were given to fire upon the fugitives, and, as the artillerymen on the gunboats from their raised positions could see well over the .32 SPECIMENS OF BRITISH HUMANITY. walls, a deadly fire was opened upon the crowded thoroughfares. One street especially, which led down to the river, was swept by a frightful hail of Maxim bullets, which mowed the fugitives down in scores.... Next day some five hundred dead bodies lay scattered about the streets of Omdurman, and among them were corpses of women and little children.... Two women were bending sorrowfully over the dead body of a Dervish, when,a non-commissioned officer went up and deliberately shot one of the women with a revolver." The attention of those who erroneously think that the Anglo-Saxon is an humane and civilizing race is respectfully called to Mr. Bennett's conclusions: "I have written the above paragraphs with the utmost reluctance, but it is certainly high time that the conscience of civilized nations realized that some considerations are due even to a semi-civilized or barbarous enemy. The conduct of the Belgians in the Congo Free State, the French in Algeria, the Germans in the Camaroons, the Russians in Central Asia, ourselves in South Africa and the Soudan-the conduct of the various nations zwho are sharing in the partition of Africa and Asia, seems to be based on the assumption that the rights of the native in a state of war are practically nil.... "Christian England goes almost wild with indignation if Moslems commit atrocities..... But Protestant symlzpathies seem almost incapable of extension beyond the limlits of Christendom. No public symnpathy is bestowed upon the wretched natives who, when they incur inevitablc defeat at the hands of the civilized invader, are either butchered as they lie wounded on the feld or are left to die wC'ithout an effort to save them." In the London Morning Post of September 29 Lieutenant Winston Churchill wrote.* "We had not gone far when individual Dervishes began to walk toward the advancing squadrons, throwing down their weapons, holding up their hands, and implor*Quoted by Mr. Bennett SPECIMENS OF BRITISH HUMANITY. 33 ing mercy. The laws of war do not admit the right of a beaten enemy to quarter. The victor is not obliged to accept his surrender. Of his charity he may do so, but there is no obligation, provided, of course, that he makes it clear to the suppliant that he must continue to fight." The presumption is that these suppliants for mercy were murdered by the world-civilizing and humane English. If the general assumption of the civilized Powers of Europe, including England, is that 'the rights of the native in a state of war are practically nil,' what will be their opinion of these rights when the natives are not in a state of war? This question searches civilization through and through. The answer to it is that the treatment of the natives in peace will be as far below the standard of treatment of equal whites, as the treatment of the natives in a state of war is below the treatment of the whites in a state of war. The just conclusion from this review of English purposes, achievement, and methods, is that we should not be helping the world by going to the aid of English Imperialism. The vaunted battle for civilization that she has been fighting has been for herself. By going to her rescue in the name of Anglo-Saxonism we should be helping to enthrone English methods of selfishness over mankind. Let England change before she asks this. Let us refuse to, aid her until she does change. Let us act on the truth that the Anglo-Saxonism represented by British Imperialism is not a good, that it is coarse, grasping, domineering and cruel, and if she will walk in that path let her walk alone. Let us save our branch of the race for better things, and restrain ourselves from being used as a tool of her folly. Let us denounce her too flimsy hypocrisy and do what we can, in conjunction with her real statesmen and her nobler citizens, to win her to a more honest and honorable national life. CHAPTER III. Our Crime in the Philippine Islands. 1. The New Policy of Corruption. We now propose to show that the new American Imperialism is a strict reproduction of the British Imperialism that has been described. If that is lovely and desirable, so is its American imitation. But let us permit American Imperialists to speak for themselves and to disclose their own character as we have allowed the English to do. This will show whether the Anglo-Saxonism that would be carried to the Philippines and elsewhere is worth carrying, or should be watchfully kept at home and extinguished. Charles Denby, our one time minister to China and now a member of McKinley's commission to study the Philippines, has published a brief paper in answer to the question "Shall We Keep the Philippines?"* Being a man of prominence and authority among the expansionists we give his words their due weight. They express the change in American morality toward the world which expansionists are inculcating and practising. This man is the type of those who surround and influence the president. He defines a hard and selfish national policy towards the weak. Every important thing that has happened, everything that is happening, goes to establish this proposition: That hard and selfish men, and hard and selfish policies, zill control our imperialist relations; that the kind and well-meaning will be overruled. There is no intention of mildness, humanity and justice, in the forces that are now gaining ascendency in American life. *The Forum, November, I898. NEW POLICY OF CORRUPTION. 35 Here is Mr. Denby, the type of the hard and selfish imperialist politician of the new school, openly impressing upon the country this crass and vulgar European doctrine. Thus Mr. Denby:... We have become a great people. We have a great commerce to take care of. We have to compete with the commercial nations of the world in far-distant markets. Conmmerce, not politics is king. The mlanufacturer and the imerchant dictate to diplomacy, and control elections. The art of arts is the extension of commercial relations,-in plain language, the selling of native products and manufactured goods. "I learned what I know of diplomacy in a severe school. I found amonzg my colleagues not the least hesitation in proposing to their respective Governmentts to do anything which was supposed to be conducive to their interests. There canl be no other rule for the governmllent of all persons wtho are charged with the conduct of affairs than the promotion of the welfare of their respective colunltries." This then is what expansion and that noble 'world diplomacy' with which our ears are being daily tickled, bring us to! Here is Mr. Denby, corrupt and confessedly corrupted by this high diplomacy which is to make us a sainted and respected nation before mankind, glorying in the corruption and trying to corrupt his countrymen. If there was ever needed proof that we should keep ourselves unspotted from the filth and foulness of those European and Asiatic complications that territory stealing will assuredly bring, here is that proof. For contact with European codes inflicts those codes upon us. Denby continues his exposure of Imperialism, and applies its Christlike morality to the Philippines: "We have the right as conquerors to hold the Philippines. We have the right to hold them as part payment of a war indemnity. This policy may be characterized as unjust to Spain; but is the result of the fortunes of war. All nations recognize that the conqueror may dictate the terms of peace." 36 NEW POLICY OF CORRUPTION. "I am in favor of holding the Philippines because I cannot conceive of any alternative to our doing so, except the seillre of territory in Clhina; and I prefer to hold themn rather than to oppress further the helpless Government and people of China. I want China to preserve her autonomy, to become great and prosperous; and I wzant these results not for the interests of China, but for our interests. I alt not the agent or attorney of Chilna; (1and, as an dAmerican, I do not look to the promotioni of China's interests, or Spain's, or any other country's-but simply of our owzn. "The whole world sees in China a splendid market for our native products,-our timber, our locomotives, our rails, our coal oil, our sheetings, our mining-plants and numberless other articles." "Dewey's victory is an epoch in the affairs of the Far East. \We hold our heads higher. We are coming to our own. We are stretching out our hands for what nature meant should be ours. We are taking our proper rank among the nations of the world. WIe are after;markets, the greatest markets now existing in the world..41ontg with these markets will go our beneficent institutions; and hiumantity will bless uss." This is an exquisite example of the British cant and bathos which is exhibiting itself serenely in the new Imperial America. Wherever the basest of international principles of pilfering and freebooting are applied to gain markets, "along with these markets will go our beneficent institutions." The halo of our blessed institutions will pervade and rectify rapacity and wrong! But it will not. We shall not build beneficent institutions on ruffianism and rapacity. 'We are after markets, the greatest markets in the world,' we do not care what we do to get them; we will cheerfully rob and kill, we will wrench their fatherland from the weak and call it ours, we admit it in cold blood, but like the praying professional murderer, we piously declare that God and humanity will bless us in it. How did our war of humanity to rescue NEW POLICY OF CORRUPTION. 37 Cuba establish the irrelevant and unheard-of conclusion that unless we take the Philippines there is 'no alternative except the seizure of territory in China?' There is no bridge between these two irreconcilable opposites excepting the beneficent institutions of American rapacity. The Philippines have done us no wrong, China has done us no wrong, but because Spain wronged Cuba and we had compassion, we do no wrong in wronging either the Philippines or China. This is the Imperialists' creed. Now we do not expect to reach such men as Mr. Denby or Mr. Denby's type-the president, the advisers of the president, the whole tribe of commercial, political and newspaper Imperialists, who are hounding the nation to crime. "Commerce, not politics, is king. The manufacturer and the merchant dictate to diplomacy, and control elections'." We realize this. But we turn away from these classes to the people. We think that when they realize the brazen fraud being practised on them, Ithey will decide to control elections, not only to put an end to the dishonest and ruffianly policy of Imperialism, but to put an end to the supremacy of commerce over man. But Mr. Denby has not even yet conveyed to us all the light he has in him. In a more recent article* he presents Imperialistic principles in their engaging nakedness without the usual shreds of moral clothing. "If," he says, "the argument made herein has any force, the legal and constitutional difficulties which were quoted against expansion have disappeared, and the cold, hard, practical question alone remains. Will the possession of these islands benefit us as a nation? If it will not, set them free tomorrow, and let their people, if they please, cut each other's throats, or play what pranks they please. To this complexion we must come at last, that, unless it is beneficial for us to hold these islands, we should turn them loose." We ask this question: Why, this being the mind and *The Forum, February, I899. 38 NEW POLICY OF CORRUPTION. purpose of our imperialist politicians and commercialists, are they allowed to grimace and pose before the nation as philanthropists and moralists? Why do we not enforce upon them silence about the good they intend to do the conquered savages, when it is an acknowledged lie? 'Let the Filipinos cut each other's throats unless the appropriation of their country will help our trade. Damn the good we might do them. We are not in this expansion business for their good.' It is true we are not, but we command you to stop telling us that we are. We propose to hold this argument on your basis, that of hard, brutal selfishness, and to decide whether it is best for us to put ourselves and the peoples absorbed into your selfish hands by adopting your Imperialist policy. And is it too solemn a question to press upon the moral expansionists, whether they think in their own unselfish minds that they will be able to overcome and rule these selfish commercial Imperialists and keep them in the paths of righteousness after the deed is done? If they are so moonstruck let them study the forces that now rule this country, and compare them with the paths of righteousness. Mr. Denby, who is willing the Filipinos shall cut each other's throats if preventing them will not fill our pockets, has one more word which makes an easy transition from Imperialist theory to Imperialist practice. He writes as an inspired commercial prophet and a poet: "In other lands and other wars the condition of the conquered people has been hard and deplorable. In our case we march bearing gifts, the choicest gifts-liberty and hope and happiness. We carry with us all that gives to the flower of life its perfume. The dusky East rises at our coming; and the Filipino springs to his feet and becomes a free man. This is not poetry, but reality wrought out by a people to whom freedom is the breath of life, and who would scorn to enslave a country or a race." McKINLEY PROCLAIMS WAR. 39 2. McKinley's Proclamation of War. When our Congress passed the resolutions which involved us in war with Spain it pledged the following: Fourth: That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island [Cuba], except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people. In his message to Congress of December, I897, McKinley recorded and pledged himself in now famous and memorable language. Said he: "I speak not of forcible annexation, because that is not to be thought of, and under our code of morality that would be criminal aggression." But one year later, on December 21, I898, this man on his own initiative, without the authority of Congress or the people, more than a month before the Treaty of Peace was ratified by the Senate, and when there was no certainty that it would be ratified, issued the following astounding proclamation to the Filipinos: "With the signature of the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain by their respective plenipotentiaries, at Paris, on the Ioth inst., and as the result of the victories of American arms, the future control, disposition, and government of the Philippine Islands are ceded to the United States. In fulfillment of the rights of sovereignty thus acquired and the responsible obligations of government thus assumed, the actual occupation and administration of the entire group of the Philippine Islands becomes immediately neccessary, and the military government heretofore maintained by the United States in the city, harbor and bay of Manila is to be extended with all possible despatch to the whole of the ceded territory. "In performing this duty the military commander of the United States is enjoined to make known to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, that in succeeding to the sovereignty of Spain, in severing the former political relations of the inhabitants and in establishing a new political power, the authority of the United States is to be exerted for the security of the persons and property of the people of the islands, and for the confirmation of all their private rights and relations. It will be the duty of the commander of the forces of occupation to announce and proclaim in the most public manner that we come, not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employments, and in their personal and religious rights. "All persons who, either by active aid or by honest submission, co-operate with the government of the United States to give effect to these beneficent purposes, will receive the reward of its support and protection. All others will be brought within the lawful rule we have 40 M c KINIEY PROCLAIMS WAR. assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity so far as may be possible. "Within the absolute domain of military authority, which necessarily is and must remain supreme in the ceded territory until the legislation of the United States shall otherwise provide, etc." This proclamation drove the Filipinos into war against the United States. There was nothing left for them to do unless they consented to national enslavement. It was not only natural but right that they should go to war against us. Our Chief Man had notified them by arbitrary decree that if they did not submit to the usurped authority of the United States-"the absolute domain of military authority," he called it-they would be forced into submission by shell and grapeshot. "Honest submission," or death: they had their choice. "Honest submission,, or "forcible annexation." All who did not honestly submit to the proclamation of the tyrant were to be "brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be." On the 5th of February that firmness began to be applied and 4000 heroic Filipinos who could not honestly submit to the self-made despot were killed. The man who killed them was William McKinley. The death of each one of them was groundless manslaughter, McKinley was their murderer. He was their self-condemned murderer, convicted by his own words of one year before. "I speak not of forcible annexation, because that is not to be thought of, and under our code of 1iorality that would be criminal aggression." Under the light of this solemn promise and its bloody repudiation McKinley reveals himself to be the crowning fraud and hypocrite of the age, who has no right to respect from any honest man in the United States. He originally declared a true American principle, that we cannot take any form of authority over a people that is cpposed to that authority without criminal aggression and breaking our code of morality; this code holds of Cuba, of the Philippines, and of every foot of ground not our own under the sun that our cupidity might be disposed to seize. The breaking of this code, con ALL RIGHTS FORFEITED. 4I sciously held and publicly announced, was therefore an act of detestable piracy, bringing shame and dishonor upon the whole nation. The administration and the imperialist press have striven to convince our people that the Filipinos are responsible for the war. This is one of the lies that we must tell each other to save a last remnant of our self-respect. But it is nevertheless a lie with no mitigation. McKinley declared war in his Proclamation, and the Filipinos began hostilities. The feeble McKinley doubtless honestly hoped that they would honestly submit to his declaration that they were to be as a conquered and subject people to the United States, without the sad necessity of being obliged to forcibly conquer them. The subterfuge did not work. They had never acknowledged the sovereignty of the United States: for the United States to declare sovereignty was therefore for the United States to declare war. After the "criminal aggression" of McKinley's proclamation that a state of virtual war already existed, that they must submit or be killed, there was nothing for them to do but to fight. And every true American who resents this dastardly aggression by the president upon a harmless race of barbarians, should be deeply thankful that they did fight, and must hope that our arms will not be able to subdue them. No honorable American can uphold the criminal attempt of American potentates to deprive a weak race of its liberty in the name of liberty. As liberty-loving American citizens it is our duty to uphold the Filipinos in their righteous and patriotic attempt to keep our yoke from falling on them. 3. All Our Rights Forfeited. For those who hesitate at this let us examine the president's rights when he proclaimed honest submission or kind but firm death to the Filipinos. I. There was no technical, formal, legal, or constitutional sanction for his proclamation. 2. There would have been no right or 42 ALL RIGHTS FORFEITED. sanction for it if the peace treaty had been ratified when he issued it. Let us first consider what rights we had in the Philippines before the treaty was approved, remembering that its subsequent approval was not retroactive, and could not lend legality to anything that was done before. Now whether we had any after its ratification, we certainly had no status of authority in the Philippines before that act. We were there purely as opponents of Spain. We were not there as conquerors of the Filipinos, but as conquerors of Spain; the Filipinos had helped us drive Spain out. When hostilities ceased the islands were not ours except by temporary occupation. They were not ours either legally or morally. Spain had not ceded them and we had not decided to accept or even ask for them. The only power in America that could make our request for them legal and binding, or accept them if offered, was the Senate, and that had not done so. The propositions drawn up by the Peace Commissioners at Paris were merely an arrangement by which the United States, acting through the Senate as ordered in the Constitution, could request or demand the islands of Spain if it saw fit. The Senate had not acted on the treaty and had consequently not even decided to ask for the Philippines. Our rights even technically were therefore nil. A proclamation of sovereignty from the president when the whole question whether we should take or claim the islands was pending, was justified by nothing but the arbitrary will of that ruler. It was no less an outrage than if he should proclaim our sovereignty over Canada, Ireland or the British Indies. The act was an insult to Spain and a profligate attack upon the Filipinos. Having issued this unlawful proclamation and so declared war on the Philippine Islanders, we forfeited all further claims over them excepting such as we might win by force if our challenge to war were taken up. After that proclamation the ratification of the treaty was a dead letter, for by our unlawful action all possibility of obtain SPAIN'S EMPTY SOVEREIGNTY. 43 ing the Philippines legally or morally was lost. The question was now between us and them and was one of force. Of course if they chose to accept the position of a people conquered by us without being conquered, that was their business; but legally and morally they ought not to have accepted that humiliation, and they did not do so. The president's impudent aggression also leserved anything but success. To recapitulate: as we now stand we have no rights in the Philippines and can obtain none except by brute force. We ruled ourselves out by McKinley's act of usurpation. Spain would have been justified in resenting that act had she been able, and Spain being unable the natives were justified. Until the acceptance of the treaty by both nations our policy in the Islands could be only provisional. If Spain finally approved the treaty she tansferred to us such rights of sovereignty in the Phillipines as she possessed. 4. Could Spain Sell Us Sovereignty? The two questions that next arise are, How much sov: ereignty did Spain possess to cede? and, Whether, even if she had any actual sovereignty, her cession of it to us gave us any true or moral rights over the Islands. According to the theory of national rights established by our revolution against England, Spain had no sovereignty in the Philippine Islands. Her yoke was arbitrarily imposed and maintained against their will. When there was a gleam of hope of success they resisted. There was certainly no moral sovereignty in this-it was merely the sovereignty of an overpowering brutality. But now for the legal sovereignty. Spain was unable to conquer Cuba before the war with us had destroyed her fleets and crippled all her resources. After that disaster is there any cause to believe that Spain could have quelled the insurgent Filipinos? None whatever. The Filipinos had seized the opportunity of our Spanish war to strike another blow for freedom. After the war the 44 SPAIN'S EMPTY SOVEREIGNTY. weakened Spaniards could no more have conquered them than they previously could conquer Cuba. Hence Spain had no lawful sovereignty in the Philippines. We may grant her the same supremacy there that she had in Cuba when we took up Cuba's cause, and we then denied that she had any rightful supremacy there. We began war to compel her to take her unrighteous hands away from that property to which she had lost all right. For the same reasons Spain had no sovereignty over the Philippines to sell or give away, wherefore we could buy none of her. We, then, have entered into the same relation to the Philippines that Spain stood in to Cuba-the relation that caused us to declare a war of liberation. Who will declare war against us to liberate the Philippines? What great philanthropic Power, in response to the claims of humanity, will rise to this great moral crisis and command us to evacuate the territory that we are subduing to our new greed? Either our war for Cuba was unjust, or, on the principles which we invoked to justify it, we ought to l1e driven out of the Philippines. If we continue our present Spanish policy there we condemn our war against Spain as groundless and iniquitous. We have the answer to our first question. Spain had no sovereignty in the Asiatic group to cede. She could grant a parchment claim-she could also have given away as much of Cuba as that any time these years back. As to whether we could acquire a moral right to this territory by Spanish cession, our historical actions settled that question beyond a peradventure long ago. When we declared our independence of England we announced the principle that a people who were dissatisfied with the rule of a nation claiming them as a colony might declare that rule null and void and ended, and that if they so declared, it was at an end. This principle declares that a nation cannot extend its authority over a people that declines its authority. We may now find it convenient to repudiate these doctrines-we are repudiating them-but OUR DEBT TO THE FILIPINOS. 45 we cannot do it without in the same act overthrowing the foundations of our own national life, of our history, and of our freedom. We may be perfectly confident that whatever we now do to these helpless Islands is making new precedent for ourselves, and that if we pull down the bulwarks of justice and freedom by which we have thus far protected our own liberties, those liberties at home will next fall, and domestic tyranny will take the place of the independence established by the blood and courage and magnanimity of our forefathers. The time has come to choose, and we must do, so with clear knowledge that the fate of all we have loved most in America is in our choice. As we choose for the Filipinos we choose for ourselves. If we disregard their rights and liberties such is the stern retribution of nature's laws that it is upon our own necks we shall be placing the servile yoke. 5. Our Great Debt to the Filipinos. There is no doubt of the direction we have taken thus far. Our course toward the Filipinos has been one of the utmost perfidy. We had faithfully announced to the whole world that we harbored no designs of conquest or aggrandizement in going to war with Spain. The Filipinos took us at our word and welcomed us as deliverers. By our own declaration-addressed nominally to Cuba but universal in its terms and promises-we were pledged to the Filipinos not to violently subjugate them to ourselves. It was ont this pledge that they rccizcd uits. If they had believed our promise to be a lie, as it turned out to be, what would their course have been! It is most certain that they would not have co-operated with us. They had no knowledge whatever of us-most of them had never heard that we exist-and they could have had no reason to think that our tyranny would be preferable'to Spain's. They were seeking freedom, freedom from all alien rule. When they learned anything about us they must have learned that we were a stronger 46 OUR DEBT TO THE FILIPINOS. nation than Spain and they might have very rationally decided to help the Spaniards against us, on the ground that it would be easier for them to drive the Spaniards out later than to drive a more powerful people out if it gained a footing. If they had done this our 'brilliant' career in the Far East would have been sadly tarnished. Could we have crushed Spain there if the Islanders had opposed us? It would have taken much of our time and blood and money, and the end is doubtful. For if the prospects had been brighter in the Philippines, Spain would have held out a little longer in Cuba, and in a few more days our Cuban army would have been helpless from disease and must have suffered a terrible punishment. Spain would have annihilated our land forces. To say that the Filipinos saved us from this humiliation is not a wild statement. Since they are'fighting against us now for freedom there is no reason to suppose that if they had known our real designs they would have fought for us then to help us make them our subjects. If they had not joined the Spaniards to keep us out, there were two other courses open: either to fight both the Spaniards and us, or to help us defeat the Spanish and then turn upon us. The result in either case would have been disastrous to our arms and prestige. The whole world would have looked upon our Spanish war differently if we had been driven to fight the natives before the war closed. The one justification of the war having been knocked from under, the restraints upon continental sympathy and interference would have fallen off and Spain would undoubtedly have found active supporters. There was Germany aching for a plausible excuse to order us out of that region. This would have been a stunningly plausible excuse-that on the pretence of liberating the Filipinos from Spain we were killing them (which we have since done). It would have been universally believed that since we were lying with regard to the Philippines, we were also lying with regard to OUR DEBT TO THE FILIPINOS. 47 Cuba. What support could we have then found anywhere? England was able to give us moral support on the ground that we were waging an unselfish fight for humanity, but if this ground had been withdrawn, that support must not only have been much weaker but Continental Powers would have combined to disregard it and save Spain from humiliation. What then? We must have backed down or been the cause of a world war. England might or might not have helped then. If she had done so the war must have been infinitely more terrible and to no purpose but to gratify our desire to steal, and to establish the right of the Anglo-Saxon race to steal everywhere. If she had declined to back our hypocrisy with warships we should have received an exceeding great thrashing and would have exceedingly more than deserved it. To return to our destinies in the Philippines. With the Filipinos hostile, or ready to attack us after the routing of the Spanish, our conquest of the islands would not have been the easy task that it was. The Filipino leaders have not shown themselves lacking in intelligence. Had they taken an attitude of enmity to both combatants, the land battle at Manila would probably have been a draw, and both sides been considerably weakened. Assuming, as we have seen that we justly may, that the hostility of the natives to us would have deferred (perhaps indefinitely) the surrender of Santiago, the war would have continued in the Philippines. We should have been forced to send thousands more troops to carry on a recognized and admitted war of conquest, in defiance of the moral judgment of mankind, and under difficulties rendered distressing by the native opposition. Would the war have been ended yet had this transpired? It is unlikely. Moreover, if the real intentions of our political masters had been known earlier the support of the great majority of the American people would have been withdrawn from 48 SUPERLATIVE TREACHERY. the war. Americans would not at that time have endured the thought of subduing the native Filipinos to our benevolent sway by force. This would have so embarrassed the Administration and Congress as to oblige them to abandon the conquest of the Philippines or to declare as a finality that they should be free and independent after the eviction of Spain. 6. Superlative Treachery. What is the whole truth? That we owe the greatest gratitude to these heroic Islanders, that we have shamelessly denied that debt. Their faith in us and aid contributed much to the success and speedy close of the war -we gained that faith and aid by deception. No sooner was the war done and their usefulness to us over than we came out in our true colors and announced our sovereignty, an act that, committed earlier, would have prevented alliance and made them our deadly foes. We have shown by this deed that honor does not exist in us. It is one of those pieces of inconceivable infamy which have sullied the records of monarchies and which we abominated for a hundred proud years. We can only wipe this stain out by restoring the usurped sovereignty of these territories to the people who dwell in them. Follow in further detail the course of American hypocrisy toward this unhappy people. Our Imperial and monarchical press may find that it serves their cause of prejudice to defame Aguinaldo, but their tirades lose force when we recall the opinions of the British press of our own "Mr." Washington a century and a quarter ago. Moreover, considering the lie that we have perpetrated upon the Filipinos, and sustained with our Imperialist press, there is better ground to believe him than his traducers. And here are declarations by him after General Otis had transmitted McKinley's proclamation of sovereignty to the Archipelago: "General Otis calls himself in the proclamation referred to 'military governor of the Philippine Islands,' and I protest once and a thousand SUPERLATIVE TREACHERY. 49 times, and with all the energy of my soul, against such authority. I solemnly proclaim that I have never had, neither in Singapore or in Hongkong, nor here in the Philippines, any understanding or agreement, neither by word nor by writing, to recognize the sovereignty of America in this, my loved country. On the contrary, I say that I returned to these islands on board an American warship on the i9th of May of last year with the decided and manifest proposition to carry on the war with the Spaniards, to reconquer our liberty and our independence.... "I solemnly protest in the name of God, the root and fountain of all justice and of all right, and who has given me the power to direct my dear brothers in the difficult work of our regeneration, against this intrusion of the Government of the United States in the sovereignty of these islands. Equally I protest in the name of all the Filipino people against this intrusion because when they gave me their vote of confidence, electing me, though unworthy, as president of the nation, when they did this they imposed on me the duty to sustain to the death their liberty and independence. "Lastly, I protest against this act, so little expected, of the sovereignty of America in these islands, in the name of all that has passed, of which I have proofs in my possession, referring to my relations with the American authorities, which prove in the most unequivocal manner that the United States did not bring me from Hongkong to make war against the Spaniards to benefit the Americans, but to help us to gain our liberty and independence, for the attainment of which object the American authorities promised me verbally their decided and efficacious co-operation." Fraud is here openly charged by the responsible leader of the Philippine people upon the American authorities, and why should we not believe him? The American authorities were then sailing briskly before the full gust of Philanthropy. Everything they did was from humanity to the down-trodden-they said. Our deep and mighty ruler had not yet taken the people into confidence regarding his plans of forcible occupation or affectionate annihilation, so that nothing restrained him from playing a confidence game on the believing Aguinaldo to gain his support. True, if the president and his friends did this they were unconscionable liars, and the nation ought to set itself right by denouncing the lie and keeping the promise made or implied. But they were likewise unconscionable liars if they made the promise at the time in good faith and have since concluded "for reasons of State" to break it. Among great Powers this kind of change of mind or lying -would be sufficient cause for 50 SUPERLATIVE TREACHERY. a destructive war, and our criminal responsibility for the change is not diminished by the fact that the Philippines are not a great Power. As no cause is apparent why at that time the pledges should not have been made, we must believe that they were made; the more so as the natives have since proved themselves willing to lay down their lives for that promised independence. This is the strongest proof that they would not have aided us without satisfying assurances that the prize was to be their own freedom. The Filipino junta at Hongkong has made the following incriminating statement: "Information which has leaked through the Pinkertons sent here by President McKinley to investigate the shipments of arms to the Filipinos shows that the first shipment of arms to Aguinaldo was made by order of the American Government through Consul Wildman, hence the shipment per the Wing Foi. The American Government subsequently telegraphed to cease this, coincident with the change of policy to annexation. Mr. Wildman and Rear Admiral Dewey promised to pay, but have not yet paid, for a subsequent expedition by the Abbey, authorized by Admiral Dewey, who afterwards seized the steamer, and she is still held. Papers respecting this are now in possession of the Secretary of the Navy. The protestations of Admiral Dewey and other Americans that they have made no promises are ridiculous. It view of these facts, let the American people judge how the nation's word of honor was pledged to the Filipinos and confided in by them and violated by the recent treachery of General Otis." Consider this fairly. Our policy did change at a certain time. At some point McKinley made up his mind to aim at the retention of the Islands. Before that there was no reason why we should not treat the Filipinos with confidence and supply them with arms to assist us. We actually did so. But after the change of heart there was every reason why we should not give them arms which they were likely to use later against us. We can get our minds to comprehend the stultification of our Government by putting Ireland in the place of the Asiatic archipelago. Fancy us engaged in a war for humanity's sake to rescue the Soudan from further bloody British assizes. We have issued the sacred manifesto to the world "that the United States hereby disclaims any dis OUR LIE OF LOVE. 5 I position or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control," and our revered Chief Magistrate has solemnly declared that forcible annexation is not to be thought of because it would be criminal aggression. Relying on these ought-to-be inviolable pledges, Ireland has risen to arms to strike for her own freedom, and has welcomed our forces to her soil to expel the English. We succeed, but instead of keeping faith with Ireland we demand the cession of her from England for a small price. We announce that our promises of freedom applied only to the Soudan, and our president issues a proclamation of American military sovereignty over Ireland. We can easily imagine what would happen. The Irish in Ireland and the Irish-Americans would stir up such an uproar against the astounding swindle, that we should be glad to get out of Ireland on any terms, if need be paying a price for our aggression and lie. And the whole of Europe would justly and if need be forcibly sustain Ireland's demands. Remote barbarians are in a different posture, and we can boldly bully them with impunity. They have no powerful friends and we have nothing to fear. But the deed is as rascally and abominable as if we were to deal Ireland a similiar treachery in like circumstances. 7. The American Lie of Love. To those who believe that American honor is still worth preserving, the language of the main author (or nerveless tool, perhaps) of this perfidy, William McKinley, is animating reading. He dilated upon the benevolence of the United States in his proclamation of sovereignty or war, informing the natives how good it would be for some of them to be killed if they could not realize the blessing of becoming our property. Tenderly eloquent words are the following, illumined by the benevolent murder of thousands, which followed them: "Finally, it should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of 52 OUR LIE OF LOVE. the inhabitants of the Philippines, by assuring to them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule. "In the fulfillment of this high mission, supporting the temperate administration of affairs for the greatest good of the governed, there must be sedulously maintained the strong arm of authority, to repress disturbance, and to overcome all obstacles to the bestowal of the blessings of good and stable government upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free flag of the United States." The terms in which General Otis transmitted the president's ultimatum will also raise the pride of freedompreaching Americans. He says: "In the war against Spain the United States forces came here to destroy the power of that nation and to give the blessings of peace and individual freedom to the Philippine people; that we are here as friends of the Filipinos to protect them in their homes, their employments, their individual and religious liberty; that all persons who, either by active aid or honest endeavor, co-operate with the Government of the United States to give eftect to the beneficent purposes, will receive the reward of its support and protection.... "I am fully of the opinion that it is the intention of the United States Government, while directing affairs generally, to appoint the representative men now forming the controlling element of the Filipinos, to civil positions of trust and responsibility, and it will be my aim to appoint thereto such Filipinos as may be acceptable to the supreme authorities at Washington. "It is also my belief that it is the intention of the United States Government to draw from the Filipino people so much of the military force of the islands as is possible, and consistent with a free and well constituted government of the country and it is my purpose to inaugurate a policy of that character." The 'representative men of the Filipinos' were to be bribed into acceptance of American authority by the promise of tempting offices under the United States. Poor, mean payment this to a people for resigning its independence, and a contemptible method of gaining possession of that independence. Another application of the noble 'spoils of office' system which our rulers have for deluding and tyrannizing over their own countrymen. And how conciliatory and inviting that assurance of our Otis that the Philippine people would some of them be graciously permitted to serve in the ranks of the military to keep their OUR LIE OF LOVE. 53 country in subjection to the United States! This must have been a flash of Otis's own private humor to help his staggering president out of a ditch, for what does the mighty Secretary of War soon after say on this subject? He speaks thus:* "The natives of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines do not understand our purposes and ways of government sufficently to admit of their being made part of our military establishment to the extent of organizing them into companies, battalions and regiments at once. Our officers of greatest experience with them are of this opinion. In time this could doubtless be done, but it will require education. By degrees, a company could be given to a regiment to be utilized as scouts and guides; further on, a battalion could be added, and in time things working well, regiments could be organized, but it will take time, so much time, that for the uses of the immediate present and some time in the future, they could not be wisely counted as affording any considerable strength to the service, however many might be provided for by a Congressional act. They are a possible, even probable factor, of the future, but not for the present." What is to be done to reconcile this with general Otis's volatile assurances? Here there is no chance for mistake or double interpretation. The American government promises something it has no intention of performing for a very long time, if ever, in order to get firm military grasp on the Filipinos. The deception stands in black and white. Otis says, 'It is my purpose to inaugurate a policy drawing from the Filipino people so much of the military force of the islands as is possible.' The War Department at Washington says, 'For use as native soldiers the Filipinos are a possible,.even a probable factor, of the fulture, but not for the present.' We defy the European Powers to produce a more barefaced instance of fraud in their own dealings with savages than this masterpiece. It is not unfair to take the president as the leader of the Imperialist phrenzy, and in his utterances to estimate the sense and unselfishness of all. We find him in his Boston banquet speech repeating the bathos which is the stock in trade of the British expansionists. His language is their language, and we hear him babbling the phrases *Contained in a statement from the War Department on the needed army legislation, issued Feb. i9, 1899 54 OUR LIE OF LOVE. of Chamberlain, Salisbury, Rosebery, Curzon and the rest. He speaks of our flag in the Philippines, "where it now floats, the symbol and assurance of liberty and justice." It floats over the graves of many dead Filipinos who died from accepting our assurances of liberty and justice. The immortal lie that we have not sought to confiscate the Philippine archipelago is reiterated-"It was a trust we have not sought;" God thrust it upon us, he says. God was the cause of our treachery to the trusting natives, God compelled us to shoot them down when our dastardly intentions were discovered, God forces us against our virtuous wish to plant ourselves in the Orient in order to bring our mailed fist within arm's length of China to smash holes in her if necessary for our sacred trade. McKinley says: "Our concern was not for territory or trade or empire, but for people,. whose interests and destiny, without our willing, had been put in our hands." "No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiments, thought and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun....They go with the fiat: 'V read ye not the changeless truth, the free can conquer but to save.'" It is not pleasant, but the question must be asked: Does this man think that he is talking to a nation of fools? If his words are not mere re-election vapor, he is the only man in the United States who is ignorant that what is thrusting us into the Orient is not God but Greed-greed for trade. Unless his mind has been unsettled by greatness the pious McKinley knows as every other American knows that if our priceless principles had not undergone a change since we started on our errand of mercy to Cuba, to stop the Spaniards from shooting Cubans, we should not be shooting Filipinos now because they wanted the same mercy at our hands that we promised to Cuba. If we must be villains let us not sneak and deny it and pub FOOLING ALL THE PEOPLE. 55 lish a guinea pig prospectus that we have taken God into partnership. There is only one defence for McKinley, if he is not a deceiver: he is dying of majesty. This was the fate of president Faure. A French statesman and physician, noting the signs of premature decay, said: "If M. Faure is not soon turned out of the Presidency he will die from general paralysis, the effect of 'folie de grandeur.' " M. Faure was so great that no one could speak to him first. For charity's sake let us believe that McKinley is so great that he can see nothing as it is but only as his magnificence of mind shapes it. More reading of his speech will not change our opinion: "We could not discharge the responsibilities upon us until these islands became ours either by conquest or treaty. There was but one alternative, and that was either Spain or the United States in the Philippines. The other suggestion showed, first, that they should be tossed into the arena for the strife of nations; or, second, be lost to the anarchy and chaos of no protectorate at all, and were too shameful to be considered." This is in defence of our policy of making ourselves masters of the Philippines and of exterminating the portion of their inhabitants who- will not consent. But the truth is quite different. 8. Fooling All the People. It is one of the recent novelties of free government to be obliged to defend the right of the governed to be consulted. Mr. McKinley has enunciated and acted upon the doctrine that we may govern a people against their will according to our own ideas of their good. The application of this tyrannical principle was the cause of our disgraceful war to prevent the independence of the Filipinos. The McKinley statement of this doctrine is the most remarkable and revolting expression of political bombast of the century, assuming that its author is not insane. It is this: "Did we need their consent to perform a great act for humanity? We had it in every aspiration of their minds, in every hope of their hearts. Was it necessary to ask their consent to capture Manila, the 56 FOOLING ALL THE PEOPLE. capital of their islands? Did we ask their consent to liberate them from Spanish sovereignty or to enter Manila Bay and destroy the Spanish sea power there? We did not ask these; we were obeying a higher moral obligation, which rested on us, and which did not require anybody's consent. We were doing our duty by them, as God gave us the light to see our duty, with the consent of our own consciences, and with the approval of civilization. Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sovereignty from their islands, and while the war that destroyed it was in progress we could not ask their views. Nor can we now ask their consent." Pardon must be asked for comment on fallacies so bare as these. Our forcing Spain to take herself out of the Philippines was the "great act of humanity" alluded to. To have this done was the mighty 'aspiration and hope of their hearts,' and it was this aspiration and hope that gave consent to what we did, the capture of Manila, et cetera. McKinley justifies our course by the fact that we had this tacit consent. But then, by his own words, that consent extended no farther than the expulsion of Spain. That consent explicitly contradicted and forbade our taking Spain's place as sovereign. Even the consent to force Spain out did not exist if our entrance into her shoes was to be coupled with it. This is so undeniable that for McKinley to invoke God's sanction on our 'great act' after we have gone forward and stultified that act by taking the very place that Spain held, is raving blasphemy. "We were obeying a higher moral obligation"-was there anything higher or moral in our ousting Spain to seize her post of sovereignty? Neither our consciences nor civilization ever approved this. Mr. McKinley knows well enough the logical thimblerigging in which he is engaged, always supposing that his mind has not failed. He seeks to make a fact which justifies one course justify a course that is the antithesis and overthrow of the first. The Filipinos wanted freedom: that justified us in driving their master out; they wanted freedom; that justified us in becoming their master ourselves. Listen reverently to the mind which can evolve such marvels. It says: 'Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sov FOOLING ALL THE PEOPLE. 57 ereignty from the islands.' This was true provided we ourselves had then claimed no sovereignty there, otherwise it was absolutely false. In fact McKinley had already, before making this extravagant speech, declared his sovereignty and a war had issued from it. We had broken our obligation to the islands by replacing one sovereignty with another, and by not withdrawing or expelling our own sovereignty. The most wonderful logical break of this demented man remains to be told. 'While the war that destroyed Spanish sovereignty was in progress we could not ask the Filipinos' views,' he says. Very well, grant this. "Nor can we ask it now," he goes on. "Indeed, can any one tell me in what form it could be marshaled and ascertained until after peace and order, so necessary to the reign of reason, shall be secured and established? A reign of terror is not the kind of rule under which right action and deliberate judgment are possible. It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers." By this, McKinley the Magnificent informs us that immediately after the Spanish war ceased the Filipino war began, that there was no time or space between them for asking the views of the Filipinos on what they would like to have us do. O McKinley, do you think that we are all besotted with grandeur like yourself? Do you think that we have forgotten that there was a long period between those wars during which you might have 'marshaled and ascertained' the views of the islanders, and that you elected to cut the knot and settle the whole matter according to your own views, by proclaiming yourself their sovereign? After your carnival of murder is ended how else will you learn their views than by doing as you might and should have done prior to your proclamation? You did not wish to give them a chance to express their preferences, lest they might oppose your ambitions for empire, and that is the secret of your not inquiring. That is the secret of your insolent manifesto calling on them to obey you. And now, like a coward, 58 FOOLING ALL THE PEOPLE. you would run away to evade even the memory of this interval and what happened in it, pretending that the 'misguided Filipinos,' as you arrogantly called them, began to 'shoot their rescuers down' as soon as Spain surrendered, and gave you no time to discover their will. But no one will be deceived, for all know that after your mind, under the dictation of corporation kings, was resolved to hold the Philippines as yours, there was no intention on your part of consulting them in good faith. Some farce of consultation may have gone through your mind for a, later day-with their representative citizens, the whites and big property owners, in order to have them perform the mock-ceremony of voting authority for acts already done. And you, Mr. McKinley, who out of a state of confidence and repose had brought a reign of terror and destruction in those islands, equalling and surpassing the terror and destruction under Spain, could say to the American people, "It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to be liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers"! Who was shooting the rescued down? What did the 'liberators' deserve for turning into masters and coercers but to be shot down? You, McKinley, having by voluntary unlawful act made the blood of two races flow, arouse unbounded compassion for your suffering when in stately melancholy you close your comfortable Boston feast by allusion to the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where 'every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart.' The effusive sophistries of the national executive, whether the result of aberration or dishonesty, have a public effect. They impose on many, for raw and brutal though they are, the people have allowed this executive to continue his course. It can only follow that the people are themselves either dull or devoid of conscience. Is a HONORABLE SOLUTION. 59 people that follows such lead, accepts as guileless truth a shower of feathery fairy tales, takes a man seriously who says twice two are five, because he has political authority, is such a people any better in mind or character than its deceiver? The American people have changed since the ring of Expansion was put in their nose. The presence of this ring is public advertisement that the AngloSaxon race has already lost independence. To a people of independence and nerve a president could not have poured out a speech of bilge-water. The most hopeless sign for America is that that speech was not repudiated instantly by the whole continent. 9. The Honorable Solution of the Problem. What ought we to have done, and what ought we to do? We ought to have signified unequivocally to the Filipinos that we had no intention of becoming their sovereigns in any form. As soon as Spain surrendered we should have made this irrevocable disclaimer. It cannot be said that this would have been impossible or impolitic, for the American Peace Commissioners had instructions from the Administration to require the cession of the island of Luzon. "The instructions of the President when we started out were to take Luzon," admitted Mr. Frye, one of the peace commissioners, when cross-examined in the Senate by Mr. Vest. This developed into a demand for the whole Philippine group. Then was the time to have pledged ourselves to make the entire archipelago free. Congress ought to have taken this stand and compelled the shilly-shallying president to make it. Congress ought to have pledged itself and the country before the departure of the peace commission that all territory obtained from Spain by cession should be made free and independent. It was also politic. We have labored from the first under the suspicion that the disinterestedness of our demands from Spain did not ring true. We could have removed the suspicion by Congressional declaration that 60 HONORABLE SOLUTION. we should hold none of the territory as ours, and much friction would have been saved. We were prevented from this honorable course by the conspiracy of the president to keep everything he could get, and by the pitiful servility of Congress to the president's orders. The president listened to corporate commands, transmitted them to congress, and congress obeyed. If congress had pledged that all acquired territory should be free, our dastardly war to enslave the Philippines would have been averted. McKinley, being properly muzzled by congressional act, could not have issued his aggrandizing proclamation of peaceable sovereignty or forcible conquest. Our course would have been plain from the beginning: we should have aided the Cubans, Porto Ricans, and Filipinos to set up independent governments of their own, and should have been spared the fatal complications which the aggression of the president has loaded upon us. The questions of Imperialism, Expansion and Militarism would not have been raised at all. What should our relation to the independent nations have been after we had established them? If we could have trusted ourselves not to be seized with the grabbing epilepsy, a simple guardianship to extend no farther than keeping other Powers off and assisting the native governments to police themselves as they learned self-governing forms, would have answered. This was one course. It was ruled out because we very early showed that we could not trust ourselves in the presence of property without itching to steal it, and that whatever we assumed to protect in the mask of philanthropy would soon be transformed into our private property by circumvention or force. But another, far wiser, course was open-one which preserved us from the evils of Imperialism and secured to those concerned a higher good than our single guardianship. We should have formed, and should now form, HONORABLE SOLUTION. 01 with Great Britain, Switzerland, and perhaps Germany, a Joint Protectorate over the Philippines, upon a plan binding all to the two simple principles of protecting the islands from predatory powers, and assisting the free government constituted by the inhabitants to preserve internal order. I name Switzerland because she represents advanced ideas of freedom, justice and democracy. Having no temptation to avaricious aggrandizement she would bring into the counsels of the protectorate elevated principles and impartial judgments. There are decisive advantages in this method. A single nation might veer over to selfishness-it nearly always does-but several nations will act as checks on one another and adhere to the pulrpose of advancing the interests of their charge. No private motives could be suspected and the joint protectorate would enjoy the full confidence: of the natives; its suggestions would be honored and the progress of the people be as rapid as it is in them to make. If there is any foundation for the belief of some that a reign of anarchy would follow if the natives were left alone, the misfortune would be prevented by the combined powers. If the Filipinos knew that internal wars would not be allowed they would have little inclination to attempt them, and would learn to govern themselves without the sword. The single nation makes the internal disturbances of a dependency the signal for taking more authority to itself, where a real protector would stand in the firm and friendly relation of arbitrator, striving to make the combatants feel the consequences of their folly, without robbing the nation of liberty. The system would be an experiment before the world in the best methods of advancing backward races. All the trials made by single nations are of small importance because the commercial interests of the governing people shoulder every other aim out,. But the results obtained HONORABLE SOLUTION. by an honest experiment would be so convincing that their adoption in all colonies would follow. The United States would be saved from Imperialism. No increase either of army or navy would be required, the forces of the combined powers being equal to any emergency. But the existence of the combination would prevent an emergency from arising. We should indicate to the world our continued and strengthened adherence to the principles of peace, our disgust at the orgies of selfishness of European Powers in their colonial affairs, which threaten to set the whole world in a blaze of war. We should clear our skirts of deception. Duty is being made to carry the burden of rascally selfishness, and the way out of the dilemma for the nation is a plan extricatiny duty from selfishness. Accepting as true that the people mainly want to follow duty and that the commercial promoters are, by sharp practice, making them think that duty cannot be performed without expansion and imperialism, the one necessary thing is to drive these tricksters out of their cover and unmask them. A policy that needs in full all the philanthropic demands that they can urge, and yet without imperialism, one that does all the good that can be done for the Filipinos and yet without expansion, leaves their deceptive selfishness without a veil: and joint protection is such a policy. Having this to advocate we know that any who oppose it, still demanding annexation or sole American guardianship, have a private axe to grind. We then have to face the proposition of commercial greed, without religion or morality to hide its sins, and the great mass of upright Americans will give it the doom it deserves. It will cease then to be incumbent upon any one, in real-. ity or imagination, to support a measure that contains the seeds of national destruction. From no side could suspicion of dishonor or failure to realize the highest conception of duty be brought against the United States, and HONORABLE SOLUTION. 63 the principles and institutions of this country would remain firmly anchored to the rock of freedom. What now remains of the favorite defenses of the wrong we have been doing? Absolutely nothing. It is said by those who have put us into the hole that we had no honorable way but to go into the hole, by taking the Philippines. They summon as the proof that every other course was 'not to be thought of,' and they enumerate the following possible courses: To turn the islands back to Spain; To give them to some other power or powers; or, To leave them to themselves, a prey to domestic anarchy and seizure by the predatory nations of Europe. Since we had to keep them, they say, we had to conquer them, and that made conquering them honorable. But since there was another honorable course we did not have to keep them, and therefore we did not have to conquer them, and the proof that it was honorable to conquer them is destroyed. But the disingenuousness of our imperialist government will not bear scrutiny, even supposing that a joint protectorate had been impossible; for a formal protectorate by us which gave the islands independent government and freedom, warning other powers off and lending our aid to keep the internal peace and help the internal development of a nation recognized by us as free, would have borne no resemblance to the protectorate of possession which presidential majesty with the whipped consent of congress is going on to establish. This kind of protection is carefully ignored by imperialists, as if it were unimaginable. Their studied silence exposes the indecency of our position. They want a protectorate that contains sovereignty, and to extenuate the usurpation and shame of it they call it a state of quasi sovereignty. It is an awkward position to be in, that of slaying men to make them love us. What ought a great nation to do in such circumstances? Go on slaying to prove that we cannot be made to back down even when we are wrong? 64 HONORABLE SOLUTION. That is about where our Filipino war puts us. The theory of International Force is that when a nation has begun a disgraceful row without color of cause, it must keep on and whip its unoffending adversary or lose caste and respect. This is the creed of the district bully. What does he know or care about justice? Let us take another case. A school master begins to thrash a pupil, and in the midst of it discovers that the boy is not guilty. If he is a brute and a fool he goes on with the whipping, saying that if we should stop before the job was done the boy wouldn't respect or love him. We are performing exactly that tomfoolery in the Philippines. Our rulers think that they need a thrashing on general principles to make them understand that we're boss. It is all false and ridiculous. Being in the midst of a bad war which our chiefs undertook for conquest and personal ambition, the right and honorable way is to bring the business to a sudden end by acknowledging that we are wrong, indemnifying the Filipinos for the evil we have done them, and giving them self-government and freedom. And there is no other honorable course. We can afford to do it because we are strong. To say that it would be cowardly is preposterous. What we are doing is the cowardly thing: to think of such foulness as we are transacting to those poor harmless savages makes a true American bitterly ashamed of his country! It is meanness incarnate. We can never hold up our heads as we have done. The vile spot will not wash out, it is there indelibly, a red cruel stain of damnable infamy. Every day that the war goes on deepens our crime and shame. Talk of cowardice! A man who caught an innocent boy and skinned him would be no worse than we are in this sublimely wanton ruffianism. The people ought to rise in retributive indignation and compel the puppets at Washington to stop this thing. There is no hope unless they do, the craven congress has adjourned, and unless the people thunder their rage and shame, and surge over the Administration poltroonery HONORABLE SOLUTION. 65 with an inflexible will that this brutality shall cease, it will drag on to lower and lower depths of moral damnation. Better America ought to be heard now. The politicians have had their fling, selfishness has steered the nation, they have guided us into the crater of a volcano. Now let the voice of American citizens speak. Now let those who believe that we have a higher destiny than to rob and steal and kill in the name of God and Love, come forward and take the helm out of the hands of these wreckers of American traditions, American honor, American justice, and American liberty. DowTn wNith the leaders that have betrayed! It is the great soul of the American people alone that can save us. CHAPTER IV. Ourselves as England's Tool. 1. A Kind Cat's-Paw. Nothing dlamns and blackens the expansion movement so much as the question, Who want it. Are the masses of plain Americans demanding murder, conquest and an armament for universal war, or is it certain cliques and classes with private ends to promote? The command that we shall renounce our past and fight for sovereignty of the world comes from British Imperialists, from our commercial classes, from our professional politicians, our clergy (already considered), our editors, and our 'great' naval and military commanders. A contemplation of this motley group of irreconcilable advocates of international lynching ought to be enough in itself to enlighten and sicken us of their dazzling military scheme. Why do those incomparable men who are tottering under the load of British empire, the shaggy-minded Salisbury, the acrobat Chamberlain, stroke our backs lovingly since we cudgelled poor Spain and assassinated Plilippine liberty? England is far gone in a most precarious pickle, and every word of advice that her lordly statesmen waft us is a disguised moan for help. Joe Chamberlain, the man who screened the infamous Cecil Rhodes and his dupe Jameson in their South African freebooting raid, has let no chance slip of telling us how great and good we may become by putting on a coat of mail and trotting with England around the globe beating weak races into submission to Anglo-Saxon virtue. But when the key to his love of our glory is England's A KIND CAT'S -PAW. 67 extremity, who believes a. word that this cunning modern Joseph Nwith a brain of many colors says? Between his speeches this blazing genius sometimes forgets himself and other people forget him, and there is no way to grasp the elusive rudder of his mind unless we read his scattered words together. He said in a speech at Manchester felicitating AngloAmerican rapprochcemeznt: "I shall not attempt to predict what may follow this better feeling, but I may at least hope that in the future the understanding of which I have spoken may be perfected, and that in the face of that understanding we two may be able to guarantee peace and civilization to the world." In Scribners Magazine he 'welcomed the advent of America as a colonizing power' in sugared words: "It can hardly be necessary to say that the British nation will cordially welcome the entrance of the United States into the field of colonial enterprise, so long and so successfully occupied by themselves. There would be no jealousy of the expansion of American enterprise and influence; on the contrary, every Englishman would heartily rejoice in the co-operation of the United States in the great work of tropical civilization. From the nations of the continent of Europe he has nothing to learn except what to avoid. Their system, their objects, and their ideals are entirely different from his; and, as he thinks, inferior."' He said that while the other Powers "imputed to the United States motives of selfish aggression, only transparently cloaked by a hypocritical pretence of humanity and disinterestedness, Great Britain alone, basing- her judgment on her own feelings and experience.. sought for the springs of action, not in the excesses of jingoes or the greed of interested individuals, but in the great moral forces which move a free people in the presence of injustice and wrong, perpetrated against helpless men and innocent women and children." *December, 1898. 68 A KIND CAT'S-PAW. And the British nation "would not shrink even from an alliance contra nmndum1, if the need should ever arise, in defence of the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon race-of humanity, justice, freedom, and equality of opportunity." Going back a year to last May, when we were just beginning to chastise Spain for doing to Cuba as we have since done to the Philippines and would not have others do unto us, this Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, who as Secretary of State for the Colonies may be supposed to know England's inner needs, announced at Birmingham: "The time has arrived when Great Britain may be confronted by a combination of powers, and our first duty, therefore, is to draw all parts of the empire into close unity, and our next to maintain the bonds of permanent unity with our kinsmen across the Atlantic." (Loud cheers.) "There is a powerful and generous nation," said Mr. Chamberlain, "using our language, bred of our race and having interests identical with ours. I would go so far as to say that, terrible as war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased if in a great and noble cause the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon alliance. (Prolonged cheers.)" England's method of civilizing the world by stealing it has brought her to the pass where the world hates her. Through an earlier development of industry she acquired foremost wealth and a sea power which qualified her to outstrip and defeat other nations in appropriating the world's territory; but now the other powers have caught up and expansion meets expansion and is blocked. There is a feeling among the powers that England already has too much, that the division of the world is not fair, and this may shape continental policy into, a combination of powers to confront and strip Great Britain. Speaking for the Government Lord Stanley recently said: "With regard to the future, this country must come to an understanding with certain Powers abroad, or have a greatly increased army." A KIND CAT'S-PAW. 69 The 'Marquis' of Dufferin in a speech at Bristol last September, 'extolling the friendship existing between the two nations,' confessed, "To Englishmen, in the present slate of affairs, how momentous is the fact that the mighty regions of North America are peopled by the Anglo —Saxon and a cognate instead of an alien people." The gruesome conditions move Chamberlain to love us with turgid emotion. An ally England must have or not very long hence divide her stolen goods; and yet it would be a bitter sorrow to divide with powers that she has so shrewdly eluded. If she accepts a continental ally it means great concessions, a long step down from a high pedestal. But if there is in the world a new nation, 'a powerful and generous nation, using our language, and having interests identical with ours,' we proud Englishmen will be able to hold what we have seized against the wvhole world. England can magnificently use the United States. We have vast wealth, owned and governed by a few citizens who are growing less American and more upper-class English daily. We need not be a serious competitor with England for territory anywhere in the world. If our cupidity can be baited by a section of China in the presumptive partition we shall serve British designs handsomely. We shall sink huge masses of our wealth in war fleets and arm to do battle with England against the coalition of Europe. We shall be ourselves the greatest conquest England ever made. What transcendent fighting strength we shall add to her! And this mighty acquisition will not cost her a pound, a shilling, or a penny. With supreme generosity we shall pay the bills; we shall furnish whatever she asks, to 'preserve the glory of the Anglo-Saxon race.' From the scrape in which she is plunged by world greed we shall deliver her by pouring out our wealth and the lives of our young men, by sacrificing hundreds of millions for army and navy, by turning over as a nation from the progressive trade of peace to the degenerate trade of war. Was ever a nation in all 7o A KIND CAT'S- PAW. history so sweetly unselfishl? Attend well-it is our citizens who are to be sacrificed and destroyed to uphold England's avarice. Never since upper-class statesmen first sang their tuneful lies to gullible multitudes has any purblind folly equalled this! Never was a nation so lucky as England in finding the paws of a mighty cat to put in the fire in place of her own! She says it will be good for us to back her in confiscating territory and we believe the lie and stalk forth panoplied in a cupidity equal to hers. Thanks to the olive branch of brotherly love and the olive oil of lubricating flattery England conquers us to her (lesigns and we are harnessed in to drag the car of her imperial progress. And above all these English are absolutely certain that they will find our instincts as low as theirs and will win with us. Arnold White, who writes from London to Harper's Weekly, tells us openly of their perturbations and hopes: "Anxiety is also caused by American difficulties in the Philippines, and the reported statement of General Lawton that Ioo,ooo men would be required to conquer and hold the islands has induced certain scribes to predict the abandonment of American possessions in the Far East. Jingo England would be very, very sorry if Uncle Sam abandoned his imperial projects. Those acquainted with the American character are aware how little foundation there is for the rumor. That temporary checks are irritating when fighting in a vile climate with a race 'half devil and half child' is fully intelligible; but after the object-lesson of our costly scuttle from the Transvaal and the Soudan, it is incredible that the United States will dream of relinquishing the burden of her responsibilities in the Far East, whatever may be the destiny provided for the Filipinos when law and order are established." (May I3, I899.) I shall let the James Russell Lowell of the fifties answer this. "Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull A KIND CAT'S-PAW. 71 himself is... He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very much fattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen. To move John, you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will do for Jonathan." W\ould, but will no longer. You can now bribe Jonathan with fat, if he scents gold he will follow it through the Infernal Regions. The Unseen is dead in him, all except this kind of Unseen-flamboyant, mushy, clergymanic, epicene: "The real reason why the American navy beats the Spanish navy is because we have learned to use 'God's projectiles' [Italics ours], and they have not learned in Spain. We have been taught how to lay hold of the muscles of the Almighty, and this knowledge is the fulcrum by which man and God work together to elevate the human race."-The reverend Lyman Abbott.* We certainly have. The Board of Ordnance of the War Department has decided on a type of field gun, 'the most advanced of any in the world,' to use against the Filipinos, "which can fire fifteen aimed shots per minute, which can be operated by one man, and which, with its full crew, can be taken to pieces in thirteen seconds, for loading on mule back for transportation wherever needed. It is of three-inch caliber and can carry solid shot, shrapnel or a bursting charge of high explosive, which will kill by concussion in a radius of 200 feet."t We certainly have learned to use not only the Almighty's muscles but his claws and his hoofs, and what is there that will elevate the human race higher than that God's explosive? Aguinaldo will learn that Jehovah is with us if he keeps on. *From "City and State," June 9, '98. tAssociated Press report, July 15, '99. 72 A KIND CAT'S -PAW. Yes, we are on what Lowell might call fat terms with the Unseen, and we need only apply to the Reverend Janitors or Aides-de-camp of that great Cosmic General to get a tete-a-tete. A Brigadier-Reverend Oliver C. Miller, of San Francisco, has made the unseen seen in a beautiful sermon wherein he proves from Homer, Nero or Solomon (only a brief report of the orders of the day is before us), that "Blood-letting is still good for all nations." "For nation and individual the law of cleansing is the same. 'Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.' "* Lyman Abbott's fleshy Almighty is here out in his shirtsleeves doing ten-thousand-yearsago Hebrew sacrifices, or just merely attending to the weekly slaughter-house business of humanity, we know not which. John Bull and Bull Jonathan are now alike, full partners, Siamese twins joined by a ligature of gold, and not a trace of the Cromwell Englishman left in them. You who think there is anything left of the Unseen in all Anglo-Saxondom, except his gold ornaments, read this. A firm of Rothschild, Whitridge, God and Company, has been formed to exploit China. Whitridge nee Cal Brice is the American partner. A business alliance of American and English capitalists has been recently formed, which is of unusual interest and importance, because of the leading positions held by these men on both sides of the Atlantic; because of the many millions of dollars involved in it; because the United States government is about to be asked to give the compact its sanction and moral support; because England has already formally approved it, and because the field of its operations is beyond the jurisdiction of these nations.t God's projectiles will come in handy here, will they not? God acting in the persons of the British and American Governments is expected to do the dirty work of murdering all Chinamen who do not accept Rothschild and ~Whitridge's merciful atonement for the Chinese sin of not having been exploited before. God and his Guns are to be the Lord Clive of the China Development Com*Report in San Francisco Examiner, April 25, '98. tAssociated Press, July 14, '99 A KIND CAT'S-PAW. 73 pany (American) and the British-Chinese Corporation, which have united to dish up China. "This makes a combination of the most powerful capitalists in the world." It's good to see the Unseen in the most respectable company that He has made. The concessions which ex-Senator Brice secured from the Chinese government for the development company consist of the right to construct a railroad from Canton to Hankow; exceedingly valuable coal mining concessions, and other industrial franchises of less individual, but great aggregate value. The British company has a contract to build an eighty-mile railway from Canton to Kowloon on the seacoast. The two resolved to pool their undertakings and their profits. The American company's engineer, W. Barclay Parsons,.. reports that the negotiations at Peking have reached a critical stage, and there is a disposition on the part of the Chinese government, presented by Sheng Tagen, Director of Railways, to avoid fulfilling its part of the contract. This is the cause of their appealing to our government for moral support. Mr. Whitridge asserts that Lord Rothschild has already instructed the British Ambassador in China to treat the contract secured by the American company and shared with the English company as if it were a British contract, and to urge the Chinese government to fulfill its terms. The American company sent Mr. Parsons to Washington yesterday to make a formal request that the government of the United States take a similar stand. Such a demand upon the United States government is probably unprecedented. Whether the Unseen which Jonathan used to be conscious of would stir himself in this matter, there is no doubt that Lyman Abbott's truculent butcher God will be on the premises with his meat axe and projectiles. He is as rapid as Samson, master of guillotines in the Reign of Terror, who could take off a head a minute. Good American people, when you permit your government to make Imperialism a fact this is what you are about: You are setting up the firm of Rothschild, Whitridge & God in business. What business? First of all, the Guillotine business. Chinese heads will fall off first, your own later. The papers of incorporation are outEnglish-American capitalists' monopoly of China, the Unseen to be silent partner, and English and American governments (people?) ordered to fall in and back the job with blunderbusses. Did you ever hear of insolence? 74 THE SHAM GLORY OF WHIPPING SPAIN. Do you like rich men's rule over yourselves (you have it)? Do you want to empower them to rule the world? Go to then and vote for expansion. The earth is the millionaires' and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. 2. The Sham Glory of Whipping Spain. The English ruling classes never met with greater good fortune than our spectacular brush with Spain. If it had not been for that pantomime wvar the English policy of pocketbook imperialism must have walked forward on its own feet and the injury and fraud which this policy works upon the common masses must have been brought to the criminal bar of her own people. But now we have become supporters of the fraud. That war deprived us of our senses by making us see ourselves supermagnified. Think soberly of it: from beginning to end nothing really glorious was done by us, because we had no foe. Spain was decayed to death, as weak as a corpse; her army and navy were rotted by the corruption at home; there was no training, no preparation, no expectation of making a real fight. Fraud had permeated every branch of the service: from top to bottom all was worm-eaten, ready to crumble at a touch. All that we did was to stretch out a hand and give the touch, then everything fell to ruin of itself. Our only credit consists in this, that when we dared to give the touch we did not know the full extent of Spain's decrepitude. If we can get any glory out of that it was indeed bold and brave to venture war on Spain. But how much glory does this give us? We knew that Spain was so feeble that we expected nothing but a holiday spree. Mr. Hoar spoke the mind of all in proclaiming to the Senate-"Mr. President, Spain ought to be as powerless in the grasp of the United States as a 3-year-old infant in the grasp of his father." What honor was there in knocking a chip off of that tottering shoulder-or in knocking the head off? THE SHAM GLORY OF WHIPPING SPAIN. 75 From the hands of Spain we received no casualties; all our bruises were dealt to ourselves by our own rottenness, like Spain's in type-the cesspool corruption of speculators in politics, preferments, or contracts, beginning with the flabby president of the United States, passing through his petted secretary of war, through the millionaire monopolists who furnished refuse meat and necessaries to the soldiers, down to the brigadier-generals and underling officers, who, incompetent in every respect, were appointed by the high masters of the war as bribery for their support in future political machinations. It is all as clear as (lay. McKinley did not remove that national stench called Alger because Alger had been important in McKinley's first election, and that great lawbreaker wanted the friendship of this stench for a second election; so that McKinley was the first and always responsible cause of the wounds that we sustained in the Spanish war. But he has never been forced to account, and the wrath of all the people did not attain to throw the detestable Alger out of his saddle until the evil done was irreparable, so lifted above the popular will is now the high officeholder. And yet this only suggests the extent of our cancerous decay. After all the everlasting disgrace cast on the nation by his political selfishness, the nation followed this man McKinley like hooded sheep into a second war, so base that it plunged us below the moral level of gangrened Spain. We forgave McKinley for appointing Alger, we forgave him for retaining Alger when all the people cried for his decapitation, and we again submitted ourselves to the false shepherd who had caused all the calamities of our previous war, and swallowed our consciences and held up his hands in a new species of surpassing crime. This is now history and the sadness of it is our own national rottenness when we pitched upon Spain. That we have suffered and upheld these things shows how our vital force is decayed. But the practical side is that if Spain had known our 76 THE SHAM GLORY OF WHIPPING SPAIN. internal state half so well as we knew hers, the war would have terminated differently. Despicably weak as Spain was, sheer luck only, the most marvellous luck, brought us off unsinged. As cited in another connection, a brief delay in the surrender of Santiago would have given time for the conquest of our army by a foe greater than Spain -disease. The Spaniards would then have annihilated the army as a man tramples a worm. After the surrender things grew so bad with our men that at length the officers mustered up courage to rebel and the "roundrobin" was written to Gen. Shafter, a memorial in which the higher officers of the force united in declaring, that the army is disabled by malarial fever to the extent that its efficiency is destroyed, and that it is in a condition to be practically entirely destroyed by an epidemic of yellow fever, which is sure to come in the near future. We know from the reports of competent officers and from personal observations that the army is unable to move into the interior, and that there are no facilities for such a move, if attempted, and that it could not be attempted until too late. Moreover, the best medical authorities of the island say that with our present equipment we could not live in the interior during the rainy season, without losses from malarial fever, which is almost as deadly as yellow fever. This army must be moved at once or perish. As the army can be safely moved now, the persons responsible for preventing such a move will be responsible for the unnecessary loss of many thousands of lives. Our opinions are the result of careful personal observation, and they are also based on the unanimous opinion of our medical officers with the army, and who understand the situation absolutely. Col. Roosevelt in a preceding letter said: If we are kept here, it will in all human probability mean an appalling disaster, for the surgeons here estimate that over half the army, if kept here during the sickly season, will die. This is not only terrible from the standpoint of the individual lives lost, but it means ruin from the standpoint of the military efficiency of the flower of the American army, for the great bulk of the regulars are here with you. The sick list, large though it is, exceeding 4,000, affords but a faint index of the debilitation of the army. Not IO per cent. are fit for active work. As we look back at these terrible conditions every reason for exalting ourselves departs. We did all that we could to fail. Every effort conceivable was made by our commanding men at home to send an army into Cuba that would be destroyed before it could win a battle. It THE SHAM GLORY OF WHIPPING SPAIN. 77 was prepared neither with proper food nor with clothing nor medicine nor any of the appurtenances necessary for a campaign in a torrid fever-breeding land, thanks to the idiocy and infamy at Washington. But through equal imbecility on her part Spain fell into incontinent panic and ran at the first blow, although her army, accustomed to the climate, could have resisted us successfully for weeks even if our men had all enjoyed the impossible luck of perfect health. Gen. Blanco gave vent to the deepest sorrow and humiliation that his great force of soldiers should have been ordered home sound and whole, with only one chance to display their fighting metal, which approved itself to be brave and stubborn metal. When leaving Havana he said, "I believed in contesting to the last ditch. I still believe I was right. I could have withstood, I believe, an assault upon Havana from an army five times our size; but that is an idle thought." And Gen. Pando, former commander of the Spanish troops at Manzanillo, being asked his opinion of the war, replied 'with a gesture of derision,' "Why, there has been no war. There are 200,000 soldiers in Cuba wvho have not seen an American soldier. My opinion is that the Spanish and American soldiers were simply inveigled into a war by the politicians of the two countries. The politicians made fools of the soldiers; they sold them." But if Spain had waited a little nature would have wiped out the American force without the aid of Blanco, unless the army had succeeded in scudding home before the thunderbolts of fever struck down half in death and prostrated all. Here is no room for imagination or exaggeration, the grim words of the American officers announce that already on August 3 'the efficiency of the army is destroyed' by malaria; furthermore this army contained "the great bulk of the regulars" and its destruction would have given Spain the heartiest consolation and probably enabled her to procure continental allies. For in from five to fifteen days after the battle of Santiago when the scourge had weakened our soldiers, 78 THE SHAM GLORY OF WHIPPING SPAIN. the Spanish would have crushed them in battle and taken the rest prisoners, to die of malaria and yellow fever later on. This climax could only have been averted by turning tail and taking to the transports and protection of the fleet. If it is said that we should soon have sent thousands of reinforcements to Shafter, the answer is that the fever would have shortly sent these new men also to their graves, and swelled the disaster and multiplied the dead. No sense or sagacity of ours preserved us from that drastic defeat: we were saved only by the surpassing folly of Spain. This is the hairbreadth basis for the cyclone of conceit that has swelled us into dizzy swaggerbags. We are boasting of what is ground for pride in neither nation nor individual. \Ve have likewise gloated on our sea victories and conferred upon ourselves the degree of peerless sea heroes. But although we are mad now history will be calm. If a man were fighting an Indian in the woods who should come and lay himself at the white man's feet to be killed, would it be called a glorious victory? And what else was our victory over the Spanish admiral? By telegraphic order from Spain, flatly against his military judgment, without a solitary chance of success or escape, perfectly knowting that he was sailing into the mouth of death, Cervera brought his fleet out of safety and laid it down before the American ships for annihilation. We destroyed it and sailed up to the seventy-seventh heaven of astonished admiration of our prowess. Yet there was nothing for us to do but smash those ships, unless we swung about and ran from the thing that was running away from us. And our conceit rose the next day to the size of four worlds. It was a child's victory, and we followed the simple ways of children and praised ourselves blind for it. What of Dewey? The whole continent transforms itself into a crash of laudation over him, but what did he BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. 79 do? He performed a very ordinary commonplace feat, which any commander of an American, English, German, Russian or French squadron would have done equally well. Now it is the 'incomparable Dewey,' the naval colossus of the age. Any strong and disciplined man ought to be able to thrash a boy or a quaking ancient swaying on the grave. Spain was the latter; the Manila fleet was one of Spain's trembling emaciated arms. The worms of Spanish government had eaten the iron of her ships in every sea, which remained only hollow emblems of strength. Their destruction may be likened to the conquest of floating hogsheads. If Dewey had encountered an equal number of English or German men-of-war would our inebriate Uncle Sam be strutting nowadays in dusky regions with his gaseous stomach far frontward? If we could realize that in fighting Spain we were whipping a zero, that it was only a sham war to salve Spain's 'honor,' that she expected ruin and went through the forms like a duellist with blank cartridges in his gun, that her home sins, her system of robbing the many for the few which had undermined the health of the State, made her an ally for her overthrow, we should see that we have grown into a hectoring monstrosity through the crazed balloon flights of our escaped imagination. The one intrinsic merit of our proud performance was the first intention of helping Cuba, which some private citizens honestly felt; yet this sentiment was so mutilated by the passion of revenge for the Maine and garbled with the conspiring of the commercial world for new pastures, that it soon lost the savor of virtue. Had we been proud of anything to be proud of it would not have turned us into fools and given us as prey to the deviltry of consummate foreign tacticians. 3. Beresford's Flattery Palaver. English statesmen took good heed of our inflation and supplied us with flattering gas ad libittin. On the ears 80 BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. of uncorrupted common sense the late "lord" Herschell's blandishments would have fallen flat: "We can rejoice as much as you rejoice today in the fact that you are one of the leading nations of the world." Raising his eyes to the intertwined flags of the two countries, he said, "I rejoice to see them united in concord, not in any spirit of arrogance towards other people, not as desiring to infringe the rights of any other Power; but because I see in that union a real safeguard for the maintenance of peace in the world and because I see more than that-I see the surest guarantee of an extended reign of liberty and justice." He saw us entering upon a career of pocketbook conquest like England's, when our national morality wvould be no better than her's, when we should need an a!ly and in return be forced to give ourselves as an ally. The soft words of that great lord, Charles Beresford, paid officer (admiral) of her majesty's navy, who has been junketing from China to America to tell us of our duties in Asia, would have had cool greeting from a morally poised people. 'Lord' Charles was sent to teach us how we may serve as England's helper and tool in China in this great emergency. He would induce us to construct a massive army and navy for England's support by the following emaciated arguments:* I. Flattery and philanthropic palaver. "Everything I can do to advance this friendly feeling between the two nations [America and England] I will always do. It means civilization, it means trade, it means the good of the world, as well as that of the two great nations." 2. England's real purpose stated. 'Mr. Jordan-What of the future of China? Mr. Beresford-If China goes on as she is doing she must break up pretty soon, owing to disturbances among her own people. The Government has not enough troops to keep them in order. They will interfere with the trade and commerce of those nations who have vested interests there. That being so, the countries will probably adopt the policy of spheres of influence. If that policy is followed, Great Britain can't have everything. That is absolutely so.' *Taken from a newspaper interview with Beresford by David Starr Jordan in the S. F. Examiner, Feb. 14, I899, and an address to the San Francisco merchants of the same date. The quotations are not arranged as they occurred, but acCording to the logical development of the argument. BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. "It is always an advantage to England to have the open door. It is our policy all over the world. Putting sentiment to one side, it is to our advantage. We have seen the value of the open door policy in the enormous extent of our trade since we adopted that policy. Our people are happier and richer." 'Mr. Phelan-There is no sentiment in trade. Mr. Beresford-Not a hap'orth.' [England modestly hopes to have nearly everything. She controls the ocean carrying trade of the world and thereby will, as Beresford says, 'get in the first order,' which, says he, 'is a very good thing for trade.'] 3. The extraordinary profit of it. 'Mr. Jordan-Is it true that many of England's colonies are not sources of revenue; that there are many colonies that do not pay? Mr. Beresford-Oh, no; no, I do not think so. Mr. Jordan —You think that England is not out of pocket from holding any of them? Mr. Beresford-Oh, no; she is not out of pocket with a single one. I think I am right in saying she is not. But the advantages which she derives for her manufacturers and her trade are enormous in the colonies, and you couldn't call that an indirect advantage.' Beresford —"There is a very large number of people both in England and the colonies who get very rich, because the colony is attached to Great Britain." "Some colonies pay a little towards a regiment, or that sort of thing, and they are very glad to do it; and they would make a great ado if we took the regiment away. The shopkeepers say: 'We are feeding those fellows; we are making money by them.' " [Who furnishes the funds that pay for the feed of "those fellows" and go to the shopkeepers? The common people of the colonies, the same who will support our army and navy.] Beresford-"I don't think we have been unsuccessful in our policy. It is a policy of business. We are very rich and very progressive, and our people are very happy." [Ask the thousands of unemployed in England how happy they are. Ask the masses of workingmen, the common middle class, and all of the intelligently educated, the same question. Perhaps 'lord' Charles would agree with the Khedive of California, Collis Huntington, who says: "I regret one tendency in our country, admirable as are her institutions.... I refer to the increase of the higher education of the masses." In England as in this country it is the rich who are rich and contented and they are few.] 82 BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. 4. lWhat they want of us. Beresford-"Let the four nations which are most interested in the trade of China join together; let them come to an understanding that the treaties are to remain as they are; that no country or nation is to claim territory in China or put on tariffs. What are these four countries? They are England, America, Germany and Japan. They are the countries which are most interested, and an understanding between these four countries would make for peace which nothing would disturb, and there would be no mistake in regard to it." [In other words, England is not strong enough alone to have her own way in China, and she must bribe our help. But she must make it seem that it is equally for:ur trade-without-sentiment profit.] 5. The inducements offered to rope us in. Beresford-"Now, as to 'spheres of influence.' May I tell you candidly what I am afraid of in the future? If we do not do something together, as sure as I stand here China will split up into European provinces. It will be done by the European powers landing troops there to protect their own interests which China is unable to protect. That is what I am afraid of. I maintain that under such a policy America would lose a great deal of commerce which she might obtain under the different policy of the open door." "This enormous future development of China is the biggest thing that ever happened in the direction of development of trade and commerce." 6. Sneaking in the military. 'Jordan-What relation does a large navy have to foreign trade? Beresford-It is the basis of it. Jordan-In what way? Beresford-Because it is its defense. Your naval budget is your rate of insurance, putting it in the business way. Your naval budget is the rate of insurance you pay for your protection. And where you are opening up places as you have been doing lately, with your battleships and your navy, that means the thin edge of the wedge for your trade and commerce. It is for your trade and commerce. In your particular instance, it was very much like what the old mother country did before. You really were working in the interest of justice and civilization. You may elect to come out again from the Orient. I don't know what you are going to do about that. Anyway, your entrance brings your trade in. It is the wedge for your trade. What will happen when you have got your vested interests fastened in Manila? You will do something quite uncommon in history if you allow your vested interests to go there and you do not look after them.' This is a crown jewel. An English fighting man, paid for fighting like a policeman, finds that his British police force is unequal to the demand and seeks to inveigle us BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. 83 into the fracas for an ally. Spend your money and your sons freely, he says, to place an army and navy by our side in China. Consider it a conmmercial insurance fund, so much paid out for the benefit of your traders. Well, Charles, you consider it the business of the people at large to insure their traders, do you, and to go out to fight battles and be killed for them? How would it (do for the traders to pay their own insurance, as well as to organize themselves into regiments and go to China and the Philippines and fight to establish and protect their own trade? Can you tell us any reason why the sons of our farmers and mechanics should go out to die for the traders' trade? Charles-tWhy certainly; any school-boy in 'affairs' knows all about that. It is for the benefit of "vested interests." 'You will do something quite uncommon in history if you allow your vested interests to go to Manila or China or anywhere else, and you do not follow with your warships to look after them.' It is vested interests, fix your mind entirely on vested interests, and you will understand everything. But, my dear Charles, what are vested interests, that we millions of common American people should care to die for them? We have no vested interests. Charles-Vested interests, vested interests? Why they are everything, actually everything! Look at it now; don't you know that all modern governments are carried on expressly to enhance and preserve vested interests? Armies and navies are built for the expansion of vested interests. Wars are planned and carried for the sake of veste(l interests. The whole military policy of the civilized world turns on the pivot of vested interests. If a nation has great vested interests its people are rich and prosperous and happy and, er, contented. You of America must go into China to establish your vested interests, and you will then be rich and happy. 84 BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. Now dear lord, you are evidently a very powerful and learned man and a fine spokesman for the vested interests of your country, but evidently America is a dark continent to you. In England it is clear from what you say that every citizen is rich and happy and enjoys a fair share of these glorious and vested interests. Charles, you will hardly believe it, but it is not so with us. We have an institution called trusts, of which you have never heard. The greater part of our vested interests are cornered by a few citizens, and they are combining their vested interests into trusts. The goal before them is one grand, stupendous, colossal, universal, omniscient, omnipotent, national trust, and after that-don't stagger, Charley-a world-trust. Yes, it is coming very fast. The national all-trust is nearly here, in two years it will be finished. Then the capitalists of the civilized countries will discover the absurdity of international competition, as the capitalists of a nation have learned the folly of intra-national competition. Then of course they will unite, and all the vested interests in the world will be in the hands of a little board of trade and we shall have an all-world trust. To be sure this is all new and quite incomprehensible to one like you who represents a free and equal, rich and happy and benevolent people, for, as you told your interviewer, "our people [the English] absolutely rule," and if they absolutely rule they n-must have justice and each one a fair share in vested things, or they would not be as you declare, happy. You differ slightly in this from that political fogy Gladstone who lately died, who said that 'the institutions of England which have enabled her to govern successfully distant colonies and subject states are founded on the doctrine of inequality,'* but let that pass. Lord Charles Beresford, great and honored aristocrat, we will explain to you why the average American citizen has no more reason to insure and fight and die for *Quoted by Mr. Hoar in a speech at Worcester. BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. 85 thle vested interests of his country's monopolists than for the vested interests of the Hottentots and Bushmen. The owners of Amdlerican vested interests are systematically and zwith malice pre-reasoned scalping and skinning the Amcerican people-that is the whole story in a short sentence. Men do not insure other people's houses-why should the mass of our people, who have no vested anythings left and derive no benefit from the foreign trade of monopolists' vested interests, insure them with a vast navy and army? Give us light on this, Beresford, schooled to great a airs. It is quite an insurance bill you ask us to foot for other people and for interests that will repay us nothing. The late congress appropriated $674,981,022 for the expenses of our government; in addition to this it authorized the expenditure of $44,104,500 for the construction of new war vessels. Forty-four million dollars in a lump sum to insure and protect American vested interests which have already taken America away from Americans! Remember too that our vested interests do not pay the taxes, they clandestinely shift them on to the many who have minimum or no vested interests. In spite of your ignorance of the fact we have heard that England's vested interests are owned by a petty fraction of her population, and that when you are pleading for America to wake up to her commercial opportunities you are asking at bottom that the American rank and file shall come to the rescue of the pigmy clique of English vested interest owners. This is an insult to the body of the American people, although so good and disinterested a man as you does not know it. You do not know, to use your own words, that there is 'not a hap'orth of sentiment in trade,' either between individuals or nations; you would not dream of using the American masses to buttress the combined English and American vested-interest class. You have told us of your honorable descent from men who never robbed, who never destroyed 86 BERESFORD'S FLATTERY PALAVER. English Saxon liberties, and we shall take you at your word that you are an innocent saint. 7. Who 'Lord' Beresford says he is. 'Mr. Phelan-You yourself are a true Celt, are you not, Lord Beresford? Mr. Beresford-No, I am a half-bred Celt. That is to say, I am Norman. I have no Saxon blood in me at all.... Mr. Phelan-How far back do you trace your line? Mr. Beresford-To the Conqueror; we trace to the Conqueror, because we came over with him. We can't go beyond that, though we have tried to.' Every true American ought to revere Beresford after that. He is a lord, and he came over with William, the pious William who stripped their lands from the libertyseeking Saxons, destroyed their free institutions, and retarded the growth of popular freedom and upright human independence in England for centuries, infusing a foul strain of domineering robber poison which still runs in the Anglo-Saxon vein and prevents the realization of justice, the evolution of character, and the consummation of democracy. This flippant aftercomer of William the Conqueror of England was a very good type for that robbing, vestedinterest nation to send over to our William the Conqueror of the Philippines. We doubt not Beresford loves and cherishes human liberty as vehemently as did that bushwhacking ancestor of his; the vested-interest ruling classes of England who invite us to arm in their defense likewise care as much for it. CHAPTER V. Business Enterprise of Generals. The words of our fighting classes at home in favor of imperialism likewise lose all their force when we consider who these people are and the motives of selfishness which move them to seek for this country a military future. It is almost enough to name these classes over to understand why they wish expansion. Have we not lately had some deep experiences what a precious set of self-seekers our military officers of all grades and sorts are? Is there any thing in the daily conduct of our fire-eating professional politicians to make us think they care for the world, their country, or for aught beyond their own skins and interests? What of our eruptive press? What of great makers of trusts, so disinterested that they are taking all America as their own and damning the people to a hell of poverty and hardship? We charge these classes with seeking their own despicable private ends in painting the glories and profits of expansion. Let us study them one by one. The trade of officers of war is war. Through schemes of war they promote themselves in the great objects of their lives, salaries, renown, affluence and influence. All their aspirations and hopes center on military magnification. And it is their trade art to make others see things as they do. They are a species of commercial drummer, whose business success hangs upon their convincing others that wars and rumors and preparations for wars are the most important affairs of human society. They must (lo this or remain always little people. They have the galling example of foreign coun 88 BUSINESS ENTERPRISE OF GENERALS. tries. There a general is a truly great man; he is really a god with his clanking sword, his glittering uniform, his awful majesty of mien, his towering disdainment of the common carcasses of mere citizens which creep on the low earth below him. It is a thing to be a general in Europe. Life has character if you can feel yourself reposing on the clouds of power, master of instruments to blow the groveling herd of men to dust if they run amuck the doctrines that you patron. How different in America! How abominable, how degrading! A general is only a mortal here, adored and deified by none-until recently. He swallows wind into his stomach and swells himself out in vain. He has been kept down in his proper place. But times have changed and he thinks that if he throws a little more business enterprise into his trade he may win the privilege to expand and swagger and become a tinselled deity. Will he miss such a chance? Will he stint his arguments to convince his darling countrymen how good for them will be the owning of islands and invading of Asia? He looks forward to the time when he will not have to beg and argue to these countrymen, the time when with docile battalions behind his ramrod back he can stride haughty and ferocious across our part of earth and not demean himself by knowing that he has countrymen. Oh people of America, watch this fellow argue now! Because the army is still small, see how small and humble he is. With the deferential modesty of impassioned concern for us, he tells us of the danger of our coasts, talks soulfully of universal love, of duty, and of civilization!this professional murderer, this smasher and preventer of civilization, verily talks of duty! But give him his army and what will you hear him talk of then? Go to Russia and listen to the generals; are they talking of love? To civilized Germany, free France, liberal England: are their generals talking as we would wish to give ours liberty to talk? THE NEW TREASON. 89 1. The New Treason. Beware. Can you not already note a change of tone, a growing insolence, since we took to war and yielded to the importunities of our war lords for a greater body of fighters? When have we before heard such language as this? The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry, if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth-if she is not to stand merely as the China of the Western Hemisphere. When before now has anyone dared to use such raw twaddle to us? But the author of this febrile slush says more: To no body of men in the United States is the country so much indebted as to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular army and navy; there is no body from which the country has less to fear; and none of which it should be prouder, none which it should be more anxious to upbuild. Is not this something wholly new and thunderingly prepcsterous? Is not the officer that can ooze this foul offense from his self-seeking mind already far on in his dreams toward a European America, where the military swashbuckler will eclipse and terrorize the toiling snail of peace? And yet even this is a lullaby beside the rabid impudence which the same nascent bully already ventures to express. As for those in our country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are saved from being treasonable merely from the fact that they are despicable. So then with an army of only 60,000 men our semi-military gentry dare apply these abusive words to a number of American people so great that it may turn out when counted to be the majority. What will be said and done as time goes on and the army grows according to, the rampant military determination which now neither slumbers nor sleeps? Then those who differ in opinion from our military sheiks will be attended to for treason as they do it in Germany. Treason is something for which men are jailed, hanged and shot. Treason is any thing 9o THE NEW TREASON. that displeases those in power, and the number of things that are treasonable increases in proportion to the increase of military force. Treason is merely a political label which those who want to establish their private opinions by force, and rule arbitrarily, apply to those with different opinions. The man who says a thing is treason is a tyrant in embroyo; he' is a person with the blood of the inquisitors in him; he has not learned the smallest lessons of human appreciation, toleration and progress; he is of tl at beastly fiber which burned men at the stake in earlier days for thinking as nature ordained them to think. Civilization has been one long and fearful struggle against this cruel beastliness, always betraying itself in new forms. The religious brute has been conquered, but the political brute and the military brute are here still, with the same old mighty will to destroy liberty, the same depraved frenzy to make mankind grovel to them in thought and act, the same aboriginal club with a new name to beat their brains out who resist. Heresy was the ancient name of the club, the recent name is treason. If you do not believe in God as I do, I will kill you: If you do not believe in my politics. I will kill you. The same foulness in the human mind brings out ever fresh the same hideous deformity of conduct under later conditions, as they say that small-pox is a disease which arose out of syphilis, caused by the lives of abominable nastiness and abandonment of those who lived before us, and which new lives on to infect and injure a cleaner age with its horrid syphilitic substance. So is the cry of treason a recrudescence of the mental syphilis of heresy. You will hear little of treason where you have not got an army to back it up, and where you have not generals and military politicians with personal interests to lift on high by use or threat of force. Mark this, and read again the words glowing with military insolence that would not scruple to turn the army loose at home to butcher thosc who (lo not believe that we should butcher Filipino slaves. THE NEW TREASON. 91 As for those in our country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are saved from being treasonable merely from the fact that they are despicable. MWho are these treasonable persons referred to that encourage the foe? They are those who are shocked because their country is acting a cur's part; they are those who are outraged in all their spirit because our arms are sent to slaughter Asian savages for the serpentine purpose of extending our Trusts into Asia; they are those who would have us found and foster some decency and honor in our industrial dealings at home before we dare to carry our iron-souled industrialism to virgin lands; they are those who say that militarism is low and criminal, that it is murder as black and infamous when nations murder as when the private man murders, that militarism is rightly obsolete among the decent, and that the Powers of Europe, with their vast machinery of massacre drawn from the blood and happiness and development of their common classes, are not decent, are low, vile, despicable, ikfamous; that for us to copy the course of such powers is degeneration and crime; that we are manly and help the world only when we declare and stand to it that we will help and civilize the world without militarism and murder, and tyranny made legal by our fiat, and industrial pillage. The men and women of America who think these things are those who are guilty of treason. Now we are called on by this embryo inquisitor and treason hunter to build up our army. He tells us "there is no body from which the country has less to fear; and none of which it should be prouder, none which it should be more anxious to upbuild." If we read over human history from the earliest to the latest times one thing stands out in huge warning above the mountain ranges of cruelty and despotism. It is this: Incipient bullies of nations, tyrants, despots, subverters of the existing order of things, curtailers and destroyers of the liberties of mankind, have always used such treacled language as 92 MILITARY HUCKSTERS. this. They have inflamed the people with military passions, the people in this state of folly have granted them the army that they coveted, and they have turned on the people then and slaughtered and enslaved them. It is a tale told to nausea in human records. And the supposition was that it would not have to be told over warningly to this country. In nothing were our forefathers more jealous; they knew that a republic cannot last, or the people remain free, if a mercenary standing force gains the tiniest footing. But men of politicomilitary avarice are playing their cards with consummate cheating cunning to make us forget the sacred legacy of those keen patriots who enabled the republic to live until now. Surely, however, the most astounding miracle is that they should take the aged method of flattering the people with the conceit of military strength and succeed in making them swallow a lie as old as the world, the lie that "there is no body from which the country has less to fear" than a regular standing army. There is in truth no body from which the country has even the fraction of a fraction so much to fear, for tyrants can be held down under heel and every other ill can be surmounted and survived if no army exists to strangle the will of the people to death. 2. Military Hucksters. That which will save us when military or political mongrels deluge such insolence and bombast in our ears is remembering that at bottom they are ranting shop and to laugh immoderately at them. They are selling their wares to us; they are seeking to extend business-the business in this instance of killing, and despotism, and the enslaving of ourselves, and their promotion in salary and magnificence and unbridled power at our expense. If we only remember this we shall treat them as the business man is sometimes obliged to treat the importunate drummer-we shall 'turn them down,' and if they MILITARY HUCKSTERS. 93 continue their truculent insistence we shall finally put them off of the premises with a kick. They are a peculiar kind of fish, which, without any pronounced animosity toward humankind, wishes its own devouring affairs to thrive. The barber wishes men's faces overgrown with hair that lie may be paid for taking it off. The dentist desires to have teeth rot, in order that he may be paid for filling and pulling them. Businessmen tempt men to buy until they are sunk into wretched and hopeless spendthrifts, and regard the achievement as the loftiest business art. The respected trade of bankers is to mortgage their neighbors until they can never emerge from their load but are boneworn slaves of the interest-collector all their distracted days. These huckstering characters are not generally cruel, but business never professed to study moral philosophy. For carnal man to be a cultivated cannibal in our day is as natural as for the cultureless cannibal to eat raw muscle. But when the cannibals of the counter assure the public that they are devouring it for its own good we recognize that joke and have our laugh and ask tlem to tell it to the marines. What should we think of an undertaker who implored people to die more rapidly for their own good, and told them in the words of our military politician there was nothing that they had less to fear than death, nothing of which they should be prouder, nothing which they should be more anxious to upbuild? But what of the military man who uses such words about his trade and advises us to enter the paths of militarism, war and death for the public good? To him we should likewise say, Thou art a drivelling idiot. This thought will bear much dwelling on, demands much dwelling on, for it is key to this strange hallucination of imperialism. For, incredible though it is, the public verily believes these generals and brigadierlings and colonelets and politico-military crosses when they declare that their devilish military business is all for the good of the nation. Although a dentist would be sent to the mad 94 MILITARY HUCKSTERS. house or tarred and feathered for circulating a mixture to rot teeth on pretense that rotten teeth are better than sound ones, the military dentists who circulate a mixture of fabrications inducing the public to believe that a nation rotted with soldiery and military ambition is better than one that has the healthy blood of liberty and peace, are sent to congress, made governors of states, talked of for the presidency, dined, feted and adored, and the people di ink down the potion so that they may rot without delay. If a lawyer advises you to go to law do you believe he is disinterested? If a doctor puts you on a long protracted course of treatment for which you pay him five dollars a visit, do you suppose le is not thinking of himself? But we go to a general or a sword-swinging politician and on his stainless threshold deposit our brains and enter the presence with imbecile credulity for every cadence of his quacking counsel. Will it be good for us to turn America into a bayoneted camp like Europe and build the greatest navy in the world? we ask him. Yes, in solemn tones from the undertaker oracle. We salaam before the majestic mind of this barking prophet, this barber bidding for a shave of us, this lawyer gyrating before the wind of fat fees. The whole nation of us would well be in a madhouse for believing of a military quack;what we would disdain to hear in a medical quack or a legal shyster. To what may this people drunk with its credulity of gleaming buttons, gay clothes and greedy swords-blue beads and tomahawks, in a word-be compared? In a populous part of this enlightened land there plies her trade of fortune-telling and healing for round sums a kind of gypsy clairvoyant doctoress. She sits like a spider before her tent at country fairs and fastens on the rural credulity that meanders her way. She engages its confidence in her magic to cure diseases by imparting fabulous secrets of the human body. One of these secrets is that the blood of men escapes as the blood of women passes off monthly, MILITARY HUCKSTERS. but in a different and hidden form. To her astounded patient she explains, 'Your blood is not being carried off as it should be, and that is the cause of your disease. For te.enty-five dollars I will make your blood flow out as it should and heal you.' The money being turned over (or what she can extort) she gives a potent herb and directs her subject to take Epsom salts at fixed intervals. This miracle-worker thrives through those favorite universal human qualities, credulity and ignorance. The more preposterous her stories, the more she is accredited with novel wisdom. And so it is with the art of military sachems: the more they magnify, the more they miracle, the more they lie-the more it does establish them with the American mob of every streak and culture. It is a fact worthy of the stone age that the swollen laudation of arms and brutish force already quoted, which issued from the tongue of the politico-military hybrid Theodore Roosevelt, was received with approbation by an audience of highly respectable Chicago diners. This gypsy fortune-telling adventurer in politics had but to say "Our army has Inver been built up as it shoulld be built i'p," and the gaping countrymen around his tent believed and cheered. He said to these so-called shrewd Chicagoans: 'Your blood does not escape and flow out as it regularly should and you are therefore in a state of disease. I will give you a medicine (in return for my promotion) which will make your blood run away as it should periodically and you will be well. The medicine is war. No nation can be great and well which does not often fight. A life in which there is not a frequent fight is a life of "ignoble ease." " If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the vworld," and playing a great part is performing those leeds of blood which above everything bring "national renown." "National renown is the highest and finest part c, national life." "The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry." We have 96 THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. been puerile and mistaken in opposing the military ideals of the Old World, the Old World is right and we must follow in its bloody footsteps. "We do not admire the man of timid peace," we do not admire a nation of timid peace. We admire a nation that organizes its utter resources into an incomparable mechanism of slaughter, because these are the "virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life," in the world's hellish arena. To succeed men and nations must be devils, let us therefore become devils and so fulfill the law of God. "In this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound in the end to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities." Acting on this sublime principle of pigpens we must make America a fighting-hell like Europe. That will be manly. Not to do it will be cowardly, ignoble, shameful. Yes, I am the clairvoyant that will cure you. I will introduce the seeds of damnation into your system with the potent herb of war, and make you strong by the periodic shedding of your life blood. I will make you good and noble and strong in character by making you proud and insolent, overbearing and mean, cruel and poisonous with hate; I will teach you that human brotherhood is a lie and all that Christianity has ever taught a snivelling fable for juiceless neurotics. Men are made to conquer and kill. Only believe on me and pay my price for these wonderful secrets. What do I ask? Why, election to the highest offices. I only ask for place and power and homage and wealth, and then I will take care of myself.' 3. The Loudest Quack of All. Thus in effect squeaks adventurer Roosevelt, talking the jargon of auctioneers and undertakers with superlative mesmerism to the drunk. Those not drunk look over his career, and count up his pay to date, and probe his motives. I-e has been a good salesman of coffins, and THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. 97 lie hopes to be promoted to Chief Undertaker of America. Through the war with Spain he was advanced to the governorship of New York. He otherwise would not have stood a shadow of a show for the place. He was elected as a war 'hero,' as prime adventurer-general Funston of Kansas will be. How does it happen that many thousands of others equally heroic who went to that war are not singled out for governorships? Because Roosevelt had the art and the money to do a stupendous piece of self-advertising. He secured a command and gave his followers a resonant name which excited the popular fancy. It acted like one of Barnum's great hits, and before the Barnum of the war had done anything whatever he was heralded over all the country as a mighty hero. He followed up the military glory thus prettily achieved with unparalleled advertising valor, going at length to the weird extreme of writing a letter for publication to the secretary of war maliciously sneering at other volunteers and valiantly puffing his own1 brood. "SANTIAGO, July 23.-My Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing with the knowledge and approval of Gen. Wheeler. We earnestly hope that you will send us-most of the regulars, and at any rate the cavalry division, including the Rough Riders, who are as good as any regulars and three times as good as any State troops-to Porto Rico. There are S8oo effective men in this division; if those who were left behind were joined to them, we could land at Porto Rico in this cavalry division, close to 4000 men, who would be worth easily any Io,ooo National Guards armed with black-powder Springfield or Other archaic weapons. Very respectfully, [Signed] "THEODORE ROOSEVELT." This letter sends more light into the fatty-degenerate character of the man Roosevelt than ten thousand of his unctuous speeches on patriotism and good governmenet. Self is the alpha and omega with him, but swaddled in trappings which make him seem to the knee-deep as if descended from heaven-patriotism, good government. Here is proof in his own handwriting of the vast deposit of brag and coarse ambition in his soul. He must pull other men just as brave and far better than he down to glorify himself. A man who could write this letter slhoxs 4 98 THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. his nature up for all time, a vulgar, mean-spirited self-seeker, and none of the sweet icing in which he constantly presents himself to the public should weigh against this sudden exposure of the cloven hoof when he was tried. Alger gave his greedy impudence a singeing rebuke. "Your letter of 23d received. The regular army, the volunteer army and the Rough Riders have done well, but I suggest that unless you want to spoil the effects and glory of your victory, you make no invidious comparisons. The Rough Riders are no better than other volunteers. They had an advantage in their arms, for which they ought to be very grateful. [Signed] "R. A. ALGER, "Secretary of War." The next exposure of Roosevelt long ears came in his rear-platform tour of the state of New York for the governorship. He took along a number of people to help him do the speech-making and praise him, and six Rough Riders for show. "The Rough Riders will have no speaking to do," said a New York paper; "when the train stops they are to form a background for the Colonel; and they are to make themselves generally conspicuous. They are in uniform; Cassie, who is said to have sounded the charge at San Juan, had his bugle with him." They were to be as it were a smoking frame of blood and bravery for the great hero, to tingle the gaping farmers with they knew not what savage race-memories of beating their adversary's head out with a stone club. He got the governorship and now is in the race for the presidency, blown along by the scientific puffs of his own breath. He has every requisite for that position. He owns a Buffalo Bill Traveling Troupe which he can take about the country uniformed and parading to convince everybody that he is a noble legislator by awakening all sorts of those cannibal antiquities and instincts in them which make men win elections with a war-whoop. He is a loyal friend of the rich, and the poor at the same time, and that will save him with both sets. Said he to a reporter at Chicago, this wise solon, this presidential THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. 99 possibility, this man who storms the White House by writing Roosterfelt panegyrics, this mountebank who can make good laws because he loves to kill good men, this perpetual factory of war gas, said he to a Chicago reporter the other day: "The poor man when he fights the rich man, is his own worst enemy." Said he with Gladstcnian simplicity and definiteness: "Legislation along the right lines is the only solution of the trust question." A man who could say that is virtual president already. Legislation along the right lines is legislation for the rich trust-men, and that is legislation in favor of the poor men, because whatever is good for the rich man is for the benefit of the poor man. 'The poor man when he fights the rich man, is his own worst enemy.' This doctor of verbiage is incomparable presidential Ireat, with a whole war on his back, a whole traveling show in his pocket, and a whole quiver of ancient sophisms and savage prejudices in his head. It was His-honor who said at Milwaukee,* "We cannot fool with anyone who bears arms against our aims and destiny.... We must treat those who are against us as they deserve..." — the true sentiment of a pirate, just the ideas that an American president to perpetuate the high sentiments of American justice and fair-dealing should have. It was His-honor also who said at Las Vegas, where a reunion of his Troupe of Rough Riders sent out freshly painted Roosevelt posters: "We must put in practice holy virtues, for lack of which no intellectual brilliancy, no material prosperity can ever atone." Every plea for imperialism, blood, army, war, of his, ends with something holy, an irvocation of some kind, a pinch of incense burned to civil service, a little salt put on the tail of college education. This is the kind of man we must have for Chief Magistrate nowadays, a man who can play Devil and God in one act. Rough Rider Reunions will hereafter be held every *June 28, I899. I00 THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. three months. "The Chicago members of the Rough Riders regiment are arranging for a reunion of the organization to be held in this city during the autumnal festival celebration next fall, and Lieut. has gone to Texas to promote the interests of the proposed reunion." [Press news. We omit the name of the Lieut. in order not to obscure Roosevelt.] The Rough Riders can be obtained for anywhere upon application to their manager. CHICAGO, May 20, I899.-Roosevelt's Rough Riders, led by Col. Roosevelt in person, may be one of the features of the parade which will be reviewed by President McKinley at the laying of the corner stone of Chicago's new postoffice building Oct. 9. The Committee on Demonstrations held a meeting today to discuss preliminary arrangements, and expressed strong hopes of getting Col. Roosevelt to attend.-[Associated Press.] Terms: railroad expenses paid, free entertainment at the best hotels, free excursions everywhere while in the city, unstinted enthusiasm of adulation from everyone, free newspaper advertisement of the event to the country, free booming of our Hero Chief for president, free printing in all the newspapers of all that he says about himself. Places to perform solicited. Write to T. Roosevelt, Executive Mansion, Albany, N.Y. Are you satisfied now with the glorious success of Beast? Go and do likewise. Be bullheaded and commonplace and all the bullheaded and commonplace of the country will tag after you with hosannas. Lather on some "ioly virtues" and you will blind the respectable and good and they will tag. "In short," says Roosevelt, "In short, I firmly du believe In Humbug generally, Fer it's a thing thet I perceive To hev a solid vally; This heth my faithful shepherd ben, In pasturs sweet heth led me, An' this '11 keep the people green, To feed ez they hev fed me." Humbug wins. There were very few men in the war who were not as brave as this braggart, many doubtless braver, and nearly all of the privates were more deserv-: i THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. IOI ing, for he was receiving twenty times their pay in gold and a thousandfold their glory and distinction for the same service. Of his troop whose name is now known but his own? Whereas his demagogic effulgence baptized him with national fame and carried him into a governor's chair, and has made him bold to anathematize those of better mind and morality for treason. The ominous factor in this situation for our people is that war demagogues of this type are allowed to succeed. When a circus manager turns the public head with his violent fictions the worst result is that money changes hands and boys have fits; when the circus managers of war by the same violence to truth upset the public equilibrium and make the nation have fits and believe in war, it is for the purpose of transferring liberty and power from the people to themselves. This is the lowest demagogic chicane. How infamous that man is-and there are many such-who poisons the popular mind with military virus to obtain suffrages! He corrupts the people in order to make himself their master. To him it is quite indifferent if the policy of expansion destroys the priceless American experiment in self-government, provided he gratifies his personal ambitions. For the people it is the path downward to absolutism. What has been said of this particular horn-blowing 'hero' may be said in their degree and measure of nearly all those of the military and semi-military profession who are blowing the bugles of expansion. They are blowing to hoist themselves. A general at the head of a regular army of only 25,000 men cannot feel himself a very monumental fellow and he does not like it. He wants at least a hundred thousand and Miles asks for it. A clerk asks annually for a promotion. A hundred thousand will be only a beginning, and Miles knows it. Every addition will be easier after the first. When the good work of imperial rule begins there will be no stopping, and the generals of the army will become ever big 102 THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. ger and bigger bustards. Is it any wonder that Miles throws his heavy moral weight in favor of expansion? The following words of his were not intended for buffoonery: The wars of the past have had their objects, their achievements and glorious results. The last was in the interest of humanity and in behalf of a heroic people, who for many years have been struggling against cruel atrocities, oppression and the despotism of a cruel monarchy... There are otherfields to conquer. The past has gone and the future opens the doors to greater responsibilities, and, I trust, to greater progress and prosperity. We are ascending to a clearer atmosphere, up to a higher mesa, where we should take a stronger position than ever before occupied by our government and people. We cannot longer confine ourselves to the narrow limits that governed us in the past... Our interests are national in the highest degree. They embrace two hemispheres. They involve the welfare of a hundred millions of the human race. We are getting to that time when we will require not only the ablest men but many of them in every department, to protect and administer the affairs of the nation. How prophetically Miles spoke! There are other fields to conquer and we are now conquering them. The next act in our care of two hemispheres and a hundred million human beings was not long in coming. We engaged in a war that would decorate the record of filtered fiends, outraging the 'interests of humanity,' to humiliate and crush the independence of 'a heroic people, who for many years have been struggling against cruel atrocities, oppression, and the despotism of a cruel monarchy,' which we now excel in every particular. Now it is clear that general Miles is not honest, for having said his vibrant eulogy of our 'noble' war for Cuba he could not tolerate this infamous war against the Philippines without eating his words. He has eaten his words and that groveling act slits open his soul. When he palavered of our holy past and our holier future he was only out gunning for military game to fill the bag of general Miles. At some famous Eat which he attended in Chicago (Oct. 19, '98), responding to a toast on the Consuming Capacity of the Army he said, "I believe that we should maintain such a physical force that we may be able to protect our citizens and our interests in any quarter of the THE LOUDEST QUACK OF ALL. 103 globe." Shafter's oration on A Conquering Hero bore the sentiment: "I believe that the repugnanec to a standing army of considerable size is rapidly growing less. And now that we are broadening our sphere of action and adding to our broad domains the islands of the sea, the necessity of a considerable increase in the armed forces cf this country must be apparent to all thinking men." Merritt declared, "We need a standing army of at least 75,000 men here in the United States; now that we have acquired these new territories, we shall need a few more." And this was in December of '98. The description of one bullying military politician and two or three humanitarian generals suffices for all of their kind who are seeking to raise themselves by a policy that will rend American freedom. They are to be believed as one would trust the honor of a rattlesnake in his bosom. CHAPTER VI. War For Sale. 1. A Windbag War-Factory. During the closing days of March, I898, the president of the United States was conducting negotiations with Spain which would have ended in the freedom of Cuba and avoided war. Congress on its part had determined that there should be a war and that if the president could not be driven to declare it the game should be taken out of his hands and the two Houses would precipitate conflict in spite of him. Both houses of congress concurred in this sentiment, both political parties in Washington were intent upon forcing the executive to act or throwing him over. The Republican members vied with the Democratic members, and the Democrats prodded the Republicans for dalliance. These politicians saw an opportunity for political capital and they raised the war whoop like feathered Apaches. With later events before our eyes it is fascinating to recall what great men said on the subject of war at that time. Senator Cullom, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, gave out these words: I do not see how we can avoid a war with Spain. The feeling on the floor of the Senate is intense. It looks to me that if the President does not soon define some policy acceptable to Congress, it will proceed without him. This is a deplorable condition, and no one laments it more than I. There is almost a universal demand for action on the part of the Foreign Relations Committee. It will not unduly delay doing its duty.... War will cost us thousands more lives and millions of money. We can replace the latter, but we cannot restore the dead. Nevertheless, I am impressed with a solemn duty.... If our purpose was a sordid one, we could not justify ourselves. To relieve suffering and make a people free is a noble deed. Upon that plea shall we find justification for our acts. A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. Io5 All kinds of resolutions of war were thickly rained in the House and Senate and these men who had the honor and care of the nation in keeping enjoyed the maddest military frolic. Men who ought to have foreseen that the military spirit if let loose would run the wildest courses. and ought to have stood immovable before the gale of congressional passion, fell in with the hurricane and added their encouraging breath. Senator Hoar said: On the other hand, I have no patience and I have no respect for those critics who find in the conduct and action of many of my associates and friends on this floor what they are pleased to term a spirit of jingoism.* Senator Tillman enounced the state of legislative feeling with the doggerel: "Populists, Democrats and Republicans are we, But we are all Americans to make Cuba free. "At least, I hope we are." Grover Cleveland exhorted a great demonstration of Princeton students-"Stand by the country when she is right, and I am not so sure that we should not stand by her when she is wrong," impudent political immorality which many a mortified patriot has tried to pardon himself with since. Bryan felt called upon to join the procession: "Yes," he answered to a representative of the press, "the time for intervention has arrived. Humanity demands that we shall act... War is the final arbiter between nations when reason and diplomaccy are of no avail... Spain might not resist intervention... But whether she resents intervention or not, the United States must perform a plain duty. Our own interests justify intervention." The politicans of all breeds and shades were practically united, the president was forced, and the mine was fired which not only emancipated Cuba but exploded American traditions and filled our veins with Spanish blood and ferocity. For all that followed on as a result of that *Speech in the Senate, April 14, IF98. o06 A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. war these politicians are immediately responsible, who abandoned reason and sobriety and drove the nation into a shamefully false position at the outset. Starting from this false ground each subsequent step was false, until we found ourselves involved in the lowest extremity of international crime. When this period is impartially recorded the legislative class of this country will sink lower than the worst representations yet dare to place them. It will be found that they acted without compass, conscience or vertebra; that they were mainly the victims of a kind of frenzy, the nature of which explains why politicians are unfit for leaders and how dangerous the posture of the country is when they are trusted with their present degree of leadership. They forced an entirely needless war upon the nation; there is now the best proof that war was superfluous. John Sherman, who was Secretary of State while the Cuban question was pending, has since made public the following statement:* "I tried to prevent this foolish war with Spain. As a matter of fact, negotiations were already in progress to purchase Cuba from Spain when the war feeling rose and swept everything before it. And Spain would have accepted the terms. This is a matter of secret history. And now what have we got to show for all this expense? Some islands in the Philippines, for instance, which are worth about $200,000 per annum income; increased indebtedness of $200,000,000, and a lot of islands inhabited mainly by man-eaters. And the most distressing feature of the affair is that we are now about to be called upon to pay $20,000,000 for territory that we could have taken without expending a dollar." Who can give more reliable testimony on this subject than our Minister to Spain? General Woodford in a speech at Boston gave this verdict: *Special in the Chicago Tribune from Washington, Dec. 20, 1898. tIn October, i898. Summarized by New York Evening Post. A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. 107 His [Gen. Woodford's] instructions when he was sent as Minister to Spain were three-fold-to secure justice to the suffering people of Cuba, to insist upon protection to the great American and commercial interests of the United States in Cuba, and to seek these ends so long as it was possible by ways of peace, and, if possible, to avoid and avert war." He said directly to the Spanish government that, in the judgment of the President, permanent, assured peace could only come in Cuba by the withdrawal of Spanish authority from that island. His first effort was to secure the withdrawal from Cuba of Gen. Weyler, then serving as Governor-General with the understanding that he should remain two years, or until the spring of 1898. Gen. Woodford reached Madrid September I, 1897, was presented to the Queen Regent September I3, had his first official interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs September I8, addressed his first official communication to the government September 23, and before the 4th day of October, the Conservative Ministry, that had given its pledge to Gen. Weyler, resigned, left power, and before the end of October Gen. Weyler had been withdrawn. Next came the proclamation of a system of autonomy for the island, and negotiations were progressing so favorably that Gen. Woodford declared it to be his "deliberate belief that, had the Maine not been blown up in the harbor of Havana, and had not that singular and undiplomatic letter of Senor de Lome been discovered, before the close of the summer of 1898, the Spanish flag would have left the island of Cuba without the firing of a shot or the loss of a life." The fact that the explosion of the Maine and de Lome's letter were not a cause for war has already been shown so often that it is hardly necessary to restate it. This is what remains then: If the politicians had acted like honorable and rational beings, conscious and worthy of their responsibility, the war would have been averted. Why did the politicians compel the war? This is the point about which everything turns, and there is no doubt why-it was done for their individual self-interest, for that alone. They as individuals, burning for notoriety, burning for an oratorical war career and fame as patriots, burning for popularity, re-election and promotion, scheming for chances to exercise favoritism and make political friends by war appointments, looking out for judicious opportunities to influence the awarding of contracts and thereby make various things, their eyes strained to see how they could use a war for their own personal advantage all around, resolved that the American people should fight a war against Spain at all costs. To them would 1o8 A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. be all advantage, brilliant prizes and rewards for their heroic words, no cost, no risk, every hair of their heads protected and safe as well as glorified. Other people would bear the expense, other people would undergo the toil, the deprivation, the suffering, the illhealth, other people would leave their homes, many never to return, other people would face the tropical heat, the deadly malaria, the yellow fever, other people would fight and receive the bullets into their bodies and lie stretched out dead in the enemy's trenches, other people would carry wounds to their dying day, crippled, ghostly and useless. tortured by weakness and worse than dead through the long years of manhood that would have been robust and exuberant if these political bastards had not desired to use a war to boom their fortunes; but while other people pay the price and do the work and lay their lives on the politicians' altar these warriors in rhetoric, brave veterans in the rapid firing of inflammatory sounds, will cover their honored nests with downy credit and grow illustrious. The life of the soldier who is slain or maimed is as precious to him as the politician's office to him. But a senator from Mississippi (Mr. Money) gaily said that he 'thought it was a good plan to have a war once in a while, that it prevented the dry rot of prolonged peace.'* These are our guardians. Sitting in the charming upholstery of Congress, reveling in a picnic of exciting patriotism and self-advertising, whooping forth the old rancid spread-eagleism, they send out other citizens to welter in ruin and death. War is with them a speculation to which they look for solid returns in money and gratified ambition: the lives of the people whom they order out to die are the material speculated in, the cattle on the way to be dead flesh, the stocks, the pig iron. This damning indictment is proved by the subsequent disclosure that war was not necessary to free Cuba, which *Quoted by Mr. Hoar. A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. IO9 congressmen were entirely competent to know, for some did learn from the president how things stood and declared it to others. But they are equally condemned if they did not know it, for their course should have been to hold off from war until every means of peaceful solution was totally exhausted. Since they did not do this, they did not desire to settle the matter peacefully: it was indeed their riotous determination to head off and crush the chance of peaceful settlement lest they should lose the renown of kindling strife and forfeit the beatific opportunity to speculate. In the midst of the general fear among the congressmen that the spoils of war might slip away through amicable adjustment, about fifty of them held a caucus and sent orders to the president what he must do. Yet in their fierce anxiety to shed the blood of others these men were fully instructed what they were bringing on the people. Mr. Daniel leveled keen shafts of information at the assembled senate: "The men who declare this war are not the men who will prosecute it in the field. They are not the men who will sustain the glory and bullet-torn tatters of a flag. They are not the men who will pay the taxes imposed to carry on the war." Mr. Hoar also delivered biting words: I do not agree with the senator who thinks that a home is made better by the loss of its boys or the crippling for life of its head. I do not like what follows war. I do not like the piling up in this country of thousands upon thousands of millions more of our public debt. I have not read history like the senator from Mississippi in a way to lead me to think that war is ever a purifying process. The seasons which follow great wars, either in this country or elsewhere, are times of debt and jobs and disordered currency and popular discontent. The periods that have followed the great wars are the worst periods in history. But how could these solemn truths bear fruit of moderation or reflection when both of the gentlemen announed that they were prepared to vote for measures that were expected to bring war? Mr. Bailey, the Democratic leader in the House, portrayed the horrors of warfare so feelingly and success IIO A WINDBAG WAR - FACTORY. fully that the galleries wept, but this was the mere flourish and brocade of his speech,the serious business of which was to taunt the administration party with inaction and delay. "In his address he referred to the late civil war. So eloquently did he describe the horrors of war as they had come to the Southern people that members on the floor and people in the galleries actually wept, and when, in conclusion, he declared that his side was for free Cuba without war, if possible, but with war, if necessary, the demonstration from the galleries was overwhelming."* He was spouting to the galleries. Said he, addressing his opponents, "The longer you postpone doing right, the longer you postpone action, the more certain it is that war and war alone will extricate you." If Bailey and his Democratic followers who so detested war had meant it and had stood by those Republicans who were exerting every sinew to keep the president from stampeding to the sound of the stop-watch, there would have been no war, no later slaughter of Filipinos, no Imperial Destiny. Truth was these Democrats like the Republicans cared more for party and popularity than for principle, they knew the political efficacy of military bombast, they feared that the other party would secure the whole reputation of the war for themselves, and they lifted up their voices to out-war-cry them and force the president, so that they might turn to the country and say, 'We did it as much as the Republicans; we deserve more than half of the credit, for when they were weak and wavering we braced them up and drove them on.' You did, Mr. Bailey and your fellow Democrats, and perhaps some of you would like to have it forgotten, now that the whole war from its inception to its consequences has grown to be a stench in every honest nostril; but your politician share in this, now that you are holding up your white-washed hands in horror at the consequences, is just what we do not intend shall be forgotten. *Speech of March 31, 1898. A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. III Had not your Democratic junto, for political capital, sided with the Republican war mob and compelled the war, there would have been no consequences for your stricken countenances to blanch under. You brought these consequences on as much as the Republicans by an act that was one of the lowest political crimes ever committed, by uniting yourselves with a disreputable gang of Republican congressmen and forcing the reluctant Administration to abandon diplomacy and lead on to war. You are now sorry that imperialism has come; sorry that we are staggering toward the military precipice, sorry that we have already done more wrong to the Philippines than Spain in her savage three hundred years, but you helped light these fiend-fires by an act as base and villainous as any that has followed. You trampled on principle in dealing with Spain; you in your representative office tore national honor with Spain to shreds and substituted brute angry force and revenge for it; you aided to start the nation down the incline of imperialism, cruel conquest and a mighty army and navy. What we have since done in the Philippines is but a further extension of what we did to Spain in forcing a war upon her, the need of which to accomplish the desired ends was not established and the needlessness of which is now so far proven that a war under the circumstances was unspeakable wickedness. With a very few noble exceptions it was not the desire of the politicians to prevent war, and this is the long and short of it. Those who stood out were powerless to rein in the Republico-Democratic rabble. And this throws into vivid light the reckless indifference of all classes of politicians to principle, to the honor and righteousness of the nation, and to everything but their own aggrandizement and schemes. It shows the folly of trusting political power to politicians, and that Democrats are no more worthy of this trust than Republicans. It proves that as 112 A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. politicians are today, whether called by one name or another, the country is periled in their keeping, and the people must find ways to take power from them. Since the Democratic politicians are now parading in anti-imperialist armor as saviors of their country, it is medicinal to remember that a year ago they betrayed their country, and this will temper our enthusiasm for them. Mr. Bailey's 'patriotic' lachrymose speech was called out by remarks from Mr. Johnson, of Indiana. This gentleman spoke in language which every man of rational mind in the Union must now wish had prevailed. Said he: If the public men in Congress would simply restrain themselves and keep their hands off the President he would be able to accomplish in a very short space of time, by the aid of diplomacy, the independence of Cuba. I believe if we will give him a fair opportunity to carry out his purposes he will bring us to a triumphant conclusion without shedding an ounce of American blood. Something described by the reporters as very amusing then happened, due to the warlike wit of Mr. Lewis, Democrat from Washington. "Mr. Lewis replied to Mr. Johnson in a humorous strain for a time, in which he created a great deal of merriment, accusing Mr. Johnson of being muzzled by the Speaker and afraid to shake off his shackles." A gay time these men were having, preparing to make their country bleed without cause in satisfaction of their political wrath. Because of the president's persistence to obtain Cuban freedom without war this jocular Democrat Lewis observed, as an humble adviser of the President, I would suggest that he join in the prayer of Caesar to be delivered from his friends. If it should come to pass that the President should receive, as some people in certain quarters hope, and others fear, his political death [if he did not yield to the Congress war-dogs], then those who may write his obituary, etc. This was the threat the noble politicians were holding over the president's head to make him stop 'monkeying' with the certain victory of moral force and unleash the fun of war. A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. I 3 Mr. Johnson, who strove to save the nation from the horrors of war which moved the galleries to tears, was hissed by these galleries as he appealed to Congress not to bring the horrors on. But he continued: It does not make any difference to me whether I am hissed or not. I believe we are standing on the verge of a volcano, and I hope to God the ultimatum of the President will not strike so suddenly that it will reach such a resentment as to provoke a war.. I appeal from the jeers from the chamber with which my remarks have been greeted; I appeal from the hisses of the galleries, which are not expected to do the fighting; I appeal to the cool, calmer judgment of my countrymen, which will pass upon my utterances when the time for calm and respectful consideration comes. There were other Republicans unflinchingly standing for Cuban freedom through peaceful means, with whom Mr. Bailey and his Democratic myrmidons might have joined and successfully warded off the bloody imperialist craze. Congressman Boutelle, speaking at Boston of the process of stampeding the president, has said: Quite a section of the dominant party-the President's own party in the popular branch of Congress-began to threaten to turn upon their own administration if it did not go to war.. I said to the President that I hoped he would not permit any man from Congress to hold a stop-watch upon him while he was engaged in determining when and what he would send to Congress as a message. Here was the chance for the Democratic war haters, if they had not learned to hate it too late, and Mr. Boutelle gives the weight of his internal testimony that if the president had not been 'rushed' peace and Cuban freedom would have prevailed. These are his views: I firmly believe that, if the public press of the United States in its entirety had been animated by and had expressed throughout the initiatory periods of this controversy a calm, sincere, truthful, and wisely patriotic disposition, buttressing itself against the great doctrine that all controversies, where it is possible, should be arbitrated peacefully rather than settled by the brutal struggle of arms; if the Congress of the United States had stood there one-third as firmly for a peaceful adjustment as it did stubbornly throw out a large portion of its membership in favor of the more inflammatory methods-I believe, and I base my belief on conferences with the President day after day, that President McKinley would have settled every just controversy that we had with Spain in regard to the island of Cuba on lines that would have guaranteed and enforced everything that the government of the United States is called upon to enforce, or ought to enforce, in regard to humanity, public and private rights, and stable government in that island without the sacrifice of a drop of American or Spanish blood. 114 A WINDBAG WAR- FACTORY. These events are a revelation of party government. The Democrats determined to get ahead of the Republicans in the face of the fact that their adversaries held the government. Their stratagem was to flame out as more saturated with patriotic humanity than their rivals, to throw them into a wicked light before the country by reviling them for backwardness and sloth, upsetting their poise and driving them incontinently to acts of war, and gaining for themselves the credit of being the real war makers They succeeded. The Republicans gulped in the bait and were griped by a panic lest their foes should steal the war glory away from them; they hurled themselves at the presidential barrier and broke it down, the waters of war rushed in and the Democrats had the victory they wanted. The Republicans would not have borne down their president but for this party trick to make them do so, and the Democrats acting with low partisan morality must take the blame and shame of being the first cause of the war. The Republicans must carry the equal shame of thinking only of themselves and party and being cheated by that poor vulger oft-repeated political wile. The people must learn from it that politicians are a mere syndicate of self-promoters. They are Judases who have no scruple to betray the people, their master, for thirty pieces of silver. The war was their war and not the people's war. This is another highly important fact. The people of this country had in them no sentiment to do injustice to Spain, they did not wish a needless struggle at arms, they did not call upon congress to upset the president's diplomacy, they would have a thousand thousand times preferred to let it go through to the end for there were many self-evident chances that Spain would yield, to say nothing of the chances that were kept secret on diplomatic grounds, and if at last all had failed was there not yet plenty of time for war? And would we not have been more ready? How terrible all this is to look back PRESIDENTIAL PULP. II5 on, when we know, as events taught us, that we were wholly unfit for war, that we slaughtered and wrecked our helpless soldiers in their camps because we were altogether unready for a contest which the people did not want and the politicians did want and would not even postpone! From this hideous experience comes the conclusion that the power to declare war must be taken away from the politicians, from stampeding and stampedable president and congress, and resumed by the people-that war should only be entered upon by a direct vote of the citizens. Our Spanish transaction proves that to leave the war power in the control of a speculating political syndicate, whether the grand name of that firm be King & Cabinet, or Congess & President, is like playing with prairie fire and can only end, as it has always ended, in most heinous abuse. 2. Presidential Pulp. The course of the president in the Philippines has had three marked stages: paltering weakness, stupendous incompetence, downright and devilish criminality. In the course of many vain attempts to defend this flimsy villain in the senate and house, Mr. Dollin stretched back to the beginning of things and fervently expostulated: Almost alone in this capital the President had begged and pleaded for time for a peaceful solution against those who were using their influence to inflame the passions of the hour against the resources of diplomacy. What would a man have done in those circumstances? Someone with virtue and righteousness in him would have turned away from the dastardly self-seekers of Congress and called on the American people. The response would have been magical. In a little while the president would have had the whole nation at his back, the politicians of the three breeds would have been scurrying to cover from popular indignation. There is no doubt that presidential firmness could have saved the country from war. The president was a coward, a poltroon, and a self ii6 PRESIDENTIAL PULP. seeker, and to pay for it we have drifted a year in hell, with no exit visible. The politicians and press were shouting themselves blue to inflame the country, but the country was not inflamed, it was waiting for more light, and the self-restrained course of the president in this affair up to that time had inspired the nation with confidence in him: the people were in a temper to stand by him and follow his lead and to tell congress to close its blustering jaws until he had finished with diplomacy. Here this man betrayed his country and himself and threw away the grandest opportunity of a century, from the unutterably mean motive of keeping good terms with the politicians. He did not want to make enemies in his party for fear of losing a second presidential term, so he truckled and gave up his manhood and became a traitor to his trust. If ever man lived who deserved execration that man is McKinley. McKinley knew that settlement with Spain without war was a practical certainty; Secretary Sherman, Minister Woodford and Congressman Boutelle, who were at the focus of events, tell us that; for him to yield then to the snarl and yelp of congressional blatherskites was an act of contemptible infamy for which there is no language. His position was this: 'Yes, I am morally certain that I can prevent war with its immediate horrors and terrible aftermath; but if I do it I antagonize my party chiefs, I disrupt my party harmony, I dash my hopes of re-election. Lord, it is too much, let this cup pass from me!' And the Lord not being disposed to let the cup pass, the president took it out of His hands and threw it on the ground and broke it, and afterwards named what transpired in consequence of this act of blasphemy and rebellion 'Divine Destiny.' If the president had resisted congress the latter might have achieved the war in spite of him. But suppose it had; the president would have done his duty, his position would have been impregnable, all the best forces of the PRESIDENTIAL PULP. nation would have rallied to him against the politicians, the close of the war would have heard no talk of Asiatic expansion and seen no Philippine horror, and when the fact became known to the people that the politicians had dragged the country into an unnecessary war for their own glory and the political spoils of it, these precious scoundrels would have received from the people the merited punishment of obloquy and the earliest shelving. Had the president been a keen politician even and nothing else, what a chance he had to make himself the nation's idol by merely doing right! But now, for selling his honor and his country to advantage himself, how deeply he is hated by many of his countrymen, and by how many more intensely despised, as the man who has brought more evil and danger upon the United States than any man that ever lived. But if the president had been a man of common resources and courage the resistance of congress would have ended not by biinging war upon the country, but a grand whipping upon congress from the country. The president would have instantly appealed to the nation for support and pointed out that the negotiations with Spain were advancing to a conclusion satisfactory to both nations without war, he could have shown the people that war would be a crime so long as one possibility of such amicable composition remained, and the great bulk of the people were of a mind to respond loyally. What could the congressional war-maniacs have done then? They could only have slunk discomfited to their holes. This course by the president would have increased the certainty of amicable settlement by raising the confidence of Spain in the honor of American intentions. Hard it is to say, but Spain had every reason to doubt that honor. Still harder is it to say, as we must, that later events proved Spain right in doubting and our honor a sham. Spain did not believe we were disinterested in demanding Cuba's freedom, hence she held off. If she PRESIDENTIAL PULP. could have fully believed this she would have met us with a more open and constructive spirit, and if the president had held out sternly against the windy clamors of bloodthirsty congress she must have believed. This act alone had then gone far to secure Spanish compliance. It surely needed something like this to convince Spain that we were telling the truth when we said that we solicited Cuba's freedom as an act of humanity. How could Spain know that we were not inveigling her into a war of pretended unselfishness, to snatch her possessions away and keep them ourselves? There were Porto Rico and the Philippines-how could she know that we would not drop the mantle of holiness when we had employed it as an excuse to declare war, and take these possessions also? We may well ask why, seeing that this is what we did. We have seriously considered abandoning our holiness doctrine even with regard to Cuba-how could Spain know that we did not intend this all along? Who knows today that we have not abandoned it? We did not have any honor, and Spain knew that we had none, and we have since proved it to her by doing what we swore that such honorable people as we would never descend to do, and it must be confessed that we placed Spain in a very trying position by insisting that she should behave toward us as if we had honor. If she stumbled a little in trying to act the farce that we demanded, we might take a little of the blame since we planted the stumbling blocks and tripped her besides. It was in the power of congress to prove our honor to her, it was in McKinley's power to do it alone and against congress, but congress did everything to prove the opposite, even to taking McKinley and twisting his rubber back until he cried that he would do the same. Then honorable congress and honorable president together went into war to show Spain by taking and keeping her possessions that they were not fighting her for her possessions. PRESIDENTIAL PULP. 119 The sum of this episode is that McKinley was merely a political bird out of the same nest as the others, and that when the executive chair is filled by a party politician the country is no safer than a ship with a crazy pilot or a passenger train with a lunatic engineer. Like the rest, the president exhibited himself as a political speculator and nothing more. He held on to his stock of national peace and honor until he thought he would lose if he held it any longer, and then he threw it on the market and stepped from under. The trenchant question to be asked of the American peoptle is why they pay heed to any words of such a political broker when he asserts the benefits and divine destiny of expansion. His acts have already shown that he is merely 'yarning' to fill his political pockets. Democrats, with usual partisan blindness, may imagine these words to be a partisan attack in their favor. They are not in the least so, but are designed to teach something rather higher than that rusty old saw, 'Turn the old rascals out and put the new rascals in.' In this SpanishPhilippine affair the politician has betrayed his character and given the country a magnificent spectacle of what he is. If the country learns this it will take power out of the politicians' hands, both as congressman and president. Congressmen betrayed us into a needless war because they were politicians, the president succumbed to them at the critical hour and joined them in committing the nation because he was a politician. The personal considerations of these professionals decided that the American people must fight an unnecessary and therefore unjust war, and that they must waste their blood and treasure. Common-sense says that it is ridiculous to give such power into the keeling of such men, and ridiculous to repose it in the care of any men. CHAPTER VII. Nadir of Infamy. 1. In the Name of God. On the i9th of April, I898, the Congress of the United States passed the most remarkable resolution ever adopted by mankind: "First-That the people of the island of Cuba are, and by right ought to be, free and independent." It gave for its reason that Spain was doing the Cubans too much harm in trying to subdue them, that she was excessively injuring the Cubans in attempting to reimpose her broken sovereignty. Our right to interfere was derived from humanity. The American executive (McKinley) approved this resolution the next day. It required no struggle of mind for him to see that Cuba was and ought to be free. Congress did not say autonomous, it said independent and McKinley followed. In his message (Dec. 5, I898,) he explained why congress had a right to declare and make Cuba free. He said: "No alternative, save physical exhaustion of either combatants and therewithal the practical ruin of the island, lay in sight, but how far distant no one could venture to conjecture." The natives were being exterminated and the island devastated by Spain's military arm, and "the autonomist administration set up in the capital and some of the principal cities appeared not to gain the favor of the inhabitants, nor to be able to extend their influence to the large extent of territory held by the insurgents." Hence, "In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of IN THE NAME OF GOD. I21 endangered American interests, which give us the right and duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop." Thus congress and president took care to erect for themselves a noble monument of humanity and to lay down principles to guide themselves and posterity for all time. They were even more jealous of the breath of suspicion and calumny, and as an invulnerable armor of virtue they projected a fourth resolution into the ear of human selfishness and blood-guiltiness: "Fourth-That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people." Men could not have bound themselves more inviolably to conduct the war to the end on these principles and to wrest no property from Spain over which an excuse should be found to "exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control." No declaration could have been more absolute and seemingly abiding than that this congress and president would not do unto others as Spain was doing unto us in the body of our brother, Cuba. Spain of course protested. She believed that the Cubans were unfit for self-government; she thought she was subduing them for their own good, which they or their childrens' children who survived would see; she was confident that her honor demanded that the Cubans should first lay down their arms and unconditionally surrender, before she could treat with them; she regarded Cuba as important for her military and commercial interests; and she held strenuously that no foreign power had a right to interfere with her management of her own. These considerations did not weigh at Washington. They were even considered to be somewhat puerile and fantastic. Washington assured Spain that it wanted 122 IN THE NAME OF GOD. none of her property, but that she could not be allowed to treat her property on those principles; that we must therefore take it away from her, not for ourselves, but for freedom. There was the possibility that we had omitted the words Porto Rico and Philippines from these sacred principles and promises, so that we might take and keep these provinces, by application of the principles which we refused to allow Spain to apply, and her use of which entitled us to wrest them of her in order to give them freedom and independence. We regarded any one who suspected us of this baseness as an enemy, we said that such libels arose from the vulgar malignity of the Old World mind which could not appreciate any thing generous. One thing impossible for us was to be doublefaced. The general opinion of Europe from the beginning on was finally expressed by W. T. Stead, who had tapped that opinion by wide travel. He gave the Italian idea first, which was unfortunate since that people is so far behind us in liberty and an intelligent comprehension of the sacredness of the plighted word. "Dislike of the American seizure of the Philippines and a conviction that the humane enthusiasm which made war possible was a mere mask of cant, assumed in order to facilitate conquest, are almost the only sentiments shared in common by the rival camps of the Quirinal and the Vatican. The American declarations are almost universally derided as hideous examples of a worse than English hypocrisy. Uncle Sam, they say, determined in all things to surpass John Bull, has outdone him, even in pharisaism and cant. The friends of America wring their hands in unaffected grief over the fall of the United States, and the temptations of its territorial expansion. Her enemies shoot out the lip and can shriek in derision over what they regard as the unmistakable demonstration which the demand for the Philippines affords of American cupidity, American bad faith, and American ambi IN THE NAME OF GOD. 123 tion. 'We told you so.' they exclaim. 'That is what the unctuous rectitude of the Anglo-Saxon always ends in. He always legins by calling heaven to witness to his unselfish desire to help his neighbors, but he always ends by stealing their spoons.'... Nor do I think in the whole of our tour through Europe I have met an European who did not receive my protestations as to the genuine sincerity with which the American people entered the war with more or less mocking incredulity. "'It is all very fine,' they say, in effect, 'to dissemble your love, but why did you kick me downstairs? It was all very well to proclaim your disinterestedness, but why did you seize the Philippines?' "'Mere national brigandage, markedly odious pharisaism,' is a phrase which roughly represents the judgment of the old world on the recent development of the new." This is the opinion of the many. "But there is in every country a minority of thoughtful men who, having for all their lives been the staunchest friends of the American commonwealth, are now confounded and utterly put to shame at what is universally regarded as the apostasy of the United States, the abandonment of their national policy, and the adoption of the world policy of conquest."* It was prophesied by all Europe (fellow-brigand England excepted, and he knew too much to prophesy) that we would do as we did by Spain's possessions, and these opinions of us were in the European air from the date of the first gun. Have we forgotten the intensity with which all these ominous forebodings were scorned and repudiated in Washington? Washington was at that time communing with God. It had its head out of the trapdoor at the apex of cerulean heaven, gazing over the trackless wastes of eternal perfection, its new element, and could not feel these taunting earthly prognostications of its sneaking perfidy. McKinley, Congress *Written by Mr. Stead Nov. 2r, 1898. 124 IN THE NAME OF GOD. & Co., were at that time bathing their heads in bliss and their feet in blood, in a peculiar state of distemper which they called Summum Bonum. They were well enough, however, to see that they could not take the Philippines or Porto Rico without absolutely renouncing all their humanitarian brag and their claims to have made the war for the sake of goodness. They evinced this by their reiterated statements and their hot denial that they could do any thing selfish or wrong. These assertions which now dance on the buried honor of these men like ghosts, are all to be found in the transactions of congress which I presume they would all be glad to burn if they could.* They are like Mr. Spooner's words who said, "We are not going to war on account of our hatred of Spain, but to relieve the suffering of the starving women and children in Cuba." And Mr. Mantle's. 'I would give my unqualified endorsement and vote in favor of directing the President to use the armed forces, both land and naval, to suppress the savagery that is now rampant upon that fair island... Spain had violated every principle of civilized warfare and had thrown humanity to the winds. It was now time that the cry of humanity and the cry for stern justice should be heard. It was time to be done with subterfuge. We should not go to war without full justification, but must be assured before striking that we strike for God and humanity. This time has come.' Nearly every Washington windbag had a sacred retaining fee from God at that period. But I doubt if any of these semi-angels was nearer the great white throne than Senator Wolcott. From him rolled out the solemn organ tones of melancholy universal love. In the eyes of every man in Europe, we must be free from ulterior motives, if we are to preserve their respect and our own. This war upon which we are entering can bring us no material gain. It will result in the loss of millions of our commerce. It will sweep our ships from the sea, and we will leave thousands of our young men dead from fevers and diseases in the tropics. All this must be counted in advance, and we have counted it. I believe the day for Cuban freedom has come, but when we have achieved the victory, there will be no territory to indemnify us for our sacrifices, because *The words of Congressmen which follow are mainly taken from the Associated Press reports of Congressional proceedings for January and February, '98. WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. I25 we do not want territory. There will be no money to indemnify us, because Spain is bankrupt. We must find our supreme satisfaction for our blood and treasure in relieving the cry of suffering and the cause of humanity. This war must be fought because, in the eyes of the world, we stand as the sentinel of liberty in the western hemisphere, and because it we fail to listen to the voice of the suffering and downtrodden, we will be untrue to the principles upon which the government is founded, as upon a rock. Obviously these destiny-makers were profoundly conscious what they had promised to their country and the world, in all its ramifications. It is rot to say they did not think their promise included all Spanish colonial territory. They knew that if they took territory to keep, the bottom of their famous tub of philanthropy would fall out and all its contents would soak away in the desert of human selfishness, where they had set up in business as the sole oasis. Every sound mind in Christendom was aware that our promise not to seize Cuba for our own extended to Porto Rico and the Philippines. If we broke our word and took them we should stand before the world as a sneak thief 'sentinel of liberty,' like a parson taking umbrellas from doorways after preaching lessons of piety to the servant girls who answered the bell. For a born thief like the Anglo-Saxon it was a stiff situation. On the one side God, humanity, and a good name; on the other something to be had for nothing by merely stealing it and perjuring ourselves. What did we do? 2. Where God Dropped Out. It is not clear on just what day and hour God branded us and ejected us from the Garden of Eden. McKinley alone knows the time, for he was the Eve and transacted the business with the Almighty. Blandished by Serpent Hanna he reached forth his hand and ate of the forbidden Philippines, and the curse fell on America through him. We seem to have been with God still in July of '98, if the Chicago ministers are reliable. Bishop Samuel Fallows then glowed in language which showed no knowledge of expulsion: 126 WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. For the first time in the history of the world has a nation's banner been carried forward by strong, brave hands purely in the interest of humanity. The American flag, which is expressive of the most advanced political ideas in the possession of man, has been set up over territory wrested by the force of arms from a nation noted for its misrule and cruelty. The Old World, with one notable exception, derisively smiled when we announced the humanitarian purpose of the present war. Lust of conquest was believed to be our real animating purpose. The world will yet see that we were thoroughly honest in our statements. Wherever the American flag now waves or wherever it shall wave hereafter, it must never be taken down until another flag which shall represent the same glorious ideas shall take its place. In reading this passage, which declares for the glory of God and the glory of perjury in the same breath, it is nevertheless uncertain whether Fallows was not trying to cover his moral nakedness before an eye that is not deceived, by the fig leaf of ordinary pulpit preaching. We can still trace evidences of simple familiarity with our Maker in September, for I find in a secular newspaper, "Christian America has realized, perhaps as never before, that the nation who disregards the right and oppresses the weak, as Spain has done for long centuries, is rushing straight toward moral shipwreck, and that nothing can stay it in its downward course except the Providence of God. In the war just ended we cannot fail to perceive that God is still at the helm of human affairs, as much so today as in the time of His Israel of old.... And today His people in this land should be more earnestly alive to duty than ever before; more jealous of His honor." As jealousy of 'His honor' had gained for us a first mortgage on several colonies quite regardless of our sworn word to 'Him' not to take it, this seemed to be a businesslike view of the case. Even in October the Lord had not wholly withdrawn. I find Archbishop Ireland acting as interpreter for 'Him' to a great concourse of Chicagoans at a peace festival. I state a broad, undeniable fact. The dominating, impelling motive of the war, in the depths of the national heart of America, was the sentiment of humanity. The people of America offered their lives WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. 127 through no sordid ambition of pecuniary gain, of conquest, of territory, of national aggrandizement. Theirs was the high-born ambition to succor fellow-men.... The world, today, as never before, knows and confesses the great power of America. The world today admires and respects America. The young giant of the West, heretofore neglected and, alas despised in his remoteness and isolation, has begun to move as becomes his stature.... All this does not happen by chance or accident. An all-ruling Providence directs the movements of humanity. What we witness is a momentous dispensation from the Master of Men. The drum and the church organ are a little metaphorically mixed here, but one cannot doubt it is due to the difficulty of Englishing divine sentences. But in January there is irrefragable evidence that God was no more and we get information of it by going to Congress. There all those semi-angels who had warred for God and Humanity and had promised the Master to take no territorial pay for it were talking a new language, that of the planet Mars. There have been some bitter national humiliations in our history, but when time has passed its verdict what will equal the slime in which the president and congress crawled when they came to eat their words of solemn honor declared with all the ceremony of God-revering men at the advent of the Spanish war? From the stain these miscreants have inflicted we shall never recover until the Anglo-Saxon race has undergone some new birth and proved by pure deeds of firm and lasting unselfishness that it has wiped out the taint of knaves and sneaks and pick-pockets. They ate their words and ate their principles, they tarred themselves thick and black with lies, but even then their cant did not die and they were mean enough to stick in the holy feathers stolen from God and Humanity and go on pretending to be angels. We have their own skulking words, no one has to invent any tar and nastiness for them. Congressman Berry (Dem.) of Kentucky announced himself, amid an outbreak of applause on the Republican side, in favor of the retention of every foot of territory we had acquired as a result of the war with Spain. "But I want to say right here," continued Mr. Berry, "that I never want to see the Philippines represented on this floor." 128 WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. "\What we have won by the sword is absolutely our own," he said earlier, arguing for annexation. Mr. Mason and Mr. Hoar introduced resolutions in the senate 'declaring it to be the policy of the United States not to attempt to govern the people of any other nation,' and that 'the Filipinos ought to be free and independent,' to which Mr. Carter of Montana objected. He viewed the anxiety of these men to push their resolutions 'with regret.' He thought it would be conceded that the pending resolutions presented no great or important questions to the American people or Congress, as they were at best expressions only of the Senate. He pointed out the more important business before the Senate and urged that the time of the Senate be not taken up with such matters. If it were supposed to make any difference what anyone asked a tar angel we should ask Mr. Carter why then congress took its priceless time to pass the resolution that 'Cuba was and by right ought to be free and independent,' or the resolution disclaiming for the whole United States any disposition to grab, seize, hold, retain or govern said island, and by all honor any other island? Were those resolutions 'at best expressions only of congress'? Then Mr. Self-tarred Carter we ask you if the senate and house could not stand by their own solemn expressions, even if they did not commit the country? And we further point out to you that if your resolutions do not commit the country the country is absolved from your leading and can regard you from first to last as a parcel of gossiping meddling busybodies. Platt of Connecticut spoke. He could not understand the sentiments or motives of those who wished to circumscribe the powers of the nation. Why, he asked, should we belittle those powers or strive by subtlety and sophistry to hamper the progress and growth of the country? Rather than pursue this course, why should Senators not wish the nation godspeed in its mission of extending our free institutions as far as possible? As for himself, he knew the American people to be a liberty-loving and right-doing people, and he had no misgivings that any administration of the United States would fail in its duty toward the people of an acquired territory. WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. Why you see, Platt, it's like this. You promised God and Humanity and America that you would not make the country grow by plastering Spain's property on to it. When you did that were you 'striving by subtlety and sophistry to hamper the progress and growth of the country'? Having made that promise you can't very well accuse any one who reminds you of it and merely asks you to live up to it, of hampering growth and progress. And as for the United States 'not failing in its duty toward the people of an acquired territory,' she has not, if that duty is to kill them. Purr and lick your tar-feathers, eminent angel of legislation. Platt's idea of our duty to acquired peoples did not hide itself many days. "The ratification of this treaty," said he, "will give the United States the right to say to Aguinaldo, 'We are in control of these islands. Attack us if you dare.' " There is a three-card-monte Jingo by profession in the senate named Lodge. He always has a few God-andHumanity cards up his sleeve and can stack Destiny better than any statesman outside of McKinley. He can write a Constitutional Bible as deftly and daftly as Beelzebub. When he delivered his famous "Address in Favor of American Perjury" he threw in a couple of Psalms and Proverbs about the Constitution. Our Constitution is great and admirable, because the men who made it were so and the people who ratified it and have lived under it were and are brave, intelligent and lovers of liberty. There is a higher sanction and a surer protection to life and liberty, to the right of free speech and trial by jury, to justice and humanity, in the traditions, the beliefs, the habits of mind and the character of the American people than any which can be afforded by any Constitution, no matter how wisely drawn. Holding these views as to our constitutional powers, the great question now before the American people resolves itself in my mind to one of policy purely. My lord, he hit it like a Yankee bargain when he said that! The whole thing resolves itself into a question of policy purely. That was what it was when you vowed not to steal anything from Spain, that is what it is now that you have your hand in his pocket and are pleading 5 130 WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. for consent of congress to take it out with his jack-knife and fish-hooks in it. I can see your forefathers sitting on a dry goods box in front of the New England grocery spitting tobacco and wisdom, jewing the Indians out of land and shooting them if they won't jew, and going to the meeting house on Sunday to ruminate on the Coming Constitution and God. You got your knack of 'saying things' from that school. The treaty cedes the Philippines to us. It is wisely and skillfully drawn. It commits us to no policy, to no course of action whatever, in regard to the Philippines. When that treaty is ratified we have full power and are free to do with those islands as we please, and the opposition to its ratification may be summed up in a single sentence, that the American people and the American Congress are not to be trusted with that power and that freedom of action in regard to the inhabitants of these distant islands.... I believe we can be trusted as a people to deal honestly and justly with the islands, and their inhabitants, thus given to our care. Of course Congress can be trusted to steal land and the jack-knives of these people and to shoot them if they don't call that taking proper care of their liberty and dealing honestly and justly by them. The pious horse-thief McKinley has been doing just that since Lodge and Congress adjourned, and no one has had a message from the grocery-box statesman saying that the transaction isn't just right. Although we vowed to God not to do with Spain's islands 'as we please,' the tobacco spitting policy of 'policy purely' is now fulfilled in all its aboriginal lineaments. Just how far it is needful to go with this history of the Lies of the Great to prove them liars, perjurers, blasphemers, and villains, I know not. Some Republican office-seekers in my circuit would not believe it until twelve volumes of the Congressional Record were quoted. For them let us take down what Mr. Marsh (Rep.) of Illinois, member of the Military Committee, said: He was in favor of the annexation of the Philippines whether the natives were willing or not. For four years we had fought in this country to force the southern people to submit to the Constitution against their will. It was absurd to say that we could not employ force to take and hold the Philippines. WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. 131 And absurd also to say that we could not take and hold Cuba by force, only we said we wouldn't. That will be cleared up for us by and by by Mr. Grosvenor, the fidus Achates of McKinley. But before him let us stand Platt of New York, the famous liberty-loving boss of that State, on the rostrum and hear him talk. He comes out of the tar kettle and says: There has never been absent from the floor of the Senate that class of intellect which has found in the Constitution its warrant for opposing new things. Nor is it new things only which are so resolutely opposed in the name of the fathers. It is the old things with new faces as well. Here we have been for a whole century annexing territory, annexing with a club or with a caress, just as necessity demanded, and yet Senators are discovering to one another the most acute distress over what they boldly describe as a 'departure from the time-honored traditions.' Platt is that celebrated patriot who holds the Republican party of New York in the hollow of his conscience and sells legislation to corporations for cash, euphemistically entitled 'campaign funds'; a wretch who is a disgrace to his country and his kind and most inimical of all men to popular government because he has monarchized popular forms and made legislation chattel to monopolies. 'Annexing with a club or with a caress, just as necessity demanded,' is quite a neat description of that shark in sheep's clothing, Congress, McKinley & Co. Platt is one of those sinister men who, like his colleague Croker, occasionally speaks the cantankerous truth, although for a warm quarter of a minute or two it lifts off the lid of hell. It is now time to hear Grosvenor. The idea, said he, that the army might be invoked to subvert our liberties was a man of straw. Mr. Grosvenor contended that the purpose of the administration had never deviated from the time the declaration of war was adopted with the absurd provision in it which no one here would support now. From that day to this, this government, under the guiding hand of the administration, had never deviated from its purpose, and stood today simply executing the orders and decrees of Congress, of civilization, and of Almighty God. "Does the gentleman mean the Teller provision as the absurd provision in the declaration of war?" asked Mr. Dinsmore. "I mean the provision that the people of Cuba were, and of right ought to be, free and independent," replied Mr. Grosvenor. WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. "I belong to a party," said Grosvenor on another day, "that has always upheld the cause of liberty. I belong to a party that has never pulled down the flag of liberty." There is some evidence here of the date when God packed up and left Congress or was packed out of it. By the help of Almighty God Congress had been so successful in robbing chicken coops that congressmen were now not only able to repudiate Almighty God, but to devoutly wish they had never taken him into partnership. If we were to do it over again we would not insert that 'absurd provision' that we went not out for to steal, into the declaration of war. What was the use, Mr. Grosvenor asks, of going to the expense of getting a brand new tailor made robe of hypocritical unselfishness to do our rapine, spoliation and murder in when we could have done the whole thing just as well in our every-day clothes? No use at all, the cloak is very inconvenient when you have nice stabbing or fast running to do, let us throw it off, now, and that glazed mask of Godliness which gets in the way of the eyes and prevents striking the fiercest blow, and do our stealing hereafter in our every-day clothes. Besides, continues Grosvenor, Almighty God will sympathize with us just as much. He knows that murder is an instrument of salvation as well as of burglary, and we can fool 'Him' into compliance by assuring 'Him' that we break into our neighbors' houses to get their property to give it to education and religion and liberty for the good of the neighbors themselves. Listen to me. Although we've kicked out God bodily as far as any attention to right and decency, honor, good faith and humanity, goes, I keep 'Him' on our side by saying in 'His' ear: 'This government stands today simply executing the orders and decrees of Congress, of civilization, and of Almighty God.' God is finally carved up and devoured by Congress while Chauncey Depew says grace with dinner oratory. Depew had been as usual to England and was re WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. I33 turned to the bosom of his fond Republican club. The number of guests is chronicled and the oracle then and there drafted a new American contract with God over 'His' remains. Behold the context: There is a colonial possession desire. It is in the blood, and no power can stop it. Though we have not entered upon it in haste, we will uphold it with the strong arm of the military and navy. A people of the same intellectual blood are in hearty accord with us in this crisis, for the civilization and humanity of the world. The Englishman understands us very well, but the Frenchman does not know any more about us than does the Chinaman. They (the English) rally us goodnaturedly on our protestations of pure sentiment in the war, and say: "Yes, that is always the way we get in, and then stay. Christianity and civilization demand it, you know, and we give the beggars liberty, law, order and justice, which they never had before. It is in your blood. You have come by it honestly. You have aroused the appetite of earth-hunger and you cannot stop."* When do you think this was? Clear back in July, '98, showing that the political masters of the country had decided to throw over and slay God long before the clergy got wind of it. This bland cynicism is final and absolute, there is no doubting it, no going behind the returns, for Depew is part of the Republican pulse, he is as slick a thief as any, and his heart beats in cathedral unison with that of the Great Chief Thief. He says that all this God, Humanity, Christianity and unselfishness business is a great humbug, operated consciously by those in the political lead to satisfy the mass of fools in society who think that 'Christianity' and 'civilization' are something more than empty beer bottles or discarded wine casks. By that ruse 'we get in,' and 'then we stay there.' Who are 'we'? Why, Congress, McKinley & Co., and the millionaire trade monopolists; all the rest are fools, who have various hobby fictions which we pander to with big phrases, and so lead them our way like hogs with rings in their snouts. To muzzle these fools we call it 'For the civilization and humanity of the world'; we mean by that, Appetite of earth-hunger, Colonial possession desire, which nothing can stop, and which we will uphold with the *Los Angeles Herald, July 2, 1898. 134 WHERE GOD DROPPED OUT. strong arm of the military and navy. Whose appetite? Whose army and navy? Those of the mass of American fools? Oh no, ours, Congress-McKinley-and-the-millionaires'. The fools obey us, or they wouldn't be fools. And the Porto Ricans and Filipinos and others that we convey God, humanity and civilization to? Why, the beggars, we just dose them up with liberty, law and order chaff and make them think they've got something tangible and rich, while underneath we take their whole kettle of fish, their country, and eat it to satisfy our 'earth-appetite,' and exploit it to gratify our 'wealth-appetite.' And if they can't digest liberty and love we dose them with bullets. The merry shibboleth 'Christianity and civilization' fools one lot of fools, and the merrier one 'Liberty, Law and Order' fools another set. This way we net in the whole gang of American asses-all the country except Congress, McKinley, Me, and the millionaires. It's great fun, life's worth living-for us. I have to laugh night and day thinking how the farce of giving a people civilization, liberty, law and order under our absolute sovereignty and after we have taken away their whole territory, goes down with a continent of fools! But it does; it slips down the American throat like Christianity castor oil, and purges away every rudiment of American insight. Just wheedle American prejudices by seeming to give in to and agree with them, and I defy you to show me one thing you can't do with the people. Talk of fools, if the cares of state and railroads and dinners gave me time I would invent a vocabulary of words to express the American character handsomely. Fool is mild, tender and complimentary, compared with the fact. Off-hand I should say they are a combination of dunce, knave, idiot, ass and hypocrite, for all the while they think, like a wicked old senile imbecile, that they are governing themselves, guiding us, and taking in somebody. We have the word of a reliable Englishman, A. V. Dicey, that Depew is straight about the Christianity THE DEVIL IN US. I35 civilization hoax on its English side. "We don't go to Egypt to civilize it," he says; "we go to get new markets." Is it irrelevant and irreligious to ask the American people whether they can stomach the humiliation which Depew, speaking for Congress and monopolists, has spewed upon them? Can they with honor and self-respect permit a policy which is trumpeted by its originators as a lie in all its texture, a gross, conscious and intentional fraud on the feebleminded multitude? 3. The Devil In Us. The bud of American holiness was peculiarly made but must be looked into if one would comprehend the full flower which soon burst. We lied to Spain about the motives and reasons of our demands, she knew we were lying, we* knew we were lying, she knew that we knew it and we knew that she knew it. We said to her, Act as if our motives and purposes were the opposite of what we both know they are or we will go to war and make you act that way; act as if we were fighting only to free and not to 'swipe' your territory, or we will fight you and free your territory and take it. The after utterances of our statesmen, which we shall amply examine, show beyond all doubting that these were our purposes and motives, held in abeyance, but held. Spain was bound by honor to reply to such a nation of liars (Congress & McKinley) with a war. It is one of the good acts of her life that with defeat and humiliation certain she replied to the great lying Yankee, 'Since you hold me up and order me to deliver my property, saying that the reason I must obey is the good of the property and not your greed for it, and proving this by swearing you will not keep it when both of us know you will, I refuse to obey. You give a lie as the reason for your robbing to shield yourself before the world, and you command me to affirm the lie *Congress & McKinley. 130 THE DEVIL IN US. by behaving as if I believed it and pretending to give my property willingly, when the gun of your greed is at my head. I will not. I will resist, and you shall be compelled to take your booty by force, that the world may know you are a bloody villain, not a pious saint. The point is this. Our lie compelled Spain to refuse our demands and to fight instead. If she had yielded to these demands, with our background motives in sight, it would have been criminal. This is not rhetoric. In declaring war Congress and McKinley said, The object of this war is to free oppressed peoples, that is why Spain must give them up, we shall not take these peoples or their territory. If they had said instead of this, The purpose of the war is to make Porto Rico, the Philippines and perhaps Cuba our own, that is our true ultimate purpose (as it turns out it was), we never should have gotten those colonies without a world war. Europe would have forbidden us, and if England had said go on, the continent of Europe would have fought England and us. Spain knew this. Spain knew that we were picking her pockets by chloroforming Europe with a lie; tearing away that lie, our work was merely brutal robbery, to be resisted by any honest nation. Hence she fought us under compulsion of duty, as a man would fight a burglar in his house at night. If the burglar said, I am a clergyman and you must not fight me but give up your jewels without resisting, it would still be the victim's duty to fight. If there were neighbors, which should they help, the householder or the clergyman thief? Congress was shrewder than the clergyman-burglar. It dressed up as half priest, half politician, and entered Spain's domain and fell upon her. When the neighbors heard Spain's cries for help and ran in, we showed them our clothes and said, This woman has stolen and misused property and we are here to restore it to its rightful owner. Poor Spain saw the devil underneath our false garments and THE DEVIL IN US. I37 tried to show the others, but failed, and after they were gone we knocked her senseless and made off with all that she had. The whole trouble was Spain's brightness. She saw through us. She knew she was dealing with a thief and murderer. She knew we would do as we have done. If the devil had not been in us all would have been different, she would not have seen it under our priestly police robe; our acts would not have been those of an excited robber, getting his plunder or killing its owner. It would not have been difficult to secure the 'freedom and independence of Cuba' but for the very obvious devil in us. Spain would have imagined the devil anyway, some think. That is begging the question. The devil was there and we could not help showing it. If it had not been there we should not have shown it, and time would have convinced. But above all, our letting the devil in us out this time entirely establishes the right of Spain's course in treating us as if we were a devil and fighting us, and it destroys our privilege to play clergyman or policeman again. We perhaps shall not wish to. Maybe we can carry on the devil's work we have begun in the devil's own jacket. Be this as it may we shall have to do so, for it is now known to the world -that there is no saint anywhere in tlS. There is this proviso, already suggested. The American people only permitted the war as one for honest freedom, they (id not sanction or enter it as a war for spoils, it is therefore an open question still how much the devil is in the American character, and how much confined to the American masters. In the first round the masters won unequivocally. For there is no question that the people were not devil enough either to have gone deliberately to rob Spain or to wage a war which they knew would become one of plunder. The clergyman's surplice on congress deceived the American people as well as the 138 THE DEVIL IN US. powers of Europe. So far the whole people stand before the world as sheer devil because they have not repudiated and undone the work which a devil congress and president perpetrated in their name. If they do not undo it mankind will know that devil was ingrained in the American character, and that the momentary rulers only initiated a work which brought that latent devilishness into fierce and fractious play. CHAPTER VIII. The Pay of These Barnacles. The politician lives on campaign funds and offices. War opened a vast field for transaction in offices, expansion will provide enormous campaign funds. Every appointment to office secures all the friends and relatives of the appointee as workers for the politician or administration conferring the plum. The Spanish war rained plums in torrents and the heavens are not yet dry. The selection of incompetents from civil life to fill war offices for political reasons has been a supreme scandal, not only in itself as a bribe from politicians to civilians to dance around their bloody bonfire, but because it caused that cruel slaughter of American young men in the politicianmade grave yards called camps of San Francisco and the South. Through Alger and Corbin, McKinley conducted a wholesale business of appointing incompetents. Under galling criticism he acknowledged his wrong-doing by a curious act, but did not repent. While Congress was in session he was obliged to send the names of his favorites to the senate for confirmation before they could receive commissions, but "soon after the close of the session he isued an order that the clerical force at the White House should not divulge the names of future appointees to the army from civil life." After this through inadvertency of a clerk the War Department allowed one list to leak out to the Associated Press and it was published by the evening papers of the country, but the excited Depart I40 THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. ment secured its withholding from the morning papers.* Thus do presidents and secretaries engaged in the great work of re-electing themselves sneak and scheme. The number of civilians who received staff appointments up till August 22, '98, tells much. Assistant Adjutant-Generals, ranking as Major, 8; the same ranking as Captain, 35; Quartermaster ranked as LieutenantColonel, I; the same, with rank of Major, I; Chief Quartermasters, with rank of Major, 6; Assistant Quartermasters, ranking as Captain, 70; Chief Commissaries of Subsistence, ranking Major, I4; Commissaries of Subsistence, ranking Major, 5; the same, with rank of Captain, 73.t This list is only partial, but many of those included are brothers and sons of present Washington politicians. The result was death to the wretched men who took congress seriously in its declaration that the war was for humanity and not greed. How many of those who enlisted to make Cuba 'free and independent' would have done so had the bed-rock object of the war, to forcibly obtain trading grounds for our millionaires, been confessed? Who can ever forgive that Congress? Innocent common citizens took the humanity gag seriously and went out to spend the summer rotting to death on foul and meagre rations within sight of home, under the care of the inefficient officers appointed to re-elect Congress and McKinley. This is one item of the pay given these scoundrels by the American people for immersing them in a criminal war. When the war broke loose the volunteers from Southern California went up to camp in San Francisco on the bleak ocean front and found no preparation of food, bedding or clothing for them. The sickness began at once. On May 13, "There is not a man in the 584 raw recruits of the artillery battalion who has not a cold or a sore *Washington correspondent of N. Y. Evening Post, Sept. 17, 1898. tThe same. THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. 141 throat. Some of them are threatened with pneumonia."* But a Major said: "The men are having a hard time of it, iut it is what they must expect. One blanket and the floor for led and bedding is not extraordinary in war times, and though many have colds and sore throats, they will recover and be all the hardier." It did not prove so, many of the strongest of them died. One with a powerful physique, who spent the summer there and finally lay at death's door with typhoid, said to me after recovery, 'I was so weakened by bad and scanty food that I could not resist the disease conditions all about me. Hard drill with improper nourishment drained away our strength.' This soldier's regiment did not go to the Philippines, but its colonel made efforts to collect his men for that field. 'If he comes for me I will shoot him before I will go with him,' remarked this young man. However, sore throats, pneumonia, fever, were what the soldiers of humanity had to expect; each dead soldier was equal to a dozen campaign speeches to re-elect the Congressmen who caused the war. In December Miss Schaefer, a Red Cross nurse, returned from Manila and reported: Scores of the soldier boys are dying in the hospitals in Manila just for want of proper nourishment. They say the government allows 60 cents a day for each patient. I could save dozens of lives on 5 cents a day. Oh, the utter woe of the hospitals, the helplessness of them. Men as bright and noble as God ever made, giving up to death, hoping for it, seeking it, taking poison, doing anything that will end the despair that comes upon them.... No wonder there are six or seven funerals a day. No wonder the dead-house is never empty.... Think of an attendant going through a ward with a pail of beef broth, ladling out to the fifty or sixty patients indiscriminately a tin cup full of it. In the whole pail full there was not enough nourishment for one, even if it were made of the best material. But what it really was made of I shut my eyes and refuse to imagine. In a whole ward there is not more than one nurse with experience, and for helpers only one or two awkward boys who, perhaps, never saw a sick room before.t Censor of Mails Otis will probably say this is a made up story and charge the nurse with being a traitor, or *Special to Los Angeles Herald. tAssociated Press Dispatch from Honolulu, Dec. 7, '98. I42 THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. accomplice of Aguinaldo. Why should it be made up? No one had to make up stories of worse things about Chickamauga, Santiago or Montauk Point. It is what soldiers who fight to establish the liberty of the president to destroy savage races for political effect have to expect. They will be all the hardier for it. But those who doubt such stories need only turn again to the president's appointments. The Chief Commissary of Subsistence has much to do with the health of soldiers. A representative of the N. Y. Evening Post interviewed one of these dignitaries bound for Manila on the U. S. Flagship China. "Have you had any experience in the Subsistence Department?" he was asked. "None at all," he frankly answered. "I suppose you have an experienced clerk, then?" "No," he replied, "I was unable to find a clerk with any experience in the Department."' This being the type of men McKinley sent out to take care of the American army why should anyone suppose that the hospitals would not be managed as Miss Schaefer described? The same writer noted another little presidential joke on the same ship. There was a sutler, with all his goods. "Sutlers have been abolished by law, and yet this man, brother of a Representative in Congress, succeeded in shoving himself on board and getting transportation for himself, his clerk, and his goods free of charge, while the United States commissary was obliged to leave part of its supplies on the dock in San Francisco for lack of room. It is needless to say that the sutler arranged a store on the lower deck, where he is gradually getting from the soldiers such money as the latter have not given to the Chinese crew for Chinese whisky, a grewsome mixture. The commissary is confined to the hold. The authorities on board are either indifferent or ignorant or helpless to remedy these abuses. The commissary was established to take the place of sutlers, and give the men articles at cost prices."* *Letter from Manila Harbor, July 17, '98. THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. 143 The next election will show the relation of campaign funds to expansion. A campaign fund is a bribe. Those whom it elects are pledged to execute the will of those who contribute it. The Republican party learned in the struggle of ninety-six how to carry elections with millions in face of the axiom that it is the party of millionaires. The millions are of course furnished by the millionaires. In that election no greater matter was at stake than the money standard, and yet they dished out extravagantly. Next time the. whole millionaire policy will be on trial and we shall expect an amount of money thrown into the conflict such as humanity never invested in an election before. Expansion in its tersest definition is, (i) The Survival of millionaires, (2) The Expansion of millionaires. Assuming this here and assuming that millionaires know it, what limit is there to the money they will lay down for campaign expenses? Imperial Platt's system of electing men to serve him in the New York State legislature will be applied to the country. He furnishes the nominees of his party in the various districts of the State with money for election expenses, and when they are elected they are his men. As owner of the Legislature he negotiates with the New York millionaires who need legislation, agreeing to deliver it for stipulated contributions to the campaign fund. This Imperial Platt controls alone. He pays election bills and whatever he pleases out of it. The millionaires understand the system and send their checks like little men. The method is easily applied to national politics. Congressional aspirants needing help are furnished with it out of the national fund on condition of sustaining the national policy of the party chiefs who supply it. That policy so far as the Republican party is concerned is whatever the millionaires ask, and as they now ask expansion beyond everything else, expansion will be the Republican slogan in 1900. Congress has only two elements, those who are millionaires and those who are not. Those I44 THE PAY OF THESE BARNA'CLES. who are do not need to be bribed to cllhamnion expansion since that is their creed as millionaires; nor do they need election help for they buy their own way to the senate and house. For the rest, Congress must be filled to the point of majority with docile expansionists. Enough candidates must be bribed by election help to make millionaire expansion secure. There will be no difficulty about this. Very few men of principle now apply anywhere for election to congress. They could not be nominated or elected, for political machinery is in the hands of men without principle. The men without principle who constitute the majority of politicians adopt their tactics from the campaign-fund weather bureau. In other words they go with the money. If we seek the political syllogism for I900 it is this: The millionaires want expansion, the party that has the millionaire money will win, therefore expansion will prevail. Stated simply, if the country becomes imperial it will do so by the act of shyster politicians, men without principle, men directly or indirectly bribed by campaign funds, the moral black sheep and scalawags of society. If we are to expand it is good to know how and why we expand. To these men election is nearly life and death. In themselves they are thin and shallow, a term or more of congress gives them substance at home, it is more lucrative, at least taken with the jobs and perquisites, than their law practice. Such are the men in congress, such are the prizes held out to politicians. Putting the two things together, it is clear why we declared causeless war on Spain, clear why congress did not before adjourning tether the president with resolutions forbidding the forcible subjugation of the Philippines, clear why the statesmen have not compelled His Majesty to call a special session for them to throttle his piracy and call back his bloodhounds, clear that the incoming congress will confirm all he has done and write Empire across America to pay the THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. I45 millionaires for electing them, unless by chance the growl of the mastiff people is heard and these salesmen of liberty and humanity feel its teeth in their auctionable flesh. A priori, after certain events, one would say that the Republican party is the exclusive millionaire machine. But some interesting changes are going on in the 'New Democracy' which shake the foundations of a priority. The Democratic party is going back to the shelter of wealth. Politicians are the same the world over and Democracy over. The soul of a party, when it has a soul, is made of those who are steadfast to principles adequate to the social occasion whatever that may be. The New Democracy is losing what it had of this element, its soul, because it has adopted no principles that are adequate to the present social occasion. In the face of history, reason and the torch of progress it says, Break up trusts; the Republican party catches the trick and reverberates, Break up trusts. There is no adequacy in this principle, nor is it even a principle. Progress and principle together say, Save the trust and nationalize it, the intelligent soul of the community and of the Democratic party says the same. But the New Democracy smells gold in the ground and has gone prospecting for victory. It is returning to the cote of wealth, approximating back to the Republican clan, and is casting about before and behind for glittering futilities of which to carve campaign idols. By examining its latest literature we shall see the work of removing its claws going promptly forward. Oliver H. Perry Belmont, who need not be introduced to millionaire readers, said in Buffalo at a great gathering (April 2, '99): I am not opposed to wealth-no one would believe me if I pretended to be-but I am opposed to trusts and monopolies, because I consider they interfere with individual effort which has made the American citizen what he is, a free and independent man. I deny in every way the idea that the Democratic party is opposed to wealth, as our Republican friends pretend. Wealth is as safe in Democratic hands as it is in Republican hands, but the right of the individual to secure it will be safer under a Democratic administration. THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. The New Democracy came out of its ancient oyster shell in 1896 to oppose the monopoly of wealth. O. H. P. Belmont did not join the New Democracy, he is himself a very great monopolist of wealth and banker guardian of many others. He realized that the 'new birth' might trouble monopoly and so opposed it. But there is a better way than opposition to take out popular fangs, as the rich and mighty have always known. Join the popular side, identify yourself with their cause, and broaden, correct and tone down their demands. Old aristocracies have captured and decapitated thousands of popular movements in this way. Belmont brings his millions back to the Democratic fold and is welcomed with hugs and kisses because Democracy has the vertigo before millions. Then standing up and speaking for the New Democracy, he shapes its policy and destiny: '"I deny in every way the idea that the Democratic party is opposed to wealth-wealth is as safe in Democratic hands as it is in Republican hands." But although on this point we agree with our enemies, there are certain luminous illusions whereon we differ from them bitterly and to these I strenuously call you to rally and drive them out from the "intricate system of patronage" wherebehind they have entrenched themselves.' A few weeks later 'Belmont's name was enthusiastically applauded at a New York public dinner when he was mentioned as a running mate for Bryan.' The keynote given, response was quick and lusty. On the Fourth of July Tammany Hall met together to "replenish the lamps of patriotism," which were filled with oil by Joseph J. Willett, president of the Alabama Bar Association, who lighted them up with these burning sentiments: "Right here I will state our party has no crusade or unholy war to make against wealth. Nor have we ever desired to build up a party of sans culottes. In many sections of our country, notably in my own, the men of wealth in nearly every instance are Democrats, and THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. I47 we have no idea or thought of driving these men from the party or excluding them from party councils." "To get together with the old-time spirit and with the old-time enthusiasm, we must fight the coming campaign on living issues. The American people are so constituted, whether happily or unhappily, that they prefer to settle the questions immediately in front of them rather than those which may arise in the future. Happily for us, there are issues right in front of us upon which we can all be united. One of these is the tariff, with its monstrosities and absurdities. The need of tariff reform was never more urgent than it is today, and every one knows we must look to the Democratic party for relief" On the question who shall own the already monopolized wealth of the country the Republican party is Tweedledee and the Democratic Tweedledum. The old-time Democratic enthusiasm is to be aroused on that young issue, the tariff. Ex-congressman Caruth, of Kentucky, then arose and girded himself with metaphysical kerosene to break up the trusts. The return of wealth to control of the Democratic party will quiet down its opposition to expansion. At the Democratic dollar dinner in New York (April 15), Vice-President Belmont offered a distinction and a difference for the assuagement of -Democrats who are from principle against expansion. "The Republicans," he said, "were slow in avenging the insult and injuries of the [Spanish] enemy and only did so when pushed to it by the Democracy of the country. They are guilty of carrying on our late war in a partisan and corrupt manner, and to the profit of corporations." Henry Watterson made a suggestion some time ago in his Courier Journal, of which much may yet be heard. "To come down to hard facts" about the Democratic party, There is but one thing for them to do. The voters have about made up their minds that party pledges are fabricated chiefly to be broken. Let the Democrats, banking on this circumstance, put up a ticket without a platform; let them nominate candidates for President and VicePresident who are a platform in themselves; and, if they can induce the great admiral and the gallant general to accept, here is the card to win with: For President, George Dewey of Vermont. For VicePresident, Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia. Platform-The Stars and Stripes, God bless them. 148 THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. As to the 'acquisition of territory and the elevation of the American Union into a world-power,' he claims that the Spanish war settled it and Democracy should accept the verdict. Silverist Senator Stewart, millionaire, has not been witholut influence on Democratic destinies and he has also given a verdict, lately. Expansion? Why we've already expanded, and it is not a question whether or not we favor it. What is to be our future course in the Philippines? That is the question. These fellows who dub themselves anti-expansionists don't know.... It makes no difference whether the United States had a right to buy the islands, or whether Spain had a title which she could dispose of. The fact remains that we did buy them, and are now there for the purpose of giving the natives an opportunity to rule themselves. It may be that our arguguments are rather strong, but it is apparently the only way to treat with those people. If straws sh)ow the way the wind blows, these hay fields should show the way the Democratic wind blows. The Democratic party will settle down to the position of the Liberal party in England. It will be.reluctant about expansion but will favor it; it will favor slower expansion; that will be its distinction and difference, its luminous illusion. Preparatory to the operation of certain kinds of medicines, certain other kinds have to be taken first. This distinction and difference will prepare the Democratic party for the operation of campaign funds. The millionaires are rejoining the party with an eye to saving monopolized wealth and accomplishing imperialism. They can tirade trusts lustily, for trusts will not be broken up, and if they are it will not hurt millionairedom; something equally agglutinous not called trusts will be found. The wealth controllers of the party will be chiefly expansionists. They will etherealize the party opposition to expansion into a beautiful epigram for transfixing votes, and if they fail in this they will provide that enough expansionist Democratic Congressman are elected to temper radical opposition to that doctrine if the party should THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. 149 carry the national elections. If the millionaires will fatten the campaign fund plenty of Democratic candidates for Congress will be found hungry to promise allegiance to 'expansion at a slowv pace.' Expansion is secure. As the trusts contribute campaign funds to both parties, so do expansion millionaires. It makes no difference which party has the majority, expansion will have the majority when the vote comes on it-always barring the teeth of the mastiff. For after all McKinley did not wholly dispose of Destiny, it still wavers on the question whether the people will bite. When they say build ships and expand, it is not for a job or glory or vulgar money. The expanding affirmations of Deity Dewey will 'carry more guns' than a thousand horse-sense arguments, because a simon-pure naval patriot can only express simon-pure wisdom. A Vienna paper reports that Dewey said, "Who is to disarm first? The experiment was tried in the United States, and look what it cost us to get ready in time and how we had to face the issue. We now think differently and are building forty men-of-war. We shall not be taken by surprise and found unprepared again, and it is hard to believe, in view of our terrific exertions, that the other powers will abandon the advantage of their armament and give them up." His opinion cabled from elsewhere was, "We need a large and thoroughly equippled navy that can cope with any other poower. Our next war will be with Germany." He may not have been so childish as to say this about Germany, but he probally thinks it. If as a nation we honored horse sense more we should realize that the only cause we cal ever have for fighting Germany is our new expansion greed. About the time Dewey was spawning these fateful eggs the Associated Press published from Washington the following information: "Admiral Dewey today filed in the Court of Claims through his attorneys his claim for naval bounty growing out of tlhe battle in Manila Bay, THE PAY OF THESE BARNACLES. May I, 1898. This is the first of this class of claims filed in this court, and it is anticipated that there will be between 4000 and 5000 altogether." What the naval prizes amount to is not yet known. Guessing at it the \Vashington Post apportioned $IOO,OOO to Sampson, 9,00o to Dewey, 5,000 to Schley, to each of the captains in Sampson's fleet 4,000, to Dewey's captains 3,000, to the men on an average 165. To be an Admiral and have war give you chance to bag a hundred thousand dollars at a shot, makes your championship of immense navies financial if not sordid. Let us not dwell on this, more than to say that the naval officers are barbers, traveling drunmers, self-promoters, quite as the generals are. Be it remembered how noble Shafter's tribute to himself was after the fall of Santiago! "It has been a hard campaign, one of the hardest I ever saw. The difficulties to contend with were very great. Never during our civil war were more difficult problems solved." Expansion prizes strike the commercial millionaires from all sides, but a single case at this point will show the genesis of clouds of terrible patriotism. Irving M. Scott of San Francisco is a typical commercial millionaire. He is a builder of ships. Imperialism has caused our government to go into warship building recklessly, for example three new battleships are to be constructed at a cost of $5,000,000o. There are only four great building firms in the country and Scott's is one. He is an expansionist-purely from principle and humanity like the rest. "Beyond doubt," he said to a reporter, "the powers would be more embarrassed if the United States let go the islands now than if they held them. Diplomats are relieved, because we hold Manila. Unless the United States keeps the islands under direct control, they believe the interests of all countries would suffer severely, and serious complications would probably arise." How lucky it is that we can relieve diplomats by awarding fifteen million dollar contracts to American battleshipbuilders! CHAPTER IX. The Bandit Press. 1. As General Hell-Maker. The press of the United States vaunts itself the possessor of great power. It has a power similar in many respects to that of the politician. The politician is a representative personage, whose force lies in the fact that after the people have performed the single self-governing act of his election he does as he pleases. The press is a representative personage for whose erection to influence not even one democratic act is needed or performed. The owner of the press must have money; that answers for the periodic election of the politician. With money the newspaper becomes a representative voice of the people, not because the people chose or established it but because few people have vast sums of money to put into a newspaper and make it stand. The people accept what is given them and it passes for representative because they are unable to put anything really representative in its place. But the people are thoroughly conscious that the press does not represent them and chafe increasingly under its pretensions to do so. With the concentration of wealth the press becomes less and less representative, less and less truly popular, for it ceases to depend on popular support for existence and depends on bodies of concentrated wealth, its great advertisers. The people recognize this change of the press center of gravity and feel it distinctly in newspaper treatment of popular issues. 152 AS GENERAL HELL- MAKER. The difference that has taken place is this. Formerly the newspapers sought to discover andl vocalize the sentiments of the people, because if they had not done so it would have wrecked their prosperity; now they coolly give out as popular opinion whatever it suits them to have pass for public opinion; and as they are entirely independent of the will of the people and do not subsist by the people's support, it does not affect them or their interests if what they publish as popular will is the strict reverse of it. It was formerly the boast of the press to mould public opinion by educating it, but now it is able to produce at a moment's notice, over night, any public opinion that is required without asking or needing the public concurrence. In this sense public opinion is absolutely controlled by the press. Whatever popular sentiment it desires it rnanufactures, publishes, announces to be the will of everybody, hears no dissenting voice, and accepts the matter as settled-and so do the people. The single fault of this process is that the opinion published has no element of the public in it. The popular sentiment which the press thus creates and sends out labeled, 'By the people,' is always that sentiment which is agreeable not to the masses of people but to the masses of press capital and the other volumes of concentrated riches from which the press draws its current sustenance. But it is as if these utterances were the public mind, for the press holds the avenues of popular speech and the people are obliged to be mute. It is a circumstance of no slight meaning, this total detachment of the press from the people. Its significance is that public opinion is never really expressed and therefore never really even formed-in short. that public opinion has ceased to be a force or to exist. This is certainly startling when we reflect on the decay of the pulpit and platform, the other leading modes of public expression. Whether the press was the main cause, it was a great cause in the decadence of these institutions, for the audi AS GENERAL HELL- MAKER. I53 ences reached by the press grew so large that in contrast the number addressed by a pulpit or platform orator seemed hardly worth the labor and machinery of gathering them together. The press has even taken to preaching as a business investment, having a corner in its Sunday edition for compact little sermonlets from the pens of divines, for five cents-much less than the rental of a pew —furnishing the public with religion and rescuing it from the Sabbath labor of walking to church. Rather the greater cause for the decline of the sacred and secular platforms has been the moral shrinkage of those who occupy them. The pastor has declined into an advocate and retainer of the wealthy class, the platform reasoner into a party politician and monger of prejudice, in each instance forfeiting popular confidence and leaving the field in possession of the press which at least makes thin moral pretensions. The people are left without a voice. The effect upon them of this loss of speaking power is a paralysis of both thinking and action, while those who command the avenues of expression are able to palm off ready-made, selfinterested opinions on the people, making the impression upon each reader that although he does not believe this way others do and leading him to act or acquiesce with what he believes to be the majority view. The main influence of the press comes through this deception. It brazenly proclaims what it calls public sentiment, in which perhaps not a single unit of the public agrees, but all are silent because each dimly fancies that there must be such a sentiment somewhere, not crediting the press with the lying effrontery to declare an absolute fiction so shamelessly. Each asks himself, too, what will be the use if I protest, since the papers will not spread a dissenting note? The people's mouths are closed with the rivets of necessity for they have no journals of any magnitude through which they are free to speak, the journals that profess to side with the people being conducted by 154 AS GENERAL HELL - MAKER. just the same rules and just the same motives as the others and differing only in the opinions which they publish as public opinion. The will of the people never governs these publications of a millionaire capitalist, the will of his capital governs, the prosperity of the capital invested in the plant is the pole star of his newspaper policy, and that is never identical with the prosperity of the people, even if the most skillfully educated brains are employed to prove the identity in daily editorials. By them also something which the people are said to want is daily published in lieu of that which they do want, and success, what can succeed, what they think will succeed, not what ought to succeed, is the dominant criterion of everything that is done. Tt ought to be made a proverb that the proprietors of none of the great dailies are in the business for principle any more than for their health; they are in it to prosper and they follow the laws of prosperity: so that a great privately owned sheet which stands out for popular reform is certain to be unsound at the core because of the conditions that govern all private millionaire things. They live by advertisement and sensation. They increase advertisements by increasing sensations. If reform is a prolific sensation some of them seize upon that as their province, not for the reform itself but for the money that is in it, and their advocacy mutilates it because instead of using it as a grand end they are abusing and degrading it as a means to increase sensation, circulation, and advertisement. Under this refraction of truth what the socalled radical dailies promulgate as popular will and opinion is often as widely distant from those things as the doctrines of the most virulent newspaper enemies of the people's demands. CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. I55 2. Carnage to Accommodate Advertisers. These animadversions, if applied without some patent proof to the very rich dailies, as for example the New York Journal and San Francisco Examiner, which are said to espouse the people's good, would be hotly rebuked by many nice persons as carping and defamatory, but unhappily these papers have furnished proof to excess. For the working classes of the country and for all people not millionaires, editors, generals, politicians and clergymen, no evil bears comparison to unnecessary war, and nothing can be more fearful and fateful than that policy of expansion which will inevitably build up a military force and spirit to destroy the precarious liberties we have. No one, furthermore, who honestly desired the industrial emancipation of the burdened American masses would inflame the spirit of war or seek to involve this nation in military complications. Those fishy 'people's organs,' the Journal of New York and the Examiner of San Francisco, have been engaged in this malodorous business from the beginning, making a pride and boast and specialty of it, from which it is obvious to people who are not overzealous partisans that the interest taken by these papers in reform is commercial and financial, their moral interest unwholesome and spurious. The proprietor of these papers, W. R. Hearst, spying among the happenings of the world for brilliant newspaper hits and opportunities, conceived that to take the United States as it were by the nose and drag her body and boots into war would create an astonishing sensation and be a " scoop" of the first magnitude. With due deliberation he went about this work and afterwards bragged that he had succeeded. I have not in my possession all that the Journal said on this subject, but sufficient is the quiet assurance of one of its owner's echoes, correspondent Creelman, in a description of the important part he and 156 CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. Mr. Hearst played at the battle of El Caney.* "Suddenly I thought of the flag. It was the thing that I had come to get. I wanted it for the Journal. The Journal had provoked the war, and it zwas only fair that the Journal should have the first flag captured in the greatest land battle of the zwar." Mr. Creelman's further description of his valor can be omitted here, enough that by proclaiming after the event that it provoked the war the Journal testifies of its intention to compel the war, whether the part it played was actually great or small. Mr. Boutelle in the address previously alluded to spoke of "the inflammatory attitude of a large portion of the press, the alleged threat of a metropolitan journal, backed by millions of money, that its owners would sacrifice millions to force the administration into a war." No paper but the Journal would have thought of doing this gallant act, as we may gather from its confession. Its method was the one universally employed by the pres in making up and fitting public opinion to the people. It assured the people in the most lurid sentences its bright young men could compile that everybody in the United States was murderously angry with Spain. The Examiner (which is theWestern end of theJournal-Examiner), gave out such headings as these, flaming across the whole surface of itself: "The Spirit of War Pervades the Breasts of All Americans. Patriotic Citizens Advocate Recourse to Arms to Wreak Vengeance Upon Spain for the Cruel and Cowardly Destruction of the Maine. Grim Visaged War Lowers Over the Nation." On another date: "War Spirit Prevails in New York City." The assertion made under this was, "The war spirit has been roused to a high pitch here by the Maine disaster, and its fervor has reached the bubbling over point." This is the newspaper process of telling people that they are horribly angry until they come to believe that they are, of telling people in one part of the country that *Review of Reviews, Nov. i898, p. 546. CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. I57 those in another part are boiling mad, and telling the same story about the second place to the first place. The Journal undoubtedly had constant dispatches from the West to inform the New Yorkers that the Pacific Coast was tearing itself to red rags with rage, and after being showered with blood and revenge every morning for a string of days, the people of each section began to believe that they ought to be beside themselves whether they were or weren't, in order not to be behind the rest of the country. This was the working of the Bourbon whisky of raw war which the press had contrabanded into the country. Another cross-page heading said: "The Battleship Maine Was Undoubtedly Blown Up by a Torpedo;" and still others, taking up altogether five heavy lines: "If There Was Treachery Spain Must Do Battle;" "ConsulGeneral Realizes This and Therefore Fears to Make Known the Truth Regarding the Blowing Up of the Maine." Nothing was left unsaid that could embitter the American heart and cloud the American reason. "From anll over the country come threats of war — Governors of several States have taken official action toward having the m1ilitia ready in case of trouble." "If the Government of the United States permits this direct challenge to its manihood to pass unnoticed, to be clouded by pretended sympathy on the part of Spain and a long drawn out investigation without results, the time has come when every honest American should seek expatriation." "So fierce is the Spanish hatred of America that it could not but make itself felt even in the presence of these mute victims of what is beginning to be felt was Spanish treachery." A little later the mighty splurge heads are: "Spain Ready to Begin War With Us." "Madrid Government Has Plans of All American Fortifications and Believes Its Navy Can Raze Our Sea Coast Cities and Demolish 'Yankee' Warships." 158 CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. Convulsive journalism surpassed itself in the harrowing creation of the Journal on the approach of the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya to New York harbor on a visit of courtesy, when an entire page of picture and print was consecrated to making the hair of Manhattan Island stand on end. Posterity ought not to be deprived of sections of this story: "Within a few days Spain will have it within her power to lay waste and ravage this city as the volcano of Vesuvius ravaged Herculaneum." "She will have it within her power to knock the tower from the Produce Exchange, desolate WVall street, ruin Trinity church, dismantle the elevated roads and levy such a colossal tribute of ruin that the city will require long years to recover from it." "It is an unfortunate fact that under these circumstances a country of one hundred million people will scarcely dare to declare war." "Three millions of people and hundreds of square miles of buildings to shoot at. Targets, high and white and glittering, unprotected. A lot of militia as helpless as an army of Chinamen, cursing impotently in the streets and shaking their fists helplessly at the bombarding Spaniards." "Disguise it as they will with diplomatic powder smoke and courteous phrases, the fact remains that the Vizcaya is coming here to shoot-if necessary." "Buildings in ruins everywhere, flames soaring skyward in half a dozen different directions, the general panic of rushing crowds, trampled women and children and powerless police." "Would they spare Grant's tomb? Does a Spaniard spare anything when making war? "Then when all the destruction possible was accomplished, when the city was in utter ruin, hundreds of thousands of citizens homeless, and fire ranging everywhere, even to the confines of Brooklyn, perhaps an CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. I59 American warship might steam up the Narrows to give the enemy battle. "But what would be the use? The Spaniard, with his single ship, would have destroyed enough property to build fifty battleships of the world." This is St. Vitus journalism in one of its most felicitously demoniacal fits, going about naked and tearing out its teeth to attract public notice for advertisement, lighting the hellfires of cowardice and prejudice, telling the American people that the Spaniard is burying his fangs in their unprotected throats, inoculating them with deadly hate which war alone can placate, on top of this funeral pyre of sanity burning incense to the spectre of a vast navy, and doing it all with plan thought out in its office weeks earlier and pursued with hideous obstinacy and malice. All this done simply as a cool business calculation! Wars are considered the greatest newspaper speculations, ranking above the most hideous and revolting domestic crimes and black immoralities which sell black sheets like water in a desert, through them irrigating the public mind with all the contents of the social cesspool and making vice and crime and all monstrosities redouble themselves. War beats them all. It excites where mere murder of a dozen relatives or a lynching barbecue of negroes only languidly irritates. While it lasts it makes the newspaper the supreme factor of existence, bearing its circulation up on geometrical wings and pouring blood-sweated gold into its coffers. 'Let us have war!' is therefore the motto of every unprincipled metropolitan sewer-rat or earth vermin of the genus press. The creed flung out by the Journal-World-Examiner type of paper and its imitators is, "The joltrlnilisil that act meets with the nation's approval." (N. Y. Journal, Feb. I4, '98.) This is the hall-mark of the "new journalism"-it transcends the fogyism of merely reporting what is done, and causes things to be done in order to boast its power, ring the bells on its enterprise, and be the I6o CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. first to astonish the public with accounts of its performances. It must pretend that its acts are for the public good, prompted by conscience, chaste in motive, and all its freaks will be clad in the cant of noble indignation perfumed with the latest musk of virtue. As a pure act of goodness it steals the De Lome letter and builds verbal bonfires on its first page to make the American flesh creep: "The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History. Spain's Minister Calls President McKinley a 'Low Politician. Catering to the Rabble.' Monstrous Language Used by Dupuy De Lome in a Letter to Senor Canalejas, Wherein He Denounces Everything American, etc." But can any one on this pure-minded earth tell us why it brags like a foghorn of its enterprise in stealing this letter if virtue was its prompter? It secures an epistle from D. M. Clough, gov. of Minnesota, (how gratefully these expansive little public men advertise the chrome press for the privilege of advertising themselves!) lauding the Journal, and gives it a threecolumn heading —" Journal's Unprecedented Enterprise." Clough says just the pious thing necessary to convince everybody of the Journal's-what? towering magnanimity? conscience? virtue? oh no, of its business capacity, the Olympian Jove of American life. Says the good Clough, "The Journal has won the plaudits of the people of the United States on many occasions for its unprecedented enterprise. I look on the publication of the De Lome letter in the Journal as a great achievement and in keeping with the spirit of the period as concerns journalism." This is a perfectly scandalous misinterpretation of the holy Journal of course, although that immaculate publishes it by oversight with a whoop la. In bigger matters it will do better things and we will turn to those. The explosion of the Maine was a big thing and drew out the Christian principles of the deep-dyed Journal to a length of self surrender that would have opened the eyes CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. i6i of the twelve apostles. Here's what it did on that occasion, before aly thing was known or could be known of the cause of the event. It appeared in war paint and feathers, tatooed from head to heel with heavy-lettered savage suggestions. "Destruction of the Warship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy." "Hidden Mine or a Sunken Torpedo Believed to have been the Weapon Used Against the American Man-of-war." "The Suspicion that the Maine was Deliberately Blown Up Grows Stronger Every Hour. Not a Single Fact to the Contrary has been Produced." [Nor had a single affirmatory fact been produced.] "Belief in Havana that the Maine was Anchored Over a Mine." "It was an Easy Matter for the Spaniards to have Destroyed the Maine." "Noted Naval Authorities Declare it was Not an Accident." [Other noted naval authorities maintained that it was.] "One Word Would Precipitate War." "General Belief that the Spaniards Blew Up the Maine." "Explosion Could Not Have Come From \ithin." "England Says it Looks Like Foul Play." "London Papers and Naval Men Think it was Treachery." [Yet the same paper prints in small type: "The concensus of opinion from cables already received is that the explosion was not due to a torpedo outside, but to a powerful explosive within the ship. They think the vessel would have foundered much sooner had a torpedo exploded under her keel."] "Foreign Nations Shocked by the Belief in Spanish Treachery." "War Probable If Spaniards Blew Up the American War Ship. Think It Was Traitor's Work." [This is given as a headline opinion of Newport naval men but the telegram itself as published contained no mention of it and the Journal scare writer was evidently, like Cato, annexing the same adjuration to everything that came under his hand-'Spain did it, Spain must fall.' This nauseous repletion of single sentiment headlines 6 162 CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. which decorated a single issue set beyond cavil the theorem that this magnanimous Journal was driven forward to declare war for the United States by the austere tradewind of virtue. Nor was goodness ever more ably sustained. Its expert subtlety carries the reader onward from the known to the fancied, from unbelief to conviction, from reason to the confusion of rage, like the spell of a mesmeric dream. The fact known was that an explosion had wrecked the Maine, all else was as unknown as the event of tomorrow. The newspaper architect needed to know no more-on that point he built an inverted edifice until, spread out at the top, were the broad conclusions for the conquest of Spain. We can trace the magician's black art from heading to heading: "The suspicion that" so and so, "Belief in Havana that" so and so, 'It could have been done,' 'It may have been done,' 'It must have been done,' 'Noted people declare that it,was done,' 'It was done.' This is the journalism that acts, and also that lies. This is thee journalism that makes public opinion in its office, carries it out finished, and spreads it over the whole world as American national opinion, and this step-by-step advancement from lie to lie is its art of opinion manufacture. This is its way of declaring war on Spain or anything that will make a good sensation, in the name of the people of the United States and then proceeding to spend millions if necessary to make the war a fact, knowing that for its masterly 'enterprise' it will get millions on millions back and have its name written in the book of financial life. We have not yet reached the summit of the inverted mountain of the Journal's virtue. As it ascends from mesa to mesa load after load of truth falls off, as Prilgrim was eased of his burdens. "Let the Cabinet Soon Avenge the Slaughtered Sailors"-this comes out at last, the wild tocsin of war to sound which all the rising fabric of progressive insinuation has been built up: out of the CARNAGE TO ACCOMMODATE ADVERTISERS. I63 single known truth of an explosion it has been established in one night in the Journal writing-room that Spain did it and that vengeance must be taken by war. Now, presumably the Journal is satisfied, and its great moral mission of action, of creating events to report, of rearing on a mathematical point of truth a universe of lies, is accomplished; but the quiver has another arrow or t \ o(~ "$50,00 Reward.-Who Destroyed the Maine?$50,000oo Reward." "$5,o00! $50,000oo Reard! For the Detection of the Perpetrator of the Maine Outrage!" "THE JOURNAL OFFERS $50,000 REWARD FOR THE CONVICTION OF THE CRIMINALS WHO SENT 258 AMlERICAN SAILORS TO THEIR DEATH. NAVAL OFFICERS UNANIMOUS THAT THE SHIP WAS DESTROYED ON PURPOSE.'" "The New York Journal hereby offers a reward of $50,ooo cash for information, furnished to it cxcllsizely, which shall lead to the detection and conviction of the person, persons or government criminally responsible for the explosions which resulted in the destruction, at Havana, of the United States war ship Maine and the loss of 253 lives of American sailors. "The $50,000 cash offered for the above information is on (leposit with Wells, Fargo & Co. and will be paid upon the production of the convicting evidence. "No one is barred, be he the humble but misguided seaman eking out a few miserable dollars by acting as a spy, or the attache of a government secret service, plotting, by any devilish means, to revenge fancied insults or cripple menacing countries. "This offer has been cabled to Europe and will be made public in every capital of the Continent and in London this morning. 'The Journal believes that any man who can be bought to commit murder can also be bought to betray his coinrades, for the perpetrator of this outrage had accoiniplices. "Vr. R. Hearst." 104 REPTILE PROPRIETORS. 3. Reptile Proprietors. One must not be finical, but the American people whose opinions and, for that matter, reputation before the world are made for them in these rogues' galleries of newspaper offices, have here another opportunity to study the science of constructive journalistic falsehood, since those who use it are so prosperous that it will soon need to be introduced into education. "Naval officers unanimous that the ship was destroyed on purpose," says the Journal professor of lying, on page I, Feb. 17. On page 8 he has forgotten what he said on page I and gives a list of 'naval experts' for and against the accident theory: 12 think it was not accident, 4 think it was accident; of the I2 experts 3 are mere green members of Congress, leaving 9 against 4, and this is the Journal's unanimity! 2~4 naval experts to I, make it unanimous. Those who supported the accident theory were Captain Harding, of the battleship Indiana, who said, "I feel sure investigation will reveal the fact that the cause of the disaster was on the ship and not caused by torpedo or mine;" Lieutenant Lewis Nixon, designer of the battleships Indiana, Massachusetts and Oregon, whose verdict was: "It would have been possible for spontaneous combustion to cause the explosion. It may have occurred in a magazine in close proximity to a coal bunker;" Rear-Admiral Gherardi, and Secretary of the Navy Long. But, roars the Jounral, 'Naval officers are unanimous that the ship was destroyed on purpose.' And yet in a world where lying succeeds and the newspaper public kindly forgets from page to page and sentence to sentence what it read before, was not that offer of $50,000 truly noble? $50,000 in these hard times! Such unselfishness on the altar of country! Never mind the Hearstian stiletto shrouded in this document-"For the perpetrator of this outrage had accomplices"-which was intended to gash Spain in a tender part: was not the offer a beaming display of piety and patriotism in the Journal? REPTILE PROPRIETORS. I65 'Information furnished to the Journal exclusively,' 'De Lome letter captured by the Journal exclusively,' 'War with Spain caused by the Journal exclusively,' 'Cuba freed by the Journal exclusively,' 'Philippines annexed by the Journal exclusively,' until we realize that the Journal and papers of its litter probably never yet published an honest word, but that all its benevolent gyrations were stage acts to benefit the Journal exclusively. Do you doubt it? Perhaps you can be convinced without excessive effort. The morning following the offer the Examiner published it with these telltale headline embellishments: "All Europe Applauds the 'Examiner-Journal' offer. Magnificent Patriotism. Greatest Piece of Journalistic Munificence of the Age." Then this: BERLIN, Feb. 17.-All the prominent metropolitan evening papers give much space to special telegrams from their New York correspondents regarding the $50,000 reward offered by the San Francisco "Examiner" and the New York "Journal" for the detection of the perpetrator of the Maine outrage. Editorially the Berlin papers express the greatest admiration and astonishment over what is termed "the greatest piece of journalistic munificence of the age." The "Local Anzeiger," one of the most conservative of German newspapers, says: "This generous offer of reward is the exponent of the noblest sentiments of loyalty and patriotism, and this departure in journalism cannot fail to create a sensation in both hemispheres." That astute act of patriotism secured enormous free advertising of the Journal throughout Christendom and some gushing praise; there was about one chance in a million that the money would be claimed; if on the millionth chance the news had been obtained exclusively the Journal would have bragged and banked and advertised on it till the end of the world and made not less than a million exclusively. They say virtue has its own reward and this kind of virtue surely does. You get the reputationl of an angel and the income of a devil. The marks of disinterestedness are very numerous. "The Journal's Special Train Carries the Details South and West. Its Special Train, Breaking All Records, First at Capital With Full Maine Story." "It Was a Marvelous Newspaper Feat," et cetera. I66 REPTILE PROPRIETORS. "Commander-in-Chief of British Army Thanks Journal." "Bagshot, Feb. I6.-I am desired by the Duke of Connaught to thank the New York Journal for its telegram informing him of the disaster to the Maine..... (Signed): EQUERRY." Well done, Journal, you drew it out of him. On another point three days before this it "pulled the leg" of General Miles and extracted a letter beginning, "I think the Journal is engaged in a grand work in agitating," etc., etc., which it introduced with the words: "Worthy of Journal Enterprise." Let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth, said one who was not a newspaper proprietor. Such a little maxim as that would not cover the modesty of the modern world since newspapers took hold of it to boom. A triplet of saws only set up as it were a gauze veil in front of it: Telegraph what your right hand doeth to Europe. Do it in order to telegraph it. When sweet words of praise come home for what you have cone and telegraphed, publish them. The Journal of a few days later discovered a new lode of virtue in itself, extremely rich, which the me-too Examniner thus capitalized for the market: "To Honor the Maine's Heroes. The 'New York Journal's' Patriotic Movement to Secure the Erection of a Monument. Enthusiastic Response of the People." And now comes what the Journal itself said about it, surely a deathless monument to its beatific self-renunciation: The "Journal" voiced the eager, patriotic wish of the nation to honor its heroes when it suggested such a monument, and offered to act as the people's servant in receiving the contributions and suggestions which shall eventually give that wish tangible form. The "Journal" started the subscription list with a contribution of $z,ooo It will give its aid to the committee which will take the stewardship of this great fund, of which the nucleus is already forming. Pending the appointment of such a committee, the "Journal" will receive and acknowledge from day to day contributions to the fund... The "Journal's" offer to receive contributions to a great popular subscription and to aid in every possible way this tangible expression of sympathy and sorrow of the nation met with a wonderful response. REPTILE PROPRIETORS. 167 Letters by the thousand came pouring in by the first possible mails from New York and nearby cities and towns, and nearly every contribution was accompanied by some word of sympathy-some suggestion as to form and location of the proposed monument. The "Journal" heads the subscription list with a contribution of $i,ooo. As the agent of the people, it will receive and acknowledge from day to day all sums which may be received, pending the appointment of a regularly constituted Treasurer. Checks should be made payable to the cashier of the "Journal." Sympathy for the brave men who met their death in the explosion finds expression on all sides, and in nearly every instance with it is coupled a sentence of commendation of the "Journal's" monument fund.... Richard Croker sent his check for $ioo and said that every patriotic American should contribute to the fund. In nearly every church in Greater New York to-day sermons were preached on the Maine disaster and many of the pastors referred in touching words to the "Journal's" movement to honor the brave men who met their death in the line of duty to their country. In these six paragraphs the Journal's name appears five times. The monument is not the important thing at all, it is the Journal; the monument is the cork life-preserver to buoy the Journal up, the gas bag to keep the Journal in the air. Now then, coming on to the climax, when the Journal says 'Let there be war with Spain' and waves its millionaire magician's wand or pen to make it, what is the motive? The Journal, the Journal, the Journal, the Journal, the Journal! nothing else; all bluster, all self-advertisement, all scoop, all thunder-and-lightning sensation, all wildfire sale of papers, all opportunities for buncombe offers of contributions and prizes, all dramatic situations to caper before the nation as saint, pope, emperor, and omnipotent patriot of morals and destinies. A fine business instinct displayed in all this certainly. Writes the Journal editorially in its office of omnipotent patriot and moralist (in the one issue that I have quoted nearly all this from): If it be found that the Spanish authorities have brought about this calamity, so profitable to themselves, no power from the White House to Wall Street will be able to restrain the American people from exacting a terrible retribution. And Spain's innocence must be clearly proven. All the circumstances of the case fix the burden of proof upon her.... The chances against such a removal [of the Maine] by accident were millions to one, and yet the removal 168 EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. occurred... The investigations must clearly disclose Spain's innocence or her guilt will be assumed.... If we cannot have peace without fighting for it, let us fight and have it over with.... The American fleet can move on Havana to-day and plant the flag of the Cuban Republic on Morro and Cabana. It is still strong enough for that in the absence of further "accidents." And if we take such action as that, it is extremely unlikely that any further accident will happen. A stinging incitement of two powers to war in order that proprietor Hearst might fill his sails with reputation and his pockets with cash-and again here it is the threadbare trick, the American people are doing it all, they 'cannot be restrained,' and the Journal public-opinion maker, the cook and baker of American thought, stands behind the mask making comic faces and raking in the gold. 4. Expansion as Newspaper Scoop. Two or three humble thoughts break their shell in the midst of these titanic throes and cosmic tumults. WhN does the Journal-Examiner preach imperialism and expansion? Is the Journal-Examiner honestly on the side of the people anywhere? Why should the people believe anything that a millionaire newspaper ever says? Why is the war-making power given over ultimately to millionaire dailies? Why do the people endow these newspapers with the monopoly of creating, expressing, and transmitting what is called public opinion? The Journal saw in American expansion, wars in the Philippines, grabs in China, a huge navy for huge naval exploits, a swaggering standing army to fitly panoply the swagger of the people as swaggered by the newspapers, a further expansion for its own occasions for windbag explosions. American expansion to minstrel Hearst is Journal expansion, American youth food for Manila fever and Tagal bullets are food for Journal headlines, the pangs of death which the sons of our farmers are to suffer conquering holes in the tropics to stick our flag in are sensations of life to the newspaper moloch, stuff to EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. I69 make Journal-World-Sun-Tribune bon-bon brags of, done up in tissue paper thoughts and thrown out to mould the American 'mob' and Congressmen at one or two cents apiece. If the Journal was so base as to sit on the safety valves of its engines for the glory of producing a gratuitous war with Spain would it wish imperialism for any other reason than Journal glory? It would require a very much mobbed mob to believe so. Then that second question is already pretty completely answered. 'Is the Journal-Examiner honestly on the side of the people in anything?' The Journal-World-SunTribune genus of millionaire news-scrapers of the country is honestly on the side of the people in nothing, and honestly on their back in everything. A standing army is the funeral cortege of liberty: deaf, dumb and blind children know that, the Journal, World, Sun and Tribune know it, expansion will procreate a standing army which when started becomes self-sustaining and self-propagating and soon overshadows and overbears civilian life,this is an inflexible law certified by the carcasses of a thousand nations in history. The Journal is no cloistered virgin that it does not know this, and knowing, it sings for expansion, which will bring it to pass. And yet the Journal says it is the people's friend! O citizens, what a friend you have in this Journal! one that will snatch away the basis of your freedom, that lavishes with one hand the coin of popular editorials and with the other gives you the cup of poison: you drink because the Journal says drink, because it talks for solie reforms, and mostly shoddy ones, and you think it true to you. But see: if expansion with its standing army prevails, all reforms are dead; cannot Hearst well afford to champion reforms if he thereby wins your franchises for something that will lay all reforms in the grave and give millionaires military mastery of the Western World? O citizens, lick off the honey from the hook before you swallow it! Imperialism is EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. the millionaires' policy: does it look as if a millionaire who entreats you to marry this policy and give a standing army and navy to buttress the millionaires were your friend? The Journal-Examiner, Sun, World, Tribune, and other millionaire daily bandits throughout America are honestly on the side of the people in nothing; all is for self, all for proprietorial aggrandizement, all for millionaires. The fiction that the newspaper mirrors public opinion therefore utterly explodes. Nothing that they ever say on public policy should be credited by the people, who rather than thinking as they do, 'some people must hold these ideas since the papers declare they do,' should reason: all these things asserted by the daily bandits as public opinion are newspaper inventions and policy, a fabric of lies to boom circulation, protect millionaires, and keep the people confused and divided. Ninety-nine per cent. of editorials are trash written by hirelings under financial dictation to confound, beguile and betray the public. Who has yet fully considered what it means to have the principal machine of public expression-that which does in a large country what conversation does in a small, that which should be pre-eminently the people's own,-possessed and directed by a class whose interests are opposite and hostile to those of the people? It restores the day when there was freedom of neither press, speech nor thought, for you cannot even think freely without the truth before you to base your thinking on, and if you can never reach the public with your thought, what liberty of speech or press have you? You can growl to your neighbor, but he says the papers belie you and he does not listen. Our press is not muzzled by laws and that is what deceives us to think it free; it is a press gagged by capture. The millionaires want the press to speak only for their interest, what do they do? Go to the law-makers to obtain press-gag laws? No, they monopolize the press by ownership and exclude all EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. 171 that is hostile to themselves. The millionaires fill the papers full of their views daily, the people utter nothing, for not an inch of the papers belongs to them. Is this freedom of speech? It passes for it, yet in fact the people are as much gagged and suppressed as if the heaviest laws and penalties locked their lips. The millionaires tailor our thoughts for us, as in Russia the Government cuts out the thinking of the Czar's subjects. There press autocrats censor what goes in, here the editors employed by the millionaire owners are the censors; our way is much better for it causes no illfeeling; through the marvelous magic of monopoly the people do not feel the hand of censorship, though it works as implacably as if in Russia the Czar owned and edited, as he now censors, all the papers of influence. In a society where immensity gains all respect, the great papers only have much influence, and they only need to be monopolized to corner up public sentiment. People feel that the small paper does not go far or reach many, they argue that its opinions cannot have great weight and they pass it by. In the towns and country the metropolitan dailies are driving the local papers to the wall, even the farmers preferring the city daily or its weekly compendium; the path of monopoly is prepared for it by centralization and rapid transit, the home papers drop into neighborhood gossips, political instruments, and domestic advertising media, without editorial ability, character or attempt at rational influence. Reform papers, the last stand of independent thought, spring up, live precariously and die ingloriously, because the public will have sensation, even the reform public, and as it grows poorer through the compression of monopoly, it struggles to fight off melancholy by intoxicating itself on the wine of daily published horrors. What is the prospect of a nation that sinks to this abyss? A star chamber of editors, appointees, payees and scribelets of millionaires, to doctor, repress, color, EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. garble, falsify, distort, invent, and finally send out their expurgated, amended conglomerate of bastard assertions, reduces the people to wooden dummies. Two hundred and fifty years ago the Anglo-Saxon race did battle for the rights of which it now holds only the shard. 'Under the Stuarts, thought that was distasteful to the Government was repressed.' "In July, 1637, a stringent decree was issued for the control of printers, booksellers, and the works issued and sold by them, and to restrain unlicensed importation. The number of master printers, besides His Majesty's and those allowed to the Universities, was limited to twenty, who were named and registered. The number of typefounders was limited to four, and these also were under Government inspection, while there were provisions also for the hunting-out of all unlicensed presses."* In 1643 'the Long Parliament issued an Ordinance in the same spirit.' Then Milton wrote his magnificent plea for liberty, "Areopagitica." "Milton believed that in all forms of thought and action the vital principle is Freedom in the action and reaction upon one.another of all differing opinions." But where is action and reaction of opinion now, when the press is owned by millionaires? In our day when effective newspaper publication is licensed by the owning of millions-such license as not many have-each city contains its little lot of licensed dailies and perhaps the whole total of them in America worth notice is about as many as the Stuart King allowed England, considering the disproportion of population. With the hurrying public of today the newspaper is the book, whereof Milton said: "It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth, or death of books whether they may be wafted into this world, or not; had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not; which is *Henry Morley, Introduction to Milton's Areopagitica. EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. I73 also no mean injury." Do our millionaires answer to this description-studious, learned, and judicious? Do editors who submit to be hired to write as the licked scribes of millionaires conform to it? They answer better to the characteristics of Roman town-slaves, 'found in the richer families in great numbers' in the decadent empire. "They were not only employed in menial occupations: they were clerks, copyists, sculptors, architects, etc., as well as actors and singers," that is, they served the rich in every way convenient to their desires, asking no questions for fear of a worse fate, and what was that? The fear of being degraded to farm-slaves. "The work of the farm-slave was harder. They were shut up in the night in large barracks, made partly under ground, into which was admitted little light or air. They often worked in chains. In town and country both, the unlimited power of the master led to great severity and cruelty in the treatment of slaves.... The town-slave, however, might be favored by his master."* Who does not upon reading this see our editor as the town-slave of the modern rich, obedient, servile, truckling, flattering, penning under the master's frown, advocating principles which he detests and causes from which he recoils,-if moral energy remains in him in such a life to recoil,-for fear of losing his master's favor and being discharged and degraded to wage-slave? The work of wage-slave is harder. They are shut up at night in large barracks called tenements, into which is admitted but little light or air. In town and country both, the unlimited power of the master leads to the greatest severity and cruelty, for the slaves are often discharged without warning and the bread is taken out of their mouths. These town-slaves are the censors of our press. Will there be 'no mean mistakes (!) in their censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean injury'? The editor and the literary man should not think me *George P. Fisher, "Outlines of Universal History," p. 174. 174 EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. captious or harsh in the place assigned them in the contemporary court of millionaires: besides being the clerks and copyists of their employers they are their singers and actors as of old but not their equals. Surely it is decorous to consider the famous and estimable M. Paul Bourget a literary man of sufficient rank to secure for him the full meed of consideration that millionaire masters vouchsafe to their house slaves in the nineteenth century, transfigured and glorified by the title of nominal equality, and this is the sum of it, in that author's own words. I was booked by my manager to give a cazserie in the drawing-room of a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the canseric was to be given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of afterthoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: 'I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture.' "* M. Bourget, with bravery rare in those who live by the pen, declined to entertain those who reckoned him beneath entertainment. But editors are not literary lions, and they must eat what is set before them and produce therefrom the thoughts commanded; they are but sounding-boards of the millionaire will, and under that constriction how fare freedom, national development, and the expansion of mind? Milton is alive here also. "l]or this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth-that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained, that wise men look for." Complaints are not heard at all when the daily press is closed *In Mark Twain's, "A Little Note to Paul Bourget." EXPANSION AS NEWSPAPER SCOOP. I75 to the people, nor considered at all, nor ever reformed, and then we have the conditions that produce Chinamen; in Milton's \ords: "it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made both in religious and civil Wisdom,"-"and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse." It is not the newspaper conducted by hired house-slave scribes that can stimulate the discovery of truth and wisdonm, but the newspaper wherein the people freely and sincerely speak to one another, weighing, dividing, and seeking light on public questions, manacled by no proprietary master through the ignoble potency of monopoly, excluded by no royal decree of millionaire censorship, nor directed by the selfish and revolutionary motives of the anti-social few to despotic and enslaving ends. Rather would the newspaper press then cherish the forming of a nation of such grandeur and puissance as Milton sublimely imagined. "For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest, and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has, not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honorable in these latter ages." CHAPTER X. The Expansion of Billionaires.. Of all the fables that adorn the rocky pathways of the human career there is none more unearthly in its weird and mysterious architecture than this fine invention of our own time that our affectionate monopolists are calling on the people to expand for their own good. Those unfortunate beings who are roasting in eternal torment must sometimes forget their heat and smile when our monopolists speak. The heart of the commercial monopolist, like the heart of Africa, has been discovered and explored. In fact he does not scruple to take his heart out and hang it up in public in the familiar shape of his daily deeds, and like a museum demonstrator with rod in hand, to point out the springs and tributaries of his motives. He has preached to us with holy and satisfied zeal for six generations: I am governed in all my actions by self-interest. If he had not preached it we have his deeds themselves, and what has he done that was not for self-interst? Hence when he declares that expansion is for the good of the people, he declares it from self-interest; and when he asserts that his devotion to expansion is for the good of the country, he says that from self-interest also. And it is easy to see deep craft of his cozening words, for six generations of self-interest teaching and acting have brought the people to such a state of maudlin moral despair that if the powerful will merely do outward reverence to the bare name of disinterestedness and public good, they are thankfully rewarded for their lip worship by free permission to do all devilishness. If they will THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. 177 but say all their crimes are done in the name of popular love the people are ready to die for them, though knowing that their love is no deeper than the word. Now this is why we are hearing so much lately of 'the good of the laborers,' 'the good of the country,' and 'the good of the world.' It is a magic shield for the most diabolical wrongs and the most atrocious betrayals of the people. And it is a very aged shield, a magic that smells of thousands of years gone and of repeated use by all manner of now despised tyrants and destroyers. Why then does the magic live? Why work on nineteenth century intelligence which is full of scientific antidotes for antique fascinations? Perhaps we are not shrewd, perhaps we only boast. The Athenians were a smart people, like the Americans, but doses of this primordial magic always operated on them and turned them into temporary lunatics. Alcibiades was a man who, like our present millionaire monopolists, had unbounded aspirations for his country, knowing that the more his country acquired the more would he have to monopolize from it. His career is a marvelous forecast of what our millionaires would do when in these days of vanishing general virility they came into their inheritance. He was like our millionaires in many ways. Plutarch has recorded that his abilities "were tarnished by his luxurious living, his drinking and debauches, his effeminacy in dress, and his insolent profusion." His heart was set on the expansion of Athens, and he was ever 'exhorting the Athenians to assert the empire of the land, as well as of the sea; and ever putting the young warriors in mind to show by their deeds that they remembered an oath they had taken to consider wheat, barley, vine, and olives as the bounds of Attica, insinuating by this that they should endeavor to possess themselves of all lands that are cultivated and fruitful.' Now the island of Sicily was to Alcibiades what the Philippines are to our imperialist millionaires. The I78 THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. Athenians 'had a desire after Sicily' and when Pericles died 'they attempted it'; "frequently under pretence of succoring their allies, sending aids of men and money to such of the Sicilians as were attacked by the Syracusans." The Greeks who taught us philosophy, poetry, art, land morals, also instructed us how to take the land of others that we covet, 'under pretence of succoring our allies.' "This," continues the unsparing Plutarch, who must have had his eye on us down the ages, "was a step to greater armamzents." "But Alcibiades," like our own brilliant orators and commercial imperialists, "inflamed this desire to an irresistable degree, and persuaded them not to attempt the island in part, and little by little, but to send a powerful fleet to entirely subdue it. He inspired the people with hopes of great things, and indulged himnself in expectations still more lofty; for he did not, like the rest, consider Sicily as the end of his wishes, but rather as an introduction to the mighty expeditions he had conceived." He was "dreaming of Carthage and of Libya: and after these were gained, had designed to grasp Italy and Peloponnesus, regarding Sicily as little more than a magazine for provisions and warlike stores." In these events what a distinct and wonderful likeness of ourselves! Our wealthy and luxurious classes inspire the people with hopes of great things, letting the popular mind rest on the Philippines, which are a step to greater armaments, but the soaring minds of these monopolists are on greater things, and these islands are but the introduction to mightier expeditions which they have conceived; for their dreams stretch on to the vast regions of China forwhich enterprises the Philippines are regarded as little more than a magazine for provisions and warlike stores. The glory of Athens and the country's good were the magic arguments of the unprincipled Alcibiades to win the people over to his splendid schemes; but his real motive-"In these distant expeditions he beheld a means of gratifying his passion for adventure and glory, THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. 179 and at the same time of retrieving his fortune, which had been dilapidated by his profligate expenditure."* "He wished not merely to outshine his fellow citizens, but to outstrip all Greece in glory and splendor," 't a modest design which the malicious have begun to suspect of our potentates of trade and wealth. And what came of Athenian imperialism? It was not hard to turn the heads of the people. "Five years of comparative peace had accumulated a fresh supply both of men and money; and the merchants of Athens embarked in the enterprise as in a trading expedition." As the ships were preparing to slip their moorings, the sound of the trumpet enjoined silence, and the voice of the herald, accompanied by the people, was lifted up in prayer." (Smith.) They were going out to plunder another people and they asked God's help. But this imperial policy led directly to the degradation and decline of Athens. A rival power saw with dread her ambition for empire and sent a fleet to the support of Sicily; the campaign ended in the destruction of the Athenian ships and the annihilation of an army which after heavy defeats still numbered 40,000. If citizens of the republican United States two thousand three hundred years later are not as infatuated and crazy as the Athenians were they may learn something from this grim story. "Thus the Sicilian expedition [originated by men of wild ambition for personal objects of glory and wealth] ended in a series of events, which to this day excite feelings of horror, the primary cause of the failure of this expedition consisted in the fact that the, Athenian people had deserted the principles of Pericles. It was his policy, after having secured to Athens sucth an enviable position, to act simply on the defensive, and not to run any risk by pursuing a dangerous offensive course; therefore the first mistake of the Athenians was in sending any expedition at all to Sicily." t *William Smith. "Historv of Greece": p. 329. tPennell, "Ancient Greece": p. 81. fPennell, pp. 88, 89. i8o THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. This was the Monroe doctrine of Pericles. He was a statesman with an eye like Washington's to the conditions of Athenian perpetuity and strength, but when he was gone and could no longer interpose the serene strength of his will the adventurous bloods, the selfinterested merchants and the truculent fire-eaters pronounced Pericles a 'little Athenian' and his sagacious policy of holding the city free from the entanglements of conquest a copperhead absurdity before the full-grown strength of the nation; and the end was that the forces sent out to conquer were destroyed, Athens itself shorn of protection was taken, its shipping was burned and its long walls destroyed. The Platts, Hannas, Depews and Roosevelts, the McKinleys, Algers and Roots, and the great merchant syndicates and trusts had prevailed, all who opposed them were traitors to the magnificent destiny of Athens,'the magic formula 'For the good of the people' prevailed, and Athens was stretched powerless in the dust. The principal Athenian expansionist, whose zeal was to use his country to fill his pockets and replenish his fortunes, and whose harangues on the glory in store for the people brought them over to his side, showed a little later on how sincere his care for the people was by inciting the nobility to "exert their superiority, repess the insolence of the commonalty, and taking the government into their own hands, by that means save their country." By overthrow of popular government this man planned to open the road to his own return to Athens, after 'depriving the people of their power and pivileges.' These things happened in a city which Milton has called "...the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits," yet all the shrewdness of this shrewd race was not qualified to stand against the arts of flattery and fraud of one seductive creature supported by that potent engine of THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. I8r popular destruction, the motto, "For the good of the people, for the good of the country." We are perhaps no shrewder than the Greeks, perhaps with the tragedy of Athens before us we should study the character of that wealthy class in our country which with the identical motto is charming this nation to the identical enterprises and the identical fate. This wealthy commercial monopolizing class has transacted several highly important affairs with the American people, and it has uniformly said and declared and sworn that these affairs were for the good of the people and the republic. It transacted the great business of tariff protection and asserted that one of its paramount objects was the good of the laboring class and its most paramount object the good of the country. What came of it? for we have now some data of results. We find that already ten years ago and more this class had spread the net of ownership over an astonishing quantity of the wealth of the country, while to the middle class of moderate capitalists bankruptcy and sharp curtailment were familiar demons, and the laboring class was miserable, poor and spirit-crushed. Such portents happened during the familiar vogue of the unselfish policy of protection to native industries. Now if this did not make common people suspicious of the policy of protection, it should at least make them scout the pretensions of good faith of the commercial class. By being unselfish and thoughtful of the good of the laboring class and country the commercial element has come into possession of most of the country's wealth-the most rapidly remunerative form of unselfishness known. For the good of the people it has sat down with congressmen and sketched out its own tariff laws which congressmen have copied like clerks and voted like flunkeys. On the whole no piece of superb magnanimity ever before gave the whole earth so fully into the hands of the magnanimous as this. It was better than being a princely pirate on the high seas. I82 THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. So that when this commercial class brought another unselfish proposition before Americans for their good it found itself in a nest of scoffing sceptics. Its second charitable proposition was the Trust. The wealthy say that the monopoly of machinery, industries, transportation and trade by them is a great thing for the people. Rockefeller claims that his wealth is a gift from God, and the other day Mr. Post, a representative of the Sugar Trust, testified that 'as a general proposition, he thought the American Sugar Refining Company [the sugar trust] had influenced conditions for the good of the country.' The trust people see nothing but natfral Christian business in combining industries capitalized at $30,000,000, and writing in a capital of $6o,ooo,ooo, the second thirty being bonus for the act of consolidation. And the people pay interest on this pen-made bonus. The trusts, however, say that it is a good thing for the people to pay the new interest, because it makes them more industrious and saving. The public good of the trust is also to take the form of higher wages for the laborers and cheapened goods for consumers. But what happens? Great numbers of laborers lose employment permanently, to subsist mainly on the charity of their own class, thus depressing the real wages of those who are still employed; strikes take on the bitterness and size of civil wars; the consumer finds the trust more often raising than lessening prices, and to his consternation he has less to pay the larger prices with. For monopoly transforms a prodigious number of independent owners into hireling clerks at salaries depressed by the awful competition of those dislodged. The statement made by President Dowe, of the Commercial Travelers' Mutual League, that 35,000 commercial traveling men have already been released from service by trusts, and that 25,000 have had their salaries reduced. To live these discharged men must offer themselves for the clerkships under the trusts which others hold, and offer THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. I83 to work cheaper. The department store obliterates the formerly thriving independent dealer and reduces him to a competing clerk. But the clerks are too numerous for the clerkships and many slide on down superfluous into the too crowded wage ranks, there to finish their broken and sorrowful lives. All this has been done by the trust monopolists for the good of the people. As a general proposition, says Sugar-Trust Post, the sugar trust has influenced conditions for the good of the country. Quite true, probably, if you subtract from the country all the people except the trust owners. If any of the American people believed in the disinterestedness of the commercial class before the arrival of the trust they may since have given it up. One only dares say they 'may have', for perhaps the sacred aegis of 'popular and national good' under which all this ruin is being accomplished by monopolists may yet succeed as it has done a thousand times in the past, as it did in brilliant but benighted Athens, in holding the people with its fatal spell till they are lost. For the monopolists there is assuredly great hope-the seasoned rock of their confidence being popular imbecility: so tried and sure is their repose in popular imbecility that these trust artificers do not shrink from the cynical declaration in the same breath that the cornerstone of commerce is absolute selfishness, and yet that all tricks and machinations that tower up from this cornerstone are for the people's good. This most jocund class of plhilanthropic bandits now comes forward with a third proposition for the good of the country. It is now resolved to expand America. Out of kindness to the people whom it has shaved to the bone with its keen-edged trust it will now extend the beneficent jurisdiction of the United States to peoples still unblessed by the trust. It might be said that by this time that argument is stale bait, needing at least some few miracles to restore its sweetness and strength, but THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. good heavens, there is nothing that quails the regal impertinence of the commercial class, nor are they wrong at all in confiding all their affairs to the great god Claptrap. Claptrap crowned the conspiracy of Alcibiades and humbled the glory of Athens, claptrap like a bellowing cyclone has swept across the track of nations from that day to this crushing out the good and nobility in them, and why, pray, shall it not succeed again? It succeeded day before yesterday with protection, yesterday with the trust, why not today with imperialism, standing armies and dictatorships? Have the people grown in wit since Greece or since yesterday? At all events it is clear what they expect, and in their gorgeous confidence in their claptrap god they proclaim undaunted that the people will surely grant them the favor to be fooled again. The trust has fooled nearly all people's possessions away, why shall not imperialism finish the good job and take also the fooled fools' liberties? So reason those who expect it to happen. Will the same old gag work again? On this point turns American fate; the people never were confronted by so grave a question. Monopolists must now have a standing army to protect themselves from the peoplethey ask the people with invincible assurance to give them this army, to be this army. These monopolists do not say in so many brutally truthful words: 'Monopoly has only begun its rule, we shall absorb all, you may not submit peacefully, you must therefore give us a trenchant military force to police our universal monoply against yourselves'; but they say in the winsome language of charitable commerce: 'We need the Philippines antl Porto Rico for national trade and prosperity; they are a stepping-stone to China where there is still more trade and national prosperity; all this will give the laboring man work and we shall all be blest, and shall also, bless the Tagals and Chinese. Incidentally this will call for many THE EXPANSION OF BILLIONAIRES. 185 more new battleships and permanent battalions, but that is a small matter for we are a rich and mighty nation upon whom taxes and debts are rather like wings that bear us up than weights which drag us down. We shall not feel an army of one or two hundred thousand. And there is our dignity solemnly beckoning to us to come and take our place among the Powers of the earth, those noble Powers whose armies are so grand and common citizens so happy. We can't -be one cf them without an army; hurrah then, let us fall to with united patriotism and create it!' This is the diplomatic language that monopolists use in their courteous request to the American people to commit suicide. These commercialists are a pack of barbers at their trade crying up expansion to shave us, but they are more than that-when they get us in the chair they will cut our throats. CHAPTER XI. The Military Curse. 1. Liberty Must Fall. "I say then that there is no easier way to ruin a republic, where the people have power, than to involve them in daring enterprises; for where the people have influence they will always be ready to engage in them, and no contrary opinion will prevent them." These were the words of Machiavelli.* It has been true of the world throughout the past; is it to be true of modern republics? Is an army to be the invariable assassin of liberty? These are questions of considerable import. We have begun the elevation of a great army, having leaped by one act of congress to 60,000 men, nearly double and a half our ancient force. We have involved ourselves in daring enterprises, against the earnest warning and counsel of all the strongest and best men of the nation. History says that when republics do these things they fall. Are we prepared to deny history, are we of a better caliber to create history of a new kind, or are we ready to sink back into monarchy and despotism? Our span of popular government, but little more than a century, is hardly a day in the life of nations. The favoring conditions have been in every sense unique, our experiment altogether abnormal. When these singular advantages pass away will not our liberties pass with them? That is the expectation of the world, and all the indications of the time converge toward that event. Our freedom *Discourses on Books of Livy, ch. LIII. LIBERTY MUST FALL. I87 has rested upon nature's generous distribution of immense material resources. Land was obtainable for the asking, and all men could live independently. The land has gone and independence with it; the abnormal conditions in which freedom grew have disappeared and the promise is already vivid that freedom is about to depart. There is the closest union between freedom and the distribution of wealth. Freedom is a consequence of the just distribution of wealth and vanishes if wealth concentrates. If, on the other hand, there is true popular freedom in fact and spirit, there will be fair distribution of wealth as an effect. The law and condition of freedom is equitable distribution of wealth. This floods the present chaos with light. The unique advantages of our new country have crossed the meridian and are going down, we are becoming normal in the European sense, the laws governing wealth in old countries now govern in ours. The crucial consequence of this full settling and industrializing of the country is that wealth ceases its fair distribution and is gathered by the few rulers of trade. Coincidently with this new order freedom also droops toward the horizon. Events happen which seem fortuitous and are treated as detached and astonishing, whereas they are results of the ending of equity in distribution. The war with Spain followed by the Filipino war is a pretext, a mere concomitant circumstance; if it had not happened something similar to serve the guiding tendency would have happened. Industrial monopoly is total and universal, and must be protected: its protection calls for armies, and that is national militarism. Industrialism militarizes in order to terrorize. The swift growth and stunned acceptance of the military program show that the soil had been knowingly prepared. It spread like clouds of poison in a single year and the people sunk torpid and powerless beneath its furious vapors. Go back this one year. Spain to be ejected from Cuba for the atrocity of killing Cubans in order to I88 LIBERTY MUST FALL. own and rule Cuba for Spanish advantage. The horror of it was a stench in our nostrils too awful to endure; our nerves quivered with intolerable anguish at the sight. A year later we debonairely slaughter Filipinos in identical Spanish style, perpetrating the identical atrocity, for the identical Spanish reason, gain. The stench is no more, the anguished indignation at the murder of the weak has passed over into a fiercer indignation against the weak for resisting murder. What cataclysm fell on conscience, humanity, ruth, honor, in this curt year? They never existed. Nothing done has been accidental or inexplicable;: all was buried in us when we feigned the rescue of Cuba; we have resurrected our nature: the secret of all was the necessary creation of militarism. Creation by whom and for whom? By the people, under spell of those who have confiscated the people's wealth and need a military police support. But why, if we had freedom and knew its value, did we not keep it? We had enjoyed notable and exceptional equity in the distribution of wealth-why did we not retain that? And why did not this equity of distribution save our freedom for us if freedom and fair distribution are such close kin? The answer is that in spirit we never were a free people. We never yet have comprehended what freedom is. Had we done so the events through which we are coursing could not have transpired, even in shadow or burlesque. Lay this well to heart, for it explains all our present infamies and prospective woes. The marvelous opportunities of life which were lavished on our people for a hundred years arose from no virtue of our own, but fell gratuitously from heaven upon our careless laps. We received them and, like prodigal sons, behaved as if they were deserved and would always. deluge us in luxuriant showers. The lesson and the virtue which we ought to have learned we spurned; we did not ask the foundation of the freedom which we held, or how to fix it forever-we glided on recklessly sporting in the LIBERTY MUST FALL. I89 careless hour, dreaming and boasting that it would never end. As a nation we typified the rake's progress. In that state of fatuous irresponsibility we had no thought of protecting or repairing the bulwarks of our shining fortune: how should we, since our levity was so extravagant that we had never inquired what these were? Hence the sleepless waves of industrialism gradually undermined and washed them away. And we wake up now out of our silly intoxication to find them all but utterly gone. Wealth, the sources of life, monopolized and appropriated, a great army-navy about to be unsprung upon us by a seeming miracle, and we flaccid, with no soul of resistance, succumbing like old men in the last stages of senile decrepitude. What shall we do to be saved? This question at last rings through every true American heart. Let us answer it honestly and let us at last begin to be brave-for our glaring fault is cowardice. If it is only a little thing that we must do for salvation we meet it; if a great thing we quake and put it off, dreading to encounter it. We are a nation of moral cowards, shirking evils that have destroyed other states, rather nursing them in our breasts and preparing our own decease. There are two things that will save us: Courage at last to look the situation in the face, Courage to do whatsoever that look shows to be necessary. The life and decay and death of previous states have eternally and forever established the principle that there must be equitable distribution of wealth or commonwealths dry and die. Wealth is the sap of a nation; if it all rushes to one spot the remainder shrivels and perishes while in that place it congests and bursts its arteries and causes death. When nations rot their downfall is a good thing, to make way for a healthier organism. Suppose, however, that the new organism speeds through the stages of its predecessor, enjoying comparative health only a short LIBERTY MUST FALL. space, falling thence meteorically into similar decay and death. The process of nations is then revealed as an enormous expenditure, the revolution of cycle upon cycle, merely to gain an occasional brief moment of reasonable sanity and happiness. All those who live in other times than the short period of health are sacrificed; those who live during that period are only less sacrificed than the others if-as is ever so-the conditions and forces of decay are vigorously working in the society around them. The lives of the finest of the human race in all ages have been embittered by perception of the forces of ruin which they see relentlessly in victory about them, their efforts for race good have been stayed and spoiled by the action of these sinister powers. On such terms as this human society is not a success, The low and bad are ever getting the better of the good, overthrowing it, trampling it out. Whatever is higher and better is mocked and spit upon, its voice produces no effect, it is finally crushed in silence, and the brute mass of life speeds on the way to the cataract. The professed religion of-England and America insists upon a code of conduct straight at variance with the code obtaining in affairs; he who scoffs at this never-used religion is abhorred by the popular bulk of both countries with unmeasured malice; yet no creature in his daily concerns, his bus-.iness, attempts the conduct ordered by his religion, and whoever would do so is commiserated as a mild lunatic with wheels in his head. This has no other meaning than that the forces of destruction are paramount, these nations being in the course of passage through the stages of decline and dissolution that have announced the extinction of many previous great empires. This transitoriness of good in every people, the fleeting disappearance of high and saving qualities in the stream of corruption which begins to rise at a nation's birth and finally overwhelms all, is proof that man in organizing the systems that he attempts to live in with his fellows, LIBERTY MUST FALL. 19I has not discovered the art of establishing relations which make the best thrive, and, by adherence to principles which preserve a nation from death, carry the race constantly forward and upward, producing greater and greater things, stronger and grander people, and giving the world example of undeviating progress and increasing power and happiness. All the failure is traceable to man's incompetence and inefficiency. Yet at this moment it is defended by illustrious pedants and pompous savants as necessary, as a part of the wise plan of the world, more or less inscrutable and altogether immutable, while the vulgar gloat upon it and proclaim from the dome of their shame that the success and upperhandness of selfish, mean and socially destructive forces, puts upon them the seal of right, superiority, virtue and divine design. The learned and the vulgar join in saying that things are as they ought to be because they are so. Setting these twin impediments aside to graze in the happy pastures of sin, the intelligent will perceive without being coached that the snail's progress of society during all these generations is owing to the small degree of intelligence that has been expended to discover forms of human association that would, through their satisfaction of human nature, stand and persist. For ages mankind did not possess fire: if our savants and vulgarians had lived then their mission would have been to make men believe that nature was opposed to the discovery of fire, they would have used the familiar argument that human nature was too poor and infirm for the use of fire, and would have denounced fire as a Utopian dream. For many ages mankind lumbered along without a knowledge of the wheel and axle, without the aid of domestic animals, without the assistance of steam, and the learned and the vulgar, the priest, the savant and the mass, were united against innovation, insisting that it was not intended, and that human nature was not good enough to sustain it. 192 LIBERTY MUST FALL. No part of the intelligence heretofore applied to mechanical invention has been devoted to finding how man may create a society with the attributes of endurance, of providing all its members with perfect justice, of developing to the greatest boundary attainable all the forces of intellect and happiness in each. The learned and the vulgar have united to agree that this is an Utopian dream, a state transcending human powers, as they formerly taught the impracticable idealism of fire. Such a society is entirely within the scope of man's invention, however. Although it is not an invention that will be made offhand, comparatively complete, like rubbing together pieces of wood, it is a discovery nevertheless already nine-tenths made, and men do not embrace it for application because like those in olden fables who essayed to look on the face of God they are blinded by the light it sheds. But great as the barriers of ignorance, learning, and unbelief are to the acceptance of social inventions, a still more powerful foe is vested interests. If vested interests had been threatened by the discovery of fire that useful acquisition would probably have been placed under the ban and its reception postponed for tens of centuries. Inventions in the art of better human society all threaten vested interests and thence arises the difficulty of gaining a hearing or candid examination for them, the power of vested interests having been, ever since civilization set in, so prodigious. Here then is the disgraceful anomaly under which we struggle: It is well known why human society is not a success, it is well known how to remedy the matter and make it a success, but vested interests say no, and there everything hangs fire. Vested interests are the demiurgus, the creator, the providence, the jahveh, the father, son and holy ghost of human society-that is to say, in human affairs there has been for ages no power in the world comparable to vested interests. The evil which causes states to enter upon decay as soon as born and prevents the formation of a stable social LIBERTY MUST FALL. organism is the right enjoyed by individuals to absorb the wealth of their neighbors. After this process has advanced for a time the state is filled with a degenerate population, people who have lost the means to develop, lost ambition, lost hope and character, who neither care for nor are capable of promoting the country's interests. It then happens that the nation is overthrown, either by an outward foe or a domestic tyrant. People who have lost their property, patriotism and character have neither the power nor desire to protect their country or their own political and social rights; being degraded and irresponsible, they are charged with becoming dangerous, which is often given as an excuse for enslaving them. If they retain life enough for turbulence it may well be that they are dangerous to those who have robbed them of all, but usually their spirit is destroyed to the root. When the average man is deprived of all possessions in a society where the rule is private property, he soon parts with his self-respect and courage, his children can have no education and, bred in an atmosphere where self-respect and whatever makes manhood are wanting, they are more spiritless and degraded than their parent. A large percentage of such wretches in a country soon eats away its vitality. There is not a civilized nation which is not today in this condition, but if we want examples from the past the two greatest historic peoples supply them too vividly. Letourneau gives an edifying picture of the conditions which led to the fall of these two great societies.* "From the earliest times of Greek history we look on at the confict between riches and poverty, or, in modern terms, capital and labor... At Athens the evil was already so great, evolution in the individualistic sense so advanced, that the legislator had to confine himself to palliatives, such as the reduction or remission of debts, proportional *Ch. Letourneau,' "Property, Its Origin and Development:" pp. 254-255, and 275-277. 7 194 LIBERTY MUST FALL. taxation. compulsion of the rich to accept expensive public offices, obstacles placed in the way of the conveyance of landed property, etc. He did not dare to abolish the right of bequest.... It was much worse at Athens [than at Sparta], a maritime city of commerce and manufacture, a kind of Hellenic England, where stock-jobbing, usury, and financial speculation were rampant; where the body social was divided into two inimical classes-a minority having in their grasp the greater part of the capital, which it was their constant anxiety to increase, and a proletarian populace, of necessity hostile to the moneyed aristocracy. The sequel is known. Character became demoralized; the ancient and heroic ancestral virtues faded away; the ruling classes subordinated the city's interests to those of their strong boxes; Philip came on the scene unexpectedly. There always comes a Philip to subjugate degenerate Athenians. Then to the brilliant flash of Alexander's conquests succeeded political despotism, and in the end Greece, the glorious, became only a Roman province." The same cause overthrew Rome. "This far-reaching and all-powerful cause, hidden under historic events, must be sought for simply in the manner in which property was evolved in Rome." In the beginnings of Roman life, as in Greece, society was composed of numerous household groups, 'ruled despotically by the father,' in which, though kinship was not necessary, there was a close solidarity of interest and none were neglected. By degrees private property arises and 'its exhorbitant rights are recognized, even the famous right of use and abuse.' With this comes the liberty of bequest, which according to the whim of the proprietor gives one much and others nothing, and lays the foundations of permanent inequality. The extension of Roman dominion by conquest created international exchanges and.the fever.of commercial speculation. The people were deprived of their property and reduced to the state of slaves by the follow LIBERTY MUST FALL. 195 ing steps. "First of all, it was necessary to compete with the agricultural production of Carthage, where servile labor was practised on a large scale and without scruple, that is, where wheat was produced very cheaply. To do this the Romans began to imitate their rivals, dreaming all the while of their destruction. The Delanda est Carthago of the elder Cato, Cato the usurer, is a good reflection of this state of commercial envy and rage. Once started, the movement did not stop. Their conquests gave them slaves by the million; little by little the small free landowners, unable to withstand the competition of the owners of the latifundia, were ousted, forced into debt, and, in consequence, themselves compelled to furnish servile labor, since the creditor had the right of seizure upon his debtor. In time Roman society in Italy, and outside it, ended by being made up only of a minority of large landowners exploiting a multitude of slaves.... Once this economic change was accomplished, the huge body of the empire had no longer either cohesion or vitality.... As economic individualism progressed, the masses became detached from a res publica which no longer had anything public about it. The wealthy, the ruling classes, thought chiefly of maintaining and increasing their estates. As to the enslaved masses, what did a change of masters signify to them? 'It is absurd,' says Diodorus Siculus, speaking of Egypt, 'to entrust the defense of a country to people who own nothing in it.' " The same condition of affairs is now gathering upon us who have yet to learn that the laws of the survival of nations are not to be trifled with. Do we wish America to survive? Do we wish her free institutions to live, and, more than all, that tendency to freedom, far as yet from realized, which Americans carry within them? If so the causes which have wrecked other nations must be removed, cost what it may; the blessings of property must be disseminated; the power enjoyed by individuals to absorb property away from their fellows, leaving them with I96 THE AMERICAN IDEA. out the means of maintaining self-respect or motives of affection for their country must be taken away, so that all citizens may thrive in happiness and character, in the love of their countrymen and of mankind. We must not be like the Athenians who dallied with palliatives and did not dare to go to the root of things and cut off the power of the few to rob the many, otherwise we shall fall ingloriously as Athens fell, and at no distant day The tyrants who will shatter our liberties if they can are already born; wealth has already been taken from the many by the few; the self-respect, spirit, courage to stand up for destroyed rights, are ebbing away; the bold, upright, just, freedom-loving manhood of the average American as he was a generation ago has almost vanished, leaving a timorous caution, a shrinking reluctance to utter an opinion that might recoil on the scanty means of livelihood, a craven servile truckling to those who hold the doors of employment; at the bidding of political and industrial masters the standing army is enlarged and the ships of the navy multiplied; every instrument is provided for the coming tyrant, every means for crushing democracy prepared for his advent, the people staring vacantly at the process, obeying the orders of their destroyers; cheering horrible national crimes against helpless Asians when told to cheer to help forward the grand military plan, and like the last Greeks and the last Romans, flaccid, indifferent, helpless to save themselves but helpful to their enslavers as one in a mesmeric trance. 2. The American Idea. The essential value of the formation of the United States lay in our casting overboard a large cargo of European ideas and institutions. We threw over kings and the whole monarchical principle (in consciousness); we threw over nobilities and determined that no tribe of aristocrats of any kind or canker should manage the country for their glory, greed, profit or deification; our idea was THE AMERICAN IDEA. 197 liberty, equality and brotherhood; and we cast over the military idea, because it was too plain to the fathers of the nation that if we touched military tar we should be irrevocably blackened and return to the carrion of aristocracy and monarchy. Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams were those who planted this policy of eternal preservation in American soil, and who are they that are about to root it up? They are Hanna, Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, McKinley and Platt —the fathers of trusts and the kings of monarchical political machines. The fathers of the country have passed away, the fathers of trusts have entered their place. The edict has gone out from these later national fathers that the policy on which this nation was built is now to be torn away; those foundations that have enabled us to rise from thirteen to forty-five states, to survive unwrecked the awful convulsions of civil war, to rear an industry that will not long hence surpass the world, to hold intact the forms and principles of equality and democracy against the onsets of the invading feudal hurricanes of Europe, these foundations, imperishable and indestructille, save by ourselves, are now to be ripped out because our step-fathers find that for their knavery, European foundations are better. Choose you between Franklin and Hanna, Washington and Vanderbilt, Jefferson and Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan and Alexander Hamilton, McKinley and Monroe. We have reached the most solemn hour of all our struggles: If we adopt militariszm we abandon the whole grand Amdierican idea. If we elect militarism we give up what we have won and go down to live in the deathly catacombs of the past: we return to the state which it was the chief glory of this continent to repudiate; we reassume those bonds which galled the better spirits of the Old World until they abandoned it to inaugurate a life where men were men and the ever ominous presence of soldiery did not humble them down to creeping brutes. Is it then THE AMERICAN IDEA. our destiny to replace upon ourselves the yoke of that insufferable servitude? To guard themselves from the touch of Europe still more, from even the corrosion of contact, which they wisely and profoundly dreaded, they declared the Monroe Doctrine, and ordered the old world to keep her body and her claws off of this hemisphere and to cease from her aggressions here. The reach of this act was immeasurable. By it we were secured a century and a quarter of character formation untrammeled by sottish European standards. We lustily despised those standards and insisted on developing according to our own. It made us in certain essential attributes the freest nation on the face of the earth. There is in the mass of our people a fiber feeling of scorn and derision for kings and emperors and monarchies; by them nobilities are disliked and despised; it has been potent to kill many propositions to show that they were practised by European nations. To be free from a standing army has been our highest pride. We have considered it un-American, anti-American, as it is; we have boasted that what peoples of Europe spend to be ready to kill each other, we spend in preparing our citizens to live-in education; we have attributed a mighty measure of the degradation and poverty of the lower foreign classes to the terrible drain upon them of the military machine which they support, and cheered ourselves with a large immunity from these evils because in our wisdom we kept no army. How can we think of giving this colossal superiority up? How can we reconcile ourselves to standing apostate before mankind and renouncing our consummate mission of building a continent according to the principles of peace? These poisoned questions will certainly be asked by the scoffer, who, pointing the finger of scorn at all our vain promises of the past, will inquire: 'What good in sooth has it done you to keep your chaste skirts up from the corrupting mire of Europe when now you leap into the brothel of war with STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. 199 insatiable relish? In what respect has your century of coy virginity and elevated contemplation of your own immaculacy made you better than we are, since you blaze forth the most shameless military strumpet on the whole earth? Did we ever do anything as lying, as evil, as hypocritical as you are doing in the Philippines, after promising God and man by all that you worship with your lips that you would never do it? Ae admit that we are prostitutes and regret it and keep alive a dim hope of pardon on the judgment day by a little cucumber talk at peace conferences, but it ill becomes you who are now a common drab like ourselves to set yourself any longer in the sky and indulge in your bleary preachments. You were only waiting for strength, and now the whole pentup greed of a hundred years blurts out. Arch hypocrite, have at least the prudent honesty to desist from this blasphemy of calling yourself the chosen pioneers of God, appointed in I776 to lead mankind into a paradise of moral democracy and intelligence.' Under these acid critics we stand with mute heads for they speak truth. We may induce Ethiopians carved up alive for our dinner to believe that they are nourishing the Almighty, travelers have done much in this sphere of influence, but other carnivorous Almighties like ourselves are not taken in by that avenue. It is their own favorite forte and they know us. 3. Standing Army Damnation. In spite of the sudden incredible growth of military spirit in this country the opposition to militarism in the general masses is still extreme. The reduction of McKinley, Alger and Miles' pet standing army bill from a hundred thousand to sixty thousand by the last congress expressed this deep popular jealousy. But that is a temporary check only, for the next congress will be a tame war body of soft clay in the president's hands. Nevertheless popular sentiment on this must be placated and 200 STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. deceived. Two methods are employed to get the bitter army medicine down without popular spasms: The first, a hothouse war and war-policy to make a fighting force inevitable; the second, sophistical oratory to show by talk that a permanent fighting force does not menace at home. The war in the Philippines has the settled purpose of creating a standing army in spite of the people. Our volunteers enlisted to rescue Cubans from death and slavery, not to kill and slave offenseless Filipinos. They rightly grew tired and ashamed of being the Weyler's Spanish devils of Luzon. Only a handful would re-enlist, the rest refused. But the devil's work must go on, and regular soldiers are required in the place of returned volunteers. So long as this war lasts the standing army must expand. The war is therefore a meditated strategem to extort a standing army from the people of the United States. The popular mind is befuddled by all manner of fallacies and lies concerning the moral imperative of the war, and in this confusion the people have not risen to stamp it out. That is all our war authorities ask. Let the war swing on and all the rest follows like touching a bell: the army follows, for the people must grant the army if they grant the war. Whatever we are politically, we know that the Washington administration is under the iron arm of the nation's monopolists, who have not a scintilla of principle. To them country means commercial exploiting ground. Money, more money, yet more money, is their creed. To hell with people, to hell with citizens, to hell with country is their creed and deed. They are unscrupulous, like a band of mercenary assassins. If a monarchy excels a republic for their sordid schemes they will have monarchy; if a Napoleon serves their mighty schedule of industrial absoluteness better than a president they will crown a Napoleon; if an item in this program is a regular army of foreign size and a war to form it, they will cause STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. 201 the war as cheerfully as they will drink champagne; if this war entails death and broken powers on many of their countrymen shining in the hope of youth, is that a feather to them? is not their creed to hell with men? if it requires the most cowardly, dastardly and cruel war in the annals of man, a war to annihilate savages whose mortal mistake was trust in our fulsome promises of succor, what of that? if their creed is to hell with American citizens, to hell with American liberty, will it not be to seven times hell with damned worthless Filipino niggers? The initial aim of the war is a standing army to sustain the coming capitalist monarchy; therefore on with the war until the army exists. You can give out as much sentimentality as you wish about the human lives sacrificed in the building of the army, but what is a standing army for. any way? Is it intended to save lives? If the people oppose the will of the monopolist masters of that army later do you not know that some thousand or twenty thousand times more will be slain than perish in the Philippines? Let us have done with false and womanish theories about the value of human life under a monarchy of millionaires. Each man is worth as much as a lackey. When the war closes, if that time ever comes, a large army will be as necessary as now. It will take generations of sweet capitalist pedagogy to make the Filipinos forget and forgive our ruffian treachery toward them, our harsh enslavement of their country. We shall keep perforce a heavy permanent armament among them to fasten them down, and that must be recruited from America. This also is desired. It is the wanted reason for feeding military grandeur. But our people may decide to stop this Philippine business and what becomes of the standing army' scheme then? The monopolists and their political abettors are striving to anticipate this event by excision of the people's army fears with surgical oratory. The governor of New 202 STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. York applied his crafty knives to taking common sense out of the American brain in the following manner:* I shall not discuss with an audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of seventy millions of freemen is in danger of losing its liberties from the existence of an army of Ioo,ooo men, three-fourths of whom will be employed in certain foreign islands, in certain coast fortresses, and on Indian reservations. No man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition seriously. If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedon in any event. This neglects the power of modern instruments of war. A few men trained to handle these weapons can resist whole armies without them or undrilled in their use. General Kitchener gave a happy illustration of this aptitude to the Khalifa's forces whom he wiped out of the universe without the exertion of fighting them. His men peacefully discharged lightning firing guns which are to ordinary archaic weapons as the machine mower is to the scythe. Another illustration recently happened to a regiment of Filipinos. The story was told in a private letter to a naval officer at Washington and found its way into the press. A landing party of about 125 from the Bennington went ashore on Malabon in several boats, and a launch remained with Winship [Assistant Engineer of the Bennington] and two men as boatkeepers and to watch the stream. The landing party advanced foolishly, without scouts and precautions, and was suddenly set upon by a regiment of Filipinos. They fled to the beach for the boats, pursued by the natives, and were hard pressed. Seeing this, Winship unlimbered a revolving cannon in the bow of the launch, and turned it loose upon the pursuers. He kept up a deadly fire, and thirty Filipinos were killed or disabled. He stood off the whole gang, enabling our party to get to their boats safely. He then fell, having received five bullets. Tausig says that but for Winship none of the party would have escaped. Here is a case where one man with a machine gun was equal to thirty with ordinary arms. If this proportion holds in general a standing army of I00,000 men armed with the newest machinery would be equivalent to an army of 3,000,000 armed with rifles in the usual style. It is entirely fraudulent and false to say that 'a nation *Speech at Chicago dinner. STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. 203 of seventy millions of freemen is not in danger of losing its liberties from the existence of an army of Ioo,ooo men.' This pictures the army standing up against seventy millions of people united against it, attempting to hold them up like stage robbers to rifle their pockets of liberty. This is not the way it is done, and does not indicate the danger. The process is this: Factions grow up in a state and the seventy millions become divided on some weighty issue. If no standing army exists to be appealed to the question is settled by debate, reason and vote, and this is the civilized, constitutional and democratic way. An army alters everything. The side that gains its help wins the day, while the opposition has no show whatever. It is suppressed by force, since it yields to the presence and threat of force. Reason, discussion, the ballot have been overthrown; the anti-civilized method of compulsion has usurped the place of persuasion and decision by count of numbers. This leads back to tyranny. absolutism, or an oligarchy based on might: it is the abandonment of constitutionalism and the republican form of self-rule. If there is a strong army in the commonwealth this is certain to happen sooner or later. Issues will arise which engender profound feeling and on which men take sides with 'principle' and passion. In communities that do not tolerate the existence of force each party knows that the only road to success is through convincing a majority of the people with argument, and temper is restrained within reasonable bounds and finally subsides. Not so when there is a tempting military body in reach to tamper with and corrupt. The efforts that would normally go into marshaling facts and proofs are then addressed to gaining the support of generals and undermining the loyalty of the soldiery. The arguments are not designed to convince unprejudiced understandings, but are those that rouse private interest and cupidity. The deed in contemplation is unlawful and revolutionary, and honest consti 204 STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. tutional methods are dropped for such as will corrupt and dissipate fidelity. Argument turns into bribery variously disguised. The generals are implored to save their country from the disruption which the other faction is about to plunge it into-to save it from disruption by disrupting it and holding the parts together by force. This is a huge melon for the generals. It elevates them in a flash to be the imposing figures of state and loads the army with preponderant power. Such a bait has ever been hard for military men to pass and few there are that have done it. To take them up into a high hill and show the kingdom of America and say that it is theirs if they will do their duty and save Americans from self-destruction by saving them from self-government is a subtlety of devils which never fails, although it is coeval with devil-birth. Every usurpation is heralded in the holyish cloth of unsought duty, done in the pain of kindness to the people. After a coup d'etat with military the army does not retire to its former place, for that would tempt a counter revolution; the offspring of tacit or actual force must be perpetuated by force, and the standing army becomes rod and staff of the new government. The military man blazes out of the elfin insignificance where we have despisingly kept him and shines as the jockey arbiter of national destinies. He becomes the lord and master of us, whose very humble servant our forefathers made him to be. There is now no hope of ousting him from this vantage, since those whom he has treasonably overthrown will perpetually hate and plot and he will ever have excuse to save the state from treason. But the party which force raised up must placate its maker or risk unmaking by the same power, which means of course that the army must have what it asks and that it is intrinsic master. Our nation is then directed by the ideals and ambitions of military men and the most dreaded perversion of republicanism takes place: the STANDING ARMY DAMNATION. 205 army assumes the leading role, the state and the people exist for it. The nations of Europe present this spectacle; the fiction maintains among them that the army lives for the preservation of the state, whereas in truth the state has its being to nourish and preserve the army, all the vital forces of each European commonwealth are sapped to feed the colossal military tumor. When militarism thus gains upper hand with us all foreign transactions and domestic affairs will be determined for the expansion and aggrandizement of the military force. If the heavy laden people cry out against external policies of brutal conquest in which the substance of the nation is squandered to secure a distant colony they are curtly told that the dignity and safety of the nation order it. This may be true since the nation proper has disappeared and been sublimed into its military chiefs whose dignity is now the whole sphere of national being. If the people beg surcease from the frightful load of taxation required to support the idle multitude of military officers, the enormous mass of lazy soldiery, the increasing armament, the extending military service and administration in all parts of the world, they are either treated with indulgent contempt or harshly given to know that as a great and glorious nation these things are imperative. They are a part of the strenuous life-a life of strenuous idleness on the part of the soldiering half of mankind and of strenuous toil of the other half to support them. The people create the army and the army takes possession of the people, a mighty insatiable sucking vampire. This then is the process of a standing army in overthrowing popular freedom. It does not set itself up against the whole nation but sides with one part against the rest, and so a small force is competent to overwhelm freedom. Our present army of 60,000 is equal to it, for throw this body into the balance of two contending factions and the controversy is settled. Suppose that two 206 THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. parties nearly equally divide the nation and that one of them decides upon a revolutionary course and draws the army over to its support: if it now comes to the test of force that half which can plus a highly drilled machineequipped regular army will annihilate the resistance of the half that lacks such aid. And yet those who argue to the people as rustic bumkins or clowns with cap and bells, audaciously say to us 'it is a puerile suggestion that we may lose our liberties through an army of Ioo,ooo men; if we do so we are weaklings who deserve no liberty; no man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition seriously.' How clear it is that these words are honey spread on paper to catch the people, when we reflect on the real manner in which armies cause popular liberties to be lost, and how clear the motive of these sweet and sticky phrases is! 4. The Character of Standing Soldiery. The character of a standing soldiery must be taken into consideration. A citizen soldiery and a standing soldiery are too remotely different things. Where a nation was divided by intense feeling it would be impossible for one or the other side to gain the support of citizen soldiery for this body would be divided in sentiment like the people and would go over to neither. It would be more likely, under civil direction, to enact the part of keeping the factions from forcibly clashing until temper subsided and the disputed questions were settled amicably. But down to its very atoms a standing army is the reverse of this. The citizen soldiers have other interests than war, they enter into all the broad life of the nation on all its sides, they are themselves the people, a part of its flesh and blood and brain, war to them is a mere incident of their lives and a most unwelcome one. Not so the regular soldiers. War is the business of their lives, all their training is for it, all their serious thoughts run on it, they take but little interest or none in the manifold THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. 207 affairs of the community-their situation removes them from those affairs, renders their entrance into them essentially impossible-their mode of life and thinking habits incapacitate them for intelligent participation in such things. Very scanty reflection on the composition of a regular army should therefore convince a free people that the less they have to do with it the better. Men who enlist as voluntary and permanent soldiers are much below the average. They have less mental ability, small character in the better sense, little interest in the larger life and development of mankind, and no desire to improve themselves. Barrack life is known to be dreary, deadening and debasing, and no person with stuff of any quality in him could think of embracing it as a profession. Its recreations are brutish and sensual, soon taking the modicum of soul that the ordinary regular starts with out of him. The life of soldiers is in every sense animal, and venereal pleasures are foremost among its relaxations. If an innocent fellow comes among them it is their chief delight to debauch him; to send a young man soldiering is to farm him out to the lowest vices-the average one of them might as well be made pimp to a house of illfame without ado. In our late Spanish war, as I have said, many of our soldiers rotted themselves down with prostitution until they were ready victims of disease. Soldiers carry and spread the venereal decay which they contract. France was given her fill of this blessing of war a century ago: "Venereal diseases which, thanks to good habits, were still unknown in the country in I789, are now spread throughout the Brocage and in all places where the troops have sojourned." During the revolution the number of foundlings increased to an "extraordinary extent," partly 'through the passing sojourn of soldiers in the houses of the people,' and "the soldiers on their return maintained the habits of their conquests."* Besides con*These facts are quoted by Taine from earlier French writers, in "The Modern Regime," pp. i66, i67, notes. 208 THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. suming the substance of a nation's labor and lending themselves to the destruction of its liberty, one of the leading parts of a standing soldiery is syphilizing the nation. The position of servile subordination to the arbitrary will of officers develops baseness of spirit and character. These officers are often coarse, brutal and low, and their elevation over the common soldier confers propriety and sanction upon vulgarity and foulness. There is no opportunity to cultivate the better elements of a soldier's nature in such surroundings, nor would the brutal military ideal permit their cultivation in any event. The soldier's duty is to perform savage acts in implicit obedience to the command of others without having a thought of his own on the subject. If he thinks and hesitates he is a coward, if he thinks and objects, a traitor. His lot is to murder his fellowmen, and a humane compunction staying his murderous hand would cause him to be shot like a dog by his superiors. In order to consent to live and act thus men must be kept close in a brine of sodden ignorance and brutal lethargy, which is the very nature of an army, a composition wherein decent qualities die and all nutrition flows to strengthening indecent ones. The professional soldier is an anachronism in civilization, the male prostitute, being among men what the abandoned woman is among her sex. He is an intrinsically horrible object, out of time and out of place, the presence of which human beings could not stand if the follies and prejudices which those who make mankind serve them were not successfully preserved by a troglodyte education. Nor would the soldiers themselves perform their bestial office if the light of their minds were not extinguished by this evil education. If common men, the substance of common soldiery, saw things as they are, there is not one who would enlist as a professional fighter, not one that would respond to military conscription. Society performs a crime in making any men what professional sol THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. 209 (iers are, men created in the ideal image of the Eternal, to be reshaped by other men into the reality of the-Infernal. But nature exacts her dues and right is not mocked. Having begotten this monster society cannot put it off and must accept the evils that it inflicts. And militarism brings social death, for a society without liberty is dead. W\hat comprehension can men of this military prostitute type and warp possess of the problems of popular freedom? What would be their ability or interest to see through the conspiracy of a faction of the people with their leaders to use the army for duty's sake to upset republican government and rear a military monarchy in its place? Hired soldiers also look at things from a professional point of viewr and their professional concern is the advancement of the military profession: whether it ad!vances with liberty or on the ashes of liberty is not vital. Regular soldiers are automata whose highest conception of duty is obedience to officers; if the officers are won over to a revolution the rank and file of booted shooting machines are not likely to hold back. Probably few Americans have considered that an army in the midst of democracy is as out of place and ruinous as a fiery royalist club in the heart of a republic. An army in its constitution is undemocratic in every point, the unsoftened negation of democracy, an organized absolute despotism within a larger self-governing society. What can the effect of this be upon democratic development if not pernicious? Its members are trained to antidemocracy, it stands before the community an approved example of a despotic hierarchy of the completest type. It is like an alien poisonous substance in the human system, which cannot be strong and healthy while it remains. It resembles a rotten apple in the center of a bin. Reflect on this carefully. An army and navy are medieval institutions formed on ideas that have long been superceded and abandoned in intelligent civil life. The system of army government is not only absolute despot 210 THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. ism, it is absolute slavery. Every officer is a Czar. The common soldier is not a man, he is a nonentity, a machine, or rather the hundred-thousandth part of a machine. A slave is one whose time is owned and ordered for him by another and that is the state of a soldier. He, his will, and his soul, belong to some one else. Let the slave try having a will of his own and he is flogged, bloodhounds track and mangle him, he is put in chains until his will subsides; let the soldier try having a will and he is put in irons, chased with bullets, tried by an irresponsible military court and shot. These are the savage penalties for being a democrat, a human being, in an army; the penalties for thinking and acting independently of the soulless machine of which he is the hundred thousandth or millionth part. Now apply this state of affairs to civil life. Mankind has been devoting its energies for twenty centuries to freeing itself fom this slavery. The relentless wheels of a civil machine of which the army is the shrunken matrix and relic formerly tortured the greater part of mankind with the same oppression. There was the prolonged and terrible struggle to cast off slavery and serfdom: serfdom is not yet really eliminated from civilized countries and slavery was only abandoned by the 'most enlightened people in the world,' God's modern-elect, ourselves, thirty-five years ago; there was the struggle for freedom of thought and conscience, fought out in the arena of religion, which cut off the best of the human stock and nearly bled mankind to death; the struggle for freedom of opinion and speech in political affairs, far from securely established now in many places: the right in a word to be one's own full master and open exponent while not injuring others. These are the priceless things of life so far partially won, and think what they have cost the human race! But the army reduces a man back to the place that he held two thousand years ago; all these hard-won prerogatives of freedom are retaken from him. The slave could think under Buchanan and under Nero if he buried his thoughts THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. 211 in his own soul, and no one denies that the soldier under William II and William McKinley can do that. The soldier has religious freedom-the freedom of aly theology he loves-but cold lead is his freedom if he carries his religion beyond his breast and proclaims that a certain war is unjust and he'll not fight in it. Society harboring an ancient body of this kind, foreign to all the principles and objects of civilization, is doing as a professedly good man would who nourished in a corner of his good heart all evil propensities. It resembles a school that should make a principle of keeping one degraded boy in the midst of the good ones, and, while exhorting warmly against his vices, should treat himn personally with great distinction and reverance and from time to time should search the country over for an equally depraved character to take in by his side. \Vhat would eloquent panegyrics of virtue and fervid denunciations of vice avail against this example? And would not events soon place a teacher who conducted himself by this hallucination in a strange plight? But no one demurs when this monstrous method is adopted by human society. It is thought sane to set a military organization, representing depraved principles which society is convulsively striving to throw off, down in the midst of the conmmonwealth, and to pet, praise and revere it. But the community will be corrupted like the youths of the school; the popular ideas will be the brutalizing undemocratic military ideas: these will captivate the imagination of the young, these they will adopt as principles of life, seeing their pharisaical elders, although pretending a better virtue, running after war above everything else. The introduction of a large army and navy into American democracy will destroy the good that our years of freedom from the military blight have developed. Heretofore we have gone forward toward light and liberty, we have been to the world an example and hope, we have be 212 THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. gun the mastery of problems of government and association which have perpetually staggered the world, and having made this glorious beginning and filled the earth with promise we are lured to give it all up, to face about in our tracks, and to return back into the medieval darkness from which we set out. Wie cannot hold citizens to the difficult practice of liberty if their eyes are dazzled by the gorgeous swagger of professionals in the art of military despotism and slavery. The retrial of Dreyfus is now proceeding at Rennes. It is a simple conflict between army and liberty. Medievalism, the ancient regime scotched but not killed, is fighting modernism. The generals have there what they want here, a fat monopoly, they sit firm on the people. A man wasting his life on Devil's Island, sent there by their invention, to save their fat monopoly, is laughing stock to these great pigs. How happens it that pigs get such power? They have a Spanish war and a Philippine war and give the pigs weapons and food and money and let them drill themselves and the pigs soon grow as big as elephants. The rich swill they feed on is for pigs a very pleasant possession. But something happens to take away the confidence of the people in pigs, the swill supply is threatened. Then the pigs put their snouts together to confer. They write down a series of treasons to swill and sign an innocent man's name; then they 'discover' him, and bring him before and try him in secret in the presence only of their own hog-tusks and snouts. The nation is horrified at the disclosures of treason to swill and rallies madly to the institution of pigs. The innocent man is of course convicted and sent to a far-off dungeon, disgraced for life and eternity. The pigs are now Judas-pigs and their swill is safe. The whole nation devotes itself mainly to the preparation of pig swill, and after stuffing its own elephant-hogs with all they can gorge, it sends off barrels of the luscious liquid to Russia where every pig is the size of four elephants. THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. 213 Man, however, was not made solely to feed pigs notwithstanding the patriotism of the job and the love pigs have of swill. Some Frenchmen grew weary of the pigand-swill business and investigated. They found that the chief pigs were an infamous lot of scamps and perjured liars, lying and murdering for the sake of their swill. So they called these scoundrel pigs to account and nearly lost their necks in the effort. Half of the people of the country thought they could not'live without pigs to govern them and to eat them out of everything, and these people wanted to mob those who said the swilleaters have gone too far, they have too much power, and next we know they will be eating us as well as their swill. The French were like a man with a cancer who said he did not see how he could get along without it to eat up his strength. But although it nearly caused the spontaneous combustion of France, the pigs were brought up for examination and when their jaws were forced open their cavernous mouths were found to be crammed full of the most disgusting and abominable inventions that ever a pig or a snake told. The strange part, or the natural part, as you please, is yet to come. When the pigs saw they were exposed they did not blush or run away and kill themselves as they ought to have done, but they declared they would kill the people for troubling them. They declared they would overthrow the government and put in its place absolute pig rule. They said: "The army is for the generals, and so is more than half the population of France. To strike Mercier. Boisdeffre and Gonse would be to ruin all the prestige of the chiefs of the army and all discipline. It would amount to the destruction of the army, wzhich wTill dcfed itself. "Do you think we are examining the alternative of [Dreyfus'] acquittal for the first time? Or that Mercier failed to realize what he said when he proclaimed 'Dreyfus or ourselves.' This is the whole question. Are the 214 THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. chiefs of the army to permit a gang of politicians to destroy all the institultions without which France cannot live? 'Mercier, Gonse, Roget and all back of them are fighters. They have long known that the ministry and Parliament are after their scalps, but their attitude is admirablv described by Mercier's exclamation when he learned tlat the Cabinet was discussing the expediency of arresting him: 'I'll be hanged if I'll allow that lot of hack politicians and that bogus renegade Gallifet to touch me.'.. "The army was canvassed recently. It was then overwhelmingly with us, and it is now so even more thoroughly. Our returns prove that, front the Colonels dowzn, all the regiments await only the sign from their generals to upset the government and to rid the country of the last of the Dreyfusards."* The pigs squealed, 'You mustn't destroy the prestige of pigs or France will go to pieces. Anybody that says we lie is a 'bogus renegade.' We're fighters! Nobody in civil office shall touch us. If the people attempt to get rid of us and stop our swill, we'll fight; we'll upset the government and rid the country of the last of those who hate the rule of hogs and demand the reign of justice.' They called in a great admirer of pigs called Freycinet, who had been Minister of War and Premier of France. and he testified by alluding to his fear that "attacks on the chiefs of the army might be prejudicial to discipline," adding: "Might not these attacks lead to the disappearance of discipline, and what then would be the result if we found ourselves in difficulties with a foreign country?" Addressing the court-martial of pigs who were conducting the trial, he said: "Let us cease throwing into one another's faces remarks that will discredit us in the eyes of our rivals. Gentlemen, let us prepare-and I would that my feeble voice could be heard by all-let us prepare *Dumay, in a cable to N. Y. World from Rennes, Aug. 29, '99. THE CHARACTER OF STANDING SOLDIERY. 215 to receive and accept your judgment with respect and silence."* A most noble pig and Iscariot idea for all who defend the divine right of swill. The General pigs treated this witness with prodigious respect. Frenchmen call him "The Little White Mouse," for 'his ability to speak lengthily without conveying much information.' An ounce of foresight is worth a good many pounds of bullets. We are in for a reign of pigs in this country unless the sternest measures are taken to shut off their rising volume of swill. Congressman Hull now remarks, "Congress will certainly have a military bill which will provide for a three-battalion regiment and a provision allowing the President to increase the present 50,000 fighting strength to o10,ooo if necessary." (Aug. 30.) Pig rule has been handed down from antiquity. The army is a pig caste miraculously trained to make itself seem indispensable; which grows on the wars it is supposed to prevent, and draws to itself all national vigor. We can repeat or avoid the history and folly of France, but given the pigs the pig transactions will follow; given the army we shall soon learn what hogs can do with America. The sty of Europe is near enough, can we not get army experience enough from our noses? Must we turn clean America into one? *Associated Press, Aug. 29. CHAPTER XII. Who Pays The Military Bills? 1. Milking the People With Armaments. A high German official recently avowed that it was well the German navy had made no demonstration in Samoan waters for it could not cope with the American navy, to say nothing of the English sea power; and he then entered upon a demonstration that German wealth warrants the elevation of the naval arm to equivalence with the land force, an imperative necessity, he argued, if Germany is to hold her own. There is evidence that this darling project of William the Crazy will be achieved, and it signalizes a momentous step in the military evolution of Europe, where hitherto there have been powers with great armies and one power with a great navy, but none with the two combined as Germany proposes. Since England's pert policy is to hold her fighting fleets superior to those of any two united powers, if Germany's cue prevails each continental state must build a navy like England's, a prodigy of expense nearly doubling the military burden of its inhabitants. England cannot be a leaden spectator of this process, which aims directly at the degradation of her commerce and empire and opens the British islands to invasion by armies that far outnumber hers; she must struggle for her naval supremacy by building two warships to every rival's one, or raise her standing army to their magnitude, which introduces a distinctly new order of affairs in liberty-loving Anglo-Saxony. She will do both. Without moderating her naval designs she is about to begin the task, revolutionary for MILKING THE PEOPLE WITH ARMAMENTS. 217 her, of bringing the army into correspondence with the navy. Showing the hastening military drift of English things the present occupant of the London Lord Mayor's chair conceived "the happy idea of giving a great military banquet." "We discern,' remarks the lively London editor, "a peculiar fitness and harmony in the hospitable scheme, for the city represents the wealth of the nation, which pays for the Army, and the heads of the Army represent the defensive organization which protects the wealth of the nation." Mark this with some care. Lord Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was there and he declared in sufficiently plain terms that a substantial increase in our military establishment is contemplated. Our army, as he pointed out, is one of the smallest and one of the cheapest maintained by any great power in Europe. He believes that "the conviction has been brought home to the minds of the people of England that, if they are determined as a nation to extend the confines of their Empire, they must make up their minds once and for all to increase the size of the Army, which means an addition of more battalions of foot, more regiments of cavalry, and more batteries at home." As taxpayers, we may grumble a little at the prospect; as patriotic Englishmen we must welcome the plan of making our second line of defence more worthy of the first. We have a great Navy; it behoves us to have an Army not quite ludicrously disproportionate to it.* M. Edmond Thery,? the well-known statistician, has formed an estimate which places the cost of the European war establishments at slightly less than $900,000o,0o annually. The prospect ahead is seen from the fact that the cost has nearly doubled since 1870, when it was $505,775,000. Peace-loving England pays out more than any other power for war arrangements. This direct drain of nine hundred millions nearly equals the value of all the railroads in the United States, yet is only about one-third of the entire cost of war business to Europe. The number of men actually in these armies all the year round was (in 1897) 3,I21,430, the productive labor of whom, M. Thery considers, would average a value of six francs each *"The Morning," London, July I4, 1898. tEditor of L'Economisie Europeen. The figures here are taken from an abstract of Thery's paper in the Philadelphia American, Sep. 3, I898. In these estimates the countries of the Spanish, Scandinavian aud Turkish peninsulas are not included. 218 MILKING THE PEOPLE WITH ARMAMENTS. for all working days,* and amount for the six powers to $I,084,385,ooo-which is somewhat more than the value of all the railroads in the United States. But these three million men are not all the soldiers, for a large proportion of the male citizens between certain ages on the continent, are required to leave their labor, assume camp life, and spend a considerable period in military drill. The number of this reserve force in 1897 was I9,650,000, and countinig what was lost to production by each man during that term of idleness, $,o000,000,000 was sacrificed, another sum equal to the total value of American railroads. Various items have been neglected in this computation, among them public works like railroads constructed exclusively for military ends, and what is withdrawn from productive labor by seamen, so that it is safe to put the total at $3,000,000,000, the annual bill of luxury which six European states pay for their military outfits. Still we are only at the beginning of it. Real military expansion did not fairly set in till thirty years ago; there is a reason for its setting in then, a law of its increase, and certain assurance of continued increase according to that law. It began then with full vigor because at that period civilized nations became fully stocked with capital and the era of surplusage opened. Investments ceased to pay as before, since there was much more capital accumulated to invest than profitable places for investment. This was an epoch and turning point in the economic history of the world; later events will likewise show that it was epochmaking in political and social destinies. Three movements of paramount meaning arose through this industrial event: (I) A desire for stable forms of investment, (2) The impulse for new markets by appropriation or conquest, (3) The tendency to develop armed force for the protection of monopolized capital. All of these processes are organic elements of the grand transformation which the surplus of saved capital is *This sum does not represent, merely, the wages of each, but the total product of his labor, including profit to employer, taxes, and wages, and is therefore far from extravagant. MILKING THE PEOPLE WITH ARMAMENTS. 219 causing. They combine to show that military armaments will continue to expand according to a definite law, because they combine to enforce that increase. The growth of armies and navies is simply the struggle of surplus capital to find profitable investment. They. are to conquer and protect markets for capitalists in uncivilized parts, which causes the nations to compete for the largest armaments as basis for the most extensive markets, and this necessity will insure the unlimited increase of war machinery. But besides this, every military addition creates two instant calls for surplus capital which capitalists have on hand and cannot otherwise remuneratively use: it purchases war implements and supplies of them, setting the factories in move. and it augments the war debts by forcing the government to engage new loans. It also prevents the payment of the already stupendous national debts. These debts are opportunities for absolutely secure investment of some of the enormous and growing surplus of saved capital and are therefore the dearest cynosures of capitalist eyes. It is their supreme advantage as business men to swell these debts and prevent their liquidation; therefore it is their supreme aim to multiply military expenses by distending armies and navies. The capital which they loan describes a circle and returns to them. They loan it to the government for untaxed bonds on which they garner interest, the surest investment that exists. With this money government buys munitions of war, which of course it can only purchase of those who possess. And who possesses? In these days only great capitalists, united in our country in trusts. Of them government buys. But these great owners are just the ones who loaned the money to the government which is now being spent back to them and from which they will draw a large commercial profit. For example, the government calls for a war loan and Phil Armour and the other cancers of beef patriotically sub 220 MILKING THE PEOPLE WITH ARMAMENTS. scribe; part of the loan is now used to purchase immense orders of canned beef from Armour and others, who make their ten, twenty or fifty profit per cent on the higgle, thus regaining into their hospitable pockets a fourth or half of what they advanced as war-loan patriots, while continuing to receive interest on it and having the government permanently in their debt for the whole amount. Likewise the great battleship-builders, the manufacturers of armor-plate, ordnance and rifles, the owners of the railroads which transport troops, the members of the great trusts which supply necessaries for the maintenance of soldiers on the field and in garrison, loan their money to the government to have it turned back to them by political manipulators, with contract profit, as purchase money for their wares. An index of the surplus of these capitalists and their anxiety for its investment is furnished by their av-iditv in snapping up these national loans. Early in 1896 President Cleveland desired to place a loan of 100o,000,000, in response to which $568,269,850 was subscribed, by 4,640 persons. This showed nearly 5,000 persons with an average of over $I35,ooo loose in their pockets which they did not know what to do with. Nearly six times the amount of the loan was subscribed, and if the wealthy had not been restrained by a. knowledge of the hundred million limit probably many times more still would have been offered. As there is hardly an industry which is not actually or virtually in a trust, and hardly a man of noted wealth who is not a trust magnate, a great part of the money raised for military purposes must be spent in buying goods from its loaners, a condition at once abnormal and most highly dangerous, for it places before the wealthy, our influential citizens, a tempting bribe to encourage military concerns. His constantly growing surplus capital makes the rich man an inevitable conspirator against the interests of peace. MILKING THE PEOPLE WITH ARMAMENTS. 221 Another very weighty item in this business is the evasion of taxes by the rich. In the first place much of his most valuable property, the franchise and the monopoly charter of the trust, is rarely taxed at all; secondly, vast wealth belonging to the rich is never returned for taxation; thirdly, through influence peculiar to the wealthy, most that they condescend to return is appraised laughably low. Not so the middle class and poor. The evasions of the rich they pay. They do not own the untaxed kind of property, nor the hideable kind; nor have they the wizard power to write their taxes down at their own rate. All this is a familiar story, good-naturedly acknowledged by all the rich and bitterly realized by all the poor, and so every-day that people start with a shock when some respectable frockcoat like Ex-President Harrison notifies the rich that if they keep it up they are likely to have much more than the amount of their 'legitimate' taxes taken away from them one of these days. But old as the story is it throws a warm illumination over war loans and large armaments. Gilt-eged as these bonanzas are for the surplus capital crocodile, his immunity from taxes richly enhances their worth. Before wealth concentrated, taxation burdens weighed equably, all felt them, it was no one's interest to increase them; in war nearly all sold war material to the government, for nearly all were small owning producers, hence all shared the profit; but they also paid their part of the war taxes, which was so much greater for each than his profit on war material that no one dreamed of forcing the war idea for private gain. Now this is completely changed. One class, the monopolist producers, does the manufacturing and supplying of war material and gets essentially all the profit, another class, the everyday common millions wVho have stock in neither trusts nor politics, pay practically all the taxes while they sell nothing to government and make no profit. Under such a monstrous arrangement the war interests of the trust clan and of the people 222 THE ENDLESS ROBBERY OF WAR DEBTS. are directly opposed. The more you can build up great armies and navies, the more the trust clan like it, for they do the selling and get the profit and loan the money to government to carry on the whole transaction, and take interest on that loan, while the common citizens bear the burden and pay the tax necessary for all this stately performance. Even the bonds are untaxed, to make loaning money to government still more delightful and secure to the wealthy. Clearly, armaments will go on increasing. The rich may not especially desire wars but they do desire immense outlays of preparation for wars. They will have their way because they control legislation; they coin all these schemes of profit into counterfeit patriotism, which inflames the people to yield every demand. 2. The Endless Robbery of War Debts. Over six months ago it was estimated that the cost of the Spanish war and what it entailed would be $28I,ooo,ooo up to June 30, I899,* which included no recognition of the expense of exterminating the Filipinos, which afterward arose. Of course a decent part of this grand sum lodged in the pockets of politicians, clerks and brigadier-generals, on the way to its destiny, but still what a mighty stroke of business for our trusts, railroads and transportation-vessel companies it made this war! Where do the people come in? They supply a part of the quota of inferior clerks and the common privates at $I3T2 a month. That is no great drain on $281,000,000, or let us say on $500,000,000 which is likely to be the figure when the financial returns of the Philippine butchery come home. Pursuant of the immemorial custom of wars the administration issued a loan of $200,000,000, with the privilege from Congress of making it $400,000,000 if required. These war bonds draw 3 per cent interest and *Charles A. Conant, on "Cost and Finances of the Spanish War:" Review of Reviews, Sept. 1898. THE ENDLESS ROBBERY OF WAR DEBTS. 223 run for ten years, payable in twenty. The interest on that loan is already $6,ooo,oo00, and in ten years will be $6o,000,000; that is, the government (the common people who pay taxes) will in ten years have paid nearly onethird the amount of the loan to the generous owners of surplus capital, and will still have the entire sum to pay. But the principal will not be paid in ten years, it will run the full twenty allowed, and in that time the people will have paid $120,000,000 to the surplus capitalists, much over half of the whole that the government received in the first place, and will still have the whole to pay. The chances are that during this twenty years it will be needful for the government to issue other bonds from time to time, to raise money to pay interest on its growing indebtedness. Nor will the debt be paid off in twenty years, for the expanding army and navy will eat up all that can possibly be tortured out of the people from year to year in taxes, and when the time expires these bonds will be taken up and renewed. Probably before we are done slaughtering Malays the other half of the $400,000,000 will be called for, and the interest for twenty years will then be doubled -to $240,000,000, anmounzolt nearly as great as the cost of the whole Spanish war (exclusive of the Filipino afterclap), which was $281,000,000. This is what war means to the rich. It is a glorious holiday harvest of money for them, no risk of either body or money. The war goes on, they go to Norway for the summer and Italy for the winter, drawing from their sure bonds the ever accumulating interest to pay their way. Cuba was a hot place for American soldiers, mainly the sons of common Americans with not a bond in their pockets; Manila is a hot place, those deadly Philippine swamps where so many of our youths have weltered for 1-onths and died, are torrid and fetid spots for the American; but never mind, the rich who furnish the sinews of war (not the muscular but the money ones) are in the cool mountains of Switzerland and Germany, high amid the ice and snow, strong and happy in the serene 224 THE ENDLESS ROBBERY OF WAR DEBTS. grandeur of smiling lands. Our dying soldiers in Cuba and Manila will yield them in the course of twenty years $240,000,000 to spend in butterfly fittings from garden to garden of the globe, twelve good millions a year. Can any one complain that the owners of surplus capital are not regally rewarded for encouraging wars and wet-nursing military establishments? Who pays this twelve millions annually, for remember it will be no less when all the bills for 'care of colonies' are in? Let us follow this annual payment into the future and witness its annual origin. Something more is to be said about it than that poor people pay the taxes and the taxes are copiously spent in buying things of rich peopie. While these $12,000,000 annually are being lavished by our loyal rich in Paris, Nice, Rome, Vienna, the Holy Land, and the ozone of Switzerland and Scandinavia, who will be supplying this money, and how will they be doing it? Why here is room for masters of satire and irony, here is a deep theme for university logicians, upright ones, and cautious scientists who can spring from effect to effect until they reach the naked cause. The fathers, brothers and sons of those who died in the tropics to establish this war-debt will spend the next twenty years of their lives paying the interest on it; the soldiers who survive will come home with broken constitutions but they will not go to Mentone or the invigorating Alps, they will not winter in the mild climate of Florence, Naples or Rome, cultivating their spent minds with treasures of art and recuperating their spent bodies with a part of that $12,000,000 which their fathers and brothers and the common citizen class in America will be paying; no, their destiny will be to come home and go to work as best they may with their shattered systems to lend their aid to raising this $12,ooo,coo a year for the rich. Is this funny to think of? Is it believable? It is a fact. BUYING THE RIGHT TO DO 'GOOD.' 225 3. Paying the Rich for the Right to Do 'Good.' Some of these people are thinking; how long they will be chloroformed with spurious patriotism to breed war debts for the rich is becoming a question. One whose son is in Manila probably never to return alive writes: I have voted for every Republican President from Mr. Lincoln to and including McKinley. I cannot approve of his policy in the Philippines, so utterly un-American, unprincipled, and inimical to the principles of our government. From the State University of Nebraska my gifted, freedom-loving son enlisted to fight in the cause of liberty, to give independence to the struggling peoples who were striving to throw off the tyrannical despotism of Spain-willing to give his life in the cause of humanity, if need be. That, son now lies in a hospital near Manila, severely wounded by a Mauser bullet that went through his chest, one inch to the left of his heart. Many a choice spirit, gifted and of bright promise, lies in agony from wounds there received-or in death's cold embrace-without even the consolation of dying in honorable battle. As one wrote to me: "We came to help, not to slaughter, these poor natives." Again: "I am disillusioned in regard to the 'patriotic motives' for this war." "We boys are not responsible for this Philippine war, the responsibility for it rests on the government at Washington-there is where the blunder has been made..... My son wrote before he was wounded: "It seems hardly fair for the government to pursue a policy that leads to insurrection, then keep us boys here to fight battles for which we never enlisted," etc. Brave fellows -as their fearlessness in battles that followed these utterances attest, yet deprived of fighting in honorable battle, as was the case while fighting infamous Spain; ready to give their lives for their country in the right, loath to fight her battles in the wrong. This led me to say to the imperialists here months ago: "Better even that my son had fallen scaling El Caney's heights, or while in the trenches at Manila up to August 13, than to now come home to me, laurel-crowned for deeds of bravest daring while fighting these poor Filipinos, who have been struggling for independence-20,ooo of whom have filled patriot graves while fighting infamous Spain." These are the sentiments of one who enlisted immediately after our flag was lowered at Fort Sumter, and I was followed by five brothers in defence of this Union.* Luther B. Wiley, of the ist Colorado regiment, wrote to a friend from Manila: I have been uncompromisingly opposed to this war on the Filipino; I think it wrong from start to finish.... And it looks now as though the men that enlisted to fight to liberate people must now fight to enslave them.... Well, it is anything but fun. The heat is simply oppressive. I have seen a higher temperature in Colorado than I have ever seen here, but it seems to smother here.... My heart is *From a letter by A. L. Hunting, of Arapahoe, Neb., published in the Chicago ' Times-Herald, May i8, I899. 8 226 BUYING THE RIGHT TO DO 'GOOD.' not in this war as it was in the one I enlisted to fight in, and Igo into it simply because I have to. If I were not an American, i think I would be helping the Filipinos. You may well be glad that you did not enlist in the war. To be a soldier in such a cause as we are now engaged, is nothing to be proud of. I am chagrined, and ashamed to think of it as it is.* A friend of the writer of this letter who gave it for publication said, "It expresses the sentiments of the West." Other words from the front are as follows: I do not feel it an honor to war with these people. Of course, we are here and will do our duty, a duty that has been forced upon us by some of the so-called statesmen that should at this particular time be in our places. It is a burning shame, and the United States must forever feel it. I have seen men die that were too good to be put up as targets for a half-civilized people, all on account of blunders made by a civilized nation, like ours. The war we enlisted for is over. We enlisted in a war in the cause of humanity, or at least so we were led to believe. Now we are trying to take from a people what the American forefathers fought for-independence. Is this humanity? If it is, I fail to grasp the idea.-[Captain Gustave Schaaf, of Company A of Monongahela, now at Manila, under the date of March 26.-Monongahela correspondence Pittsburgh Dispatch, Republican. ]t Another says: Within half a mile I can see the wreck of a little town which has been destroyed by our victorious army. Homes that perhaps represented years and years of toil are now in ruins. They were perhaps the centre of the fondest associations that the poor Filipino mind is capable of. In front of us the aged and helpless are being hurried beyond the firing line, to spare them from the unerring aim of the "Mericano." Blood prints are scattered on the grass, here and there, every time we advance. War is terrible, and it is worse still when one is fighting against a class of people who believe the same as our forefathers did, and are willing to shed their blood in their struggle for freedom as our forefathers did.-[Manila Letter from C. E. Rossman of the Kansas Regiment, in Miami (Kans.) Republican, May 12. When these young men who probably represent the feeling of all the intelligent volunteer soldiery settle down at home to the cheerful task of earning their quota to Fay the bondholders $I2,000,000 annually for spending 'rolicsomely in the earth's pleasant places, the question may emanate from them to their neighbors and penetrate the heads of all the rank and file of America: Why must T, who took my time and risked my life to fight, pay these fellows who stayed at home and did nothing but take the *Printed in the N. Y. Evening Post, (semi-weekly edition) May 18, I899. The letter was dated Apr. 9, '99. tThis and the following extract are quoted by the Post. BUYING THE RIGHT TO DO 'GOOD.' 227 surplus capital out of their gold-dripping pockets, which the trusts were flooding into them, and loaned it to the government with absolute security? Why must my father and neighbors, my children and grandchildren in undated perpetuity toil and strain and despair, depriving themselves of what their honest work creates, for these frisksome and merry idlers? Then the answer will be made to them: 'This is the price of war; if you are a true patriot you will bear it cheerfully; we could not fight if the rich did not furnish us money to fight with and of course we must pay them; no man does anything for nothing in this world.' Suppose they were audacious enough to reply to this: 'But we fought for nothing, did we not? for a private soldier's pay of I3.50 a month is nothing. It was love of liberty and justice that moved us to fight, it seems to us we paid the price of war then, it seems to us you have paid the price of war at no time, and that you are the coldest and meanest human sharks imagination can conceive, for you have made merchandise of our willingness to spend our blood to free the oppressed, you have turned our willing sacrifices into a banking fund, and we the fighters are then turned toilers to pay your $I2,000,000 annual usury on this fund as long as we and our descendents live. Tell us, noble masters, why we who risked all that is dear and bore all dangers, now shall take up this new burden and dying leave it on our childrens' necks after us, while you consummate drones who risked naught and did naught draw the bounty and hand down to your children the right to extort it from our children for ever and ever. Is it the law of the universe that those who do a good deed shall pay a fine for doing it? Has the Almighty signified that those who shun good deeds shall clamp an onerous tribute upon those who generously undertake good actions? Will you tell us how we differ from the Roman plebeian scorned by Appius Claudius, and where you differ from that trampling Patrician? 228 THE PATRIOTISM OF DRAWING INTEREST. "Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is done, Still fill your garners from the soil which our good swords have won. Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leach-craft may not cure, Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the poor. Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers bore; Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruel hate." That the price of liberty is now death to the fighter and eternal usury to the opulent home-stayer, is a stunning discovery! Those who fight for the downtrodden must then pay the wealthy for the privilege of doing so! This is a new system of morality, seeming to a mind not chloroformed with spurious patriotism a most scurvy jest.' 4. The Patriotism of Drawing Interest to Kill the Innocent. Not only scurvy but pestilent, not only pestilent but plague-stricken, not only plague-stricken but plaguestriking, and aimed by these usurious hypocrites who stay at home and suck blood and cheer the bleeders and bask in the sun of country as themselves martyr patriots for principle and fellowman. Don't think that they do not bask; don't think that this is a made up gibe; I'll show them to you basking, huge flabby cheeks trussing billowy folds of fat, vast paunch wealth fed reaching forward thrice the width of man and resting on extra chairs and money bags, basking there in the ghastly magic of hypocrisy as sacrificial patriots. Come softly, lift aside the screen, look at the world's fat men and listen to them crooning to each other and mankind. A banker speaks, and around him are gathered the twenty-fourth annual convention of the American Bankers' Association.* Sappho and Dante. Homer and Whitman, Shakspere and Omar all find cosy corners in his polyphemian maw and in his sconce there is room for this: *In Denver, Aug. 24, 1898. Ass'd Press wire. THE PATRIOTISM OF DRAWING INTEREST. 229 Honor, patriotism, reverence, all things which our fathers esteemed as more precious than gold have not departed, but as a rich heritage have been transmitted to their sons, and stand out as pre-eminently in the character and acts of this generation as they shone resplendent in the days of the Revolution. Though there is necessarily a distinction between the days of heroism and those of patriotism, they find unity in the accomplishment of high resolves and noble purpose, when uninfluenced by the ends of vain glory, or the glamour of the deed to be performed.... What is the first great care of a nation about to engage in war, offensive or defensive-to look well to its finances, and to see who will sustain the government's credit. Where, and to whom, does it look? What spirit is invoked to work out the problem but the patriotic spirit of bankers? From the heights of Bunker Hill to the bloody crest of San Juan....our soldiers,... Whilst our bankers in the most trying moments maintained their courage, constancy and confidence unshaken, always ready to uphold the integrity of the country at every hazard. "Whilst o'er us one flag must float, One song ascend from every throat; That flag, the banner of the free, That song, the song of liberty." Bellies and stomachs and paunches! Cheeks foaming v ith white fat! Tintinnabulations of Calypso! Usury in carloads and gastric juice in tanks to dispose of it! Which poet down there in his centre speaks up through tlhis Money-Counting Creature's esophagus? All that blessed bankers'-distinction between patriotism and heroism! It brings the living city Shylock and the dead farmer soldier under the mute protesting folds of the same flag. For the hero is one who dies for his country in war, and the patriot is one who robs it in war. Now we fathom the hooting and storming over patriotism ever since the bright hope of a new war debt rose in the mental tissues of thle rich. Now we comprehend why the term 'copperhead' has been recoined for those who plant themselves against the military expansion. The common people who bear the sacrifices and pay the taxes must not know that it is all a hocus pocus of the Inulti-millionaires to create war loans and new investments for their surplus 'saved' capital-it would never do for the people to know that; and to prevent it they must be wound into furies of patri 230 THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA. otism where they will not think, every dissenter must be hated and hissed and stoned, excitement must reign and rage, orations on paining duty and civilization divine and universal love hatching for the weak must submerge the land, unctuously spouted by attorney-lackeys of the millionaires, the millionaire-bought press must belch out daily diatribes on prowess and the grandeur of Nuncle Sam, his tender mercy to the Filipinos butchered for their highest good, the religion of exterminating all weak things that resist the civilizing US: for all this hired folderol will fill the plebish mind with fierce confusion that will veil it from perceiving what shindiggery the rich are up to while it is patriotic. It has worked majestically. The rich have got in their loans and the plebeians have filled their cohorts and waddled to the front; the military torch is lit and corps on corps, then corpse on corpse, are added to the standing army, calling for loan on loan from the sagacious patriot banks; the plebeians are in a killing mood toward any one who doubts if it is all right and would restrain them for their own salvation. The patent emulsion of patriotism-from the gratis fountains of the rich have so madly inebriated the monkey herd that they truly fancy the millionaires who stay at home and loan money to the country for $I2,000,000 a year are patriots! God forgive such pre-Adamite stupor! " for that ancient spirit which curbed the Senate's will! O for the tents which in old time whitened the Sacred Hill! In those brave days our fathers stood firmly side by side; They faced the Marcian fury; they tamed the Fabian pride: They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from Rome; They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shivered fasces home. But what their care bequeathed us our madness flung away: All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in a day." 5. The Rich Shall Pay Their Quota — Blood and Money. The thought that pierces most keenly and opens its poisoned barbs to fester in the wound is this: If patriot THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA. 23I ism requires the common American to lay down business and abandon hearth and the loved for nothing but love of duty and country, to go to far lands and jeopardize his life and health, shortly, to risk and give his all, why does it not demand the same of the wealthy man whose plethoric pockets exude gold which he cannot invest? Why does it not require this fatted loaner of money to give his surplus uninvestable gold to the government, instead of loaning it for pay and profit? This proposal is worth much scanning. It places the common fighting soldier, the child of the people, and the non-fighting loaner, the child of usury, on something like a union footing; one gives his time, his strength, his health, and stakes his life: the other gives none of these, let him give his money. What demand could be more just? And if the vast and shining conception of patriotism applied to the common people is not equal to this when applied to the patrician money-fiend, let them be required to loan their money to the government for all wars and all increase of armament without interest, until the time in the hazy future when government at the present rate of miliiary expenditures can pay its devilish debts. Now this is a brilliant way out of several dismal complications. We shall not long, after its enactment, have one class of professional patriots who have no phantom thought of going to the war, howling patriotism to the plebeian multitude for a business stroke. If there is no money in these wars for the rich, nor profit gainable from insurmountable national debts for increasing the army and navy, but on the other hand a sacrifice exacted from them as well as from the common kind, you may depend upon it they will get new light on the subject of patriotism and national duty. It is bewitchingly illustrious to be a patriot when other men are the killed and you are the unfailing winner by it, but if you are a certain loser also the shimmering glamor fades and you descend into a soher and honest investigator of the righteousness of bloody 232 THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA. raids. No man is a patriot who does not sacrifice for his patriotism; and these surplus-capital-patriots who make no sacrifice but sponge in an affluent income from their patriotism ($I2,000,000 yearly from two little wars) are patriots nowhere, but shrewd speculators in the crude commodity patriotism. But for my part I do not think that compelling the millionaire patriots to loan their money without interest for every war they nourish and for all their military exlansion pranks, would place them near a just level with the common sort of men in point of sacrifice, or decently insure against their breeding militarism for private gain; and to bind and fortify this desideratum all wars and armaments should be paid for by direct taxes proportioned strictly to the wealth of the taxed, that the rich miay not pay at merely the rate of the poor man but in the full proportion of their ability. Then no military debt would be incurred to scourge posterity, all would be paid as we go and by those able to pay it. If we then desired to make a present to the next generation of a huge array of armed men and. fabulous battleships, fully paid for, and to deprive ourselves of the comforts and well-being necessary to buy them, none but ourselves would suffer fcr our being fools; and if our children continued in the fools' path they would pay their own ninny bills of suffering, but if they recognized our insanity and hated it they could stay the business peremptorily and live like cerebral beings. By piling up a public debt you are always strengthening a class which will fight every diminution of debts and secretly block principles and methods that terminate the debt system. No question of human progress will be considered on its worth because the paid emissaries of the bondholders will be in every public meeting, on every board of trade, in every hall of legislation, at every editorial desk, in nearly every pulpit. They will always iterate from memory such fudge as the following when questions of international peace are mooted: THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA. 233 The dream of universal peace, which shall be cemented and made permanent by international compact, is extremely beautiful from the point of view of the idealist. But it is a dream that is more or less iridescent and unreal. The world has not, as yet, progressed to a point where such a thing is entirely practicable. Human nature must undergo some radical changes before wars can be made impossible. Treaties and compacts are well enough in their way, but they are not always made to be kept. All compacts are liable to be swept away before the stern and merciless necessities of war, which is a law unto itself, establishing precedents and breaking down preconceived ideas. Men will fight, so long as human nature remains what it is, and we may as well recognize this fact first as last. In the course of time, through slow evolution, human nature may be so modified as to make possible the realization of the humanitarian's dream of universal peace and brotherhood. The time for this has not yet arrived.* But when the question of financial burden for military escapades and splendors is evened up, the point of personal loss and risk must be balanced, otherwise the stayat-home patriots w-ill still be wringing out the bloody flag with savage tears and nagging others on to sally out to soak it in glory; and this can be fairly accomplished by raising all soldiers by draft. Military ranks are now 1 ecruited from four classes: the unfit and brutal, the adventurers, those whom industrial monopoly has expunged fromn peaceful employment, and at critical moments some of especially high and generous build. As to the last, those moved to venture their lives for some noble cause, it is a natural selection of the most humane to cripple and kill them out, from whose loss the quality of the nation suffers deeply. As to the unemployed, it is an abomination for an opulent people which will not supply a livelihood for its citizens in peace to entice them into its armies and shove them forth to death fighting its battles; it is equivalent to invading adjacent countries and press-ganging their citizens into our military service, for those from whom work is withheld are absolved from all duties to their native land; and since they have already been heartlessly neglected and rejected by the nation, let *This is taken from a dailv paper whose editorials are a nauseating repetition of dreary commonplaces like these. The editor was made a brigadier-general in the late ' war' through political influence and is naturally a chronic obstructer of all that makes against perpetual brutality and barbarism. 234 THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA. not the nation profane the name of patriotism by calling on them to offer their lives to protect a callous national jailer. As to the brutes, the incompetents and adventurers, the military life only confirms their evil traits, to correct and eradicate which a schooling in first grade civilization is wanted. With these classes to rely on for going to the front the stay-behind patriots and architects of pulmonary glory have no qualms in making a war to order any time. Theirs is vicarious patriotism and vicarious fighting; one class excites the war, others wage it; and those who do the inciting are very little apt for temperate deliberation on the wisdom or folly of the enterprise, since not a scratch will their satin skins sustain. Make all equally subject to military service and this will change; choose the soldiers by lot from all of military age, regardless of occupation, personal preference or wealth, that there may be no shirking under subterfuge that some specially want to fight and are naturally fitted for it. Within the military period of life all who favor war should know that they are liable to go to war by compulsion, if there are wars, and that neither money, craft, nor influence will buy them free if the chance of draft calls them. The business of instigating bedlam which is now a famous pastime for wits and preachers and wealthy cads would become a solid and grave concern which they would cease to fool with as a simpleton with a gun or a countryman with dynamite icicles. None should be exempt from going to active service, and not to pray or nurse but to fight, whether clergyman or politician, member of congress, tramp, supreme judge, criminal, or president. There would be a great deal less of the nasty work of war done in this world, for many of the world's bellicose colics are started!by the shirks who know they will never be dragged to the scene of death. Take the present war. If the rich who want markets in the Orient conquered for them and are sending out THE RICH SHALL PAY THEIR QUOTA. 235 thirteen dollar and a half men to do it, had not only to pay their perfect quota of expense, but ran good risk of being drafted to participate in the horrors and mutilations of this conquest, how many of them do you think would continue to believe in our holy military mission? And if the stenographers of God's will, our divine clergymen and editors, felt the nemesis of a draft grazing their scalps for their revelations, who doubts but they would soon discover another god than war? The draft should supply all the regular soldiers as well as the volunteers, they being required to serve for a stated number of years only, then relieved and discharged. The express and permanent vocation of soldier should be abolished. By this means a great many would have an intimate taste of militarism and all would live in the swart consciousness that any day the pleasant cup of their own brewing might be forced to their lips. If you can send down other men to live in mines and dig your coal, you burn it with the freedom of manna from above; but if you have to take a turn in the black bowels of earth yourself you seek a substitute for coal. If you can place children in match factories to contract the phosporous jaw for your smokes, it seems to you the best of possible worlds, but if you must go and have your turn with the disease the world is ascertained to be a disguised hell and you do not rest till you have found a substitute for phosphorous. So long as you can fill your standing army and feed your wars with your neighbors and their sons war seems sublime and necessary, ordained by a sweet god, an attribute of 'human nature as it is,' and the grand hope of universal peace seems to your practical bedspring soul an 'iridescent dream,' but when you or your remarkable son must go to brave the absolute realism of barrack life for years, and pass through the iridescent nightmare of a noisome war, you comprehend in less than five years that peace is not a constituent of the millennium merely, your human nature becomes supernaturally transformed, and 236 MILLIONAIRE SCREWS. yvu go about exhorting the substitute for war which all reasonable men knew before you were born. All this light and lucid morality has burst into you simply because you had to take the medicine which you so loved to give other people, you were ordered out to fight with your own sacred carcass and patriotism in place of sending your neighbors' bodies to buffet the bullets. 6. Millionaire Screws. When the Spanish war loan came to be made it was realized that too many people were seeing through the loan-and-bond business, which led to a ruse to popularize the loan, give the war a grip on popular affections, and kindle up patriotism. With much misgiving a common people's loan was invented, for 'there was a strong feeling in Congress in favor of arousing the interest of the masses of the people in the loan, even at a small loss to the Treasury, so that tlhousands of small property owzvners might become partners in the fortunes of the Government, as is the case in France.' Hence the small subscriptions to the loan were to be accepted before the large ones. Note the confession in this. If the common people had a few dollars invested in the war it would be popular with them: the rich who have heretofore taken up war bonds have money invested in wars and therefore wars are popular with them: proving as we have said that their flamboyant patriotism is only investment, a patriotism drawing its sustentation from the blood and dollars of the mIasses. Before wealth was monopolized the patriotism oi these masses was healthy and spontaneous, rising from the knowledge that the country was theirs. They did not expect to make money out of wars, hence there were no wars of aggression; they did intend to maintain their rights and when this was necessary every man fought with the spirit of one who knew that the nation was his nation. But now the country is not the people's country, MILLIONAIRE SCREWS. 237 and popular patriotism has shriveled and must be stimulated by a bribe; it is the trusts' country, the wealthy skinflints' country, and if the masses are to fight and perish for it as heretofore some artificial incitement in the form of a $20, $I00, or $500 bond must be administered, 1ike a mustard plaster. This "big popular loan" was considered a brilliant success by its propagators. 231,000 persons subscribed in these three amounts a total of nearly $Ioo,ooo,ooo; the other hundred million was taken by about 60,000 persons in sums less than $4,500 each. Let us analyze this remarkable popular achievement. First of all the structure of the loan indicated great poverty of surplus savings in the coffers of the masses, since out of 70,000,000 people only 231,000, or not one in three hundred, had even $20 surplus to invest where there was absolutely safe security. They did not abstain because these safe investments, however small the interest, are not desired, for they are; the people now distrust banks of deposit, savirgs banks and every form of small investment because they regard them as robbing establishments and more than half expect to lose whatever they deposit there. But when Mr. Cleveland offered his $Ioo,ooo,ooo loan in '96, 4,640 people of the rich had jingling in their pockets nearly $600,000,000 to invest-that is, one-fiftieth as many people had six times as much spare and uninvestable wealth. Secondly, as to the popular character of the loan. How many of the 60,ooo who furnished the second $Ioo,ooo,ooo were of the rich, who wanted at least what they could get of the prize? The real sham of tjhe loan is that whatever part of it was assumed by small buyers will not long be held by them, they will soon be compelled by the 'stringency of the times' to realize on their little bonds to get the money to live on, when the rich will step in to buy and the celebrated popular loan will become like all the rest a rich man's fund. This transference of bonds to the 238 MILLIONAIRE SCREWS. rightful holders of debts-the giant skinflints-has probably been already largely consummated. Soon the people will realize the fiction of popular loans as a basis for military patriotism, and what will be done then to induce them to vote and die for national debts? There would be but one way to keep the mask of popularity on these loans, which are popular to the degree of reaching 1-250 of the population on the broadest construction, namely by a law providing that no person shall be able to acquire more than one bond and forbidding those whose wealth exceeds a moderate stated sum to purchase the bonds from their holders at all, on pain of forfeiting them to the government. This would be a good provision, as it would soon expose the utter humbuggery of popular subscriptions. If the rich could not buy these popular bonds as soon as the people were hard up for money, the people would soon cease to subscribe for such bonds, for they would find it impossible to realize on them among others of their condition, the small propertyowners, and they would no longer bid. Then the fact would stand out in its nakedness that whatever the disguise may be a military loan-like any other-is merely a choice depository for the surplus capital of the rich. All cries for war are therefore cries from the rich for war loans among other blessings. It is a precious arrangement for extracting boundless perpetual annuities from the people, under the lid of the State; the term 'Government' is a figure, a popular dummy, in what is a thoroughly commercial deal; it is a popular varnish to make the people fancy the transaction theirs. Government is an agent or factor of the rich which comes to the people saying, 'We must have an armament for national protection and I know where we can borrow the money for it.' This seems so brotherly! It looks as if the whole idea emanated from the people; and the cozened people take it up and strain themselves to death to sustain it. MILLIONAIRE SCREWS. 239 In Europe the carrying out of such ideas costs the common people $3,000,000,000 annually, exclusive of the interest they pay the capital loaners. Loans are safer than business. A man with governnent bonds is the completest drone in the universe, the idler paramount, a massive dead-weight on mankind in all his qualities; he does nothing but swallow interest year in year out; for bonds are as safe and certain as sunrise, no responsibility, no carking directors' meetings, no oversight of manufacturing concerns, no constraint even to find a good manager, for there is nothing to be managed; he merely sits in a lifelong summer shower of wealth and it falls on him. How many of these serene beings are there in the world? The formidable concentration of wealth answers not many, and we can tell fairly what nutriment they suck out of the world through bonds. The aggregate national debt of the six European powers is in round numbers $25,000,000,000,* and fixing the interest rate at 3 per cent the annual sum of interest on these goodly billions is $750,000,000 for distribution among the drones. Is it a wonder that the drones want wars and war establishments? It is not his nature that loves war but his bond account; you would not have to change human nature at all to bring about general peace-simply change the rich man's bond account by abolishing it, and peace will reign. The magic of interest-bearing debts has often been descanted upon. You pay and pay and never get paid up. In thirty-five years paying $750,000,000 interest annually the whole debt would be paid off, but the alchemy of it is that when it is paid off it remains as large as ever. Thirty-five years is a generation, which signifies that each generation will pay the total sum of the debt, twentyfive billion dollars, and then the next generation will take up the joyous sport and do it over again. Capitalists are *This was Whitaker's estimate in I891. The Austrian debt includes that of Austria, Austria-Hungary and Hungary, the German debt that of Germany and the German States. 240 MILLIONAIRE SCREWS. longlived, through commanding all the health resources of space, Switzerland and Norway, the sunny Mediterranean, and many of them will live to receive the payment for their part of the debt twice, seventy years, and will then transmit it unimpaired to their children. It is the people who die young, those who do the toiling that earns and pays this interest, in factories and field, ever under the doom of the twenty-five billion dollars which they must raise in their span of life! To whom is war profitable, those who toil to pay the stupendous interest, or those who loan the funds and dissipate the interest in redolent tranquillity? Here is what the shrecwd Francis Bacon said about the gluttonous game three hundred years ago: "Usury bringeth the treasure of the realm or state into a few hands: for the usurer being at certainties, and the others at uncertainties; at the end of the game most of the money will be in the box." Capital owners are not enterprising, their sons are less so, and cutting coupons is the most congenial business enterprise the fully fledged capitalist can embark upon. Today through universal monopoly surplus capital increases by leaps and bounds in these men's pouches: where are they to invest it? Why, that is simple enough, use the forces of persuasion which money commands, preachers, editors, politicians and president, to harangue the populace that the glory of the country calls for soldiery and provinces, it touches the mainspring of the popular cortex and the people vote the policy which orders loan on loan, and the surplus funds of the capitalist are now secure. This patriotism, a Gorgon love of barbarian glory, unlocks every heart and every chest that the rich require, the people can always be destroyed by catering to the barely smothered feudal passions and pricking them up to accommodate their masters 'for their country's sake.' "It is a strange desire which men have, to seek power and lose liberty," said the same Bacon. MILLIONAIRE SCREWS. 241 The grossest frauds are practised on the citizen masses to spur them along the military highway. Abroad each 1)pwer holds before its people the scarecrow bugaboo of 'other powers; every Governlnent says to its pottering subjects, 'Our rivals are excelling us in armament and we must make a responding increase or hazard obliteration'; it also says, 'Our wealtll has grown and we can well afford the greater outlay.' But these new outlays ever den:and new urgent loans and prevent the wiping out of existing debts, so that as surplus capital swells the military system is expanded tol give it investment. If the powers that control the Powers-the owners and providers of war cal)ital-desired to have this militarism cease, it would cease instanter. They would refuse to furnish rulers and governments the backing for their military schemes, which would then drop like spent shot, for rulers and governI,.ents are only mercenary agents of the wealthy. As to the great body of citizens in every 'Power,' they are not (i the slightest danger to each other, there it neither national nor commercial ground for contention between thlem, the rivalry of nations is the rivalry among the groups of capitalists \vhlo stand on the peak and rule each people, and militarism is the cost of their rivalry. The English clique is covetous of larger opportunities to rend -money out of the world than the German. Russian, or French clique, and vice versa, and each sets its whole nation dancing to its avarice and turns its private money-lust into national feuds; all the petople lav-e to take up the conflict and fight it out with other peoples to establish if possible the supremacy of their respective capitalist clan. When it is done, whoever wins, the people of each land are in the same plight as before, only their capitalists are stronger and have the power to oppress them worse. 242 THE ROYAL FAMILY OF CAPITALISTS. 7. The Royal Family of Capitalists. These brotherhoods of present capitalists are to their nations what the royal houses formerly were. Royal families did not care a tinkle for subjects but were to them as the owner of a great system of mills is to his vassals or employes, for example Carnegie or Frick. The subjects were allowed to live to make money, luxury, power, and pomp for the royal Chef, as employes live to make up all these comforts for their royal owners. The families of great capitalists everywhere have stepped into the slippers of the royal families of yore, to exploit the nation as the royal families did. We recognize them doing this in domestic industry, but we have not realized their actual assumption of the kingly role of using their country against other countries, plotting and waging wars and raising armies and navies, to make their power of exploitation not only national but international, as kings did, and to use their people and nation as working and fighting material, so much animated machine, to execute their ends. Let us see what royal families have done, and that tells what the royal family of capitalists is doing. Our mother country is always pat with examples of our evil ancestry. Take her in the early part of the last century. "Money," says the historian,* "went much further in those days than it does in ours.... George the Second was literally stuffed and bloated with money. He had eight or nine hundred thousand [pounds] a year, and his wife was richly provided for.... There was much poverty all this time in London, and indeed over the whole country. Trade was depressed; employment was hard to get; within a stone's-throw of St. James's Palace men, women, ilnd children were living in a chronic condition of semistarvation." This king had nearly five million dollars a year to spend, when money went much farther than it *Justin McCarthy, "A History of the Four Georges," vol. ii, p. 89. THE ROYAL FAMILY OF CAPITALISTS. 243 does now, and his subjects at the very doors of his palace were living in chronic semi-starvation, quite a decent evidence of his kingly love for his people. Now let us go over to France and Spain. Members of the Bourbon family sat on each of these thrones dealing out to the rabble of their respective countries such circumstances as led in about fifty harrowing years to that well-lighted breakup the French revolution. Kingship was a corpulent trade for these two kings, and like the nineteenth century generator of trusts they sought to extend their monopoly by a secret compact directed against their neighbors. The alliance was formed as "a mutual guarantee of all the possessions and the honor, interests, and glory" of the two Houses. "One article in. the treaty bluntly declared that the foreign policy of both states, France and Spain, was to be 'guided exclusively by the interests of the House.' The engagement:. as to be kept secret, and was to be regarded 'from that (lay as an eternal and irrevocable family compact.'"* Mr. McCarthy remarks: "No conspiracy ever could have been more flagrant, more selfish, and more cruel. The deeper we get into the secrets of European history, the more we come to learn the truth that the crowned conspirators were always the worst." The purpose of the pact was to extend the possessions of the two royal Houses, for the countries they ruled were their property, and their design was to amplify their possessions at the expense of England and the Emperor. The people were no more heard of in it than the whales who form a trust consider the little fishy employes in the various plants which they unite; if it were otherwise why did the people rise in the infinite fury of revolution? These kings expected their subjects to wriggle on supplying them with exhaustless wealth. "Of course," says McCarthy, "when we talk of France and Spain, we are talking merely of the Courts and the *The same, p. 27. 244 THE ROYAL FAMILY OF CAPITALISTS. families. The people of France and Spain were never consulted, and. indeed, were never thought of, in these imperial and regal engagements." These kings planned and actuated a war to set up a member of their family in the ruling craft, by giving him a royal seat somewhere, an operation parallel to the work of our capitalists in making wars for markets and causing the destruction of any quantity of their subjects' lives. In the ambition of this precious Bourbon pack to magnify its income, like the trust it looked about for other ruling establishments to imbibe. Poland was in those ages convenient prey for a swoop, and the ambition of the King of France was to seat his father-in-law on its throne, to accomplish which he embraced war. Fifty thousand soldiers were slain before this war's completion-fifty thousand people offered to gratify the fiscal lechery and profligate power of a couple of reigning scoundrels, the scrubby monarchs of France and Spain. No imagination is required to see that if we read trusts and multimillionaires instead of kings of France and Spain we have a sprightly picture of our own nice predicament. We smite the Filipinos, why? For the benefit of the American people? No, for they derive no more benefit than the French molecules gained when the French king's father-in-law fatted in Poland; the war is to gratify the regal aspirations of the American royal family of millionaire screws. They have a compact among themselves, sure and sinister as that secret arrangement between the Bourbon bullies to work for millionaire interests against every comer, and not a feather do the people count in the transaction; the lives of ten, twenty, or fifty thousand soldiers, paid for the conquest of the Philippines, are to American royalty as little as that number of soldier cadavers were to capitalist Louis XV. If you deny this look to what monopoly has degraded the mass of our people: it is a state verging close to that of the THE ROYAL FAMILY OF CAPITALISTS. 245 French people anterior to the great revolution. Now if any one says that the French Kings and Courts did care for the people in those days, all we have to do in rebuttal is to point to the condition of the people and to the fact that the furious revolution ascended out of it; and if any one says that the wealthy Americans of our day care for the people and wish the Philippines effaced and armies built for the people's good, all we need to do in rebuttal is to point to the fact that these wealthy lovers of us are taking away everything we have through the footpad appetites of their ungovernable monopolies. Truly is Imperialism the perfection of perfection for infinitely enriching the wealthy, and infinitely taxing and slaughtering the rest of us. CHAPTER XIII. Administration War-Bluff To Gain An Army. 1. The Chatter of Military Fools. Now the interesting matter is to trace how this thing is being brought about under our very chins, how the Bourbon harness is being put on the United States, for though we have been quite exploited at home by the millionaires, it is a new pleasure for them to take the Nation in hand as an instrument to exploit the world and for a more modern and exalted exploitation of ourselves. Kings did this, the wealthy class-governments of European States do it, but it is new to have it done with us, and it is immensely interesting to see by what art they are manipulating to capture this Commonwealth (ourselves organized), to wield it as their private dynamo in domestic and foreign exploitation. We are subjugated by a series of frauds, not chained suddenly with militarism-for we should resist thatbut little by little, and moral ideas are smuggled in to comatize our minds. The clutch and keeping of the Philippines means everything necessary to this new development, hence at all hazards must be carried through. But to most Americans it is revolting, the idea of a clotted, interminable war of eradication is horrible. The squeamishness is met by methods: We must not hear the truth about the war, and we must be cozened to think it will soon be over. For the first object THE CHATTER OF MILITARY FOOLS. 247 the suppression of news and transmission of official lies, well groomed, from the seat of war answered; for the second, a constant volley of dispatches must be fired from the front announcing that 'the rebellion is about to be crushed.' Here are chunks of these messages, and the headlines embroidered on them by the daily press. Let us start off with January of this year, just before the war. Everybody in the Philippines had the situation well in hand, as they have had it ever since. "Master of the Situation," said the Compost; "Gen. Otis Cables that Gen. Miller Has it Well in Hand." 'That the strength of Aguinaldo's party is waning rapidly is not doubted.' The war began and another Gen. bulged with wisdom. It was De Merritt. We had given the Tagals their first thrash and he was jubilant: "The military organization of the Filipinos will scarcely, I thilnk, survive this defeat-certainly not, if we at once strike hard again wherever they show front.... There is probably not an officer amonolg them who has any respectable knowledge of modern military; science."* Poor Aguinaldo! He had not been to West Point or Red Tape and could not pass a military examination. Doubtful if he could read, even English. Therefore sure to collapse at sight of bellied martinets. Only knowledge that of swamps; such knowledge useless in a swampy country. Also said to be versed in dead climates. No such course at West Point or Annapolis, Aguinaldo therefore a blooming 'fake.' Merritt wiggles on: "I think we may expect that defeat at Manila will have a disastrous effect upon Aguinaldo's authority.... The feebleness of his power having been made manifest, there is every reason to suppose that his numerous rivals, suppressed for the time, will rise to dispute his authority. When they have come to nothing through factional differences and possibly conflicts, they will be entirely amenable to *N. Y. Evening Post interview, Feb. 1899. 248 THE CHATTER OF MILITARY FOOLS. olr guidance and rule, I think. They are really docile and amiable people, without nltLch stern stuff-not pu1gnaZcious and irreconcilable as our Indianw are." I quote this chatter to show what fools the generals are. Everybody in the country taking it for granted that they being generals must know more than the rest, and they smitten garrulous, squirting sappy rodomontades out of empty wind-swept heads. To such quacking goslings we confide our destinies. A'docile and amiable people, without much stern stuff,' forsooth! And now our orphic officers are lisping of a hundred thousand men to put this singular amiability down. To amalgamate the nuggets of Merritt into an imperishable lump smile warmly on this: "For the subjllgation and holding of the entire Philippine gr'oIp, ho-wever, he [Genny Otis] ought to have at his disposal not less than 3o,ooo,menz. W[ith that number, I bclieve that, despite the multiplicity of the islands, we shall.with comparative ease and wit!hinl a measurably short time be bable completely to crtush all opposition." Ve pass on from month to month through the springtime pr,-mises of the situation-well-in-hand generals, president and repress. "Plans of Otis. Rebels will be Crushed in a Few Days. Advance to be made when Gen. Lawton Gets There (Hoo!)... When Aguinaldo is Captured the Backbone of the Insurrection will be Broken." Quite so. This was in early March, and at this writing, September. A\guinaldo is still at large and the backbone of the insurrection erect. The sanguine and sanguinary telegraph said: Within a week Gen. Otis, according to advices received at the War Department from Manila, is expected to begin an aegressive campaign looking to the crushing of Aguinaldo's forces. Telegrams from Gen. Otis about his plans indicate that he is ready to begin the movement, etc. Gen. Otis will make every effort to capture Aguinaldo. It is believed here that when that is accomplished the backbone of the insurrection will have been broken. So it coiled on through March and April, always promise and never fulfilment, holding the American peo THE CHATTER OF MILITARY FOOLS. 249 pie suspended, by continuance and repetition deadening them to the cruelty, and so far as could be keeping the deeds done a deathly secret. Such deeds for after cheer as these, recorded by a Corporal in Manila:* We sleep all day here, as we do duty all night walking the streets. We make every one get into his house by 7 P. M., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 30o men the first night. They tried to set the town on fire If they fire a shot from a house, we burn the house down, and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now. And this, as told by the Chattanooga Times: Capt. Elliott of the Kansas regiment, now on duty in the Philippines, after describing the fires set in Manila, last February, by the Filipinos, in which several hundred perished and 30,000 were rendered homeless, proceeds to say: "Talk about war being hell, this war beats the hottest estimate ever made of that locality. Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and the dismal prison alone remain. The village of Maypaja, where our first fight occurred on the night of the 4th, had 5,000 people in it at that day-noze not one stone remains upon top of another." —[We thank Thee, O God, Amen.] The country resembles Cuba as Spain left it: "But where are the happy-go-lucky, parti-colored people that swarmed the wayside stations and loitered along the sunny roads? Death has gathered them all under his shadowy-wings-upward of 400,000 of the non-combatant country people of Cuba wiped out by famine in four years' time. 'Where are the white-walled villas, the straw-thatched huts, the fields of waving cane? The whole province is like a vast crematorium-every hamlet obliterated, every home an ash heap." t The letters from soldiers concerning the fanous orders of Gen. Wheaton to take no prisoners are well known, and there is surely more reason to believe the privates than the denials and obfuscations of officers whose destiny flickers on a chaste record in the American public mind. Can we so soon forget the present of ~30,000 *Letter in S. F. Call from a Corporal of California Regiment. tCuban letterlfrom Fannie Brigham Ward, Jan. 3, '99. 250 DUM DUMS AND THE ANGLO-SAXON HOG. voted by Parliament to that Sidar Kitchener for his illustrious butcher-damnification of the Soudan? We are now following the holy perforating example of England and what is right for her is right for us. 2. Dum Dums and the Anglo-Saxon Hog. The following is reported from the Hague Peace Conference: "The conference finally resolved in favor of prohibiting the use of bullets which spread and flatten out in the human body, explosive bullets, bullets in a hardened case, which does not entirely cover the point, or bullets with an incision. The British and American delegates alone voted in the negative. Major Ardagh, of the British delegation, declared that Great Britain did not desire to use any projectile inconsistent with the principles of modern warfare, and that dumdums should only be used against an uncivilized foe." The world-wide Anglo-Saxon Hog is satisfied of his stellar superiority and does not find it necessary to be humane or good in any given instance. Self-conviction of goodness is for him what deeds of goodness are in other nations. The most maleficent blatherskites of the whole Hague were fat John and lank Sam. These fine pups of civilization seem to have gone there only to prevent humanity from getting a start in the Conference. To begin, our delegates were a scaly unmodernized lot. It makes your skin creep to imagine Captain Mahan in the same zone with Peace-he and Captain Crozier (captain, captain, you see, two barbers sent to a conference for the abolition of shaves) were there to save dum dums from the grave. Andrew White has eaten so many diplomatic pies from our various presidents and fobnobbed with so many foreign ministerial sneaks that he is only less corrupt than the corrupt Denby, while Saith Low, like Barty and the bull, started in the world to 'show off.' He placed one foot on the bare-backed mustang Principle and the other on the blue-blooded brute Prudence and florished his legs and his whip in great shape before the New York audience. Principle immediately threw him DUM DUMS AND THE ANGLO-SAXON HOG. 25I on his head, from whence he bounded up elastically unhurt and fell right side up on Prudence, which he has bestridden ever since with great profit to his nominations. Now these pie-eaters represented the United States at the Peace Conference which was called by the most unmitigated tyrant and cruel monster of modern ages, in the opinion of the average Bull and Samuel. But we beat the monster. We showed that the place to out-hell hell and spank the devil with new tricks is England and America, in a church probably, and if not in a university. White is a former college president and Low is one now. Now let us put our ear to the Atlantic cable and listen to University-White stand up for humanity at The Hague. The second point, prohibiting the use of asphyxiating projectiles, was agreed to by all except the United States and Great Britain, whose abstention nullifies the agreement of the others. The third point, which relates to expanding bullets, occupied the major portion of the sitting, owing to the dum dum bullets used by the German army. Andrew White, head of the United States delegation, then made an important speech in opposition to the prohibition of such bullets as the dum dum. Mr. White's arguments made a great impression upon the delegates, and especially when he explained that the adoption of the proposal as submitted would not prevent the use of another bullet, which had already been invented and which would attain the same end as the dum dum, but in a more cruel manner. The new missile, Mr. White said, was outside the specific definitions of the present proposal. Capt. Crozier, the military member of the United States delegation, proposed, as a substitute, the following: "The use should be prohibited of bullets which inflict unnecessarily cruel wounds, such as an explosive bullet, and in general every kind of bullet exceeding the limits necessary to put a man immediately hors du combat."-Ass'd Press, July 21, I899. By the lord Harry, I wish the common American people who do not suck pie could have got hold of the ears of these devilpates while they were bleating their antiAmerican imbecility, for I think they would have faced about and talked Christian or had no ears left. Think of courtmartialing and shooting soldiers who should flame up against a cruel 'government' war, and letting these gasconading toads who betrayed everything revered by 252 DUM DUMS AND THE ANGLO-SAXON HOG. us hop home 'honorably' across the ocean to new honors and new sugar-sucks! 'The refusal of the United States to arbitrate and Great Britain's refusal to settle the Transvaal difficulty, are mentioned by some of the foreign papers as inconsistent with their positions at The Hague. The papers also comment on the United States's refusal to arbitrate the Hazleton, Pa., affair, as requested by Austria, as being inconsistent with the attitude of the American delegates.'* Nor is this foreign opinion only, for while Jingo Chamberlain is fomenting war in the Transvaal, truer Englishmen proclaim the impiousness of it. The 'Rt. Hon.' Herbert Asquith said at Leven, 'he was convinced that there is nothing in the Transvaal situation, delicate and dangerous as it is, which cannot, and ought not, to be safely solved by firm, prudent diplomacy.' t But why will not the great lover of peace and civilization arbitrate? I suppose her noonday attack of land hunger and human flesh hunger is upon the humane old lady and she must chew. And we are to enjoy the honor hereafter of being the dowager-lion feeder! Stead cabled from The Hague (July 25): "The Englishmen and Americans acted throughout almost like a joint delegation. This was due to no arrangement or direction, but solely because both nations found common ground for defense, common interests, civilization and humanity." Common interests in the following: A special to the [Chicago] Chronicle from Washington says that a shell of terrific explosive power, wide radius of destruction, and a capacity to annihilate by bursting fragments and a shock as effective as a streak of lightning, will be the feature of the fall campaign in the Philippine Islands. Tests of the charge of this terrible engine of war are being made at Sandy Hook, the government guarding closely the secret of nanufacture. A shell of this nature, charged with an explosive equal to melinite or dynamite, falling near a battalion of the enemy, would kill or cripple a very large percentage of the battalion. The chances to escape from this tremendous machine will be decreased Ioo times, experts say, as compared with shrapnel discharged at the same objects.-[Ass'd Press, June 27, '99. *Cable Letter from Berlin, July 15, '99. tAssociated Press, Sept. 2, '99. AN EVER WELL-IN-HAND WAR. 253 Why was the part of this great Republic in the Hague conference an unrelieved disgrace? Because the toadlets sent to represent us there were appointees of Conqueror McKinley, tonguetied by nature and tonguetied by him. Nations that have God's work of civilizing to do must use God's projectiles, and what can be more Omnipotent than dum dums? The English continue to use them. With such an example from our madonna Mother what harm is there in a little thing like this: Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from Gen. Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About I,ooo men, women, and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.... Tell all my inquiring friends that I am doing everything I can for Old Glory.... (!!! )-[Letter from A. A. Barnes, Battery G, 3d U. S. Artillery, published first in Greensburg, Ind., Standard.] Another soldier's letter which found its way into the press through the Portland Oregonian of May 4, states that while Wheaton's flying squadron was at Malapat na Bato, reports, which afterwards proved to be somewhat exaggerated, came in that two companies of the Twenty-second Infantry had been literally cut to pieces, having fallen into an ambush. After a hasty consultation it was decided to proceed at once to kill or drive into the lake every native possible to be found in the half-moon-shaped district lying between the mouth of the Mateo River and the farther end of the lake, a distance of twelve miles. This was a neat job of humanity to grow on the slender stalk of a report which afterwards proved to be somewhat exaggerated, but God's ways are past finding out. 3. An Ever Well- In - Hand War. In May the dispatches from Washington and the Jennyrals were allaying and assuring the minds of the people with the words they had worn out in March. "Crisis is On. Insurgents are Depressed. Moral Effect of American Reinforcements. Tend to ShowT Natives' Folly 254 AN EVER WELL-IN-HAND WAR. of Continuing War." This optimism streamed out from Washington on the IIth, and on that date also brigadier Otis (not the commanding general) returned home and made his report. This is what it had cost to capture Malolos: Thus, after an arduous and brilliant campaign by the Second Division, supported by other troops, lasting seven days and involving frequent combats, numerous casualties among our troops, and heavy losses by the enemy, Malolos, the recent capital of the so-called Filipino revolutionary government, fell before the American arms. Does this look as though the 'rebels' were weak, seven days of constant arduous fighting to capture one important place? Of course the 'enemy's losses were heavy,' but what about ours? It is my grievous task to have to report that the casualties of the brigade during the seven days' operations particularly described in this report aggregate I36 in killed and wounded, thus swelling the brigade's total casualties in battle since the outbreak of the rebellion to 285, or considerably more than Io per cent. of the average effective strength of the command actually engaged in the campaign from first to last. This was only those lost from his brigade, not from the whole Division engaged in this 'brilliant' campaign. Still things went on as before and the sorry enemy continued about to be crushed, according to Washington and creeper Otis. "Last Act in the Drama," came from headquarters, "The curtain will go down in a few days on the fighting in the Island of Luzon." Then came other information, very suggestive of the condition of some things beside bullocks: The roads are rough and after the daily showers, which are forerunners of the rainy season, so soft that it is impossible to make more than a mile an hour. The few mules that are here have been found to be really superior to bullocks for this work. The latter die unless they are given frequent baths, and the heat has killed so many that carting is now all done by night. A letter was published from Brig.-Gen. Hale wherein he described the leaders of the rebellion as a scurvy lot, impelled to fight by the enjoyment 'of living in fine houses belonging to others,' and thought that the insurgent cause would soon 'fall to pieces of its own weight' if AN EVER WELL-IN-HAND WAR. 255 this could be stopped and a few other luxuries like it"especially if some inducement is offered to the troops to surrender and turn in their arms." Brave briber Hale! Why were you not on hand to finish up the American war of independence by putting Washington and his staff out of the other people's fine houses they quartered in and giving the American farmers some especial inducement to lay down their arms? You who were fighting out there to destroy freedom never had a vision what it is for a much beset people to fight for freedom, did you. Dewey himself at last spoke out oraculously: "End Not Far Off." Aguinaldo and his generals must be captured, and then the very semblance of an insurrection will cease." Why yes; that is crack military soothsaying, exactly what might have been said to Napoleon III at Sedan: "Moltke and his generals must be captured, and then the very semblance of an invasion will cease.' The Tagalos are the trouble, says Dewey, "the end is not far off if we push after them;" all very pretty, Cousin George, but what if it will take a hundred thousand Americans to push, and not catch them? But far back on May 4 a specky cloud of another hue began to carol over Washington. The "government" was getting ready its next move. It sent out cards to the people: "The War Department is satisfied from the dispatches received from Gen. Otis to-day that the American commander has put aside the insurgent temporizing over peace, and has turned his attention to most aggressive tactics. The wisdom of this course was fully approved by officials here, who have foreseen that the natives needed further chastisement in order to bring them to a realizing sense of their position " [i. e. a realizing sense that they are well in hand.] They are not whipped yet then, and now you begin to tell us what you knew from the beginning that they are not by a long degree easy to whip. Finally, at the end of May, came the collapse of all this imposing flimflam. Then it was announced that the 'rebellion' was not crushed or anything like crushed, and 256 AN EVER WELL-IN-HAND WAR. that a very much larger force would be necessary. The Imperialist Administration press changed its festive toot in the twinkling of an eye and began to send out headlines in this key: "More Troops. Need of Additional Men in the Philippines." "Crush Them. Something Must Be Done to the Filipinos.[!] A Provisional Army Will Be Raised if Necessary. Volunteers not to Be Enlisted Except as a Last Resort. Regular Army May Suffice. Thirty Thousand Men Needed to Subdue the Rebels. That Number Will Be Given Gen. Otis if He Wants Them. Forty Thousand Men Available if Deemed Necessary." W\hat does this mean? We thought the amiable 'traitors' were 'busted' last March, and now it is June and the work isn't begun. Is Otis a McClellan? Didn't he want, or wasn't he able, to crush the skinny followers of that 'self-seeking' Aguinaldo who was only carrying on the war that he might live in other people's good houses? Hadn't we better send another general to draw Otis's salary-Eagan, Corbin, or even the infinitessimal Alger himself? But perhaps McKinley is the dallying McClellan. How if he only sought to drag the contest painfully along towork the American people up by slow stages to a spirit of revenge against the Filipinos for loving their freedom so well, and being so brave, and' standing so intrepidly in front of his beneficently assimilating thuds of extermination, and worrying the sublime Sultan of America in his imperial stagger across the world. It has a very strong flavor of fretting Americans up to the military imperialist pitch by irritation. Whether the war is righteous or nefariously hellish, if it can dawdle and drag on, killing our men and decimating our regiments, the people will at last blurt out Crush them! Crush them!-Crucify them, crucify them! If this was the game, it has worked. The censored dispatches from McClellan Otis were first allowed to moderate their twaddle as follows: AN EVER WELL-IN-HAND WAR. 257 Dispatches from Manila stating that more troops are needed and that the American army is suffering embarrassment and unnecessary losses on account of the lack of a sufficient force to occupy the territory from which the insurgents are driven, attract much attention here. It is assumed that the facts are as stated, and moreover that Gen. Otis has his reason for wanting them to become known. Dispatches from Manila are censored, and if Gen. Otis had disapproved of this representation of the situation, as respects his forces, it could not have been transmitted. The same is true of dispatches concerning dissatisfaction in military circles at Manila with the course of the civilian members of the peace commission.* This is solid extract of beef reading, neither canned nor chemicaled, for free republican gastritists, self-rulers supposed to suppose that they know about their own affairs and control them. Censored dispatches, Otis sitting in his other people's fine houses in Manila distilling -from his squatty imagination what he thinks (under general mandate from his Sultan) the American bulk had better believe about 'their' campaign of mercy on his beat The next act of these thrilling private theatricals passes in Washington. Alger, Corbin and Smith (that chicken Emory of mail-suppression immortality, our postmastergeneral) held a cabinet meeting and McKinley was there to transmit the orders of Alger and Corbin to the country. The country was informed by telegraph of this pompy conference: The situation in the Philippines was reviewed thoroughly, and the subject was discussed from every standpoint. It was agreed that something should be done to crush the rebellion speedily, and, if that could be accomplished in no other way than by raising a provisional army, this expedient would be resorted to. Then came the crash and din from the Chorus for which all this stage scenery had been prepared, reverberating the edict, Crush them, Crucify them. We select the word of God's particular men, the clergy, because if God said this the Filipinos must surely die. He chose Kain (or Cain) for his messenger this time, by earthly title archbishop, who smote the rock of St. Louis with these thunders, and tears of patriotism and hate for Canaanites and Jebusites and Amalekites who own the land that we want flowed out: *Special in daily paper, from Washington, May 28, I899. 9 258 WORRYING DESTINY INTO AMERICA. 'The United States should at once proceed to deal with the Philippine question with a firm hand. I was not in favor of the war, but since we have raised our flag over the Philippine Islands, we should make the authority of the United States supreme there, even if it becomes necessary to send 200,oo000 troops there to do it. All Christian nations look to tus to accomplish that end. We cannot go backward. We must not shirk the task we have undertaken. It is impossible that we should abandon the islands now that we have taken hold of them. From the view point of national honor, I say that the administration should take hold of this question now with a firm hand, and not desist until the rebellion is put down. If we were to relinquish the Philippines to their fate, England, Germany, Russia, or some other nation would step in the very next day and assert their right to restore order there, and to protect human life and property.'* 4. Worrying Destiny into the American People. Theadministration has again gained its point. Theworry of the long drawnout war of which Americans are sick and ashamed has made them passive to further 'destiny,' delivered through Mack; although opposed to the president's spit-in-the-Filipino-face policy in the beginning, they are now frictioned up to imagining that this huge Republic's honor can only be saved by putting the copper heel of might and light on the valiant natives and mashing light out of them; the illogical, ignorant, arrant gabble of archbishop Cain 'goes down.' All Christian nations look to us for a power of killing, now that we realize our Christian mission in the world; we do not deny that part of Cain's heavenly message. Ever since the emperor Constantine used Christianity as a ladder to power Christian nations have been at it in that sense, conquering *This divine proclamation was delivered on June 6, 1899. WORRYING DESTINY INTO AMERICA. 259 and confiscating weaker nations' lands in the name variouslyof God, Christianity, law-and order, the sacredness of human life and property!-sacred to the conquering Saracen Christians after they had possessed themselves of the property and slain the possessors. "It was the strength which Christianity had won in Gaul that made Constantine declare himself Christian: no sooner had he done so, than he found himself, like Henry IV of France long after, able to march straight to supreme power. The Gauls flocked to him, eager to fight under the Labarum [a lance with cross-bar, like the cross, with rich purple cloth, gold threads and precious stones on it in emblem of Imperial poverty and humility]; and in A. D. 312 Constantine and Christianity entered Rome in triumph."* And ever since, Christianity has been the religion of 'civilized' war, so that, doubtless, from the Christian viewpoint of national honor we must comfort the Filipinos to ashes. But from the more humble and less Godlike and bloody view-point of common intuition may we not be spared the introduction of ecclesiastical modes of reasoning into mere human things? If we must send 200,000 of our good youths to christianize the Filipinos with Mausers, let us not sear our consciences by pretending there is no other way. If we would stop fighting and inform our 'subjects' that they shall be independent and organize their own government, that we will assist them by keeping other nations out, they would welcome us. But that is not the Christian method, which requires unconditional submission to the nation which happens through the size of its armies to contain God at that time, because, as theology teaches, the will of God is supreme and he alone knows what is good for others. I would recommend the Christian clergy who think there is no honorable door out of the Philippines but the cellar one of conquest to read an eighteenth century *Kitchin's History of France, vol. i, p. 5I. 260 WORRYING DESTINY INTO AMERICA. treatise on Ecclesiastical Logic called Section the Second of a Tale of a Tub. Therein it is recounted how a father dying left each of his sons (the Churches) a new coat (the Christian religion) and in his will (the Bible) ordered them under great penalties not to altar a thread of these coats. But wearing shoulder-knots and gold lace came into fashion and the brothers wanted to be in the style, so they set to studying the will by the method of 'interpretation' to find in it permission to wear gold lace, although there was not a word in the document about it; and they were soon rewarded by the following discovery of one of them: "For, brothers, [said he] if you remember, we heard a fellow say when we were boys that he heard my father's man say that he would advise his sons to get gold lace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure money to buy it. By G-! that is very true, cries the other; I remember it perfectly well, said the third. And so without more ado they got the largest gold lace in the parish and walked about as fine as lords." It must be a mind filled with interpretation that can say that having made a blunder the way to rectify it is to go on to the end with it; if it was folly to begin the war when the drooling McKinley assured us that a few thousand soldiers would quiet the trouble in a few days, why is it not accumulated folly to go on with it now that we know McKinley maliciously falsified and the task is enormous? A mind with oral traditions may know, but mere plain thinking cannot see through this. Nor can it see what dishonor there is in confessing a mistake and a wrong, and in correcting rather than deepening them. Nor yet can it see why England, Russia or Germany, would rush in if we specified that the national integrity of the Philippines was under our care. Probably some fellow heard the hired man of Constantine or McKinley's ape ancestor, say these things, and told it to our clergymen when they were boys. WORRYING DESTINY INTO AMERICA. 26I The flagrant character of the fraud played off on America trickles out through censored dispatches and somersaults of government policy; but in private letters from soldiers and officers on the field it comes running, and here is one of these letters from an officer, dated May II, which is worth all the censored tomfoolery of Gas Otis, because this was not censored: Much of the news sent home by correspondents is so shamefully false that it does our cause great injury among the foreign interests here. Gen. Otis keeps sending reports that the insurrection will soon be suppressed. Nobody in the field believes such stuff The insurgents can fight a guerilla warfare with o, ooo men, such as will keep oo, ooo American troops busy for five years. In the rainy season all campaigning on a large scale must stop. Meantime the insurgents can recuperate, replenish their supplies of ammunition, go on cultivating their fields in the interior and suffer comparatively little hardship. In all the 300 years of Spanish occupation, war raged continuously in some parts of the group. The interior and larger part of Luzon never has been conquered. The volunteers have done the heavy fighting so far, and they fight all around the regulars, too. Have that Philippine strategist at Washington choked off. His articles are ludicrous. In an issue of the papers received last mail he speaks of no fighting having occurred south of the Pasig River. That is exactly where all the heaviest fighting occurred prior to the movement against Malolos. The American losses south of the Pasig River foot up over 500. Which probably tells the truth, a commanding General posing in an out-of-the-earth place, mixing up censored doses of news to give his countrymen in a military spoon with the idea of operating on their minds to produce thoughts favorable to his war, or a simple officer writing a private letter home-one who has no stake in building a monument of lies and dead men for the American administration? But even if these private revelations were explicitly denied by the presidents and generals, they are too well confirmed by the sudden acknowledgment of the army's utter inadequacy and the rush orders for new enlistments of troops. What did this order received by United States recruiting officers in New York City mean: "Make all enlistments you can-infantry, cavalry, light artillery, and heavy artillery-for Philippines. Select men. Urgent." 262 WORRYING DESTINY INTO AMERICA. Another kind of testimony came in from which there was, alas, no shrinking, the havoc of the heat of the summer season. The New York Sun's Manila cable brought information on June I2: On the march Saturday from San Pedro Macati a great many of the American troops were compelled by the intense heat to fall out, and some fears were entertained that they would be either shot or captured by Filipinos, who skulked in the rear. Fortunately most of them, after a short rest, were able to rejoin their comrades, and now nearly all the stragglers have been accounted for. Nearly 600 men suffered from heat exhaustion. On the same day the funeral of Captain Nichols of the monitor Monadnock occurred at Cavite. He died of sunstroke. The cable tells the story thus: The Monadnock has been lying off Paranaque for two months past, under fire from the rebels almost daily. The heat here has been intense, and the officers and men of the Monadnock suffered greatly.... The heat on Saturday was most severe, and the monitor was engaged all day in shelling the trenches at Paranaque and watching the rebels fleeing south through Las Pinas, and also watching the American troops closing in on the towns. Capt. Nichols was overcome by the heat at noon, and retired to his cabin, where he received frequent reports of the operations, and gave directions for several hours. He became much worse at 3 o'clock, lost consciousness and expired at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. His last words were, "We have got the rebels there at last." What an exposure this is of the Otis-McKinley hilarious falsehoods through March, April and May, that our little 'scrap' in the Philippines was about ended and the colored traitors to their dear mammy America were about to be crushed! How for two months the Monadnock had been constantly exposed to galling fire from these nearly crushed insignificants, and when the combined army and navy at last cleared the puny dwarfs out as the crowning labor of two tough months, one of our brave commanders died of the implacable heat. When war-sot McKinley brought this wanton conflict upon us did he know the horrors he was calling down on our brave men? If he did-we say it deliberately-he ought to be hanged. If he did not he ought to be dressed out as a fool, and with a fool's cap on his fool's head WORRYING DESTINY INTO AMERICA. 263 carried up and down this country to establish a tradition for those magistrates who would hereafter trippingly force this country into criminal wars. Despite what our soldiers were suffering during those two months one of the censored dispatches published in this country May 28 said, "Although desultory firing continues along the skirmish lines, the insurgents are so broken, discouraged and disbanded that it is almost impossible to reorganize the forces." Then on June 6 came this event, upsetting again the assertion, and making us wonder if a set of madmen or merely half knaves and half imbeciles, were cooking the news from the islands: The rebels on Saturday night made an attack upon the friendly town of Maccabebe, and after driving the inhabitants out, burned the town. The insurgents nightly attack the troops at San Fernando. Several Americans have been slightly wounded there recently. The enemy have several Krupp guns, which they bring forward and use for firing large shells into the town, then retreating with their guns. One of the insurgents' shells fell within thirty yards of Gen. McArthur's headquarters Saturday evening. Evidence perhaps the strongest of all appeared in another way. Nearly all the volunteers in the Philippines, as soon as their release fell due, rejected the odious business, although the military authorities angled with particular lures. In this the president-policy of conquest received the hardest slap it had yet known. Says the press report: "The efforts of the War Department to induce the volunteers in the Philippines to re-enlist have been successful only to a very small degree. Notwithstanding the offer to allow such of these men who re-enlist travel pay amounting to nearly $600 in each case, it is reported that not more than enough men to organize two full regiments have been secured out of the entire eighteen volunteer regiments now in the Philippines." These men were neither cowards nor disgruntled boobies. The letter from the officer quoted declares, "the volunteers have done the heavy fighting so far and they fight all 264 A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. around the regulars, too." No charge of cowardice has been made and it would be pityingly ignored. Cowards do not face this kind of thing: The present expeditions show the difficulty which has to be encountered by an army which must depend upon wagon trains in catching barefooted bandits in their own mountains, and also give proof that the rebels do not intend to fight battles. Gen. Hall left Santa Teresa yesterday morning and marched twelve miles to Morong, up and down rocky hills and through woods and swamps. Some of his men fell out on account of the heat. The head of the army arrived at Morong at noon, having exchanged only a few shots with insurgent skirmishers on the way. Groups of stragglers followed all day, but the force was 200 smaller than when it started. The men were almost thirty-six hours without rations, and it was considerable of an achievement for them to cover the ground as they did. On a bleak mound at Battery Knoll near Manila 300 young Americans lie buried: were they and their comrades cowards? were they disaffected? By a little past the middle of May over 600 of our men had been killed in those islands, by official report. But out of eighteen Philippine regiments only enough re-enlisted for two skeleton regiments, only Iooo men in all, and it shows that the hearts of the soldiers were against the war, that they saw through and condemned it.* For had they trusted the righteousness of its objects, they would have remained and fought to the end. Those men were constantly in the heart of affairs, no censor-garbled dispatches could be sent to them, they knew the truth, and their condemnation is a death blow at the policy of conquest and domination. 5. A Sham and Shoddy Peace Commission. The president sent a commission ostensibly to patch up affairs with the Filipinos and foster peace. This was a ruse to create an impression at home that our sultan wanted peace. He thought the commission would be a sort of soothing syrup for Americans, to delay their opposition while he rode on to unconditional conquest. The *July lo Gen. Otis cabled: "Two veteran regiments assured, will enlist about 1000." A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. 265 proofs are convincing. To begin, the commission was mainly formed of military timber. Otis, Dewey and ex-Col. Denby-that Denby whose moral degradation was shown in an earlier chapter-(III)-constituted the military biceps of the commission, a majority over the civil element of Schurman and Worcester. Negotiations proceeded, and so did campaigns. Otis seems to have domineered the military side and unconditional surrender is what he stands for, by cable tip from his Washington lords. But what was the use of a commission to diplomatically suggest that to our 'rebels?' That had been the gist of the president's war proclamation, and then of the war, and the 'insurgents' knew all about it. McKinley proclaimed: "Within the absolute domain of military authority, which necessarily is and must remain supreme in the ceded territory until the legislation of the United States shall otherwise provide, etc.," and Otis-Dewey followed the announcement with cannon balls; why then the expense and farce of a commission to go forth to fuddle with words the demands already clearly delivered by bullets? Merely to hoodwink the people at home; a little more charity-soup and the sovereign specific 'Humanity.' But the civilian fractions of the board did not go out altogether to draw pay and hoodwink. Mr. Schurman had previously made a clear-sighted statement regarding the Philippines, and unless corrupted by McKinley and imperial mud he was bound to stand to it and carry it out or retire. He had said: "Novw that the war is over, there seems to be a willingness on the part of some to depart from our original policy. At the beginning of the conflict our President and our Congress in declaring war made a solemn declaration as to the motives and principles on which it was to be waged. We interfered, we declared, in Cuba for the sake of humanity and disclaimed any intention of forcible annexation or control over the island. It is not 266 A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. in accordance, then, with those principles to annex any territory which formerly belonged to Spaint. We hear it advocated that the Philippines belong to us by right of conquest. Bult the idea that we have conquered them is a mistaken one. We have taken Manila, but there yet remain some I5,000 insurgents under the control of a fierce and desperate leader. To claim the islands by right of conquest it would be necessary first to conquer them. WVe are, therefore, under no obligation to their people. To keep this force in subjection it would be necessary also to maintain a large army in the Philippines. It would be another burden on our hands, and an expensive one. We ought not to sacrifice youthful lives when there is no obligation to humanity antdl civilization itnvolved. Monarchy mray expand by ace quisition of territory, but democracy, which is governmenlt by the people and for the people, caninot afford to accept as citi.zenls people who are not capable of selfgovernl e lenlt. The nation, like a person, m1ust be honest, and keep its promises."* Did he intend to stand to this or did he not? It seems that his knees had fainted very alarmingly when he took a commission from Majesty McKinley to attempt to bring the Tagals into any kind of submission to us. Had he been true he would have declined that dubious honor and toiled for his conviction with pen and speech as other stronger men have done. But he went, and then his deserved humiliations began. The president, having hedged him in so that he could do nothing but negotiate and babble, began a very singular course. The dispatches medicated by Otis and promulgated by the administration, insinuated there was a divergence in the commission, the president siding with the military faction. Our governors published such facts, but when Mr. Schurman as president of the commission *Address to Cornell students, September 22, 1899. A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. 267 sent home his report, it was withheld from the public by Secretary of State Hay. Bismarck had not mastered the art of suppression and distortion better than that. The Washington information said on a certain day, 'The President also intimated pretty broadly that if there was serious disagreement in the Philippines between Gen. Otis and members of the civilian commission, Otis and not the comnlumissionlers twould be upheld by TWashingtoln. Some excellently posted people say tonight the colmmission has bcen tipped to attend to its own bu1siness and not to monkey wTith military opcrationzs." Without doubt the cleft between the civil and military elements grew wide. One wanted some shade of fairness, the other wanted to thrash and kill and subdue. According to a N. Y. Herald special, President Schurman of the Philippine commission, in a dispatch to Secretary Hay, has, it is believed, recommended more liberal concessions to the Filipinos, with a view of ending the insurrection at once... Gen. Otis will continue his military operations throughout the rainy season. It is apparent that the President does not look for the close of the rebellion until the Filipinos are convinced of the superiority of the United States. The concessions already offered are liberal, the Administration believes, and as far as the President can go without authority from Congress, and it is doubtful if the new propositions made by the commission have received his approval. The foolhardiness of further negotiations with irresponsible leaders of defiant rebels is at last fully appreciated by the administration. The insurgents must be whipped into submission. The President, it is said, is now of this opinion, He regrets that he is unable to share in the optimistic opinions of Mr. Schurman, chairman of the commission. The case then stands thus: A competent civil investigator, selected by the president himself and sent with every facility to learn the truth, holds that by more liberal concessions a reasonable peace is attainable; this is distasteful to the commanding general, whose glory lies in wiping out the spots and vestiges of resistance; it is offensive to the administration which wants militarism to rule the roost and is determined to break the spirit of the foe at any slaughter-price of Filipinos and Americans. As 268 A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. George III said, the Filipinos must learn the superiority of the United States. Here is the text of the doctrine as given by a violent administration parrot. "The good old military terms of unconditional surrender, which it is customary for the victors to exact from the vanquished, would undoubtedly be the best, alike for the Americans and for the Filipinos, in the present instance." "Let our soldiers play out their hands in the Filipino game and then the Peace Commission may have seats at the table." The commission was treated on this principle, so that without breaking any laws of inference we conclude that it was an impotent sham always. But who can fail to see also that the finding of the commission's president scathingly condemns and disgraces the policy of the American government? It undermines the plea of good feeling toward our adversaries, and unclothes the official purpose to subordinate civil and peaceful counsels to military hellfire. A new manner of speaking to represent the new force in our affairs has appeared. We never before heard of what 'the army wants,' and 'the army thinks,' now we 1 d hear it. I take from a Manila dispatch these sentences, one of those censored messages remember: The army believes that if this country intends to retain control of the Philippine Islands, it will be cheaper in the long run to uhizi the insurgents so thoroughly that they would be glad of the opportunity to surrender, rather than parley with them and make terms which they would construe as a compromise. The army is also of the opinion that while the first course may cost more men and more money, in the beginning, than the latter, it will prove an effectual damper upon future insurrections, whereas, if the war is ended by a compromise, the professional revolutionists among the Tagals may be encouraged. This is the military opinion of all times. Break the enemy's back, and he cannot get up to fight you again. George of England held this view, he thought it would be much better and cheaper in the long run to whip the whole life out of us, once for all, then professional revolutionists like Samuel Adams and George Washington would be squelched, whereas a compromise that left our heart still beating might encourage us to meet the Mother A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. 269 Country's next injustice with another insurrection. Very wise and cheap-George policy, which we have adopted whole. The 'army' believes so and so: let us see about this, what is the army which has this mind? Out of eighteen regiments of it, only scraps to form two regiments consented to stay on any terms; we can be certain that those sixteen regiments had no such opinion as their tumid chief ascribes. The army simmers down to, the generals, as it is they who think so and so, they who censor the news, they who have it sent abroad that the army wishes their wishes. But the army would not be coming home and deserting Otis if it approved Otis. We catch that belligerent sprig of power in a very inflamed fib. Why did he not say like an honest blackguard, My laurels, even if they be McClellan laurels, are more toothsome while the war goes on, and I therefore think we had better reduce the Filipinos back to chalk. Is it well for a republic to have an armed force in whose name the ambitious general can propagate his schemes? This appearance of the army as a special entity to influence American destinies is ominous of the strong Europeanizing tendencies among us. When a European army thinks something and the unarmed people think another thing the popular mind is wont to be quietly coerced. By this far-reaching system of fraud and scoundrelism in the conduct of the Philippine imbroglio, militarism and its consequences drop like a pall over the blindfolded and unwilling American people. A series of mountebank tricks played by those who boss, the people gape amazed, hypnotized, wonder why they don't move, are dully aware of being renegades to liberty in yielding to an authority which asks not their advice or consent, and wake from the trance at last, manacled. The trick is shallow? Yes, as light as ether. Its nature is commit 270 A SHAM AND SHODDY PEACE COMMISSION. ting the people without their knowledge or consent to a course desired by the national bosses, then saying to the people, 'We can't honorably withdraw now, we have gone too far.' It is a detestable game of gambling government sharpers? Yes, but administered to a nation of simpleton chanticleers, all crowing, a nation not tutored or diploma'd in the methods of the great, believing any grotesque flummery that is trigged out in the sewer rags of medieval honor. How unrepublican the people to be drawn into they know not what! how unrepublican to stay in a false position when they learn its falseness! Very true, but if they soddenly fold their hands while their eyes are put out, they will probably remain immobile when they discover they cannot see. Weak enough to let the army and colonial system be grafted on us, we shall be weak enough to let it stay. CHAPTER XIV. The Washington Magazine of Lies. 1. Star- Chamber Creations. In overwhelming support of everything that has been said come the reports of the returned soldiers. The disgrace of the situation as they picture it is unspeakable. Back in November last, nearly three months before we broke out on the Filipinos, a stirring protest, signed by a number of Colorado volunteers against being longer held in Manila, was published in the Pueblo Cheiftain. (Nov. II, '99.) It recited that since landing on Luzon the men had not eaten a decent meal unless they paid for it out of their own cash, and that on August 13, at the battle of Manila, the men charged upon the Spanish trenches when they were so weak from constant hunger that they could hardly carry their ammunition; and declared that had the Spanish forces remained in their trenches they would have had little trouble in dispatching the attacking force, so utterly exhausted were the men from continuous duty and weakened from hunger. Soldiers who went through this knew the inestimable debt of the United States to Aguinaldo. The protest continued: As true Americans, we, on May 5 last, enlisted in the cause of humanity. We were soon convinced of one fact, viz., that we did not have to go to Cuba to find hungry men. In the cause of humanity we offered our services, and not for the special aggrandizement of any one, two or three men. Over Iooo Colorado boys are anxiously awaiting developments. Even then the common soldiers were getting it through their medullas that the army officers and the McKinley politicians were the principal beneficiaries of the fighting. On the 5 of March Sergt. Fritz Andrere of the U. S. V. signal corps, I8th company, having returned on account of ill-health, was in Los Angeles and interviewed by the Herald said: 272 STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. If the American people knew what they were doing, or rather what they have allowed to be done in the Philippines, they would shrink in horror from the task. It will take worse than Spanish cruelty to suppress the rebellion in the Philippines, and Butcher Weyler will be an angel compared with the governor general who is to be successful in exterminating these people, who are naturally peace-loving, but who will fight to the bitter end for the holy principle of freedom. The conflict between our forces and Aguinaldo's men was brought about by some of the American officers whose ambition is stronger than their sense of right, and the politicians in Washington who consider these far-away islands a good thing. I have many friends among the Filipinos, and my sympathy is entirely on their side. I believe the natives have been abused, and from what I can make out, Aguinaldo's report of the conflict, and the causes that led up to it, are more plausible than the American account of it. Is this man some poor runagate? He was offered a first lieutenancy in a new signal service corps that was to be formed. He told the reporter emphatically that he was 'glad not to be mixed up in such a disgraceful assassination as was being carried on around Manila.' He too has discovered that some thing other than the people is behind this war. If someone high in authority would now come forward and firmly assert that the Filipinos did not want the war and begged after the first hostilities to have it stopped, but our commnander, acting under higher inspiration, refused to stop it, would not that disclose a determined purpose in our authorities to fight if they could patch up an excuse, and evidence some powerful underground motive for the war? Gen. C. McC. Reeve, of Minnesota, supplies the firm assertion that the war was unnecessary. On Sunday. February 5, the day after the fighting began, Gen. Torres of the insurgents came through the lines under a flag of truce and had.a personal interview with Gen. Otis. in which, speaking for Aguinaldo, he declared that the fighting had been begun accidentally and was not authorized by Aguinaldo, that Aguinaldo wished to have it stopped, and that to bring about a conclusion of hostilities he proposed the establishment of a neutral zone between the two armies of any width that would be agreeable to Gen. Otis, so that during the peace negotiations there might be no further danger of conflicts between the two armies. To these representations of Gen. Torres, Gen. Otis sternly replied that the fighting, having once begun, must go on to the grim end. And it has been going on ever since. The little brown fellows whom we all expected to disperse in short order are fighting well.... [Interview in St. Paul Globe, April 26. STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. 273 If Stabber-general Otis did this was it from an arbitrary spasm of his own fibers or under executive spell? Otis certainly knows the wishes of Washington, whether he wishes one thing or the other himself. Rev. Clay MacAuley, who had been in Manila, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript June I, which furnishes tips that pry open the jaws of the sphinx. "For a long time," says he, "I could not believe that the disastrous recent events were known to the Washington authorities. I was inclined to lay the responsibility for the increasing perils upon the military commander directly in charge. Yet now it seems clear to me that Gen Otis did this work in the main in literal obedience to his superior. " Mr. McAuley talked with Gen. Otis and states that "Gen. Otis expressed regret that there was not a better knowledge of the situation among the Washington legislators than there seemed to be. And he impressed me deeply by his declaration: 'I was ordered to this post from San Francisco; I did not believe in the annexation of these islands when I came here, nor do I believe in their annexation now." Also, "I had the privilege of a conversation with Admiral Dewey," who "spoke much of his concern over the turn affairs had taken and said that he was 'powerless to act.' Yet in one point in the remarks he declared: 'Rather than make a war of conquest of this people, I would up anchor and sail out of the harbor.' " 'Mr. McAuley says he wrote President McKinley, whom he met in Washington, regarding the situation, and predicted the outbreak which has since occurred ' If the statement of Otis's position is true there is no doubt he gave and gives the president accurate private tales of the facts, and the president burns them. If Otis regrets that the situation is not better known among Washington legislators he unquestionably does his best to make it known to them through the president, and the president pockets the knowledge. In that case someone is coolly lying to the public. For Adgt.-Gen. Corbin declared under the sting of the round robin of the censored Manila newspaper men, "The standing instructions of the President and Secretary of War are that the public shall be given all information we receive. This has been and will continue to be done. Of course, plans of campaigns that would be of help to Aguinaldo and other rebels, have not and will not be promulgated, but all facts 274 STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. of events transpiring have been given in full."* Either there is a quibble here-to bring everything wanted to be suppressed under 'plans of campaigns that would help Aguinaldo.' including the painful facts about the situation which Gen. Otis sends to the president and regrets that the legislators do not know,-or the instructions of the president to give all news to the public are a josh. The public has not had the facts and no one who looks at half the evidence will doubt that the president is their crematory. Let him fix up the lie between himself and Corbin as best he can, the public is lied to from WVashington. Is it said that perhaps the Rev. MacAuley is the fabricator? The reasons for believing him are as follows: He has no motive to lie, the president has, a hundred of them; his statements were sent to the Boston Transcript and copied over the country by the Associated Press, if they are lies the authorities can find out of Otis and nail them in five minutes, the letter was published July 7 and they haven't done it; a lie like that about a general in action is rather personal and traducing and would in high probability bring some form of retribution from headquarters, none has come; the writer of such a letter would know this and not invent stories that would become a hornet swarm about his ears; merely to be proved a public falsifier would do Mr. MacAuley more harm than publishing several letters in the Boston Transcript would advantage him; lastly and potently, we know that in this war the Administration has become a professional Russian censor and represser of Philippine truth-see round robbin-and is therefore to be distrusted in everything it says; it is maliciously hoodwinking the people to compass its funeral designs: and for that reason an outside witness would be taken without oath where the Government would not be accepted on ten oaths. We therefore conclude that the *Special Washington dispatch to Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1899. STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. 275 president of the United States is the liar. It is so much more revelation of the villainous practices of an imperialist government against its own people and proof that our Washington tyrants are conducting this war with ulterior and star-chamber intentions. Among the returning invalids from Manila is Captain Charles A. McQuesten, one of Gen. Otis's staff, and a physician who was health officer at Manila. All this is promise that he will not wantonly criticise things. But more than this, he is a believer in the military policy, "he strongly supports the military government of the islands." Such a man will certainly not tell stories to injure his general or the military government which he supports. And this is Capt. McQuesten's narrative as reported by the Associated Press, June 20, in San Francisco. I give the most of it: Capt. McQuesten made a close study of the conditions of the Philippine situation. He is of the opinion that it will take from Ioo,ooo to 150,OOO soldiers to properly subject and hold the islands. He also says that the Peace Commission was an absolute failure, and its work from the start was without effect. He strongly supports the military government of the islands. "Schurman knows that the commission is a failure, and is coming home in July," said the captain. "Unless troops, thousands of them, are sent to the aid of our men there, they will be driven back into Manila in the course of the next few months during the rainy season. Our men simply cannot stand the climate. Fifty per cent. of them will be incapacitated by sickness, and the territory overrun and will have to be abandoned. Manila will be in a state of siege again. "Our soldiers and men have accomplished wonders. But nothing decisive has come of it, because our men were not in great enough force. One of the great dangers that our men have to face is the climate. The newcomers will be at a disadvantage because the troops returning home are inured to the climate. As a matter of belief, the Filipinos think they have the Americans licked already.... "I will say a word for the western volunteers. They make the finest soldiers in the world, and their fighting qualities are wonderful. But the volunteers all want to return home, and I hardly think that the plan to enlist three skeleton regiments from the volunteers now in the Philippines will be a success." This man has no need for any of Otis's public reticences. He can tell the truth and the laws of evidence compel us to accept him. Believing him, the course of 276 STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. the administration emerges as the most stupendous project of imbecility undertaken since Napoleon started for Moscow, or the most unexampled scheme of villainy in American history, or both. For my part I cannot see how an American citizen throbbing with love of liberty and fairness can read these lines without bursting into such a flame of wrath against McKinley and his advisers and those nation-wrecking monopolists who are using him for a bludgeon, as to make the life of his administration not worth a quarter of one per cent. It ought to be swept away in extirpating resentment and its least and last act of selfish aggression wiped out. Right will either triumph or destroy what triumphs over it. Cruel injustice may win but in so doing it engenders a hell for those who inflict it as well as for those who endure it. The one vindication of American principle that now remains possible is to bring down McKinley and his profligate gang of monopolist conspirators, and to obliterate every trace of them and their odious deeds. Nor do I see any safety from Republican death-makers in Democracy. I believe that the Republican and the Democratic parties are both profoundly corrupt, hopelessly corrupt. I do not forget and shall not forget that that stainless scion of Democracy, Bryan, who is now opposing expansion as one of the doctrines upon which he hopes to attain the presidency, himself enlisted as a Colonel in that buncombe war with Spain, dipping in his net for shoddy war-capital and playing to mean popular prejudices to serve his political ambitions; that he advocated accepting the Paris treaty which has brought the avalanche of imperialism upon us, when it was so close in the senate that his influence against it might have turned the two or three needed votes and saved the day and the nation. I have no plea for that man nor confidence in him, nor in a party machined and generaled by men of his kilt. Had that party stood firm and STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. 277 right il tie l)eginning awe should have had no inmerialism now, to trust il it to rescue us from iml)erialism is to trust the east wind to blow west. Nor am I unconscious of those new signs of fine Iscariot cunning, repeating the performances of Bailey and his chums in Congress, which are show\ing themselves in Democratic leaders and warning the party that it must hedge on this subject of imperialism for the sake of elysian success. 'Ex-Gov. William J. Stone of Missouri, acting chairman of the Democratic State Committee, takes sharp issue with the anti-expansion memibers of his party. While not conmmitting himself as to whether this country should o.wn and govern the Phililppines, he declares stiongly against the anti-expansion plea.' George H. Keeney, president of the Association of National Silver Clubs, is another influential sign of subterranean change ill Democratic policy, veering it over to succulent polpularity. He said to the Associated Press (July I6) I do not believe that anti-imperialism will be made the chief, or even a conspicuous plank. The best men in the Democratic party either approve the policy of the administration, or feel that the present cause has been inevitable and must be fought through to success. It will not do for Bryan to put himself against the brains and patriotism of the country. Many of his friends have felt that he is only losing ground by his present policy of attacking the administration's position, and have advised him to fight on ground zwhere he can easily score a victory. We have urged him to attack McKinley for the palpable errors that have been made in the conduct of the war. He could score a hit by showing that it was due to the administration's dilatoriness that so much fighting and slaughter has been necessary, and by showing that our soldiers were actually starved in the field. Antiexpansion won't do. We succeeded last year in electing one Democrat in California, merely because he favored the annexation of Hawaii... The southerners are repeating that the western combination failed in 1896 and in 1898, and that the chief consideration at this time is success. 'Score a hit,' that is all he wants-principle and right to the cyclones; go to, let us win the political battle so that I and you may have the pudding. Attack the frills and peccadilloes of the party in poweer, not its crimes 278 STAR-CHAMBER CREATIONS. and bedevilments; if we are so idiotic and Quixotic as to disturb the latter we may be beaten and lose the plums. Hurrah for pudding! Very well, but that disposes of you for us. Hitch your party chariot to the pudding star but know that new principles have arisen in politics this twelfth-month. The Anti-Imperialists must organize a new and independent political movement and appeal to the country on that broad issue in all its broad ramifications. The country must be given the most tremendous education on popular liberty and government during the next fourteen months that it has ever known. Down with both the old fossil putridities, and build up a new political edifice whose stones shall be undeviating justice at home and abroad, mortared together by the indissoluble principles of supreme liberty. This is what we must do. The true American spirit must be aroused, it only sleeps, it only awaits instruction, it only wants the opportunity, a clarion call from honest voices to salvation. Save America-let that be the cry! Save it from the sure wreck of imperialist monopolists. If anti-imperialists are not brave and broad enough for that wide policy they too are pitiable, futile, and doomed to fail. The Republicans begin to know already what they have to face. The ominous cry, Down with McKinley, Down with murder in the Philippines, Bring our soldiers back from the pit of death, Down with imperialism, has begun to growl far and wide through this land. Before this thing is over the people will spring and bury their teeth in those who have caused the wrongs. The Republican Washington Post has published an article supposed to be inspired from the Republican ring saying: The next Republican Presidential campaign ticket will probably be McKinley and Roosevelt. Men high in the councils of the party favor the combination for I9oo. It is hardly necessary to emphasize the fact that Roosevelt regards his present position merely a steppingstone to higher office. His ambition is to be nominated for the Pres SOLDIER CIPHERS. 279 idency in 1904. There are others upon whom the lesson of Roosevelt's popularity is not lost. Despite all that may be said by the optimistic rank and file, the Republican leaders know the campaign is not to be won by walking over flowery beds of ease. They look for a contest as bitter and intense as that of 1896, and they are aware that the full voting strength of the party must be brought out. 2. Soldier Ciphers. The very strongest evidence of the panic into which the imperialist supporters of the administration, since the recent revelations from the Philippines, have been thrown, is their vindictive onslaughts upon those divulging the facts. This would be inexplicable if the revelations did not fill imperialist minds with consternation for the effect they will have on the people. A special from Washington showed that round-up of asses in bray and grimace over McQuesten's freedom: Capt. McQuesten's interview given to the newspapers of San Francisco today stating that a thousand more troops must be sent to the Philippines is regarded here as an annoying and inopportune announcement from a military man. Capt. Questen stated nothing that President McKinley did not know already, although his printed words have a somewhat different sound. One of the most despairing of these savage onsets is made by the Los Angeles Times,* a saffron-crimson WarCry, which has exceptional confessional pith as being the jews-harp of a brigadier-general (its owner) who has returned from the Philippines and knows the extreme exigency of suppression censorship and fact-perversion. This editorial also relates to Capt. McQuesten's disclosures and is entitled "'Frozen' Impudence." It is an amazing threnody upon the duty of everybody to subordinate everything to McKinley's policy of murder, and if he doesn't like it to 'Shut up' and help it along. American monarchists may take heart from this reading. But even if every statement of Capt. McQuesten were true, the good sense and soldierly qualities of the officer making them would be open to serious question. He is a subordinate officer, not of the line, but of the medical staff, and in criticising the results achieved by his superior officers he is guilty of a breach of military discipline *Editorial, June 26, 1899. 280 SOLDIER CIPHERS. as well as of courtesy. Good military sense and a proper sentiment of official delicacy, if this officer possessed them, would have kept him from such a course. The faithful soldier obeys orders and refrains from talking too freely while he is under the obligations of obedience. Great Guileless Heavens! here we have it all in a cocoanut shell! The faithful soldier no longer has duties as a man and a citizen, to himself, his country, and his fellowmen. He is a subordinate, his role is to obey, his country is his general, his president, what they say let him corroborate although he knows it be a cursed lie, what they command let him perform though it leads the nation to confusion and crime. Such is the confession of faith of the nonarchist-imperialist, his unfallacious ten comnnandments. But in the name of republics who ever heard such bosh proclaimed? We're not a monarchy-yet. McKinley and Otis are not the whole American peoplevet. A common captain or a little ant of a common soldier is not an utter nothing-yet. The 'faithful soldier' in a republic has obligations to something besides his king and his general, still, and that is to his country and his countrynen, to truth and to principle, and if the time ever comes when his king and his general usurp the place of these in his heart, in God's name let this country go down, let infinitely deserved ruin punish our apostasy and blot us out of the book of nations! But just now let us hear nore of the unalterable law of our latest fashionable God, Imperial-Militarism, that we may know the solemn vows we take upon ourselves in entering His service: He (the common soldier and subordinate officer) has, indeed, an unquestioned right to his opinions; but the exigencies, the practice and the necessities of military service require that he shall not express these opinions when on duty, especially when they are in conflict with the known policy, plans and methods of his superiors in command. If McKinley as the puppet of a small colony of monopolist thugs is shamelessly misguiding all America with fancy reports of conditions in the Philippines, in order SOLDIER CIPHERS. 28I to fasten an army of standing thugs and the imperialist policy upon it, the faithful soldier or officer who knows the conditions must not divulge them, 'especially when they are in conflict with the known policy, plans and methods of his superiors in command.' Mirabile dictu! Is there anything that will save America when this can be said in America? Would the men of Bunker Hill have listened to words worthy of Louis XIV of France without a thundering repudiation of them? O Shades of our Revolutionary Fathers, rise from the earth for whose liberty you bled, to rebuke this blasphemy and restore your weakened descendants to pristine manhood! Save us or we are lost, for seventy million of us are not strong enough to save ourselves. This fertile editorial further says: The results achieved by the Commanding General of the Eighth Army Corps and the splendid troops under him have challenged the admiration of the world, and have brought imperishable glory to the American arms. And also imperishable ridicule on the military and civil commanders of American arms-deserved ridicule. The European press musings upon our masterly and imperishable achievements in the Philippines called out by the discovery that all this campaigning and slaughtering so far has been a farce, are as follows: The Vossische Zeitung makes merry over what it calls Gen. Otis's Napoleonic art of preparing bulletins, and adds, "with negligence of the most obvious facts; he has been reiterating for months that the resistance of the Tagals was broken, their armies in complete dissolution and the end of the war in sight." The Deutsche Tages Zeitung prints a letter from a German at Manila, complaining of the Americans "destroying the best part of trade and industry in the Philippines and deceiving their countrymen at home by sending false news." Berlin cable, July 8. But this is envious Germany say the imperishable optimists. Here then is sympathetic and adoring England: LONDON, July I8.-The afternoon newspapers of this city generally, in commenting on the protest of the American correspondents in Manila against the censorship, denounce the American Philippine campaign as it has been managed by Secretary Alger and Maj.-Gen. Elwell S. Otis. The St. James Gazette says: "The great American 282 SOLDIER CIPHERS. people have been hoodwinked by this general and their administration, who have kept up a series of suppressions of the truth and suggestions of the false, of Russian ingenuity and thoroughness." The Pall Mall Gazette says: "The correspondents have done their duty to the public as journalists and gentlemen should." The Times, in its leading editorial article today, says: "Alger has run the war office as a political machine. Military posts have been bestowed upon political friends, without regard to fitness or the interests of the country. Dishonesty and corruption have been rampant, wherever there was public money to be handled. American soldiers were killed by thousands on American soil, by such agencies as embalmed beef and scandalous neglect of elementary sanitation. As the head is, so we expect subordinates to be. They were chosen without regard to fitness, but with every regard to political service. Naturally they act as the politicians they are rather than as soldiers, and administrators, which they are not. The new imperial policy of the United States is now discredited by association with a system of corruption. McKinley, for some reason or other, is incapable of ridding himself of the incubus of his Secretary, who, evidently regarding himself as having the President in his pocket, serenely defies the public indignation that has been aroused by his mismanagement." Imperishable glory indeed! the imperishable glory of sacrificing brave and noble soldiers in an accursed cause under the imperishable stupidity and ambitious obedience of Gen. Elwell S. Bottom and the conspiring numskullery of the boneless McKinley. But the ditch of "Frozen Impudence" is far from dry. It affirms our argument that Otis kept McKinley fullprimed with the inside facts of the Philippines. As Maj.-Gen. Otis is fully cognizant of the Philippine situation in all its phases, it is not to be supposed that he will neglect to keep the authorities at Washington advised of the situation and its needs;... The men who are at the head of affairs in the Philippines have quite as much knowledge of the situation, its requirements and its prospects, as any of the doctors in the medical branch of the military service. Maj.-Gen. Otis and those nearest him have far better sources of information than any of the subordinate officers can possibly have. Accepting this, Otis certainly knew all that was known by Rev. MacAuley, and Capt. McQuesten and the other returned officers and pr h re no 'l n, and privates who are now 'letting out and he told it fully to the arch-deceiver McKinley. To carry his diabolical project of militarizing the nation for Hanna and the monopolists McKinley hid this from the people. He is a black and damnable traitor whose crime against his country and human liberty no words can paint. SOLDIER CIPHERS. 283 The editorial before us terminates thus: The administration will pursue its course without faltering, irrespective of the clamor, on the one hand, against the sending of more troops to Manila, and the eqally noisy clamor, on the other hand, for the sending of an army of from Ioo,ooo to 150,000 men. The President is large-minded enough to be magnanimously unmindful of the idle yawp of men who know so little of the subject of which they assume to know so much that all their knowledge could be compressed within the covers of a very thin small-pica primer. Do what you will, people, the administration will pursue its course without faltering or paying attention to you. The president can afford to ignore you, because he has the Hanna millionaires with him and is fast securing a standing army to canister your protests if offensive. "It only requires one fool to destroy a city," wrote Marais on an occasion in Paris; it only requires one fool to destroy a nation, if that fool happens to be the president. There is a certain resemblance in McKinley to those imbecile French kings who were not to be swerved from their divinely destined way by human facts or events. Fifty parliamentary magistrates journeyed to Marly to lay a cause before the Fifteenth Louis. He 'replied that he would be obeyed, and turned his back on their president.' When he deigned to give the magistrates audience, 'as the first president was about to speak, Louis ejaculated, "Hold your tongue!" and when Abbe Pucelle advanced, holding in his hand a written deposition of the complaints of the Parliament, Louis said to the Secretary of State, "Tear up that paper!" The same day Pucelle was exiled.' Our king is not so violent as this but he is exactly as arbitrary. The people come to him with an array of startling facts: He says, "Hush up those facts, they are not facts!" The faithful volunteers refuse nearly to a man to enlist (perhaps a paltry thousand out of 18,ooo being bribed to do it), and so condemn the American policy beyond salvation: the president shouts, "What these volunteers report is not true; give a higher bribe and we will get other volunteers in.their places!" What 284 SOLDIER CIPHERS. is this but "Hold your tongue! Tear up that paper"? An American Cabinet meeting is a modernized French "Bed of Justice." Our king enters in and by his fiat enacts what he wants and it is law. "The administration will pursue its course without faltering, irrespective of the clamor," on the one hand of the people, on the other of the hideous truths which can now no longer be suppressed. I wish to emphasize again the particular confirmatory value of this both sinister and pathetic editorial of the Los Angeles Screech-Owl. It is not a mere daily scribble like other editorials of its kind, but a publication of the secrets of the army's soul. Its proprietor is but lately returned from the Philippines where he was a brigadier, he went to Washington to inspirit the president with more unpublishable horrors, and he therefore speaks as one having authority. And he is so unnerved to see the black facts coming out to the people, that he gives everything away; in his maudlin rage at the frowning results of these exposures he blubbers out the necessity of exercising an infamous principle, which no one would think of enunciating were there not tyrannous ground for its use. Namely, If all the evil things this McQuesten has exposed were true, the straits of the government policy are now so desperate that this man is a villain for divulging them; we must stamp him as such and defame him as an ignorant unfaithful soldier (Captain of Staff, and Health Officer of Manila though he is), and must act as if all these intolerable truths were lies. Hush up, deceive everybody, follow the president blindfolded, is the only patriotic thing now that the pus-sy facts about the Philippines are flowing out. Very well, brigadier Otis, you may get an office under Louis XV McKinley for your faithfulness and elevated conscience, but there are about seventy million people here who are not brigadiers, who hope neither a second SOLDIER CIPHERS. 285 or third-rate job from the Grand Gull, and who will rescind your prurient Jesuitism and act on the amazing truth now coming to light. Let us marshal more of it, for it is mightier than a pen of Hanna millionaires or office-bribed patriots. Two things are conspicuous: If any of those who return are in favor of fighting it out in the islands and retaining them by military force it is usually an officer, whose bread is buttered on the side of the war authorities; and even these, like the others, unite in saying that the task is far heavier than the American people suppose or Father McKinley admits. Newspaper interviews in San Francisco with the returned troops brought these facts out: Without exception, those of the Oregon regiment who were interviewed said that at least 50,000 additional troops were needed to bring about peace. The troops were necessary to garrison and hold the towns taken from the Filipinos. With the present force this was impossible, and as fast as the American troops evacuated a town, after conquering it, the Filipinos quietly sneaked in and again took possession. First Lieut. Gritzmacher of Co. H, said that 60,ooo additional troops, at least, were needed to conquer the rebels. 'The general cry when we left Manila," said he, "was that Ioo,ooo more men were necessary to bring about peace. There were no prospects of such a result when we left. The volunteers have wanted to come home ever since peace was declared. In thirty-two days the Oregon regiment took part in no less than twenty-seven skirmishes, and we did not seem to leave much of a lasting impression there." Sergt.-Maj. Marshall said that Ioo,ooo more men, at least, were necessary to conquer Luzon alone. "The war is not popular among the volunteers, " said he. "Six weeks in that climate enervates a man. A dash of Ioo yards in that country prostrates a soldier. Every volunteer in Luzon who didn't fall into a soft snap was eager to come home when peace was declared. The so-called great victories have been without lasting results. When we marched out one end of a conquered town, the Filipinos quietly sneaked in at the other." Capt. Saunders said positively that no less than Ioo,ooo additional troops must be sent at once, to be ready for service at the end of the present rainy season. Capt. Saunders is commander of the transport Newport, and thoroughly acquainted with the conditions in and around Manila. Maj. Gandenstone, in response to a query as to whether the islands were worth fighting for, said: "That depends. We must hold the islands for the sake of the dignity of ourflag, if nothing more. A much larger army is necessary, 50,000 more troops at least. The natives, as a whole, are intensely hostile to the Americans. We have the same difticulties to overcome as did Spain. 286 SOLDIER CIPHERS. Let Sergt.-Major. Marshall, and Captain McQuesten, and General Reeve, and all the nincompoop and nonentity privates, these dregs of the earth, these scruff of the earth's head (America), these powder vermin, these manures of monarchy, be silenced-great Shafter speaks: "These interviews come from discharged soldiers and the riff-raff and skulkers of the army. The judge-advocate is in possession of all the particulars." Six hundred members of the returned Nebraska regiment were guests at a San Francisco theater (Aug. I,) and the name of Maj.-gen. Otis was mentioned. 'There was momentary silence, and then the Nebraskans broke out in groans and hisses.' They were the 'riff-raff and skulkers of the army.' Maj. Groesbeck is the judge-advocate at San Francisco and someone asked him why the published interviews with soldiers were allowed. Put on your gallows-cap and try to imagine. Answered Groesbeck: These men are about to be mustered out. They are no longer under Gen. Otis. If these men were molested it would simply be placing a cudgel in the hands of the enemies of the administration, such as they are even now looking for. If I had my way I would clap every mother's son of them in jail. Iwould stop these pitiable attempts to smirch the honor of the army. I entered the army as a volunteer during the civil war. I know what volunteers are. I know that I did not amount to anything as a soldier until the second year, and how can these fellows, who have only seen a few months' service, understand anything about discipline? In no other country in the world is such a thing possible. In Germany, or in any other European country, such a condition of affairs could not last 24 hours.* The gravamen of this vitriolic military fire-spitter is that America is a poor goose while we are not all of us under the heel of Germanic compulsory military servitude. This will come and it will be needed. It is already needed, by a number of military Vesuviuses in Manila. They are honorably mentioned in the dispatch that follows: DENVER, Col., Sept. 14-Napoleon E. Guyot, late private of Company G, First Colorado volunteers,who during the last three months of 1898, served as a clerk under Major Kilbourne and later under *In The Public, Chicago, Aug. 5, 1899. A PERMANENT SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. 287 Lieutenant-Colonel Potter, auditor of public accounts at Manila, publishes this evening a signed statement in which the gravest chargest of corruption are made against the American officials in Manila. He says an examination of the vouchers forwarded to Washington will show that exorbitant prices are paid for all kinds of supplies purchased in Manila; that vast quantities of high-class wines and other supplies have been purchased ostensibly for the Spanish hospitals, while in the American hospitals only the coarsest supplies are furnished. He says court-martials of private soldiers charged with selling government property have been stopped because they would result in the exposure of official rascality. The robberies, he asserts, will aggregate an enormous sum.* This is the snapper on the whip of 'Hush.' A standing army disciplined to protect General Thieves! To tie the weeping country to a whipping-post for its discipline when it denounces thieves! 3. The Philippines are a Permanent SlaughterHouse. The fact is, and let us now face it, we are sending our American youths out to a charnel house. That is what the hostile Philippines are for Americans. A "grave-filler," Capt. Kaye of the U. S. army called Manila as long ago as last November-before the war. Manila's climate he said 'will fill many graves ere the soldiers are brought back.' Louis V. Dow arrived in Yokohalna from Manila told the Japanese papers that altogether not less than 5000 American soldiers have already died. He expressed the conviction that the end of the war with the Filipinos is by no means yet in sight. The official representations of American losses, he thinks, are not wholly reliable, as they make no allowance for the numbers who died in the hospital. The number of Americans killed in battles or who have died in the hospitals since the outbreak of hostilities will, he thinks, easily reach 5000. The volunteer forces he regards as the flower of the army of occupation, for their year's training has made them as efficient as any regulars in the world. Unfortunately the more recent dispatches of reinforcements are not nearly so good as the original volunteers, who were not actuated by any prospect of higher command. The latter arrivals will require a good deal of licking into shape. The original army of occupation is not in a pleasant frame of mind. Its members are, in the first place, perfectly willing *Press dispatch. The charges made by this soldier are given fully in Ch. xv., Sec. 3. 288 A PERMANENT SLAUGHTER- HOUSE. to fight against any civilized power in ordinary warfare, but they object to wasting their lives and health upon "niggers," as they contemptuously call the Filipinos, and they indulge in many growls at the necessity which compels them to be on "qui vive" day and night in order not to be caught napping by their cunning enemies. One feature of the war is that, although so many natives have been killed, very few weapons have been captured. The moment a Filipino falls there are ten others ready to snatch up his rifle and make off with it. Their numerical resources are practically inexhaustible, whereas the Americans can only obtain fresh men after long delays and at great expense.* The ruthless implacable gang of monopolist looters order the putty McKinley to raise more men to die to conquer this new looting-ground. Think of the hard, fierce, hateful, iniquitous cruelty of this! See how the men who have been there and know feel about it! 'Not in a pleasant frame of mind,' they; would they would go through the country enlightening and arousing their fellow-citizens to the folly and wickedness of our course. Look at what the soldiers there are now going through for the benefit of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Rothschilds and other money fiends of the Anglo-Saxon race. It takes a heart of stone and the brain of a criminal to read the reports from the Philippines without rage. The Manila dispatches of July 9 said: It has been raining and storming almost constantly for two days, and the country along the American south and bay lines is literally flooded. The soldiers are suffering great discomfort. The Thirteenth Infantry Regiment at Pasay is in the worst position, being practically surrounded by water. The bridges that were used for getting supplies have been washed away, and some of the companies are now surrounded by streams six feet deep. In many cases the men are sleeping with three feet of water beneath their bunks, which are elevated on cracker boxes. The company cooks, when preparing the meals, stani knee deep in water. Wind blew over several tents of the Second Reserve Hospital. The United States transport Centennial is ready to sail for San Francisco with discharged soldiers, but the latter have to sit around the water front all day, drenched to the skin, waiting for a launch to take them to the steamer. These sons of our farmers and workingmen-halfbankrupt farmers and wholly bankrupt workingmen-are surely doing the dirty work of our millionaires with a *Associated Press from Vancouver, B. C., June 27. A PERMANENT SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. 289 spaniel spirit. If lives of common Americans longer counted for aught this would be called a high price, inordinately, satanically high, to pay for markets for monopolists. But there are plenty more idle and hopeless American boys where these came from, a rich stock to dump into market-conquering graves. On the I9th the whole country about Manila is flooded. "The wire being down between Las Pinas and Bacoor, linelcI1n ha1d to wadc through u ater zip to their armllpits to repair it. Twice has there been a foot of rainfall within twenty-four hours. A party of insurgents attacked a launch on the Rio Grande, below San Luis, yesterday. They killed one of the occupants of the boat and wounded two others. Subsequently they cut the telegraph line and stole half a mile of wire." "It is impossible to move the troops because of the floods." By the 2Ist our army bats have got as much as this into their unerring density: "The unprecedented rains of the last week have convinced observers here that military operations on a large scale, with advances covering many miles, will be impossible for a long time. Many miles of the country are flooded to a depth of three or four feet. The Paranaque bridge, which was considered impregnable, has been swept away, cutting off temporarily the garrisons of Imus and Bacoor from communication with Manila. In the circumstances it would be impossible to move wagon trains, as the trails [not roads] have become doubtful. Pack-mules will be utilized, if it should be impossible for soldiers to make marches." What is the state of the health of our boys who are fighting the battle for Rothschild-Rockefeller monopoly under these cheerful but moistened circumstances? Even His Serene Magnificence Gen. Otis Bottom admits that they are a little bad. His report of June 26 says: "Rainy season. Little land campaigning possible in Lu 10 290 A PERMANENT SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. zon.....American troops have worked to limit of endurance.... Sickness among troops has increased lately, due mostly to arduous service and climatic influence. Nothing alarming. Of the 12 per cent of the command reported sick nearly 6 per cent in general hospital, of whom 3 per cent have typhoid and 17 malarial fever; I2 per cent have intestinal trouble; remaining 50 per cent have various ailments; 14 of which due to wound injuries. Many officers and men who served in Cuba break under recurrence of Cuban fever." This is decidedly reassuring, and recalls the reports we used to have last summer from the serene commanders of the cesspool camps in the United States where the soldiers were rotting and dying like flies. "Nothing alarming," there was nothing alarming then-nothing ever alarms a general we think who lives on the fat of the land pretty far distant from bullets and fashions romancing bulletins in his speculative brain. Here is the hospital report of the medical department for the week ending July I6: "Typhoid fever, 23 cases; malarial fever, 223; dysentery, 233; diarrhoea, 173; intestinal troubles, 6; gastric troubles, 13; wounds and injuries, 1 6; exhaustion, 8; sunstroke, I; contagious diseases, o1; undeterminled diseases, 316; all others, 256; total, 1378; total number of patients today, including those sick in their quarters, 1889." This is the official beginning of the rainy season; what will it be at the end? Perhaps we can judge from an authoritative statement of present conditions which was not censored. This is the news brought from Manila by the transport Newport which tells the story for June I.* The volunteers are greatly debilitated in consequence of their hard campaigning through three months of tropic weather. Since the middle of May, no volunteer regiment has had a sick list of less than 20 per cent. Most of them at the present date have 25 per cent. ill, and a few regiments have less than one-third of their number on duty. The Nebraska regiment has suffered the worst. It came in *Ass6ciated Press, San Francisco, July 12. A PERMANENT SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. 291 from San Fernando, a few days ago, with less than 200 men in the ranks. Some of its companies have only two sets of fours. The South Dakota followed with about two hundred and seventy-five men on duty. The Montana and Kansas regiments at San Fernando have not more than 280 available men each. The morning after the Washington troops took Morong, a week ago, only 263 men responded to roll call. How do you like this, Americans? especially you of the farming communities who send out your boys to fall for their coun-Rockefeller? Does this look as though Otis gave reliable facts about the dead and dying? Now we come to a telegraphic statement from Washington (Ass'd Press) which we ask you to peruse word for word several times. It is one of those breaks which, connected with the other reports we have quoted, let a whole army of cats out of the bag. WASHINGTON, June 27.-The President was in conference for a time with Secretary Alger respecting the best method of carrying out Gen. Otis's desire to maintain, at least throughout the rainy season, an effective fighting force of no less than 30,000 men in the island. In the general's last estimate, it is noted that he asks for an "effective" force of 30,000 men. This estimate will oblige the War Department to secure more troops, as Gen. Otis's sick report and his casualty list make it evident that provision must be made at once to supply a shortage of about 15 per cent. in his forces. The officials are taking into consideration the assurance of the medical authorities that no diminution of the disability rate can be expected during the wet season, but that the conditions may grow even worse as the season advances. Many of these men will have to be invalided home, it being demonstrated, particularly in the typhoid cases, that convalescence is rare unless the patient leaves the Philippines. Thus the department will be under the necessity of keeping up a steady flow of recruits from the United States, if Gen. Otis's desire is complied with. The recruiting officers' reports indicate an ability on their part to supply Iooo men a week, more than sufficient, it is believed, to meet Gen. Otis's needs in the future, while for the present the department has assembled 5000 recruits at San Francisco, ready for transportation as soon as ships can be found. Is a commentary of those sacred verses of war scripture needed? Not only a wise man running ought to be able to read them, but a fool on an express train ought to see what they mean. So many of the soldiers are dead, wounded and dying-about 15 per cent of the entire army-that this shortage must be made up in addition to the regular estimate of fresh volunteers called for. 292 A PERMANENT SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. Not only this but if disease keeps up its present lively and deadly reel, of all troops sent, fifteen per cent will be falling into the sick and disabled list constantly. Now these sick will not be restored to the ranks when they get well, for they don't get well in the Philippines, 'particularly in the typhoid fever cases;' they either die or remain sick until they are sent back to this country. Hence the army is like a sieve, fifteen per cent are running out in death all the time. And this is early in the rainy season. How long does it take according to the present thermometer of disease for the 15 per cent to die, or become permanently invalided? The War Department, studying Otis lore, makes out that the troops will go off at about a thousand a week, nearly that, and they are elated to find that the recruiters think they can drum up that number to take the places of the dead and sick right along. But then this does not take cognizance of the increasing death rate which the medical men foresee as the season proceeds. Perhaps we had better put it at 2000 a week, which we must pour into the Philippine sieve of disease and death weekly-the rate of Ioo,ooo a year if it keeps up. How many heroes we shall annually have to produce to cram the stomach of the god of expansion! But call it Iooo a week, 50,000 a year, isn't that rather a large price to pay for the luxury of enthroning Rockefeller Rothschild et al. monopolists over the Anglo-Saxon race? All who are ready to die for this noble cause come up and sign your names. The death or disablement of a thousand of you a week is an established certainty, so that there is room for many. If the war continues long enough we shall have the whole United States diseased, conquering Io,ooo,ooo Filipinos to the Christian religion of monopoly. If the whole force in the Philippines must be Ioo,ooo men we must raise 150,000 men to keep up to the Ioo,ooo mark; and the next year 50,000 more, if the heroic rebels keep on bushwhacking-in ten years THE BUTCHER MUST BE KING. 293 500,000 good farmers' and mechanics' sons dead and wrecked, which will not be objectionable to the millionaires, for there are too many of such sons down at the heels and brooding in poverty and sorrow, for millionaire monopolists' peace. Kill them off, keep up tropical wars to debilitate and break them, have a standing and perpetual charnel house for their reception and disposal, establish a sieve of earth to hurl them into-and call it 'the dignity of the flag.' 4. The Butcher Must be King. The horrid and president-damning fact is that he who caused and is causing this riotous slaughter knew and chose to do it, knew ahead what would come, then calmly opened the unclosable flood-gates of death. Let curses rest on him while the world stands! Forgive him not! Look at the pictures of that sleek, satisfied fellow reviewing regiments returned from the death he projected them to, each tenth man gone! A glossy silk tile rests down upon his ears swollen by the plaudits of the mothers and fathers of the decimated dead, come out to look at the accusing voids in the ranks where their sons once stood, and bless the destroyer! The President's rotund carcass stalks thitherward like Tiberius on his rock, the only fattened calf in the world! Look at that idiot eye, the flickering manly-imitation of that wavy mouth! But take the longest gaze at the feed-pouch which occupies no Philippine coffin, but occupies itself with the juiced viands which this symetried assassin palates from the coffins he has filled! Take off the lids of those coffins in the Asiatic East and compare the faces lying in them with his face! Scrape away the dirt and blood from eyes lying earth-covered in Luzon trench-graves, already wormeaten, while this refulgent blood-drinker lolls in cheers! Clap your hands for him, citizens, mothers! Kiss the 294 THE BUTCHER MUST BE KING. wrinkles in his rich coat! He only shot your sons dead, he only tore and mangled the good flesh to which you gave life and which you loved'! Worship him! Pay him! Hang his picture in the room with your departed-the murderer and the murdered! Do not hang him, rather kiss and lick his cear feet who has cursed you and yours to humor his darling Hanna. I swear this man is a troll, encased in magic and triumphant mystery, proof against Right, fortressed against Justice, supereminent ruler of a nation of dying hearts. For knowingly, designingly, unshrinkingly, unfeelingly, like a stonesouled hired man of the Devil of Death, he got this war up, and corpsed and coffined and expressed universeward these soldier Americans. Digest as you can the following terrible words of General C. McC. Reeve:* i. Why These Cargoes of McKinley Coffins. "Conciliatory methods would have prevented the war. Now, we all agree to the proposition that the insurrection must be suppressed (?), but in the beginning a conciliatory course was not adopted. General Otis's unfortunate proclamation of January 4 rendered conciliation almost impossible. He adopted the policy of ignoring the natives, of treating them as half-civilized savages. No indication was given to the Filipinos as to the future intentions of the Government. In August, September and October immediately following the capture of Manila, the Filipinos kept inquiring what we were going to do, and our authorities replied, 'We cannot tell until the Paris Commission gets through.' The Filipinos would ask, ' What will you do if you acquire the islands?' And still no hint was given to them by General Otis until it was too late. He ignored them completely. At every step of the peace negotiations he stipulated that nothing should be considered until the Filipinos laid down their arms. Herein is where the natives mistrusted the Americans. The Filipinos had many lessons from Spain in the folly of laying down arms. They were not able to comprehend the difference between Spanish and American promises." 2. Are the Filipinos Children and Fools? "When I was appointed chief of police of a city of 350,000 inhabitants I deemed it wise to ascertain as soon as possible something definite and to the point regarding the character, traits, disposition and *General Reeve 'sailed from San Francisco June 27, I898, as colonel commanding the Thirteenth Minnesota Volunteers, and was subsequently promoted to the rank of brigadier general for meritorious conduct in action. Shortly after the occupation ot Manila by the American troops he was assigned to duty as chief of police.' Being in San Francisco, he was interviewed by The Call, Sept. 14, '99. THE BUTCHER MUST BE KING. 295 intelligence of the native population. Accordingly I sought the counsel of the leading English, Scotch and German merchants. They told me that the Filipinos were intelligent, industrious, peaceable and fond of home life. Personal investigation convinced me that the natives were engaged in all branches of industry. In the professions of law and medicine were many of the natives. "The best dentist in Luzon was an officer in Aguinaldo's army. In the field of mechanical and railway pursuits the Filipinos were active and promising. I was surprised to ascertain that the diffusion of knowledge was general. The percentage of natives able to read and write was large. The enrollment of students in the San Tomas and Dominican universities and the attention paid to such branches of knowledge as law, medicine, liberal arts and civil engineering excited my surprise. Five thousand students were enrolled at the Dominican University. I mention these facts to dispel the impression that the Filipinos are ignorant and unlettered savages. Throughout the provinces in the island of Luzon good common schools and high schools are maintained, the teachers being native priests " 3. Admiral Dewey's Opinion of Their Power of SelfGovernment and of the War. "Admiral Dewey entertains a high opinion of the industry and intelligence of the natives. He employed many of them at Cavite Arsenal and spoke highly of them. The natives expressed great admiration for the admiral. He holds to the opinion that the Filipinos are capable of self-government, and in my judgment he firmly believes that the war could have been honorably avoided by an enlightened policy of conciliation in dealing with the natives. The Filipinos are much better fitted for independence and self-government than are the Cubans. It is my understanding that Admiral Dewey has on several occasions stated that the Filipinos were capable of self-government and that a wise policy of conciliation would have averted the war against the natives." 4. The Feeling of the Natives Toward Americans. "The disposition of the natives was that of extreme friendship toward Americans. In the city of Manila the Filipinos, especially those who were wealthy, were anxious to remove the impression that they were ignorant of the requirements of modern life and the usages of civilization. They readily extended the hospitality of their homes to American officers of the military and civil service." 5. Brewing the War. 'Did General E. S. Otis object to the interchange of social amenities?' "There was no official objection, but it was well understood at headquarters that these social visits excited the displeasure of General Otis. One incident I particularly recall. General Garcia, though an officer of Aguinaldo's army, invited me to a fiesta at Caloocan. Quite a number of officers accepted the invitation, among them Colonel Frost of the South Dakotas. We were entertained most hospitably THE BUTCHER MUST BE KING. The after dinner speeches evidenced many sentiments of friendship. A full account of the function was published in the Manila newspapers. The topic was discussed at headquarters and the officers who attended were not commended. Thereafter it was chilly for those who exchanged social greetings with the Filipinos." 6. The Trumped-Up Pretext That the Natives Would Pillage and Slaughter. Regarding the apprehension that the natives were bent on pillage, riot and murder in Manila, General Reeve said there never was the slightest danger in that direction. "There were five thousand insurgents in the city at the time of the American occupation. On the Calle Real they had as many posts as the Americans had and not an act of rioting or pillage was reported. Another example of their good behavior in this respect was given at Iloilo. The natives had possession of the town before the Americans went there and their first act was to send in a force of 500 men to protect the city. The protection was ample. There was no destruction of property until they executed the threat to destroy in the event of Americans landing to take possession." 7. Was It Aguinaldo, or the People, Who Wanted Absolute Independence? "While Aguinaldo was seeking to obtain from General Otis some outline of the future policy of the United States, the war party in the Cabinet, headed by General Luna, was gaining strength daily. Instead of Aguinaldo controlling those who demanded absolute independence, the parties making the demand succeeded in getting him under control." The history of the war is compressed in these piercing sentences. If they are lies let Butcher McKinley cashier and court-martial Reeve. If not, let the nation cashier and court-martial McKinley. The poet sings: "There is a Something sacred and sublime Moving behind the worlds, beyond our ken, Weighing the stars, weighing the deeds of men. Take heart, O soul of sorrow, and be strong! There is one greater than the whole world's wrong. No truth so low but He will give it crown; No wrong so high but He will hurl it down. O men that forge the fetter, it is vain: There is a Still Hand stronger than your chain. 'Tis no avail to bargain, sneer, and nod, And shrug the shoulder for reply to God." * *Edwin Markham, poem "Dreyfus." THE BUTCHER MUST BE KING. 297 Tush and fiddlesticks! Gazzling cozoloon! How long, how long? We've heard about this sacred Something and sublime, but little good did It ever do until too late! too late! Dreyfus a wreck and France a wreck, then It steps down (per schedule), turns around, and steps out, and all things circle as before to another wrecked being and another wrecked State! Let Him or It stay out, It rectifies nothing. Our Butcher wrecks two worlds — who weighs hlil.? This sacred Something stats behind the world, beyond our ken. It's just as well, O soul of sorrow, He never yet did aught but furnish muses for poets and amusements for the thoughtful. A Still Hand, forever still! Stronger than your chain-but not stronger than Its chain, which It never breaks! One greater than the whole world's wrong-in books. Ravishingly hopeful seashore sentiments, where the surges of the sweet deep drown the beating waves of earth's unintermitting damnation storms! No wrong so high but He will hurl it down, when it has submerged all, and spent its force, and receded to return again with fresh and indefatigable destruction! And if you question this, read on the Filipino page of our history, written with fountained bayonets in blood, of McKinley's success, inviting General Reeve to direct you to the Something sacred and sullime as you move on. We now follow those Philippine events with a guide book. General Reeve is our interpreter. While citizens and mothers kiss McKinley's gouty knees and the dust of his feet and bow before his long list of their dead, we know the hand that struck them, and why. Come, let us follow the drums and the buzzards. The Butcher must be King. CHAPTER XV. The Dignity of the Flag. 1. Flags and Business Signs. I have a word to say about the 'dignity of the flag.' Said Major Gandenstone a few pages back, "We must hold the islands for the sake of the dignity of our flag, if nothing more." We have taken hold of the islands, they say, it is undignified to let go of them. Calmly and candidly this is the doctrine of fools. Apply it in any other walk of life and you will see that only a fool would say it or follow it. We have taken hold of a redhot iron, it is undignified to let go-therefore we burn our hands off. Even imperialists would perceive that the act of a fool. We have raised our shotgun to blaze at a deer, as we suppose, but just in time we see that it is a grizzly bear, very likely to eat us alive unless we rescind our ultimatumr: but it is dishonorable to turn back, undignified, so we shoot and perish. We have involved ourselves in a business venture which will cost us more than we shall make, may ruin us, but a business man must never correct a mistake, he must never acknowledge that he has made one, he must never turn back, it would be undignified, would reflect dishonor on his name. What screaming comedy this sulky doctrine is when taken in any connection but the American flag, and the only way for a man to uphold its honor is to turn immortal fool! About flags and nations cluster a number of Middle Age fads of chivalry, not only puerile but famously silly to all but stuffy crania, representing no higher FLAGS AND BUSINESS SIGNS. 299 walk of sense and insight than personal duels to heal rumpled honor. Child-men with child minds love to splash and swim in this dead sea of ancient antinomic ideas, but in all personal, practical, domestic and national affairs, the man of brains prefers to bathe in clean water. But just step out into international affairs and crowds of wise men drop to the dueling level and dive into sewers. If unwittingly they have taken hold of a redhot country they must hold on and burn the nation's hand off for the honor of the flag; they must prove themselves crescendo fools lest somebody might think they were fools. Having made a miscalculation in business they must go right on and take the gathering consequences instead of correcting their calculation and folly, lest some one might think they had not nerve to lose half a fortune. Now any idiot can lose a whole fortune any day if he has it, and he merely proves that he is an idiot by losing it, when he does not need to. All intelligent operations of men consist in closely watching for mistakes and correcting them as soon as made, in detecting missteps and retracing them. It is the.blockhead and the blockhead only who perseveres in blunders. For beginners in thinking on this theme let us illustrate by arithmetic. Let us suppose that the nation has an example to solve and much depends on getting it right. At almost the start a mistake is made in a figure: but for the dignity of the flag we must maintain that mistake and go on to the end piling mistake on mistake till we reach the climax of the sum and have a colossal structure of blunders. Our national honor demands it. If the laws of arithmetic interfere with the honor of the flag, arithmetic be damned; if the laws of common sense call for correction. of errors, down with common sense; if you have made a thousandth part of a fool of yourself by confusing a figure in your calculations, make ten thousand fools of yourself by not admitting it-that is the essence of flag honor and dignity. 300 FLAGS AND BUSINESS SIGNS. But this is mere Middle Age callowness, not twentieth century experience and wisdom. The honor of a nation consists in solving its problems right, not in defying man and God by persisting in wrong if you have started wrong. The keen man learns, the cattle brand of the fool is that he never learns. The essential teaching of the whole Bible is, Repent; if you have sinned, repent, do better; don't go on adding sin to sin, because you have sinned once; if you have been foolish and made a. mistake, repent, correct your mistake. Mad bulls having mistaken a howling abyss for a limpid stream rush over and die, but men stop and turn back. Men do, but the dignity theory of nations is that they must not, it is humiliating. \Ve must probe this crustacean theory, for surely there is a mine of laughter in it soanewhere. It is not deep hidden-the honor of nations consists in being infallible. as infallible as the Pope, as Fate, as the Almighty, as the Newspaper. A nation can't make a nistake, can't be in the wrong-that is the essence of the doctrine of the impeccable flag. It is a direct descendant, I suppose, of the bro'ad-grinned monarchical joke with which. nations cut their throats only a little while ago, that kings can do no wrong. It is a dogma which causes some inconvenience, as for instance; when two equally powerful nations assert dead opposites. They are both inflallible. both absolutely right, and of course can neither back down nor budge back. Now the Middle Agers invented a way of settling the dispute without destroying the infallibility of either, tley had the nations fight and destroy each other, and the doctrine came out of the war serene and unharmed, as unfallible and impeccant as ever. They preserved the doctrine by destroying the nations; they destroyed the flags but the dignity of them remained floating. No one could see it, but everyone could remember it. This satisfied the sense of fitness of the Middle Agers, who, when they were not saving their dignity FLAGS AND BUSINESS SIGNS. 301 by suiciding the nations, were discussing the tangible problems how many angels could sport on the point of a needle, how many owls could sit on the same spot, and how many directions a man in Paradise could walk in at the same time. We perhaps think the Middle Agers were fools but they were not; they were just-merged barbarians, they had just broken their shell. The full-grown bird who copies the foolish chick is the fool, and that is ourselves. Though it destroys the life, strength, property, happiness of millions, though it harms us and harms our enemies. though it is murder and suicide, we kneel to that senile old maxim of Bedlam, that having planted the flag- somewhere we cannot pull it up. But now I propose to show that it is not the American people who really feel this way at all, or care a rush about the Philippine hot-iron, that they do not hold this lrunken sentiment about the flag, but on this point as on the others we have reviewed, that it is certain hyper-selfish interested parties who are shrieking to the people that the whole country's good is balanced on the American flag-pole in that roasted parcel of Philippine slime. The nation went out there under a total misconception, guided by an ignorance unbelievable. I will give you ample proof of that. May I5th, 1898, McKinleN received a dispatch from Dewey saying, "To retain possession and thus control the Philippines would require, in my best judgment, a well-equipped force of 5000 men." Our giant-wise guide Dewey is seen from this to have known a little less of the problem he was guiding us in than a six months' colt. Miles and magician Merritt put the number at from I2,000 to 15,000, while in the same breath Merritt was stating that "the work to be done consists of conquering a territory 7000 miles from oui base, defendled by a regularly-trained and acclimated army of from o1,000 to 25,000 men, and inhabited by 302 FLAGS AND BUSINESS SIGNS. I4,ooo,ooo of people, the majority of whom will regard us with the intense hatred born of race and religion." He said that 14,400 men would be enough-one thousand Americans for each million Filipinos. Shrewd fellows these! The Washington cushion-warriors decided to raise the estimate of necessity to 20,000, thinking this gloriously ample. After hostilities broke out more men were sent, and for a campaign the war has dragged on a total fizzle in result. Events having demonstrated that the authorities who created this war were unconditional ignoramuses, it is time to ask again the question, If the people had known what possession and conquest of the Philippines involved, would they have tolerated the crime? If not, was it anything but a gross error in the national sum in arithmetic which a common sense nation would at once correct? We expected possession of the islands to cost us practically no lives, and therefore the decoy-duck president escaped without a throttling in the first steps leading to their subjugation; now, when we find the original reckoning all false and many thousand souls already sacrificed to the blunderer with infinite death-promise, shall we go on? All human progress has been learning flexibility, learning not to make a great ass of yourself because you happen to have made a little ass of yourself, learning not to be inflexible in folly. Is it possible that the greatest republic ever achieved has not learned this supreme lesson? We must remember that the leaders nagging us on now are the same who nagged us then, that they know not a wrack more of the demands of the future than they knew then; they were jays then and they are jays now; to follow them on in the darkness is to relinquish memory and reason. For aught they know it may require 200,ooo00-500,000, soldiers, just to beat the Tagal guerillas in their pestiferous groves of Hades. Neither the presi FLAGS AND BUSINESS SIGNS. 303 dent, Dewey, Otis, nor any one knows-they can fib and fable in poetic cablegrams but so can Jack Coon and Thomas Moon back in Canton, Ohio, or Griggs Corners. It's all Homeric myth like Palladium Dewey's celebrated 5( oo to hold down 14,000,000. Likewise to be vigorously remembered is this: that if Aguinaldo surrenders tomorrow, if he surrenders before these words are in print, the situation will not radically change. For the dragon teeth we have sown will bite for many a long day to come. "Hope's clad in April greenTrommelommelom, trommelommelom, Tender its vernal sheenTrommelommelom, trommelommelom," sang Cousin Hlans 'at the pitch of his voice, swinging his stick and snapping his fingers, in an ecstatic mood of amorous bliss;'* and looking back over the year gone we see the Government of this great people swinging its stick and snapping its fingers and singing at the pitch of its voice Trommelommelonm, trommelommelom, in an ecstatic mood of amorous bliss over the great feats it is going to perform in the Philippines without knowing anything about them and by simply feeling ecstacy. But war upon the unoffending is not a merry-go-round, and the millions whom we have insulted hate and will hate us, and with their mighty climate vengeance is theirs. When the war ends we shall have to keep it ended, incessantly pouring into the sieve of death and disablement thousands of fresh soldiers annually. Let this, I say, be remembered vigorously, for when the war is done it is not (lone, nor will be until polluted murder and pillage and burning homes are erased by time from the hearts of this brave and noble race. We venture to place that lethe some time in the twenty-second century. *Kielland's Tales of Two Countries. 304 DE NEGRIER DYER. 2. De Negrier Dyer. But now we are awake to the realities, and what is it still drives us on, why do we persist in the destroying obstinacy of biting a nail in two with glass teeth? It is the dignity of the flag. Somebody is telling us to immolate a hundred thousand farmers' sons a year if need is, or the nation's honor will be sullied; he tells us that the mistake we made in attempting the job on the ground that it would kill no farmers' sons, commits our livid honor to killing countless hosts of them. Waive his reasoning and look at him. He dashes out in his true colors under the scalding criticism of the newly disclosed facts. Give ear to the language of those who pretend to be the defenders of the dignity of the flag. The secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League wrote to Capt. N. Mayo Dyer of the Baltimore charging that the army and navy are inculcating a martial spirit which threatens civil liberty. Capt. Dyer proves that they are not by the following reply: The Anti-Imperialist Secretary "ougtht to be denoulcnccd as a traitor to his cotun1try for ewritilng such a letter. Anllyotn who wTill deliberately oppose and1 try to prevent the wcork of the arm1y and,nazvy of his country is as lowc, int mzy estilmation, as though hhe were to deliberately take np armls against his countrzy, and shoull be takenl in hand (t onCC." We thank God that if our military porcupines feel this way they say it. To prison with anyone who talks against the army doings now, whatever the doings are! To the gallows with him if he says too much. The army is infallible. Rub your eyes and read about Dreyfus and the spotlessly, immaculately infallible French army of Eden. Our officers are using the very words of its officers. Captain Dyer says this: You are a traitor if you do not ignore all the loathsome revelations that have lately conne to you from the Philippines, the scoundrelism and DE NEGRIER DYER. 305 fraudl which the vampire army commanders and parasite )residenlt have vented on the nation nust all le overlooked, and you must gaily continue sending your friends to death, for no purpose, for no end, for no goodl-because upon a misunderstanding you began to do it, and the president says keep on! The new Declaration of the American people then must he, Do what the p)resident says, without a question, without a murmur, \-ithout even the insult to him of thinking about it, or you are a traitor. This is the American Army and Navy Declaration of Independence of the American people. Thanks, Dyer. no man ever helped liberty more than you have, for your words will damn the army and navy with the over\whelming American millions who still love liberty and will have it though all the batteries of hell stand between. A little affair happened in France which may be set alongside of Dyer's outbreak as a companion piece. General De Negrier was until July 25 a nmember of the Supreme Council of War of France. Among his duties was that of inspector of four army corps. It appears that in the course of a recent tour of inspection he addressed to the commanders of corps a verbal communication violently censuring the government for its failure to defend the army, and declaring that if the government refused to interfere, they themselves must act in self-defense. Gen. De Negrier invited the commanders to transmit the communication to all generals and officers.* Now this is a practical paraphrase of Naval Capt. Dyer's words. Whoever does not look at the American army and navy as we officers do, and sheepishly give up his nose for us to lead hiim y, ought to be denounced as traitor. De Negrier says that if the government of France fails to "defend the army" and "interfere" against those who disapprove and criticise any course it is pleased to take, "they themselves" ---the army, the generals"must act in self-defense." Dyer says, "Any one who ~,ill deliberately oppose and try to prevent the work of the army and navy of his country is as low in my estima*Paris Cable, Associated Press. 306 DE NEGRIER DYER. tion as though he were to, deliberately take up arms against his country, and shlould be taken in hand at once." Ossa on Pelion! Ever new insolence piled on insolence by these bursting military bullfrogs! Ever more daring insults and infringements on our rights of speech and act! And the American people supine, submissive, silent, cowardly. Even France can teach the skulking Americans a little. What response did the traitor De Negrier get for his incendiary instigation? 'General De Gallifet, Minister of War, hearing what Gen. De Negrier had done, instituted an inquiry and then summoned him to Paris and taxed him with the affair, which De Negrier wtas unable to deny.' A decree was then issued ordering his degradation, and disgracing him from the Supreme Council of War. The traitor Dyer ought to be spankingly disgraced. It has gone too far when an army or navy upstart can talk that way to the free American race. Words like those are a nest egg for yet worse words and for actions. Break such an egg as soon as it is laid and tear up the nest if you do not want a brood of devils hatched hereafter. Bring this mouthy knave to civil judgment, strip off his anchor-straps, and thereby teach his kind that they are to hearken obediently to the American people, not to rule and insult them. "A Jesuit, preaching before Louis XV., declared that blood alone could extinguish heresies, and it would be well to spill a few drops at once, in order to avoid the flowing of streams in the future." That is the position of De Negrier, Dyer and his fellow bravos toward their masters and paymasters, the sovereign people. Throttle those who are already crying out agains the damnable crimes of the Administration and Army, gag them, imprison them, spill a few drops of their bloold, spill it all, and thereby awe the nation at large and freeze the rage that is beginning to swell. A hundred and forty-six years ago that might have answered in France, but it will not go DE NEGRIER DYER. 307 down in the United States of America now. Rather will these Military Snarlers who advocate it go down, a monument to posterity of one of the last attempts of the hateful military class to seize royal powers over a free people. If not, if Americans fail to rise to this crisis and crush the budding aspirations of the army and navy out, what will come? France will be repeated here. The story well authenticated came out, of 'an atrocious plot to cause the assassination of Dreyfus by means of a simulated attempt at midnight rescue, when the prisoner awoke confronted by a jailer holding a loaded revolver within half an inch of his temple. This narrative, which is confirmed by Mathieu Dreyfus, is coupled with the revelation of the refined torture inflicted by forged dispatches presented tc Dreyfus falsely accusing his wife of dishonor, and has stirred the passion of the masses to a tremendous pitch.' This thrice distilled fiendishness emanated from the French Cabinet, of which Meline, Lebon and Gen. Mercier were members, and was perpetrated to maintain the dignity of the army and preserve it from the cavil of civilians. It is greatly important for Americans, who are consenting to be loaded with the annihilating incubus of an army, to saturate their minds with this pungent Dreyfus affair. The army paraded itself as the most honorable institution of France, as ours does; prattled with the apparent innocence of a newly feathered angel of the honor and dignity of the flag, as ours does. O ye gods, what good men these generals and colonels, the fellows of the General Staff and Cabinet Ministers of France were! Washed in the blood of Dreyfus they were cleaner than the children of Israel after sacrificing fifty thousand sheep; stainless, holy, honorable, like our generals and McKinley, their one supernal motive their country's good. And what was this college of military saints who could not sin doing? These highest generals and ministers of France 308 DE NEGRIER DYER. were lying, perjuring themselves, inventing and forging false accusations of a brother officer-to keep the comomnon p1eople of France respectful to the army and their miscreant selves. It is altogether one of the blackest things in history; it is nearly as infamous as our butcherous treachery to the Philippines. You cannot readily gain a conception of this infamy, it is so foul and limitless. But if -vu can imagine Jesus during his years of preaching virtue, conducting clandestinely machinations to become rhe Emperor of Rome, and forging clocuments, blackening innocent men's characters, lying about the purity of their wives, and ordering plots for their secret assassinati-on. you can comprehend the character and deeds of the leaders of the French army. And if Jesus, being detected and brought to trial for his secret crimes, had replied to the judges that it was perfectly right for him to do all that le did, because its object was to establisl the kingdom of God on earth, we should have the perfect counterpart of what these diabolic French generals said-they lied and perjured, they blackened others and concocted assassination to establish the kingdom of the French army on earth, that sweet smelling necessary institution for France. This is what the Dyers of our navy and army will do here one of these days if their acorn insolence goes unpunished, when the time comes that the honor of their sacred instrument requires perjury, false imprisonment, defamation and assassination. Remember, it was the highest military men of France-Gen. Mercier was Minister ot \Var-not the underlings alone, who engineered this ldunghill conspiracy. Every man engaged in it was of that bestial vile fraternity of professional assassins of earlier ages -only a hundred or two years earlier after all — who were ever ready to put the knife into the prisoner of state whose life was inconvenient to the reigning devil; and these "fleshed villains, bloody (logs" are the loftiest THE PEACE COMMISSION'S DEATH-RATTLE. 309 military lights of France. Let us cut (lown this upas tree hefore it g-rows; let us (lestroy this nest of reptiles in their earliest sl)awning (lays; else ve shall be their hellpless victims later. 6. The Peace Commission's Death - IRattle. The (lying gaSp and final throat rattle of the bru-nmnagem Peace-Commnission was heard in September. That satyr was then called down and hack to its m-iaker. Schurnian had sinik into. his m-aker's pot-house cymbals anl advocate. Fie versiolned himself out in Five Articles, and pastel theni cIn the lpress. "Fifth-The United States having assumed, by a treaty -)f peace xvith Spain, solvereignty over the Archipelago, lbecame responsible for the maintenance of peace (lud order, the adm-inistration of justice, the secutrity of life Canid property among all the tribes of the archipelago. This is an obligation which intelligent Filipinos, not less than foreign nations exlect us to fulfill. Nor Tci/i the natloioal honlor periit its to tur ) b1ack. in taking the Philippine Islands, cW'C allnne. d rcSpollsibilzIltv. The fact that the responsibility is heavier than most peolle sipposed it wooulll he is no excuse for failure to dhischarge it. I rcpeat that the -Philippine questlons is esseniallyhedI /a quecstionl of 7national honor (71(1 obhligaTioll." Little boy, you have spoken the oration wvritten for you by your maker wvell, now- say yonr owin. "I have great confidence in the people of the Philippine Islands," he added, " and iimluch sympathy for their aspirations. 'A race should be jutdged hy its hest products and an educated Filipino of whatever tribe, and each city has its educated men, wvill bear comparison with an educated man of any race... "Nevertheless, consilering the marked intellectual capacity of the Filipinos and their admirable (lomestic and personal virtues, imagination cannot easily set the limits 310 THE PEACE COMMISSION'S DEATH-RATTLE. to their progressive achievements under the inspiration of American civilization and, while Amercan sovereignty... "-he here takes up his president's ditty and (lies away in the opium fumes of that potentate's Boston Banquet lucubration. Schurman has done his work, put tombstones at his moral head and feet, and send him back to the silence and darkness of Ithaca, there to turn to dust amid the phosphorous enlightenment of university art and science and literature, and the reveling suitors for decorative promotion. From his Ithacan sepulcher he speaks through a correspondent of the N. Y. World and sheds upon the continent a noble delineation of the Nefarious American Cur. You are to study the picture and guess who and how many the cur is. "Your correspondent is able to say on authority that the Schurman Peace Commission offered every possible inducement short of absolute self-government to Aguinaldo and his followers. Aguinaldo was promised as the price for the restoration of peace in the Tagalos tribe a bonus of m1ore than $5000 a year while the Tagalos remailned peaceful. He was told that he could choose men from his tribe for the minor municipal offices. The commission went so far as to promise Aguinaldo the moral support of the United States government if such were needed to make his leadership of the Tagalos thoroughly secure. With all these inducements, tempting as they mtist have been, A4guinaldo, as the recognized'head of the insurgent movement, declined to yileld. He insisted upon immediate self-government, and as his insistence was so firm as to make an agreement impossible, the American commissioners ceased negotiations."-Ass'd Press, Sept. I6, '99. The American curs offered Aguinaldo anything except everything if he would sell out-absolute independence being the everything he has fought for. They could not THE PEACE COMMISSION'S DEATH-RATTLE. 3I1 bu y lhilm with gold. Our smirched pups strove like the Devil with Jesus to make him sell out for earth and power and cash, and he would not. Who was the higher, the more moral, the more civilized-Aguinaldo, or Devil SchurmanD-Denby-Otis-McKinley. Put away all contempt for Aguinaldo after that, and turn it upon the Administration cess-shop. As an amendment to the propositon that the U. S. shall govern the Tagals for upliftment and civilization I move that the Tagals assume sovereignty over America to teach, civilize, christianize and uplift us from the wallow of bribing and larceny. Apropos of Aguinaldo's rejection of McWashington's bribe, the Administration Daily Drooler says: The recall of these commissioners by the President indicates that he is determined to cease attempting to deal with the Tagalo rebels in any other way than by the strong arm of the military power, until they have been brought to a realizing sense of their position, relative to that of the United States, in the government of the islands. The efforts at conciliation have not met with much success. Our purposes have been misunderstood, our generous offers have been spurned, our confidence has been met with distrust, and in innumerable ways it has been made apparent that the Tagal rebels, in their present frame of mind, are to be reached only by the argument of force. Such being the situation, it is well that the Peace Commissioners have been withdrawn, and that fresh troops and munitions of war are going forward to the Philippines. If we must, as it seems, employ the "mailed fist" in the solution of this problem, we should do the work so thoroughly that it will not be necessary to do it a second time. It seems necessary to whip the rebels into submission, since they will not listen to reason. Perhaps after their resistance has been broken down all along the line. they will be ready to accept the generous terms offered by the United States, which now, in their blindness and bigotry, they refuse. Yes, after Aguinaldo and all their good and honest men are killed by the U. S. some leader patterned on American mud will accept the generous terms of $5000 ayear offered by the United States! These Filipino ducks do not understand about civilization yet; they are so blind and bigoted that they refuse bribes. American blood and billingsgate will teach them that civilization can't be carried on a day on that principle. But death and American hell now and American heaven later will show 312 GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. them not to spurn our generous offers. Aguinaldo, haven't you learned yet that there is not a place in all the Universe for an honest man? 3. Generals and Statesmen Common Thieves. The world is learning a lesson in these days out of which the future will he shaped. It is that the majority of Statesmen and Generals are just mere common thieves, just ordinary jail-dodging pickpockets. The thieves of France, her men of nuck, her Generals, convicted Dreyfus; France is prostrate in a brothel of thieves. Oh well, France is Latin, we are Anglo-Saxon. We'll look at England then, jewel of the deep, and deep jewel. England proclaims sovereignty over the South African Boers. It is a plan to steal South African wealth for British exploitation, nothing else. There are fabulously rich mines there, Cecil Rhodes and other English cut-throats want English Government supremacy so that they may squeeze these mines dry as a lemon, without Boer check. Therefore the British government orders the Boers to come down or be fought. What is this? Why, England is another France, prostrate in a brothel of thieves. English rulers and French Generals are sparks from the same bloody blade. All their ruling is for cash in pocket. The fellows live in mire, they are accursed blood-stained assassins, Salisbury, Chamberlain, Mercier, Roget, Jouaust, Queen Victoria, du Paty de Clam, an accursed crew of bloodthirsty murderers-for cold cash. Their motive is jewels and gold, power to loot and rob. It will not be thought that Elwell Otis-Bottom and his aids, and the Washington Anti-Filipino Statesmen, are likewise mere Latin-English sneak-thieves. But truth is, most of them are just this stamp of vermin, Statesmen Lice fastened and fatting in the Filipino hair, General Chigres fast to the Filipino flesh, their louse-food-stolen GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. 313 gold. Who tells this? The soldiers who fought under command of these lice. They are now citizens once more, released from the cowering fear of the court-martial bullet. The things they swear may make lice wish they had wings to fly to the protection of the French army or the British cowboy Cabinet dagger-girt and boots full of six-shooters. Our steal-dollar generals are not only smirched, but painted black all over and dyed black to the core of their sordid livers and sponging hearts. These are the men-shall we call them men or crack-tills?-bvy whom we shall be ruled under imperialism. A THIRD RND ROUND RBIN. The First Colorado Regiment, returlned, is composed of genuine patriots, who are taking steps to save this country from standing army rats and officer lice. The Denver Evening Post of September 14 published a statement signed by twenty-four of these privates and "many others," in which the following declarations are made: The history of the Colorado regiment, from start to finish, is a record of robbery and neglect. The conduct of a majority of the officers has been such that to have worn the straps in the regiment is cousidered a discredit by fully 75 per cent. of the enlisted men. Upon the arrival of the regiment in San Francisco on the outward journey, the first two meals consisted of raw tomatoes and pork. Had it not been for the boundless generosity of the people of San Francisco, the regiment would have suffered from hunger then, as it did on the ocean. In the very beginning the rations were insufficient. On board the transport China was installed a man named Tarsney (a former adjutant general of Colorado) as a free passenger, with a stock of goods for sale as "sutler." The ship had hardly cleared the bay of San Francisco when the stuff known as canned beef was dished out to us. This mess of semi-putrid and sickening offal, together with hard tack, constituted the bulk of our rations from San Francisco to Manila. A day or two of this and the men were forced to purchase from Tarsney his goods at enormously increased prices. Their little stock of cash was extorted from them in this way. The Red Cross Society put on board the China and donated to the soldiers a large amount of goods. General Hale placed himself on record in a San Francisco paper to the effect that the enlisted men each had received his proportion of these goods. Every private in the regiment knows that such was not the case. These Red Cross goods, made most necessary to the men by the shortage and vile char 314 GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. acter of the rations, were deliberately appropriated and, with bold effrontery, sold to the men at enormous prices. Now pass up to the cablegram sent by over ioco men of the regiment to Colorado, asking for relief. The situation had become absolutely intolerable. We were packed in foul and unhealthful barracks like a lot of wild animals. Seventeen per cent. of the men were sick. Magotty pork, sugar and rice, and those twin abominations, desiccated potatoes and onions, were issued instead of fresh vegetables. There was all at once a unanimous revolt in the regiment and the cablegram was sent. The whole regiment indorsed it at first, but subsequently, through treachery, two companies were induced to withdraw from the movement. After sending this cablegram to Washington the men received the bulk of the rations belonging to them and which their officers had before stolen. What a splendid set of maggots to teach self-government to the Filipinos these officers were! The men did not complain at first, 'but after two months in Manila the food issues became absolutely damnable and the sickness was over 17 per cent in the regiment. Then the consideration that plenty of good food could be secured from China and Australia, and the belief that they were being robbed to death, induced them to protest with emphasis and unanimity.' The soldiers charge that 'Colonel McCoy pretended to grant permission that the cablegram be sent and then went to Major-General Otis and requested that it be not sent. Colonel McCoy also had a great deal of trouble diers. General Hale, Colonel McCoy and other officers of the regiment asserted that Dr. Beere was instrumental in having the now famous cablegram sent. The soldiers declare that this statement is absolutely false. They say:' It remains a deplorable fact that not one officer had the manhood or decency to defend this woman from Colorado who came to succor the soldiers. On the contrary, they have made the most despicable campaign against a woman which the army records can show-all because Dr. Beere defended the right of the private soldier to decent treatment when sick. 'It seems that there was a Calcutta Black Hole at Manila-the guard house, in which the offenders of the regiment were incarcerated. It consisted of two rooms, ag GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. 315 gregating in ground dimensions I6x32, with a low ceiling and situated on the ground floor, a part of a Manila house that no Filipino will sleep in because of the deadly fevers. This guard house had one small window and one door, which, with the thermometer at Ioo degrees, was kept closed by Colonel McCoy's order. Private McDowell got drunk on canteen whiskey, purchased on credit, and was arrested. There were twenty-two other prisoners in the pen, and McDowell, just out of the hospital, and in a bad condition from his spree, was unable to get any medicine. So he cut his throat and died, saying: "I can't stand this any longer.' ' There is blood on the canteen profits and on its promoters.. In view of the fact that the canteen books and records were burned by McCoy's orders before leaving Manila, it is perhaps useless to endeavor to get at the truth as to the canteen profits. The encouragement for gambling by the officers was another feature of their code of military ethics. The common spectacle of gambling between the officers and certain privates was noticeable about pay day time, and the equality between them was beautiful to contemplate until the private's money was gone. The passage home had happy events: By McCoy's orders the regular hospital accommodations on the ship were turned over to the hospital corps itself, and the sick were all packed in the forward hatch in one of the foulest and noisiest places in the ship. Here, over a lot of rotting vegetables and pork, lay Ioo men, suffering with all manner of complaints. It is a noble career we have entered on. To liberalize savages we shall make a war to destroy their liberty, for the purpose of filling the pockets of officer-thieves. What next! Something uncensored about Boss Tweed Otis and his polluted military pals. It is a letter also in the Denver Post of September 14, written and signed by N. E. Guyot, 'late private, Company G, First regiment, Colorado Volunteers, who, while at Manila, was detailed for special duty in the office of the auditor of public accounts.' *The condensations of parts of the round robin here quoted in large type are from the Los Angeles Herald; the quotations in small type are the exact words ot the soldiers as transcribed by the Herald. 316 GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. During October, November and December of I898 all the vouchers covering disbursements in every department in Manila passed through my hands, and now that I am once more afree citizen of the United States I can say that the administration of General Otis is one of the most tyrannical and rascally military governments that has disgraced the Orient since that of Lord Hastings. An examination of the receipted vouchers now in Washington by any honest accountants or auditors in the United States would result in their recommending that a number of generals, colonels and captains in Manila be at once arrested for malfeasance in office, tried and sentenced to the penitentiary. Extortion and robbery prevail. The chief commissary purchased at prices from ioo to 200 per cent. higher than retail prices enormous amounts of stores for the Spanish prisoners in the hospital and on parole. Robbery in one bill would aggregate sometimes nearly $1ooo. Vast quantities of high class wines, groceries, etc., were bought for the Spanish hospitals, and no sick American ever saw such luxuries as were bought for the Spanish. By some peculiar jugglery tons of fresh beef on board a ship in the bay, ostensibly all the property of the United States, would be transferred to the ownership of Warner, Barnes & Co., repurchased by the chief commissary at an advanced price, and all this without the beef ever leaving the refrigerator ship. Purchases of flour at exorbitant prices were made, and the bills show the extortion. Four ounces per day was taken from each soldier's ration of fresh beef and inferior rice substituted. A big profit was made by selling the beef to the foreign firms and then double prices paid for the rice. In the department of Colonel Pope, quartermaster, barefaced robbery became so frequent and notorious that some courts-martial were actually begun and prosecuted up to a certain point, when they mysteriously stopped. I make a specific charge that these papers were hung up by General Otisfor the reason that in the attempt to court-martial a certain private for selling government horses and carriages to private parties, it wasfound that the prosecution of the private also involved the exposure of high officials. Collectors, armed with receipt books, make the rounds, collect the industrial tax from the natives, give them a receipt calling for half the amount actually paid, and thus assist in spreading the impression that all Americans are thieves. This was one of the chief grievances which encouraged the breaking out of hostilities. In many pay rolls, whether it be street, lights, scavenger or any other department, occur numerous duplications of names and hours of service. The conclusion of Mr. Guyot is this: The solution of the Filipino problem is this: Emancipate or exterminate the Filipinos. If the policy of expansion and extermination is to be followed logically, then let us have an end of the flying brigade and bill-posting tactics, and put into operation the more businesslike policy of wholesale massacre and starvation, such as an editorial in a San Francisco paper urged the other day. But it will take a "regular" army to do that kind of work. The volunteers will never do it. They can never be made in the future the instruments of combinations of cash against combinations of flesh and blood. The volunteers have been thinking, and I believe the results will be seen in I9oo.* *These charges were briefly referred to in Ch. XIV, Sec. 2. GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. 317 A few such apocalyptic visions of Thug-and-Thief Otis and' his fellow Bucks will convince Amnerica that the prime reason why military officers demand a standing army is that the regular soldiers would never get loose to 'peach' on their superiors. Let us by all means have a whole hundred thousand standing thugs like Otis and his scoundrels, without brain, heart, or conscience, and the military bosses can then steal and suborn and lie and murder by court-martial without fear of opposition or detection. Liberty is mounted on a flying-machine now. LOS ANGELES TESTIMONY. B. F. Tomlinson, a young resident of Los Angeles who saw Philippine service and was honorably discharged about two months ago, made the following statements to the L. A. Herald after the Colorado round robin appeared:. I firmly believe that the story is true, because my own experience was very similar. I do not believe that the statement was exaggerated in the least. There was fraud, robbery, extortion and harsh treatment all along the line.. The food was poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. The officers had fresh meat and vegetables, while the enlisted men were fed on embalmed beef and desiccated vegetables.... I came back on the Morgan City, which carried 447 officers and men, mostly sick and wounded. No provision was made to supply proper food to the invalids, and the medical attendance was insufficient. There were two doctors on board-Major Cardwell and another whose name I cannot now recall. They claimed to have visited all the sick and wounded daily during the homeward voyage, but I know there were some whom they did not see for two weeks....[At Manila the captain of this company] treated his men so badly that when he was killed in action some time after our arrival there was no manifestation of sorrow or regret from a single man in the company. That is a mighty hard thing to say, and I dislike very much to say it; but it is the truth, and the truth is what I am trying to tell you... T.he same system of robbery and extortion prevailed in our barracks of which the Colorado boys complained so bitterly. The officers would sell our regular rations, our fresh meat, sugar, coffee, etc., and buy rice for us instead. There was a pretence that the difference in cash secured by such an exchange went into the camp fund. If it did, the enlisted men never got the benefit of it. [When at the front things of this kind were common:] On one occasion we were crossing a frail bamboo bridge. When we were in the middle the commanding officer made us close up. The concentrated weight was too much, and down we went into the water. One of the boys, Otto H. Brakenwagon, had his eye gouged out by the 318 GENERALS AND STATESMEN COMMON THIEVES. broken end of a bamboo pole. The surgeon, whose name was Matthews, dressed the eyeless socket, and sent the boy to the hospital. The hospital surgeon kept him a few days and sent him back to the firing line, saying there were plenty of men there with only one eye. This is merely a sample of the way the boys were treated. Many of the sick and wounded, who should have been kept in the hospital, were sent back to the firing line. I will cite the case of Sergeant Benjamin Hielt, who was shot through one kidney and sent back; another, a boy named Philo, from Los Angeles, was shot in the knee, so that he had a stiff knee; he was sent back. Frank Devlin of Los Angeles was deafened by a shot from the Utah battery, but was forced to go back, although he could not hear at all.... We had no complaint to make of the necessary hardships; it was the cruelty, robbery and extortion that we kicked about. There were limes when I wished that I might be killed, to end my misery; and I can never bring myself to vote for any officer or official who had a hand in subjecting us to such cruel treatment." These are the phantasmal glories of Expansion bursting in our East. Why should not the scullion officers rob everything they can reach? They are sent out by scullion thieves at Washington to rob a nation, they are the agents of robbers, of course they will rob on a private scale as the Washington Statesmen-Lice rob on a frowsier scale, and the millionaire thieves of the world, topping over all, rob on a colossal scale of stupefying grandeur. CHAPTER XVI. A War to Enslave America. 1. Press -Censorship on a Jag. I have already brought much proof that there is a motive back of the assigned motive of the ratty administratiol tor this hell-found war. This cowardly reticence grMows from administration knowledge that the motive is inimical to the people, who, if they knew it would call the White House tough from his place and crush his expansion babble. The fact of a concealed motive is ground enough for calling time on this instrument of abomination and ordering him to quit. Now there is not only supposition but overwhelming fact to show that the president is pushing Philippine conquest and imperialism for some other cause than the polymorphous ones made public, and that he is not listening to the will of the people but strenuously seeking to wrench and mould it to a pre-established discord of his own. Why, on any other explanation, does he shudder to have the Philippine conditions published to the people? Answer this. If you cannot, it is binding proof that majesty has a private policy known by him to be adverse to the enlightened will of his countrymen. He dares not promulgate it for fear of the country's scorn and rejection. Hence he hides truth and drags the people on to inextricable entanglement in his plan, so that when they discover the truth they will think they cannot back out. No other interpretation can tally with his suppression. 320 PRESS-CENSORSHIP ON A JAG. The whole matter then turns on this: Is it fully established that he is suppressing facts? The proof of this is absolute. It is also certain that this suppression amounts to complete distortion, which has been constant and designed. Thus far we have referred only indirectly to the 'round robin' protest of the war correspondents in Manila against the censorship of their reports. Let us now examine its contents. It is signed by eleven correspondents. "We believe that from official dispatches made public in Washington, the people of the United States have not received a correct impression of the situation in the Philippines, but that these dispatches have presented an ultra-optimistic view that is not shared by the general officers in the field. We believe that the dispatches incorrectly represent the existing conditions among the Philippines in respect to dissension and demoralization resulting from the American campaign and to the brigand character of their army. "We believe the dispatches err in the declaration 'that the situation is well in hand,' and the assumption that the insurrection can be speedily ended without a greatly-increased force. We think the tenacity of the Filipino purpose has been underestimated, and that the statements are unfounded that volunteers are willing to engage in further service. "The censorship has compelled us to participate in this misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of facts on the plea, as Gen. Otis stated, 'that they would alarm the people at home,' or 'have the people of the United States by the ears.' "Specifications: Prohibition of hospital reports, suppression offull reports of field operations in the event of failure; numbers of heat prostrations in the field; systematic minimization of naval operations, and suppression of complete reports of the situation." The facts heretofore cited to show the president's suppression and falsification of news and establish his duplicity, were invincible, but this crowns them. Why all these presidential lies without a purpose? Merely the good of the people? Whose business is it to know the good of the people: the president's or king's, or the people's themselves? Is it that the war may go on despite the people? This is infamy and treason, a rabid usurpation of power never vested in any president and never to be there vested. We are getting at the heart of the matter. The president has resolved that the people PIESS-CENSORSHIP ON A JAG. 321 shall not settle this question of Philippine war, but tlat he will settle it himself, and he organizes a detailed, elaborate and prolonged system of lying to morphine the national mind while he steers the affairs of state to his goal. Wie have still further testimony of this, in a private letter to London from one of these war correspondents, sent June 17, and later published through England in this country: There seems to be no end of the war in sight. The censorship is constantly becoming more troublesome. Gen. Otis recently established a rule that anything relating to the navy must be taken to the commander of the fleet for his approval and afterward submitted to the military censor, thus adding to our difficulties.... It is impossible to write the truth about the situation. The resources and fighting qualities of the natives are quite misunderstood by the American papers, and we cannot write the facts without being accused of treason, nor can we tell of the practically unanimous opposition to and dislike of the war, among the American troops. The volunteers, or at least a portion of them, were at one time on the verge of mutiny, and unless Gen. Otis had begun sending them homeward there would have been sensational developments. We have been absolutely refused all hospital figures. So hateful then was this McKinley murder booze to the soldiers who fully knew the case that a part of them were on the verge of mutiny, and we only hear of it long after and far around. Is America longer a democratic country? Has not a president prosecuting a struggle so repulsive as this to the grim end some ulterior reason other than his countrymen's good? Is not this discovery of presidential perfidy cause enough for striking down this administration plague? The only official notice taken of the correspondents' protest was indirect, in statements from menmbers of the Cabinet and the major-domo Corbin, and they all amounted to this: Otis is a man of excellent judgment, full of military experience, he is on the grolund, 'he is, therefore, more competent to judge of the conditions than anybody in this country, or, for that matter, than any newspaper men who are on the ground.' That is. in plain terms, the president's puppet is to be placed against 11 322 POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. the entire human field, against all the volunteers who were on the point of mutiny because of his currish policy, against the dissenting officers like Captain McQuesten, against the newspaper correspondents, against the common sense and judgment of all the people in the United States if necessary. Well, McKinley, this is going it rather strong, even for your Oriental Highness. You lmay meet with a trip if you keep on sky-climbing. As to that humdrum shibboleth, the surpassing judgment of the generals, have we not shown that they are the last people to look for good judgment in? Did not that entire military constellation, Dewey, say, 5000 men are enough for the Philippines "in my best judgment"? Mighty poor best judgment, but just like the rest of the military infallibles, yet McKinley takes up red-tape Otis and sets his judgment against all mankind. Sorry outlook for the world if this thing goes on. 2. 44Political and Diplomatic Considerations." I have reserved a choice piece of evidence for the last in order to supply what few inordinate sceptics there may be. with a cud to chew. Gen. T. M. Anderson, one of the division commanders in the Philippines under Otis, made a public statement very astonishing in character, and then publicly corrected it with one far more astonishing. Both statement and correction follow as given to the Associated Press at Cincinnati on the 2ISt of July: General T. M. Anderson, commanding the Department of the Lakes, who was quoted yesterday as saying if he had not been held back he would have finished the Filipino war with his own division, stated that he had been misquoted. Gen. Anderson made the following statement: "I said my division or Lawton's could have defeated the organized forces, but no one could tell how long predatory warfare would last. I said that a division commander, whose business it was to fight, did not take the same view as a governor-general, restrained by political and diplomatic considerations. The term politics was not used in a party sense." POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. 323 I ask the American people what this means? Here is one of the highest commanders that fought under Otis, one who was in the field seeing all that went on while Otis sat in his tent or mansion sopping up bulletins for America, who, says outright that his division alone, or Lawton's alone, could have smashed all organized opposition in the Philippines, if they had been allowed to do it. Then they were not allowed. And why not? Because Otis did not want it done. And why was that? Because Otis as Governor-General had diplomatic and political grounds for dragging the war out. Here is unimpeachable substantiation of that which we set out to confirm-that this war is a god-send to the president, that he has not wanted to end it but has intentionally trailed it on, in order to engender militarism in the United States. He has wanted not to seem able to crush the organized opposition for some shrewd reason in his vasty mind. And that reason is now obvious, even to ordinary soul. First, if the war had been ended at once what ground would have remained for the new building of the army now going jubilantly on? How would the green military spirit of the country have been ripened? No, at all hazards the war needed to be nursed like the sick heir to a croTwn if there was any danger of its dying. Our fresh and 'rosy-gilled' diplomacy demanded that. But we have brought invincible evidence that when the 'organized opposition' of the Filipinos is broken it will not end the war at all. Organized warfare is our element, unorganized warfare is theirs, and as soon as we dissipate their battalions they will emerge in their native strength to fight us forever with the consummate jungle science of unconquerable Apaches. This would put a new and exceedingly ugly visage on the war in the eyes of all Americans. It would reveal this looting picnic in its own colors, showing the natives 324 POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. to be practically invincible, demonstrating that we must shovel in American bodies for consumption there like coals to a furnace, which would be a deathblow to the Hanna-MAcKinley plot, for there is a limit to the number of sons our people will burn at this stake. No one knows this better than our shyster King himself, and that is the secret of his hysterical dread of telling the truth. Explain if you can on any other theory Otis's fear of 'alarming the people at home' and 'having the people of the United States by the ears.' The people at home are infants kept in cradles and bibs while the great WE, McKinley and Otis, suckle them with expansion pap. Who made McKinlev and Otis the American wet nurse? Who authorized them to lie imperialism into us? They know the danger of letting the people ask this question, they know the people would burn with shame and rage if it dawned on them that by chicanery and fraud they were tied to the administration petticoats, McKinley knows he would be rotten-egged if the facts filtered out to the nation. Hence he has imposed on Otis the course depicted in the correspontlents' Specifications: "Prohibition of hospital reports; suppression of full reports of field operations in the event of failure; numbers of heat prostrations in the field; systematic minimization of naval operations, and suppression of complete reports of the situation." The correspondents are surely ambitious for fame and chafe because they cannot get it, but that does not detract a grain from the cannon ball force of their accusations, which have met with no disproof. All this exhibits why the happy administration determined not to press the enemy too hard or annihilate 'organized opposition.' By Fabian delay it could feign to its domestic babes that when the 'rebel' organization is shattered, the war will close, and postulate the obvious, that hostile 'organization' is nearly broken. Ponder this POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. 325 soaring program of swindling villainy! Luring the people at home from sacrifice to sacrifice by saying the organized opposition will soon fall and the war with it, when it lay in the power of the authorities to break that organization any time, and they were secretly forbidding it to be done! They were fomenting and feeding the rebellion. The man who, did that is a Benedict Arnold, a betrayer of the nation, a traitor; McKinley and the Hanna creatures did it; they are traitors and should be taken in hand inexorably as such. They had the power to prove immeediately whether war would end if they dispersed the organized opposition, had they so willed we should have known months ago whether that would finish the struggle, then would have come up the question in America: Are we going to prosecute interminable guerilla fights costing innumerable lives and militarizing us? Are the Philippines worth it? Are the the Philippines plus China worth it? More vital far the question would have then gone like a tocsin to American hearts, What are we doing this for? for whom? who will reap the profit harvests of these blood-offerings? These questions were only faintly asked when the war began, because our people confided in the allegations of Washington that the enemy would vanish at a blow, because since then the White-House Mogul has falsified our losses, and because the ruse of drawing us into quicksands by degrees until we were over our heads has, thanks to AngloSaxon imbecility, worked. It happens, however, that the question whether the war would end if the organized opposition were overthrown has been settled for us by the correspondents' round robin, wherein they declare that it is to all intents and purposes overthrown, and that this is one of the facts withheld by authoritative misrepresentation. They say, "We believe that the dispatches incorrectly represent the existing conditions among the Philippines in respect to dis 326 POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. sension and demoralization resulting from the American campaign and to the brigand character of their army." The organized Philippine forces are in substance shattered and the authorities know it but will not allow the correspondents to make the fact public; for a purpose of their own (diplomatic and political) they are sustaining the tottering semblance of organized opposition in their enemy, holding up with their own hands the empty shell or straw farce of organized opposition, in order to plausibly go on lying in America that an organized foe still faces them. Now since the correspondents declare that the organized forces are practically dispelled and the resistance practically brigand or guerilla in character, it is proved that crushing the organized forces of the enemy would not end the war at all, because it has not ended it, and another Administration falsehood is gibbeted. The Washington conspirators have unfailingly assured us that the war would cease when the organized Filipino strength gave out; practically it has given out and could have been absolutely broken, and the conspirators knew it, the war has gone on and they knew that-and they therefore knew that breaking organized opposition and ending the war were two things which had no connection. They knew then the entire scope of the obstinate inventions they were disbursing to their befoozled countrymen. The chief essence of the Filipino rebellion is its unorganized character, in our sense of organization; they can fight us better without our Westpoint kindergarten soldier trots and tricksy rifle mannerisms, they have no use for these Sevres rows of clockwork-men and porcelain uniformities which Western tomrot dotes on as skill; so that crushing whatever they had or have of that parallelogram art was about as epochal a circumstance in the war as breaking astrologer Otis's bulletin pencil-point, and far less critical to planets POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. 327 and destinies than breaking his telegraph machine or losing his private cipher-code. To avoid a misunderstanding which some may court let me recapitulate. What Western nations call organized fighting is practically unimportant to the Filipinos. Such organization as they have in this sense could have been easily broken up if thunder-and-smoke McOtis had wished it. But its breaking would have left the real fighting strength of the natives practically unimpaired, for their natural fighting manner is un-organization in our best-parlor sense. The discovery of this by Americans at home would have been a terrible moral blow to the war, and to avoid showing it our troops were held back by McThunder Otis. The heart of the corpse of "organized opposition" had to be pumped into perpetual motion to keep the blush on the cheek of the fiction that the American Government was fighting something it could very well whip when it got its dander clear up. Moreover, when our people learn that the torture-room hand of the administration is seeking the death of a people with immense resisting and selfsustaining power of their own kind-the unorganized, Indian, guerilla, kind-it will be clear that the blackest of black fabrications is that these people cannot govern themselves at least as well as osur jay-millionaires and jamboree-politicians can do it. If one will read what Gen. Alejandrino, an envoy from Aguinaldo to Otis (on the Ist of October) said, one will comprehend the real case: "How long can the Filipino army and people withstand 60,000 American troops?" asked the representative of the Associated Press. "Fightilg in our way, we can maintain a state of war and the necessity of a large army of occupation indefinitely. You Americans are holding a few miles around Manila, a narrow line of railroad to Angeles and a circle of country around San Fernando, but you are ignorant of the resources of Luzon. We hold the rich, immense, productive northern country from which to draw. 328 POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSIDERATIONS. Our people contribute the money and food which maintain our army and this is done at a minimum cost. It is an interesting question what the cost to the American people is of maintaining the American troops in the Philippines. We do not, of course, know the amount, but it must be excessive. \Ve perceive what an American soldier requires in this climate. On the other hand, a Filipino exists with a handful of rice and a pair of linen trousers. We do lot hIave to pay our soldiers anld cain practically hold lup their wages as lonlg as we desire. Even wtithout outr presclt supply of arms anld amltmunlitionl wte could keep yolur alrmy occlupied for years. With an expense that grows daily how long will your people stand it? The Filipino people do not wish to continue the fighting. tI'e have no army conltractors: We have no business m11cii making profits from t1he mlaintenance of our armty. There is nothingi i it for us, n1or are our salaries large enoulgh to keep us fighting for money and position." This general, said the dispatch, "impresses one as a dignified, dispassionate and keen man of the world. He was educated in Europe, and designed the remarkable entrenchments from Manila to Tarlac." He has well epitomized some of the causes of this war-business men furnishing supplies at profit to an army playing at lottery with Death. To this envoy McMud Otis replied that he could not treat with Aguinaldo as president of a republic. The Filipino general's words confirm the slight importance of organization on the native side, and leave theq Mc Otis purpose in not breaking down the appearance of one bare. Is there not in this fabulous panorama an hundredfold reason for seizing the simian McKinley and wringing from his false gullet the motive of this seasoned schenme of lying, wrenching forth his real murder-motive, and deciding with the flood of new light we now have whether to go, on with tyrannous slaughter and follow a presidential sneak and cheat? WHO SHALL PAY FOR THESE DEAD? 329 It is a forelmost item in the high-church imperialist creed that if Aguinaldo were beaten or dispose(t of distaste for American sovereignty would collapse. But this theory is a bubble if the present warfare is mainly that of guerillas, for in such a form of strife every man has an independence separate from any leader, and the irresistable march of the 'rebellion' betrays the deadly hatred of us apart from any individual's fomentation. Moreover, there have been three independent factions against us instead of one as the creed assumes. These are headed by Aguinaldo, Gen. Pilar, and the third was under Gen. Luna.* Of these three Aguinaldo has been considered among his countrymen the least radical. Lunla belonged to a very prominent Philippine family of great talent, which infers that the animosity toward us is not limited to a class or clique. These considerations indicate that the rebellion would not be checked if Aguinaldo were destroyel. 3. Who Shall Pay for this Loss of Life? It remains to fix upon the elongator of the war the frightfully grown mortality that has and hereafter will result from it. McKinley is the man. McKinley appointed and retained the incompetent scoundrel Alger in the \Var Office while we fought Spain, and was therefore the author of that atrocious massacre of American soldiers in American camps a year ago; the same wretch, McKinley, is the father of the policy to stretcl out the war, and author of all the consequent deaths. \NWill the American people find some way to get back at such a heartless ruffian? If they had known the true conditions they would unquestionably have brought about an early compromise from eitler nausea or good sense. Gen. Funston in an interview with Cotnsul \Vildman of Hong*Ramon Reyes Lala, a Filipino and relative of Luna, in Collier's Weekly. 33~ WHO SHALL PAY FOR THESE DEAD? kong said recently, "Strange as it may seem, I am almost a 'peace at any price' man... I believe there should be a little less gunpowder and more diplomacy.... I believe a little diplomacy at this time would go a long way toward settling the trouble and bringing peace and consequent prosperity to these unfortunate islands." This is not merely one further compact proof that the administration could have ended the war if it chose, it shows that an intimate knowledge of the inside facts had convinced an active fighting general that we ought to get peace at almost any price. Now I ask, If the American people had been allowed to know what Funston knows and what has brought him to this mind, may it not be taken as certain that they would have formed the same conclusion? It is perfectly fair, indeed wholly inevitable, to hold the faithless McKinley absolutely responsible for all the loss of life that lengthening the war has caused both sides. Let us unflinchingly brand him as a Cain who has murdered his innocent brother citizens in his inhuman passion for power and cowardly lickspittle subservience to private monopolists. Let us not shrink from saying that upon this devil's head should fall the heaviest punishment that can be meted out to an infinite criminal by his incensed fellowmen. What he has done was conscious and designed. For him there should be no palliation, no mitigation, no pardon. For diplomatic reasons known only to him and forcibly withheld from the nation our soldiers who enlisted to free Cubans from slavery were compelled to stay in that equatorial furnace under the ceaseless hail of guerilla bullets, sleeping over lakes, with the air they breathe 'like steam,' wounded, disease-stricken and dying. Ought not the man and the cabal accountable for this to be dragged before the bar of the American people, tried WHO SHALL PAY FOR THESE DEAD? 33I in the full light of their unspeakable crimes, and punished to the last extent of those crimes? The case before us is not supposititious. On top of the irrefragable facts comes this direct unflinching stab from General Anderson. It is false or it is true. If false such a thrust would cause him to be courtmartialed. But his superiors keep their tongues silent and their hands off. That is confession of its truth, and that truth loads on McKinley all the consequences of the drawnout war. Every man that now dies is directly killed by murderer McKinley and his crew. Although this murderer will not let the cowed people know how many are sick in the Philippines his doctored report said 2000 in the hospitals late in June. One month later, the admitted sick are 3000. Still worse, many are on duty who are unfit for it. There comes from Manila through the Hongkong cable (July 22) the following: Chief Surgeon Woodhull considers that the increase in the military force in the Philippine Islands will necessitate the employment of forty additional surgeons. Surgeon Woodhull's recommendation to that effect has been disapproved by Maj.-Gen. Otis, commanding the United States forces here. There are nearly three thousand soldiers in hospitals. The official report last week shows I8oo in hospital in Manila, and there are several hundred at San Fernando and other garrisons. There are also 275 sick in quarters in Manila. The regimental surgeons report that a large number of soldiers on duty are unfit for service. As usual God Otis, who knows more of everything than every one else in the world, knows more than the surgeons and denies that more doctors are needed. It might look as if the soldiers were sick. Later, word from Manila via Hongkong escaped the talons of the censor: The censor has refused to allow the following dispatch, the accuracy of which is unquestioned, to be telegraphed: "The surgeons' reports in regard to the condition of Gen. MacArthur's division, show that 53 per cent. of the officers and 25Y2 per cent. of the enlisted men are sick. This includes the sick in wards. Eleven per cent. of the sick are suffering from dysentery and malarial fevers." * The political and diplomatic considerations for pro*Associated Press, Sept. 5, 332 THE GREATEST LITERATURE SINCE PLATO. longing the war have raised the sick and dying soldiers from 2000 to 3000 in one month. And yet, as I have asked again and again in the course of this inquiry, what is it all for? Solely to carry out a hidden policy which McKinley has in the vaults of his soul, which the common American never heard and does not know, and which he has not one particle of interest in. To sum up, for his private ends, this Nero of ours is destroying the lives of our youths, is squandering the nation's gold, is cursing us with the creation of militarism, and fastening the unbreakable shackles of imperialism on our ankles. And we poor craven helpless titanic millions are too nerveless to take this butchering tyrant by the throat and wTring his foul secret from him, and put him where lie belongs. 4. The Greatest Literature Since Plato. Never did president find himself in more dangerous dilemma. With I8,ooo volunteers returning home to expose and reprobate his sullen policy, how can he gain more volunteers to carry on nefarious conquest? He has recourse to the most disgraceful and' vulgar wiles. He seeks to entice American youths to enlist by hiding the deadly conditions they must face and painting the soldier's tropic career as a lark. One sheet of the sweetened flypaper which he spreads for olur farmers' sons proves that our sand-bagging government is in the last ditch. In the lobby on the post office floor of the custom house in Covington, Ky., was recently posted a call for recruits, signed by "William T. Johnson, first lieutenant. Third United States cavalry, recruiting officer."* The 'flaming heading' of the call is, "Uncle Sam's Personally Conducted Excursion to his New Possessions, Manila, Cuba and Porto Rico." Then says it: "'All c.rpcllsc/ s anlld salary paid, (anl (it th1 Celtd 'yoU are returned to voulr own ci Il)1wi. No one less rich than he *The Springfield Republican, June 16, is authority for this. THE GREATEST LITERATURE SINCE PLATO. 333 could, and no one less generous than he \would, make you sucil an offer. A ca11(11ce for the poorest collntry boy to g'e( a liberal c(dt1cationl (Iad a start in thle wortl (it tile salel tinec. Since my last circular was sent out asking for recru'its for 'A i rip,Aroiuni the WT'orld,' I have sent hundreds of young men, some by way of New York and Suez canal, and some by way of San Francisco, to Manila. Later was obliged to turn many away and to answer many letters of those wishing to go, telling the time hal passe(l-non more wanted. Don't wait until your appeal has to be alnswered in a similar way, but colme while I can do something for you. Can help you now; next week possibly 1 can't. I'1"lhy stay (t lollle aIltd drudge 12 or /14 hours a day on0 the farl'm, wz1helzn yoil ca(1 (do better, get better clothes and more of tlhemii, be better paid and fed, aiitd l t w, ork oine-foztrth so hiard, (and1 sCC the 'world at the anlle ti1neC? Mily word for it, oltcc ar soldier alcwa ls ar soldliecr, w1olld( b e 0your experienICC. Splendid chance for upright, honest young men of good education and antecedents to becomlle colliiissionled officers. The llnet three years promise to be years of gr'at activity anld chanzg iln artmly circles. Peace and rest hold every one in relative places as in a vise-active servcice gives to each thle opport ltnity of a lifetime, and the shakeltp may fintd,yo0l oit topt-who knows? Y1on mtay be onte of outr fitturte great,gen erals-a Miles, an Otis, or a Lacwtoin. [O Gawd!] I1117ihat pre1'vents? Every enlisted man carries the possibilities of a Major-General's epaulets in his knapsack. A i4t.vetry atlxious to Celist soice of the vTery best youlllg 11fCn1 ill this part of the coltUtry, whio 'wish to try3 for a cotltttissionl. A great many have in the past gotten then-many will get them this year. 'I want men for regiments that are now in Manila, and also for regiments that are going there. Take yvour choice-all arms of the service. I thiiik 1you will fin(d it acti've cenoIugh over there for 'yoit. I have also regiments in our other new possessions, Cuba and Porto Rico, and this country. This grand oplortunity won't last long. Come at once, or 334 THE GREATEST LITERATURE SINCE PLATO. you may apply too late. Fortune knocks once at every matl's door-this may be your knock.... Want men for a cavalry regiment, stationed at Washington, Chicago and New York. What better stations do you want? Also want some 'excellent' colored men for both cavalry and infantry. Would like a number of colored men over six feet in height for infantry service in a very desirable part of the country. There is absolutely nothing in this whole colunttry half so desirable for a colored man as the regular army. Only four regiments-come early. Apply at the Lexington recruiting office, or at the substation at Ashland or Somerset, Ky." Ask the volunteers who have been there what they think of this. It is the shrieking bribe of a distracted and perishing imbecile. Three thousand men dying in Philippine hospitals and this gay outing promises that "at the end you are returned to your own home." The work is not one fourth so hard as the country boy's, yet the soldiers have to work night and day guarding against guerilla Krags, and when they sleep they know not if they will wake up in this world. This dying groan of the McKinley Cur-Kennel, for such it will turn out to be, tolls the death of the last lingering ember of virtue in that filthy breed of politicians now hunting America to ruin. For its like we must go back as far as the debauched reign of Charles II in our grandmother country. Macauley's dash at that period will fit our day gracefully and damningly.* "The whole breed of our statesmen seems to have degenerated; and their moral and intellectual littleness strikes us with the more disgust, because we see it placed in immediate contrast with the high and majestic qualities of the race which they succeeded... The rage of faction succeeded the love of liberty. Loyalty died away into servility.... The government wanted a ruffian to carry on the most atrocious system *In Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History. THE GREATEST LITERATURE SINCE PLATO. 335 of misgovernment with which any nation was ever cursed, to extirpate Presbyterianism by fire and sword, by the drowning of women, by the frightful torture of the boot. And they found him among the chiefs of the rebellion and the subscribers of the Covenant." The opposition was just as infamous. "But vicissitudes so extraordinary as those which marked the reign of Charles the Second can only be explained by supposing an utter want of principle in the political world." CHAPTER XVII. The King at Large. 1. His Motive. Having shown that McKinley harlors a motive which he does not confess, and that unless he is a lunatic he could not behave as he does without such a surreptitious purpose, because if his mind were honest and free he would come forward and tell the people all and willingly let them make up their own minds, and would then abide by their will, what is this secret gadfly resolve which is goading the pompous despot's mind? The secret is that the millionaire syndicates have determined to extend their predatory pastures by force of American guns. Our army and navy are to be for these universe-looters as their dynamite and jimmy to crack the safe of the world and get its treasure; McKinley is their despised caitiff in this deed. How dlid they get the fellow so under their heels? He was an incompetent business man of feeble caliber and caoutchouc will. He failed as a banker in the village of Canton, Ohio, and was picked up by Mark Hanna, a syndicateur of iron purpose wholly devoid of public virtues and conscience, an unblushing briber, the quintessence in every particular of the modern unbridled industrial adventurer-despot. This thug saw his chance and (with Kohlsaat of the Chicago Times-Herald we believe) pulled McKinley out of the melting-pot of his fortunes. Thenceforth and forevermore the bankrupt broker was Hanna's minion. The king-maker knew he could not be king himself, for there HIS MOTIVE. 337 is polpular detestation of his ilk, but he knew that through his bondslave Mc he could rule more absolutely than if king. The late campaign followed in which at Hanna's beck the millionaires poured out their millions lavishly to make themselves despots of this hemisphere. Their success far exceeded their own twilight dream, for unexpectedly the question of expansion and imperialism arose while their willow king possessed the throne. At first they did not fully realize the possibilities which this opened, which accounts for the president's initial opposition to the Spanish quarrel. All they realized at the first instant was that a war would disturb trade currents and might delay their vast operations for welding all productive property of the States in a firm monopoly. But this was only momenltary and their ideas electrically shot out to the horizon of world-monopoly. Their operations, half unconsciously to themselves, had brought them to the point where war was the next and inevitable step toward culminating their monopolist evolution, these operations had created the war conditions, and it was but a moment's act for the millionaires to become conscious of it an(l swell to their new world-role. By magic McKinley was transformed into a 'loyal' and enthusiastic war president, and with subtle cunning at the war's close the colonial policy was engrafted on us. This was not done at the instance of the people, it was never placed before the people in a form which permitted them to act on it, the popular will on the subject was never ascertained an(l never sought; the executive took affairs into his own hands, shaped a program in his closet at the command of his masters, and has been prosecuting that program for months, not only without giving the sovereign people a chance to authorize or disapprove it, but without so much as deigning to make a statement of the contents of the program to them. 338 CONGRESS SLAPPED. So he has in the few months thus occupied wrought a revolution in American government. The people have been the highest tribunal, and have uniformly asserted their sovereignty; this president has succeeded in subjugating the people to such a depth that even without the formal courtesy of admitting them to his counsels he fastens on them a new system of government, as well as a fundamentally new national policy. The change is not less far-reaching than Julius Ceasar's alteration of the Roman commonwealth, which cost floods of human blood and finally the subverter's life. Everybody then saw what was happening and the best men fought rather than submit to it, and fell on their own swords when hope died; this equal revolution and greater subversion of democracy has transpired under so great a cloud of disguises, so gradually, with such pious persuasions of warimposed necessity and God-imposed duty, that men were dazed and the masses have aimlessly followed events rustically agape. The barbarian instinct of the party clan has been strenuously employed to knout and garrote thought. 2. Congress Slapped. Obedient to the orders of the star-chamber millionaires the president inaugurated the plan of imperialism, unsanctioned by Congress or people; step by step he has delevoped that policy, entirely of himself, never consulting Congress or people. The Anglo-Saxon race fought many centuries to establish chambers of representation without consulting which monarchs could not act. On that rock all Ang'lq-Saxon polity thus far wrought stands or falls. McKinley the Omnipotent brushes that rock from his invading path as though it were a fretting pebble. He consults nothing but his sweet Gaveston, the millionaires. "Come Gaveston, and share the kingdom with thy dearest friend"; "He that I list CONGRESS SLAPPED. 339 to favor shall be great"; 'The headstrong people shall not limit me.' This ignoring the people and inaugurating a vast new plan of state by personal autocracy is the most trenchant and terrible event transpiring in the Anglo-Saxon world in modern times, being the undoing of Anglo-Saxon history, the strangulation of the Anglo-Saxon race genius. The foundations of the great deep are shaken and the pillars on which our world stands broken up. No longer are we Anglo-Saxons, having parted with the quality which entitled men to bear that name. Self-governing' was the kernel of might and progress which indomitable way-breakers bore from the Elbe to the Thames and thence to Plymouth Rock-we are not worthy to be called their sons. The haughty domination of one man belongs to Constantinople, St. Petersburg, Berlin, our yielding to the little mounting sneak McKinley makes us Turks and Slavs. Liberty's birthright takes flight from us. But the daring dictatorship snatched by this McKinley leads to much which that magnificent has not foreseen. It absolves his subjects from allegiance to him. There is in people who were once Anglo-Saxon a supreme code: when elected men tread on their sacred vows of office those who elevated them are released from duty; the elected ruler who transgresses constitution and laws under which he bound himself to serve, destroys his title to obedience from those he rules. McKinley began by transgressing an inviolable duty to receive from the people through Congress instructions what he should do in the East. He then concealed and protected himself behind ambiguity. When the people translated his actions into words and attacked the specified policy, his supporters denied the policy for him, and proved their denial by demanding where the president had ever declared such a doctrine. Since he would not verbally define his plan he could thus squirm out of any CONGRESS SLAPPED. thing, though convicted by his constant deeds. \Vhile doing everything that one designing unlimited imperialism would do, he always replied to critics that his only aim was the establishment of order in the Philippines. By this means he delayed much sharp attack, but did not for that delay his imperialist measures; he seized the truce to hasten them. His friends to this moment insist that when congress meets it will decide the Philippines' future, and they say, meantime stand by the president. They use this seemingly innocent language: "W( have a right to demand of all good citizens to stand by the President as he upholds the honor and glory and the greatness of the flag, no imattcr wchiat the iltdividltal ideas miiay be regardilng the Philippinlc Islands.' And all the while they are violently pushing operations designed to make impossible the action of congress along any line but that which they are establishing. In Sing Sing and commerce such a method w\ouldl invariably be clicanery. So sure is the presidential flock of success tlat some of its most conspicuous geese exult in the market-place already that imperialism is forever and irrevocably fastened to the nation. That notable fiddle-string Whitelaw Reid often and passionately vibrates to the presidential tuning fork in the highest octave: "Nothing in human power can ever restore the United States to the position it occupied the day before Congress plunged us into the war with Spain; or enable us to escape what that war entailed. No matter what we wish, the old continental isolation is gone forever. Whithersoever we turn, we must do it with the burden of our late acts and carry the responsibility of our new possessions." "We are actually and now responsible, not merely to the inhabitants and to our own people, but in international law, to the commerce, the travel, the civilization of the world, for the preservation of order and the protection of life and property in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in Guam and in the Philippine Archipelago."* Yet no one but McKinley ever said we should assume those responsibilities! It is all settled and the people had never a thing to do with settling it-no more than if Mc*Address at Miami college. Jute r5, '99. IMKINLEY'S BED OF JUSTICE. 34t Kinley were tile only American alive! If this isn't the patois of (lictators we cannot imagine how they would talk. \\hat is there for congress to settle when all is settled already? A much more pertinent question is wh1y congress should come together at all, McKinley does not need it. All its jargoning will only result in registering the monarch's decrees; it will not legislate, it will do as it is told, for all legislating of importance has, according to the lMcKinleyites, already been done. He has done it. If we douht that Reid knows everything-that McKinley knows. another loquacious courtier, who occupies a stool by the throne, has let his tongue run at large. This is Griggs. He sploke at a rejuvenating (linner of the N. Y. State Chalmber of Commerce, respondling to the toast "Paradise Regainedl" which lie defined as 'confidence in ourselves.'* I have no great secrets of state to disclose to you. I have no discussions of great questions of policy to make. Ishall not even discuss the question of expansion. I consider it settled. It was settled when the Congress of the United States annexed the Sandwich Islands. An additional settlement was made when Spain ceded to us Porto Rico. An additional bond of settlement was taken when we took an island in the Ladrones. Whether we get any other island or harbors as a result of the expansion remains to be seen, but whether we do or not, it is only a question of degree. I am descended from neither Aristotle nor George Third, but I take this to mean in the logic of government that McKinley set out to iml)ose imperialism on -Americans andt is so l)ersuadled of having achieved it that he comforts his secretaries by letting them blab to their hearts' ease albott it. This is un(loubtedly statesmanship of the 1most consulmmate and royal brand, but we humbly remark that it is not democratic and not Anglo-Saxon. In the next sec tio,, we will explain the breed that it is. 3. McKinley's Bed of Justice. A Bed of Justice is something which those who read French history regard wNith wonder equalling the horror *Novenlber I898. 342 MCKINLEY'S BED OF JUSTICE. with which those who cogitate on Spanish affairs regard the Inquisition. The Inquisition was an ingenious device for making the will of God exclusive in the world, while the Bed of Justice was a ceremony performed by French kings to make their will exclusive in France. In that country-France-they did not enjoy legislative bodies, so-called, as they are called in Anglo-Saxon sections, the king being the legislator for all. There were bodies, however, denominated Parlements, Grand Chambers, Grand Councils, et cetera, whose function was to register the decrees of the King, and latterly as the glow of the Revolution began to streak the French sky some of these groups became so bold as to demur to occasional royal demands. When this happened the King called them into his presence, whither they came like scared school urchins, and ordered them with his own august lips to register his will. This restored them to their senses, for it was a decided fact that His Majesty was divine and synonymous with France. The origin of the term Bed of Justice is both interesting and instructive. The kings of that happy people were accustomed to take their directions for the government of the nation from their mistresses, and they were accustomed to go from the beds of these governing favorites to assemblies of state to announce the latest decrees. Through Louis XV, one called Pompadour ruled the country with an unmitigated hand. The second part of the term proceeded from the imperial axiom that the will of the king was always and immutably just. Only they could sin in those times who had a greater power over them to administer chastisement, and after Louis XIV the French monarchs were free frcm that incubus of righteousness. Hence when the king's will stamped itself on the whim of his mistress it became an edict and the act of announcing it in person to a Parlement constituted a Bed of Justice. It was the most serious thing McKINLEY'S BED OF JUSTICE. 343 which a Frenchman could do, to disregard one of these double-decked decrees. The club-footed progress of democracy has somewhat modified, though not obliterated, the Bed of Justice, but McKinley is the first to revive it in all its pre-revolutionary size. This great Chief's mistress is Hanna, who dictates to him the whims and wishes of the harem of millionaires that lie back in the dark. The president affixes his will to these wishes and they become edicts. Since the adjournment of the last congress the nation has been unvaryingly'governed by these Bed of Justice decrees. We have been conveyed into imperialism entirely on them When the new congress assembles McKinley will transmit his female's mandates to it in truly regal style, and the thing will skulk, cower and register that will as law. He will say, "I have no great secrets of state to disclose to you," the time is past when it is necessary for popular representatives to delve in secrets of state; "I have no discussions of great questions of policy to make," I am competent to manage such without you; "I shall not even discuss the question of expansion; I consider it settled." It is the greatest question that has arisen in all our history and I have settled it entirely alone, without conference with anybody, singly, in accordance with the instructions of my mistress. It is now your duty to go on ir the path marked out by my kingly authority, and to execute what I have enacted. What is congress then but a superfluity, a national ornament, a luxury? WVhy do we talk of self-government? We are the subjects of a conqueror; and what a conqueror! It has been supposed that it required a man of brains and force to subjugate a people-a Caesar, a Cromwell. a Napoleon, but the lordly and boastful Anglo-Saxon bows his neck to "an ear-scratcher, a dissembler, a trencher-licker, one that talketh for his belly's sake, and is altogether a man-pleaser"; of one of 344 IMPERIALISM BY FRAUD. those sycophants "whose intent is to get all they can though others are hurt thereby."'* A great conqueror he is indeed, he profoundly punished the corpse of Spain, and hopes some day under the blessing of heaven to overcome a race of wild men; but let us remember Voltaire's saying of such: 'Those politicians and conquerors (and all ages produce some) were generally so many illustrious wicked men. That man claims o(ur respect who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by the force of truth, not those who enslave their fellow-creatures: he who is acquainted with the universe, not they who deface it.'-" 'Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed; but blessed are they among nations who dare to be strong for th' oppressed,' "repeated our gusty humbug at Indianapolis one year ago, but he was not referring to the Philippines. 4. Imperialism By Fraud. The policy of expansion is therefore being chained on us by fraud. It was conceived in fraud and brought forth in fraud through the unholy alliance of the president and his millionaire strumpets; by fraud it has been fed and brought up-concealment, subterfuge, misrepresentation, hypocrisy, lying, murder, have been the apparatus for its nurture; it is intended that fraud shall make it absolute. for the master is assured that when the people are involved at many foreign points their nerve to kill the growith will fail. Encouragement has been given this hope by the shameful scuttling of Charles Francis Adams who wrote a white feather to the public to declare his emasculation. 'Four months ago,' he ruminates, 'it was still possible for us to adhere to the traditional American policy, base our action toward the Filipinos on the Monroe doctrine, and treat them as we treated Mexico, keeping our ships at Manila, and leaving Aguinaldo to build *Martin Luther. IMPERIALISM BY FRAUD. 345 up an indelendent government if he could.' But now "we have destroyed that which was most virile, energetic, and promising in the conditions which we found. Under these circumstances, 7what remains for us to do?... The mischief is done; the mistake is irretrievable." 'It only remains to try to limit the interference of the United States to an absolute mninimum,' "having accepted the position of copyists we must copy as closely as we can."* We have to thank the vanishing Adams for advice to be as wise fools and as good villains as possible. His reasoning is a syllogism of liquid-champagne liquid to the harlot of the president, just the assurance wanted that Fraud is God. If it only remains now to yield and acquiesce, it will only remain to acquiesce and yield when imperialism las gone ten times farther, and ten times farther again, and ten times farther than that. In other words, if a trick is played on us we must acknowledge defeat without fighting. Some people are unconquerable because they never know when they are defeated, but here is one who knows he is defeated before he is so, and was therefore always defeated. It is difficult to believe that a person like this ever had an ancestor. 'The mischief that is done' shows nothing so much, after our deviltry, as the masterly fiber of the Filipinos folr standing on their own feet and not leaning on Uncle Sham. It does not show that what was promising in the Philippine conditions has been destroyed. And looking more deeply at the matter, as the original John Adams would have done, suppose that everybody who was opposed to keeping Mexico after our wicked attack had said as Adams says, we must go on, we must hold what we have taken, "the mistake is irretrievable"should we not have been insane as well as wicked? Would not the irretrievable mistake have been our lnot backing out of our listakc? But luckily there are not many op*Written in May, '99; quoted here from Harper's Weekly, June 3. 346 A TRAITOR'S ACT. ponents of our latest crime who are suffering with Mr. Adams's impoverishment of moral blood. Why was congress not consulted on the Philippine question? Why did not the president ask for instructions before it adjourned? Because he was afraid the instructions would not agree with the millionaires. He wanted a free hand to do, so much imperializing that congress would feel obliged to father it, before he asked its advice. He also wanted a new congress, elected by the froth of the war beer, which he thought would be more servile. And besides he knew that if he gave the late congress an inkling of his designs it would drag the whole story out of him and force a declaration of purpose, he knew that a senate which had hardly ratified his Spanish treaty for fear of Philippine complications and imperialism would make short work of his policy of forcible sovereignty (disclosed in his first proclamation to the Islands), and lastly he was certain that the public would squelch him if congress did not. He therefore asked counsel of neither gods nor his countrymen but created imperialism by private proclamation, as a Word brought the Tworld out of nothing. 5. A Traitor's Act. If such a thing as treason remains, to do this was treason. To spurn and rend the Constitution, to seize and arrogate legislative powers to himself, to tear up the foundations of American government, were acts of unqualified treason. They were acts which no one but a traitor would harbor thought of doing, the essential acts which define and constitute a traitor. Such is McKinley, a traitor to his country. The enormity of his treason develops on considering for whom he has done this and tc whom betrayed us. He has not sold us to a rival power, but to a petty group of wreckers and plunderers at home, A TRAITOR'S ACT. 347 for them he has perjured himself and broken the Constitution down. It is as monstrous and abhorrent a crime as though he had delivered us to England or the Slav. So that, as I have said, all duty and allegiance of American citizens to this criminal are finished. A traitor to the people is not to be obeyed by the people. The course that he has inaugurated through treason and crime is not to be whitewashed or condoned, it is to be detested and repudiated. But public duty goes much further. Since the president is against the people the people cannot be passive. Passiveness permits the traitor to advance, it feeds the powei of a budding destroyer, it sustains and abets treason. The duty of every true citizen is to disobey. Whoever yields to the president now comforts and promotes a traitor to his country, and connives at treason, subversion, and revolution; he makes himself an accomplice of villains tc destroy the institutions of liberty and enslave him. That the supreme traitor is the magistrate of the nation renders resistance a thousandfold more imperative, for a traitor in that place of power holds the wires of a powder magazine under the commonwealth. When a father has turned fiend and schemes to murder his family, loyalty does not require the sons to assist the parent and accomplish their own destruction, it requires them to checkmate and defeat him, to tie his hands and remove him to a place of restraint. When a president becomes renegade to his country and purposes delivering it to a band of murderous millionaire highwaymen for whom he is agent, loyalty calls in trumpet tones to every true man in that country to turn out and hunt that president down, to resist and checkmate him, to bind him and get him tinder restraint, in order to save the people from pillage and death. A president who goes against the people is their enemy, in his position of vantage he is a madman at large, a madman with a lighted torch in a 348 A TRAITOR'S ACT. field of rich grain, a madman with matches in a powdermill. What is there to do but seize him and tear off his power? And the way to make this president innocuous and shear him of incendiary bristles, is solid opposition from the betrayed people to all his schemes of national ruin. Everything he has done should be undone. \What unutterable irony there is in the bitter thought that the Filipinos who are tasked as rebels and enemies are the only men who today are strenuously sacrificing to save American freedom from death! They are fighting to protect the chief jewel of our life, and we are seeking to exterminate them! For us they are laying down their lives, and we are taking their lives! That is irony; irony manufactured in hell. The most unscrupulous and implacable enemies of the seventy million Americans in the whole world are the few great millionaires-tomorrow billionaires-whose mission is to rob us of all property and confirm that robbing by military and law: in fighting for their own liberty the mighty Tagals are pouring away their blood to save us from that impending death. And who fights them, to bring down this death from the pit upon us? We, ourselves! 0 foul and savage blindness! Horror putting to shame all horrors born of brutes and devils! Let but the Tagals be defeated and traitor McKinley wins, treason reigns, the Hanna league of libertywreckers and Constitution-assassins is master,-and we are paying taxes and sending out armed men to accomplish this! We call it loyalty to stand by the administration that is piloting this nation to death and the army which is to strike the blow. I declare that it is treason to support the army. I declare that the Tagals are the real American army today. I declare that Tagal hands should be upheld, that we ought to furnish them comfort and succor, and let them A TRAITOR'S ACT. 349 know that if we at home are dazed by the blows already showered oin us by the millionaires, that if we cower before the threats of a traitor president armed with the military thunderbolts which his treason has forged, we at least appreciate them and pray obscured justice that they may win. Deeds of our forefathers! has it come to the pass that the only defenders of their legacy of freedom to the New World is a tribe of wasted savages seven thousand miles away, who never saw or heard of us till we invaded their homes to compass their slavery? But it is infinite gain to reach the clear consciousness that defeat of these illustrious patriots is the loss of Amlerica to Americans, and their victory American salvation. Then we shall straightway ask why in God's world our army is at this nasty business, why we are not enlightening the soldiers and calling on these our brothers to stop fighting to enslave us all. They know not what they do. How have they had time to know, these cruelly deluded fellows, hoodwinked and deceived like the people at home by subtle conspirators and sent out to die and sicken at the rate of a thousand a week to exterminate this nation's preservers? They have time only to march through rivers and lakes, to stand guard against guerilla bullets by night, to be sick, to die-how can we ask them to probe treason and ferret the plots of devil millionaires? That is our duty. Men of America, let us do that! Let us not be derelict. Let us not permit our soldiers to perish there in ignorance of the wrong they are doing themselves, their country, and human freedom! We must not fall victims of shallow confusion. At this moment the traitor president is using the innocent and well-meaning army to accomplish a coup d'etat on this continent for ends of private villainy; he asked no sanction of Congress or people; it would have been volcanically refused; he has only carried his point this far 350 A TRAITOR'S ACT. by lies and silence: is it doing right then for anyone to support this deluded army in the consummation of an unapproachable crime? If the president were employing the cheated army here in the United States for the same purpose no one would hesitate an instant. Suppose that he were asserting by armed force a prerogative forbidden him in the constitution, let us say the right to pass laws now solemnly reposed in Congress, who would support the army then? And would the present army support itself? No, we should all unite to haul that president from his pinnacle, and if the army sided with the apostate Chief the people would drag him down in spite of gattlings and dynamite shells. If he is accomplishing this very plot across the suffering bodies of the Filipinos shall we do otherwise? We are befogged because there is a 'foreign enemy' in the mess. They make it out that it is always loyalty to fight a foreigner. But certainly it is not loyalty when it is a disguised incitement for making you cut off your own head. The cry 'Stand by the army for loyalty's sake to subdue the Philippines' is blared from Washington to Maine and Alaska to mix the American mind in order that the nation may cut out its own heart. This loyalty is spurious, a lie, arsenic covered in the sugar of whipping a foe, and our will-be murderers chime that we must be loyal and relish the poison though we die of it. Away with this fustian about loyalty, when it is a loyalty that kills everything we love! Are we daft? Or are the present masters of us gods in thinking we shall think them infinite and blast ourselves for their accommodation? As to true loyalty of heart it is cheering to know that the volunteers awoke ahead of most of their countrymen to detest the brutal work consigned to them in the East by the Hanna syndics. They almost mutinied and vomited that odious task out of their bowels. Let us sound the alarm, then, to these armed countrymen of ours and call them to the people's side. Re A TRAITOR'S ACT. fuse to re-enlist, refuse to fight. You who are in the Philippines, demand immediate passage home. You who have not yet gone, refuse to go. There is a law high above the word of an officer, the law of duty, the law of country. Your officers are commanding you to destroy your country; will you obey them? They take their orders from a supreme traitor, a witless pumpkin of tumored wealth; will you be led by a pumpkin traitor? Do you intend to, help the most infamous sycophant of modern days establish a syndicate of billionaires on American bent backs and broken hearts? You enlisted to serve your land, but it is discovered that a Catiline, an Arnold, is the head of your land, ceding it in chains and gag to a dreggy gang of national brigands. To obey when you know that is destruction of the country you went out to serve. By all that is good refuse to do it. You swore allegiance to your nation, not to a popinjay president, not to traitor Hanna, not to all-earth monopolists. Be men and bravely think. An American soldier owes allegiance to his conscience and reason first, last and forever. To those who have not enlisted we say, sternly refuse. Do not let the philandering allurements of chic excursions abroad mould you into bribed instruments to destroy your own land. If none rallied to the beggars for recruits the war would flicker out from dearth of fighters. Is it mutiny to disobey officers? Are soldiers shot for that? What is it for officers to obey a tinkering traitor president and command the soldiers to execute treason? That is something worse than ordinary common-day mutiny, it is mutiny against the sovereignty of a whole people. Are not officers shot for that? If there is tattle of mutiny, the mutiny of soldiers consists in obeying officers who dictate treason, and disobeying these gallows-birds is loyalty to the all-sovereign nation. 352 IMPEACH AND IMPRISON THE PRESIDENT. 6. Impeach and Imprison the President. If we intend to rescue America from the abyss, this monster conspiracy must be grappled firmly and its supple White House rake impeached and imprisoned. This is a turning-point in the nation's destiny, Anglo-Saxon liberty is at stake, all for which we care is to live or die. If we show feebleness of mind and hand now we are not worthy of our noble heritage. We are in the clash of two kinds of worlds, one the billionaire world, the other the people's world. The billionaire world has swelled to giant figure, it dares face the lean-grown people now and say 'You shall go cown, henceforth we rule, the world is ours.' It is a struggle between two vast regimes, between titans, between gods. Are we to yield? Are we the people to shirk and cringe and shrink before this gibbon challenge? Then we are lost and let us celebrate the doleful advent of damnation here and now, visible, tangible, obliterating, annihilating. But we shall not shrink and we shall not be conquered. Damnation is yet to be rolled back. Hell may pour out more devils than there are millionaires on earth and the people of this American continent will bottle them up and send them down by hell's express to the perdition from which they came! This is the ultimate, but what of the immediate? The millionaires have so far ridden all popular storms masterful, serene, supreme; they have at length captured a president and a cabinet; the prize of America is all but in their grasp, and if they are not faced and barred at this instant the victory is theirs till we can rally for a counter revolution. It means the victory for a time of all the reactionary and black, none know for how long, none know what mankind will suffer and drag itself through before emerging from that molten sea of hell-fire. That is why the destiny of the world pivots on what we do today and tomorrow. That is why we must turn neither to the IMPEACH AND IMPRISON THE PRESIDENT. 353 right or left until this coward conspiracy of newly garni:hled devils is destroyed root and branch. To realize the issues' immensity is to rise and face them with stern joy, knowing the awful truth that it is victory for hope and beauty and happiness, the life of the new world dreamed of and long struggled for, or death to it, and life and victory for the old and cruel, the ruthless and corrupt. Take up your histories and decide which you will have, And remember, invulnerable people, you can have what you choose. Let us therefore bring this MicKinley to the rail of judgment and depose him. He has no title to American clemency, for he has trampled his nation's highest ordinances and made himself an outlaw. If a robber who loots a train and shoots a mere fifty passengers is considered worthy of the gallows, what is this arch-Ripper who loots two nations and murders a dozen thousands worthy of? It is a strange debility of mind that does not see in a ruler doing these things the murdering highwayman multiplied by every stab and death committed through his orders. His is crime raised to the millionth degree. Monarchs of the old pattern might flame through space on gauzy wings of a different morality from material mortals, but not so republican monarchs, they are amenable to the law and the code directed' to the midnight thug or lonely desperado-only we have been squeamish about lifting up the robes of majesty to look at villainy and impartially apply the law. If a wretch murders olnc, society cages or destroys him as if he were a ravening beast, if ten, he is abhorred by his kind as fiend incarnate, but if he copies twenty-thousand-murderer McKinley, and slays hecatombs of his own race and myriads of a far-off and offenceless species of mankind, to confer on certain omnivorous beasts of paya franchise to feed upon the flesh of all their countrymen, human imagination has not yet opened to dimensions that can realize and express the 12 354 IMPEACH AND IMPRISON THE PRESIDENT. horror, because that is a field from which even republics are fortressed off by the reflected majesty of their bloody monarchs. If a ruler multiplies murder by infinity he is excused and spared because the most honored and exalted prerogative of ruling was once murder. Rulers are the same in all ages and circumstances. Pope Julius II for example. He had strong ambitions which could only be satisfied by battlefields; to gratify him people had to fight. "His nature needed violent excitements, and this was the real ground of his actions. He threw himself upon whatever came nearest."* But we shall try rulers and presidential war-compounding cranks by the same laws as other stick-daggers, and no bad egg was ever hatched better than McKinley to begin with. We are to set a new model of civilization and righteousness to the world,'of equal righteousness and no favoritism to the maggot 'great.' Not only should the president be impeached, but action for murder in first degree should be brought upon him. May be to rob large wipes out the sin which police-courts and tar-brands the starving thief of one loaf, but shall he who initiates job-lot butchery euphemized war and does it by breaking his country's fundamental law, go scot free while murderers in little hang? No, he shall take his trial with them, and if it is found that he inflamed this war without constitutional sanction, let him hang or let them not hang. Take your choice, but as to hanging small murderers and electing vast ones to a second term of the presidency, that isn't worthy an Anglo-Saxon intellect, so just and fearless and equitable as that cryptically is. Why mince words? McKinley has been more a traitor to popular rights than Charles the First of England, ten thousand times more beastly cruel than Louis Sixteenth of France, and their execution in expiation of the wrongs they did, broke down the barricades and let the pioneers of life into the world. McKinley fashions to * Grimm's Life of Michael Angelo, i, 285. IMPEACH AND IMPRISON THE PRESIDENT. 355 restore what Cromwell and the French revolution sapped.. Millionaire regnancy is as horrible as empire of Stuart or Capet. I will not have a tyrant monopolist over me any more than I will have a tyrant thing called king over me. The restoration of tyranny, phrased as commerce, is as wicked and quick to be resented as efforts to vamp over pre-revolutionary absolutism. And I say plainly that one who tries to accomplish this by general murder as McKinley has done should hang, or hanging should be abolished and none of the annual ten thousand life-takers in this country should pay the penalty of their necks. Discrimination is what I protest against. Why shoot one mad dog and let another live? All mad dogs are on a par. If wisdom says abolish capital punishment, good, but if not then hang the worst criminal today existing on this continent. Or shall we be good lambs and let the wolves in poodle skin swallow us? Shall the ancient regime be restored because it is unchristian to snakes not to frank them to bite you, unloving to bulls not to permit them to gore you, untender to cannibals to forbid them to eat you? We had better lay aside a little our transcendent treatises on love and skin-licked culture and study a little howv the best in the human family is resolutely extinguished by the domination of human brutes. Look at these embryonic billionaires for whom McKinley is the midwife and general imbecility the surgeon. They are the real foreigners, the savages. They are of the effete and gangrened empire of tyrants, where rottenness oozes from the gilded summit to the reeking base of society. We know it all by heart, a million times have we declared our glad freedom from that putrid past, yet now it surges up with its infinite slime to engulf society again. Where are we? What are we doing? Is not this generation guardian of the human race for all the future? May it dally in the luxuriance of imbecility while all the worth of life is effaced and the earth is turned back into a dunghill? CHAPTER XVIII. Turning- Point For Mankind. 1. Do not Go On. \Vhat further devolves on the nation in this conflict and crisis? Realize again the whirlwind of autocratic events that has swept us down and the future is clear. The Paris treaty of peace outlined no policy toward the Philippines; it is not granted to the president by our system of government to initiate a policy in such affairs without consulting congress and receiving its sanction; (land conlg;rss in this lmust register the people's zvill. Failing to execute the people's wish spoken through a truth-telling congress would make a president the usurper of powers not his and a criminal before the supreme nation. McKinley assumed this role. He could have inquired of the old congress for directions; he could have convened the new congress and asked its advise; he could meanwhile have laid the whole matter before the people with his own preferred policy, for discussion and instruction: none of these things did he do, but he issued an insulting proclaimer to the Filipinos on his own authority, arrogating sovereignty over them and initiating the creed of sovereignty, an extra-constitutional act for him as mere executive. These omissions and commissions, every one of them unconstitutional and usurpatory, brought war and pitched us into that expansion from which the president's flunkeys tell us we cannot withdraw. The issue that this hurls full-sized into the Anglo-Saxon world is whether the people are to govern themselves, as DO NOT GO ON. 357 heretofore, or one man is to ravish self-government forcibly from them and arbitrarily govern alone. Every other problem becomes infinitessimal when this emerges, and the people can re-establish their supremacy only by undoing all the usurper's acts, repudiating his every move, terminating the war, drawing out of the Philippines, and closing the insolent chapter of expansion. There is no other way to re-enthrone popular sovereignty, for if expansion goes on it firmly achieves all the measures that will render one-man sovereignty invulnerable. The people owe it to themselves to undo what was carpentered in despite of them by victorious rascality, unless there is some clear advantage in letting it stand. But letting this stand is the certain ruin of popular freedom, which is everything. They must unnwrite this crimson history, for republican salvation. For this reason it is that what is now done is the turning point for mankind. Compared with loss of freedom every argument for more war is not alone mere sound and emptiness, but reacts against its own cause. These familiar arguments are that we must prosecute the war until the 'rebels' give up to vindicate our dignity, that we owe it to other nations-as an international obligationto do so, that we owe it to the Filipinos themselves to do it in order to set up and maintain an orderly government there, that we must proceed until congress meets to decide whether we shall proceed, that we must proceed because it is already decided without congress that we must proceed, that it is necessary to go on in order to bring ourselves into the rank of great world powers and take our proper place in the universe, that going on will not bring us into entanglements with the world powers or the universe, and that trade demands it. This medley of mountebank monstrosities and selfslaughtering contradictions is enough to harry up derision, but when we follow the steps which have forced 358 DO NOT GO ON. imperialists to base their glum cause on such arguing we have a much stronger feeling. We forced a war upon the Philippines purely to compass ends of spoliation, and now we enumerate dignity, international duty, obligation to those warred against, doubt what congress will do, knowledge what congress will do, national ambition, freedom from national ambition, Christianity, diplomatic scorn of christianity, and a secure platform for spoliation, as reasons for carrying the licking of the innocent Filipinos on to perfection. The most prominent and serviceable of these arguments just now as given in the latest words of the ever-blatant aspirant for the presidency in 1904 is, "What the people have to do is to resolve to back up the President to the fullest extent, in seeing that the outburst of savagery is repressed once and for all," and to see that these new tropic islands "are governed primarily in the interest of the inhabitants and therefore ultimately for the honor and renown of America." Rusevelt. The gist of this and all the naively vapid pleadings is the same, and is said in two words, Go on. But the argument is shivered when you look at the reasons for going on: 'to repress the outburst of savagery once for all.' We merely ask whose savagery, and who burst out? and that shivers the argument into splinters. To govern in their own interest those who do not want to be governed by us, and to obtain the authority to do it by conquering them; that shivers the argument to atoms. And every single reason amounts merely to 'Go on,' that the results of going on inaugurated by presidential fight and fiat may achieve themselves: setting in transcendent authority the millionaire vampires ruling through their cut-throat tool, defiant of the people and popular forms of government. So that the one thing to say and act on is, Do not go on! End the war by renouncing the traitor syndicate claims of sovereignty. Renounce all thoughts of annexation. Help the natives as best we may according to their desire in self-government, but give them independence, and give it now. We cannot otherwise vindicate and WITHDRAW FROM THE PHILIPPINES. 359 save ourselves. Will we only persevere in conquest and then with imperialism no millionaire will care a tick if we impeach, imprison, or hang McKinley, for the millionaire ends will be gained. Caesar was killed to save liberty, but it did not save it, for all the apparatus of monopoly was left standing, and another Caesar was soon ready, whom the people saw it was neither worth while nor possible to kill. Tyranny is not defeated by merely removing a tyrant, it is necessary to destroy the machinery of tyranny. The doctrine of Go on is for our tyrants all-inclusive and all-sufficient. It will unfailingly lead in the next congress to a new bill liberally enlarging the army and navy. We are cynically assured of this by those who know best. "If," says the future aspirant for the presidency, If the people let their representatives in Congress hamper the administration, as they did last winter when they refused to put the army upon a proper footing as to size, permanence and organization, then the people have themselves to thank if the war lingers, and difficulties and danger increase. What more do adolescent billionaires require than this? Here's the whole crashing climax, everything aimed at from the alpha, and shouted from the housetops without a flinch by one of their trusty henchmen. Go on, that is all you have to do, and you satisfy us; when the outburst of savagery is subdued keep a large force afield for use in minor outbursts; enough for us if the army is on a proper footing as to size, permanence and organization, and expansion marches. Now that the secret is brazenly told from the fountain head we shall be Australian Bushmen or Otaheites if we do not grasp the deadly import of it and act. It cries out across the land in tones that ought to pierce and thrill the dullest heart, Awake! Awake! The knell of liberty has been struck! Come forth to its rescue or perish! Do you dare to tell me after all the treasonable things that have been done to pave the way to a proper army that self-government will survive if we 'Go on'? 2. Withdraw From The Philippines. The two points now made the most of by the million 360 WITHDRAW FROM THE PHILIPPINES. aire coterie are these: \Where the flag has goone up it must never come down; Because the Filipinos are half savage half child they cannot govern themselves and we must govern them. Bragging of our wonderful conquest of dead Spain the reeking Alger expressed the first of these sentiments creditably to his personal exploits: "SVe went through the struggle and came out victorious. W\e transported across the sea more than I50,0o0o men without accident. We fought battles in the Philippines, Cuba and in Porto Rico, and we never lost a battle, a color, a prisoner or a gun. Wherever the American flag was planted by the American soldier, there it stands, and there it shall stand forever."* This flatulent argument has been disposed of by reminding all swollen heads that raining fierce blows upon a wormy carcass does not establish bravery, and a business man rwho plants his sign in a bad location is only an arrant fool if he does not take it down. Except for the benefit of generals, politicians, millionaires and kings, there is no mundane reason for keeping common sense.and national affairs eternally divorced. When this is answered the same fallacy wobbles up in another gown. Yes, they say, it was folly to have planted the flag, knowing all we now do, But it has been assailed, so now we must keep it stuck in the mud, in the name of Pride. Does the business-man who has raised his sign in a bad place think it necessary to keep it there simply because competitors assail him with competitive volleys and try to drive him out? This occurs every clay, and the only question the true business man asks is whether there is a business reason for staying. He does not bullheadedly determine to injure himself and everybody else just for fun or for Pride's sake, as the nation is implored to do. The folly of corrupt politico-military reasoning reaches its height in this argument. For instance a brigadier-general who is not yet locked in a mental asylum calmly segaciates to his countrymen: "Of course we sustained none of the heavy losses experi*Speech on his pseudo-triumphal return to Detroit, Aug. 2, '99. WITHDRAW FROM THE PHILIPPINES. 36I ence(l in the battles of the war of the rebellion, but there Twcr a(ll too heavy losses, if they had not been inperatively required for the vindication of the assailed flag. The losses of the enemy were at least five or six times greater than those on our side."' Think of a man of business saying to his wife, I am losing a thousand dollars a day at my new branch business stand, but my competitors have assailed my trade and are trying to run me out, and I am imperatively required to vindicate my assailed sign. But then, the consolation is that they are losing at least five or six times as much a day as I am. The wife of that codfish would probably have him adjudged unsound of gill and put under restraint by the courts before he squandered his whole fortune. But a memory comes up which is worth some hundred thousand common reasons, because we thought so highly of it that we corroborated it by force. Spain was dealing with Cuba on that very principle of saving the honor of her assailed flag. If that principle was sound we had no right forbidding Spain to pursue it; but we forbade her, and declared forever that the principle is not right. Hence it is not right for us to revamp what we have destroyed and apply it to the Philippines. Spain said wAhat we are saying: The Cubans must first stop resisting and lay down their arms and acknowledge our gentle sovereignty, and we will then do everything that is right by them. We copy and repeat that brimstone paragraph, ad nauseami, about the Filipinos. But we thcn replied to Spain, "If Spain should be permitted to pursue her course in Cuba, she would go on without remorse, and destroy, if possible, the patriots to the last man. Her black crimes call aloud for vengeance, and that vengeance will be taken by the American people in the interests of humanity. 't And we acted on this to the extent of war. In other words we engaged in blood to establish the proposition *H. G. Otis, at a reception to him in Los Angeles on his return from the Philippines, May 12, 1899. tCullom in the Senate, April i6, 1898. WITHDRAW FROM THE PHILIPPINES. that the right of subduing an enemy merely to heal a sore on your flag does not exist. We spent much treasure and many lives to prove that; we have since spent much treasure and many lives with the same troops to unprove it and prop again the Latin deathshead program which we knocked down. Historians in two thousand years will display with this the obtuseness of the Anglo-Saxon mind and make it a scientific canon for lumping us with other baboons and barbarians. For we do say, and say it constantly that we cannot treat with an enemy in arms against us-the identical plaint of Spain. The Spanish language of the United States is as follows: "The supremacy of the United States must and will be enforced throughout every part of the archipelago. Those who resist can accomplish nothing but their own ruin." [Article First of Proclamation of our Peace Commissioners to Filipinos, March, '99.] Unconditional surrender was the peaceful message of the peace commission. A mass meeting of Chicago bishops, ex-congressmen and ministers of Christ's gospel, (May 7) resolved that the rejection of our peace propositions by the insurgents was "contumacious." They resolved that our soldiers are fighting "in just reprisal for an unlprovoked attack." They resolved "Sixth-We regard the great issue of the hour to be the success of our country in the performance of the duty which it owes to civilization. Until this is assured-until armed insurrection has ceased-we have no terms to offer but the American terms of unconditional surrendcr." 0 God, forgive them, they know what they do! The great duty to civilization as they see it, is to put down armed insurrection, which was Spain's great duty as she saw it, and for endeavoring which we put her down! Lastly, we regale ourselves on the peachy press. "In accepting the surrender of the insurgents, one thing "SOVEREIGNTY" THE BILLIONAIRE WHELP. 363 should be insisted upon with absolute firmness, and that is that the surrender should be unconditional. It should not be tangled up with promises, express or implied, such as will be likely to cause trouble in the future." The big fellow vindicates his honor by making no express or implied promises to spare the life of his little victim. That was the attitude that so deeply grieved us with Spain. We wanted satisfactory Spanish promises to deal kindly with Cuba, not demands for unconditional Cuban surrender. But we oscillate around to the Filipinos and bray the ultimatum-"Complete submission to the American power or continued war is the only alternative. This will, of course, be insisted upon by the American commander." "When the supremacy of our flag has been fully established, the problems of the future will demand and receive consideration." How crazy every one has become! When Spain fulminated this doctrine of the duty of unconditional submission, we all saw that it was nothing but vindictiveness and revenge, or the sinister cloak of recapture and loot! But when we do it? - Well, fundamental principles do not change in six weeks or months. A doctrine cowardly, vindictive, revengeful last summer is the same this summer. What was so mean that we could not allow Spain to do it, is so mean that some holy rescuer ought not to allow us to do it. 3. Sovereignty" the Billionaire Whelp. The Committee on National Affairs of the New York City Republican Club, a club for the general guidance of the Universe, has just enunciated the second argument as an antidote for the revelations of truth-telling volunteers: Among the four choices which were presented to us in the most surprising issues of the late war, which settled itself iu ways quite beside the intention and beyond the ability of men, we have been led so far to choose the honest and intelligent course. We cannot give the islands back to Spain; we cannot leave them, with the Spaniards driven out, to a self-government to which they could not possibly be equal; we cannot, by the experience of the past, propose a joint pro 364 "SOVEREIGNTY" THE BILLIONAIRE WHELP. tectorate with or by other nations; nor can we, without setting the nations of Europe by the ears, let any one of them step into our place. We are shut up to accepting the responsibility of results which no man foresaw. This club has not visited the Philippines, probally not a member of it, and its president is Depew,* the two requisites of certainty. But General King has been there, and in a letter to the Milwaukee Journal (June 26) he affirms "that the capability of the Filipinos for self-government cannot be doubted, and if given a fair start, they could look out for themselves infinitely better than our people imaginle." I-e also says, "Tlcy1 rantk far higher than the Cubans or the uneducated negroes, to whom the United States has given the right of suffrage." This word is undoubtedly worth several barrels of Universe Club resolutions, especially bearing in mind that all the leading resolvents anticipate some good promotion from the president if he gets a second term. We question not they will each and severally and all carry these very resolutions to the White House and demand, Depew the secretaryship of state, down to the very janitor that went out to buy the paper they were written on, who will request to be made Governor-General of some Philippine rock. But General King methinks knows enough more than these office-jumpers to make it worth time to follow up his clue. We should say that the glorious love of independence the natives have shown, their glorious power of withstanding us, their glorious skill in organizing a campaign and their glorious tenacity in adhering to it, are somewhat weighty indications of ability, and of ability to get along without us. But let us dig on and unearth the nigger in the Depew rubbish-heap. Imagining Anglo-Saxon obtuseness to be great, he thinks that every one will suppose he has enumerated all the alternatives. In an earlier chapter (III, *For the honesty of Depew and his crowd see p. 133 of this volume. Depew said: 'They (the English) rally us goodnaturedly on our protestations of pure sentiment in the war, and say: "Yes, that is always the way we get in, and then stay. Christianity and civilization demand it, you know, and we give the beggars liberty, law, order and justice, which they never had before. It is in your blood. You have come by it honestly. You have aroused the appetite of earth-hunger and you cannot stop."'' "SOVEREIGNTY' THE BILLIONAIRE WHELP. 365 Section 9) other courses have been defined. A joint protectorate is not impossible. The difficulty in the tripartite protectorate over Samoa does not discredit that method. Let us leave out Germany and create an Anglo-Saxon and Swiss joint protection. The cause of all the trouble has been that skeleton which our managers tried to conceal under the bed, Sovereignty. All occurrences make it sure that the whole struggle hinged on that. And we ask: If the Filipinos are too young for self-government, fwhy could we not rear them up to it without asserting sovereignty? One man said to another in difficulties, I will help you but you must pledge to obey me in all things and transcribe yourself my property. A man speaking thus would be known to be the victim of antiquated notions of life, or a disguised spoiler and slaver. The prilciple of solereignlty is the oce thing 1our a(dmi(nlistrators care to cstablish. That principhl carries witil it the right to capitally exploit, it brings 11iliitarisin, it opf ns the door to other sovCerciguty.wcith larger exploitation and ever il ore ari 'v. Secretary of the Navy Long, in his next annual report. which he is now getting up, will make some important recommendations regarding the navy. He will ask that a naval policy board be created, and that an extensive plan be adopted for the up-building of the navy. He believes Congress should now decide to build one or more battleships each year for the next ten years, and should count upon making a certain appropriation every year for the work, so that at the end of ten years the United States navy will be equal to any in the world.[Special press dispatch from Washington, Sept. 9, '99.] The Philippines are a bagatelle. Sovereignty, lmilitarism, are the great aims. All the demands honorably raised by our original occupation of the Philippines require neither army, navy, sovereignty, war, nor exploitation. To have said to the Philippine inhabitants, You are independent, we w ill protect you from European seizure and help you to learn self-government, would have answered every one of the Universe Club propositions. Answer, then, prophets and seers, why was it not done? Because the whole raison d'letre of wars and expansion would then have been lost. If we merely ex 366 "SOVEREIGNTY" THE BILLIONAIRE WHELP. panded a benign influence, protecting and civilizing the weak, there would be nothing in it. The sheep-shearing monopolist syndicate of Hanna governing us has no time for such sentimentality. The Depew Rubbish Club does not even index that course as possible. Yet since it is possible it knocks the wind out of the course Depew decides on. It does not give the islands back to Spain; it does not give them a self-government for which they are unequal, because we help them; it does not set European Bowwowers by the ears by throwing a bone of contention among them, and it does not burden us with the duty of conquering a 'rebellion,' permanently policing subjects who detest us, sustaining an imperial army and navy; nor does it afflict us with the necessity of revolutionizing our traditions and metamorphosing the republic into an empire over subject races. These propositions are invincible, and if invincible when we entered the Philippines they are equally so now. The Filipinos are fighting to defeat our sneak-thief aspiration for sovereign rule. The day we renounce that the war ends. Everything that honest philanthropists and civilizers desire will be accomplished without it. Why then do we not renounce it? What sinister power forces us to go on making all these prodigious sacrifices, committing these blasting follies, for a useless bubble, a worthless gaud? It is because not one of the reasons given to take in honest philanthropists and civilizers is the true one. Sovereignty itself is the sole true reason, and the absolute millionaire domination which is to be its whelp. To he satisfied of this, grapple directly with Philippine conditions. No one pretends that anything but sovereignty has been the cause of the contention waged. If we give that up the material of 'rebellion' will evaporate, there will be nothing more for the natives to fight over, nor longer a wish to fight. They will become co-operators with us toward the building of their government, "SOVEREIGNTY" THE BILLIONAIRE WHELP. 367 to learn and apply our forms. Every complication and doubt disappears. That is the level road of honor, not difficult. It is the sinuous trail of dishonor which is rocky, unless we turn back from that we shall die. But we shall not turn back unless the people rise en masse to compel it, for the millionaire charmers can hire colleges of spokesmen for their cause, by this multiplicity of voices giving the show of majority and turning the great crowd dumb and discouraged. I explained how the garbage-cart press supports deception. The majority of the papers daily repeat that expansion is an accomplished fact, and the vast dumb people who have no voice listen helplessly and at last take what they cannot disprove as true. It is the constant dropping of the press that wears out courage in the people and paralyzes them. But the press does not personate a fragment of the people, and every honest man individually abominates it and spurns its counsels. We must cease to look to newspapers to learn public opinion. We must act independently everywhere, every man speaking out his mind boldly in his own circle and in his own ways. We shall soon find a new method to learn and to shape public opinion. The physics of the press process in this case has the following law. The greater part of it daily repeats in the words of a blathering Alabama senator, Morgan, "Those who lament and decry the conduct of our government in dealing with the Philippines, as being violative of our Constitution, are too late to accomplish much else than to echo the pathetic appeals of Aguinaldo that zee do nzot destroy our governlment in order to save the Filipil os from the fatal power of his dictatorship. It is not far to go nor is the way obscure, to find in the Constitution of the United States power given to Congress to do what was done in Louisiana and Hawaii, and what our self-respect compels us to do in the Philippines."* Seeing a thing said over and again bakes con*In N. Y. Independent, July 6, '99. 3 S8 PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. viction, and the people's nerve gives way. What is the use of further struggle? they ask, it is done. Is it done? The fact that garbage press and gobbling politicians say so: is a mighty evidence that it is not done. 4. Permanent Anti - Expansion Program. \:e deny that it is done. The people have voted and sanctioned nothing; and we will set forth a principle to lift the struggle onto new, abiding and unassailable ground. If a1nything has beenl donle it can be undone. If we are conlmittcd zwe can untconllmit ourselves. If the politicians think they have tied us up, we can slip the noose. If the next congress comes from the stocks a docile ducker to our traitor King, to catalogue his Bed of Justice dispensations, if it clutches American claws into the Philippines to stay and gives the army its 'proper organization as to size and permanence,' let us all swear by the powers above earthly Powers that every one of those hell-hound deeds shall be undone and this question shall never be settled till it is settled right. Let us lay down resistance never, but wield it until all territory of prey is restored to the rightful owners of it, its own inhabitants. This program means that if the millionaires saddle and curb us today, they shall be rubbing their stunned heads in stony gutters tomorrow. We declare the law that it is never too late to mend a nation's blunder. If fraud carries temporarily and the army is built large on the sepulcher designed for freedom, let the people rally before death comes and unvote the army, cut it down again, discharge the military incubus. We shall go further and pledge to bring home our troops sent to foreign lands to plant the flag of American monopolies. Cuba, the Philippines, Porto Rico and Hawaii must be made free, and the fecund louse of expansion killed stone dead by popular act, and if it cannot be done this year let it be done next or next. If the masses PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. 369 of our countrymen know that this indomitable policy is abroad, a public opinion will rise in them to heights of glorious action and a new birth of the nation will follow, a deliverance from the greedy commercial reptiles now supreme and w-orking out the pomp and sparkle of damnation. The termination of the Philippine war will not swerve us from this course. Our millionaire savages may prevail in overwhelming our superb Filipino saviors and erecting millionaire sovereignty, but down it shall come, we will herald to our Philippine allies that this shall last no longer than until American righteousness can organize itself to vote wretch-sovereignty out. I foresee with gladness all our carpet-bagging military governors crawling home ousted by a restored American sovereign, the people. Fight on, brave Tagals, never cease your guerilla twar though you are driven here and there; there is a silent heart in the American nation swelling, swelling with the holy rage of a new religion to men. Freedom shall be extended to you, do not doubt it, for the omnipotent conmmon man of this continent will never consent to rule slaves. Down shall go the millionaire and all the evil he has (lone, and then you shall be free. Keel heart and fight on, hand to hand with the people your brothers here, to destroy the common foe of all humanity. With this determination inspiring us we must go unfalteringly forward, resolved that the end of the war, if it comes, shall not abate our struggle. I assert that our progress toward actual liberty will be set back at least a century if military imperialism prevails, because the apathy of mankind is proverbial. Draw men off on a new tack and a new hallucination and they forget the path of duty. Supply the people with a few dolls to play with in the form of savage nations to bring up, it will occupy their attention and they forget their meals, forget the cupboard is empty. The adapted dolls are being given us as fast as we need them. 370 PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. The present one is the Vindication of the Flag. 'Children,' they say to us, 'put everything else out of your minds; don't worry about the future in any way; God and MIcKinley will take care of that. Go out and have a good time playing with your new doll and when it is night come in and we will put you to bed on a board without your supper. \While your are at play here is a little Bible text to learn by heart from your Sunday-school teacher the Boston Globe:-"Our chief concern continues to be the upholding of the national dignity and authority in the Philippines. We must not yield a hair on that point, nor suffer little points of jurisdiction that Congress and the courts will yet attend to to swerve us from self-defense, the first of all duties as against Aguinaldo and his deluded mob. We must see that the best military and civil administrative ability is at the helm, and that overconfidence does not postpone the accomplishment of the chief duty of the hour-the vindication of the nation and the respect due its flag, and proper assumptions of authority."-'Run along now and study your card and dress your doll in straws and be happy.' When that doll wears out a bigger one is presentedour duty to keep and permanently govern what we piously trounced for the cradle pride of the flag. (Doll-players are expected not to ask why we don't let the blood-bought culprit go when he is punished and the prostitute sores on the flag cured.) Then we graduate out of the Sundayschool and go to college and a professor takes us by the hand and leads us into an annual conclave of the American Academy of Political, Economical, Charitable, Industrial, Penalogical, Sociological, Social, Sociable and Gossipological Science, and gives us these texts to study while we dandle the duty-to-govern doll: "In the cases of Porto Rico and the Philippines, we are under no constitutional limitations. Here there is no presumption of future independence. They are our spoils of war, to governl as Spailt did, or to govern as PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. 371 Great Britain wou1ld, so far as our constitution allows. I do not think we should shirk the work of permanent government for them, anything other than permanent government, however desirable, will be most difficult. And my reasons are that future surrender is sure to be construed as a confession of failure, and would hurt the na-l tional pride. We need not have assumed the burden, but having done so it must be patiently and loyally borne.... And lastly, the whole spirit and tendency of the European policy, which wce (re following, forbids such surrender... No governmen!t can succeed there (in the Philippines) which is not based on force. We need to place a benezolent despot in every district in the archipelago. Therefore, the military goverlimeltet is the only one possible." (Theodore S. Woolsey, Professoral Skyrocket of the University of Yale. This plaything is a great growth on the other, with machinery inside for walking, and is almost a baby. We have got on now where there is no presumption of future independence, and we must have a military despot over every island jewel in our crown. Will not this toy keep us playfully engrossed for long to come? That's the intention of the givers. As we go out the annual door of the Academy of Wisdom, Bliss and Slops, another professor puts a tinted slip in our hands with the clammny information typed upon it "that the inhabitants of the tropics will never be capable of self-government in the sense usually attached to that expression."-(W. Alleyne Ireland from London, Imperial England.) Professory means by this to imply that if we are careful of this doll it will never wear out. The common people of America can play with the English wonder forever, and by learning hypnotism from the learned Academy can fix their minds on it to such an extreme that they will not remember the mortal necessity of eating at all-a splendid and imperishable conquest for learning and millionaires. How majestic American society will be with thousands of 372 PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. plumed military Governors looking like General Boulanger stomping their clinking spurs around! \We are now getting a three or four thousand candle power arc light thrown upon the scorpion under the cockpit phrase, 'Vindicating the dignity of the assailed flag'; the professors are throwing X-rays upon it and bringing out the bones and inward tumors: the resolve to squat viselike on savages forever and make the army an integral to the American governing system! That fine-surfaced doll has poison on the cheeks which little children may lick off in their love of beauty and die. Sure it is that if an X-ray were thrown on human history from the period of Cain to that of McKinley and Hanna it would discover not a military despot that was benevolent. It would disclose a drove of panther-hogs long enough to supply American packing establishments with army beef for nigh an aeon. Stepping up from wall-eyed collegians to wall-lieaded statesmen, the most trippling translators of the divinity Greek of heaven into market-stock human, we are confronted with a doll and a maxim by mail-robber Smith (Charles Emory), one of the pieces of Cabinet furniture. The name of his doll is Blind Patriotic Devotion, the doll being blind; the maxim is tied around its neck wth a string on a brass tablet; it is a priceless treasure of thought first penned by Rameses the Great and handed down to Smith from the Pharaohs. This is it: There is call for thoughtful and patriotic devotion on the part of the people. In dealing with great questions which concern the future of our country and its relations to the world there ought to be no room for narrow partisanship. Let us confine our partisan differences to domestic issues; let us limit our family contests to the family circles; let us, with patriotic spirit.... [here he weeps, his voice breaks, and it is impossible to hear what he says] and when we come to confront foreign questions and foreign nations involving our honor. our dignity, and our interests before the world, let us stand united as one people, forgetting that we are Republicans or Democrats, and remembering only that we are all [McKinley] Americans together. This Smith is a thoroughly honest and innocent fellow. PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAAM. 373 He thirsts for the abolition of partisan feuds which propose (ost-mortem examination of American institutions that are dying mysteriously on every hand. His doctrine is, let the dead stay dead and don't inquire for poison in their stomnachs. Smith is no partisan. The other day Smith's president with Smith's help made an order abolishing civil service rules covering thousands of offices, so that the Democrats in them could be packed out and Republicans put in. This, however, is a 'domestic issue' and he says let us confine our partisanship to such small things and on the great questions of wars and massacres and the assailed flag and Boulanger military governors all over the world let us "stand united" and follow the Republican dictator McKinley without blinking. If we lon't elect McKinley again to show we sanctify his jugular revels it will be "narrow l)artisanship." Smith's posture is this, the nation must open its mouth and close its eyes and take in any foreign object provided 1y tlhe administration of the party in power. This doctrine wotuld authorize the president to declare war on China and levy ten million soldiers to invade it and no one would have a right to peel lest Europe might think we were not a united people. It is the (lead doctrine of the absolutism of kilngs. On all the hugest concerns of the conimonwealth it proclaims that the people must not think, discuss, or criticise or vote, but turn all over to the president. That is democracy gone to seed. Smith certainly knows how to make a doll tlat will do its duty. \\hen other dolls 1pall on the multitude the doll of trade survives and blooms. There is something perfectly lghastly ab)out this doll, and that is why it charms. It suggests tlhose awful crayon black and pale portraits of the family dead which hang on devoted walls. It gazes (town witl coffined urlanity, interrogating the waylaiddo vou not think I'm a nice thing to have around? Trade in the eyes of the average man, the mere writhing citizenworm which turns at no kick, is a doll as big as Gulliver 374 PERMANENT ANTI-EXPANSION PROGRAM. in Lilliput. It terrifies the faithful sciolist believer like the mysterious horror which emanates from the hideous bronze face-making god idols of China, Africa, and antiquity. After all other dolls are played out this uncanny figure is wheeled forth on its juggernaut wheels and in the midst of incantations which no heads but those of ward politicians, economic professors and millionaires can fathom, the population is invited to play with that. One of the games connected with that is testing how many can be deprived of the means of subsistence in a short time. When we grow weary of killing savages for the honor of the flag, and ruling savages from national pride, and following the president whoever he may be, wherever he may go, and whatever he may do, we have to fall prostrate before the doll of trade or there is no good modernness in us. What if we were to brave its wooden lightnings and take the sawdust out of its legs, bowels, lungs and brainlobes one by one, and get into its holy of holies, if it has any, where some one has struck a sulphur match and the smoldering woodfire is sending out the fumes of superstition: perhaps if we did that, full-sized adult American men would lay by dolls and put on pantaloons and come out of the nursery to do men's thoughtful independent business. CHAPTER XIX. Without Consent of The American Governed. The most momentous fact of the century is the nmanner of foisting imperialism upon us. To do it with our consent would have been one thing, to do it without our consentt, as it has been done, is the greatest fourth-dimensional marvel of time. The guy of humanity which laid Spain at our feet opened the problem to the Millionaire Administration how to rob Spain and disarm popular suspicion. The act oif confiscating instead of liberating Spain's territory had to be painted as an act of humanity. It was easy enough to. say that all the Spanish islands should be liberated from Spain, but the pinch came in showing the humanity of our keeping them, particularly on top of our biblical asseverations not to do so. Our rulers got over that by inventing that the islanders are not fit to govern themselves. It is an invention, because it certainly had not and has not been proved. The hardest tussle came when the unselfish Trust Administration was called on to establish the humanity of exterminating a race to give it liberty. This intention was flatly stated by our war bosses. During that long bright period when we had the rebels 'well in hand,' "Secretary Alger said that the situation was most encouraging, and that it was apparent that the Filipinos realized the strength of the United States and saw that resistance would mean extermination for them if they persisted in defying authority."* The invention used to clothe this deformity in virtuous humanity was the happiness of un 376 WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNED. born future generations to spring from the exterminated. This guy also was soberly perpetrated, and soberly received by a people proud of its susceptibility to humor. Finally the evolution of imperialism reached a stage where the pretense of acting for humanity was an impediment. It prevented steps which were necessary if the juggernaut of progress was to murder on. It was an impediment, yet so tasteful a bait to the pious that it could not be done without. A very daring experiment was tried, that of disclosing the true purpose, territorial conquest for wealth, and painting the stars and stripes of humanity upon it. This plan included the full confession that trade had become the A and Z of the whole matter, but asserting that Yankee trade never went anywhere without carrying a superior article of humanity and civilization in its pack. If this atrocious humbug found lodgment in the American spleen, every conceivable thing necessary for the world-spread of American monopolies would be tolerated by the people, even down to the vivisection of whole savage races for trade experiments. This might be called a dull joke; it is still too early to say whether Americans, renowned among themselves for their biting perception of humor, will be able to see it. Our rulers have conducted their game very artfully, and the work now is to unravel the mesh in which that art has tangled us. How, from the essence of humanity (lid the president extract the right to steal? His accomplices in this highwayman's synthesis in commercial chemistry were his politicians and editors. In their passage from God to Greed the steps are as follows. The president began this Fagin performance as soon as Spain was whipped, his instrument was our Peace Commission at Paris. Step i. It would be unhumanitarian to leave the Philippines and Porto Rico with Spain. Step 2. It is our duty to take them away. Step 3. \Ve shall not know what to d.l). with them, but duty will always disclose a WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNED. 377 way. Step 4. We have a perfect right to take them. If humanity does not give the right war does. Step 5. Although we fought purely for humanity we have a right to consider our own good in the settlement incidentally, only incidentally. Step 6. Considering our own good is in this instance identical with pure humanity, because, as the most generous people on earth, we can do nothing ungenerous. Step 7. It may be our duty to appropriate Spain's possessions to save Europe from an unnecessary quarrel. If we do so it will be against our will and for purely humanitarian reasons. Step 8. It may be that these possessions would be a great advantage to our trade, but that is not certain, and their climate is bad. Step 9. If it should be thrust upon us to take these lands for humanitarian and commercial reasons it will be the best thing that could happen to them. Our use of them for trade purposes would be identical with civilizing them, for this great enlightened nation can do nothing selfishly. We should teach them self-government and liberty, under us. Step Io. These semi-savage peoples have all shown themselves worthless and unthankful. Even the Cubans are low and ungrateful. They do not deserve the blood we shed for their liberty, nor much consideration of their wishes. We know better than they do what is best for them. We must save them from themselves. Step I 1. Our trade in the East depends on the Philippines. There is no disguising it. We must have the Philippines. It is our right and duty to look after our own interests in the world. That is the only way that we can preserve and spread the light of our enlightenment to others iwho need it. The dark places of the earth call upon us to trade with them that they may be enlightened. Step 12. All human prosperity rests on trade. The powers of Europe will take away our trade if we do not make ourselves a great world-power in army and navy to protect and extend it. It would be a crime to permit less civilized and humane races than our 378 WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNED. selves to capture and people the untilled places of the earth. By these steps God is hammered into Greed and yet retains the image of God. The transition from God to Trade is accomplished, but all the trade language remains divine and biblical. The most miraculous part of this miracle is that the people of America had no part in it anywhere; the president and his acccomplices (lid it all, yet were such cunning prestidigitators that they made many of the population fancy they were doing it. By what magic did these wonder-workers do such marvels? They had a whole box of tricks for it. A. They told the people to wait and their time four action in the premises would come, the people waited and their time never came. The president said wait and you will be consulted and have a chance to say what you want done; the people waited, the president went on and did what he wanted done, and then he said to the people, There, this was done with your approbation; you were consulted, for you held up my hands; the course adopted was your course, you have acted. B. The president said, We do not know what it is best to do, no man knows, we must proceed cautiously and slowly and wait for events to show us what is best; then I am sure you will not flinch from doing it. He thus seemed to be very judicial and impartial, and made the foolish trust him. Meanwhile he moved the finger of destiny in his direction and set events in Paris, the Philippines and elsewhere going his way, and then announced, Destiny has spoken, Providence has led us, the path in this direction has been chosen for us (by me, not by God, however), let us now bravely walk in it. So shallow people were stirred and thought they were following the finger of God when it was McKinley's finger. C. McKinley said wait, and while we are waiting let us not question or carp or quarrel among ourselves, but stand a united country, laying aside internal differences in the face of an external enemy and national prob THE POLICY OF "WAIT." 379 lems, until we settle those honorably; until then let there be no dissenting voice; follow me without winking and don't ask where I am going. The people have most of them obeyed all these injunctions and waited and waited, and trusted and trusted, and hoped and hoped to have their opinion asked and to be taken back to some degree of sovereignty and self-government. But every day they were more out of it, until the climax came in the announcement that there was nothing for them to be consulted about, all was decided, expansion was a settled and fulfilled fact. By yielding an inch of self-government we lost a continent; by reaching out for the country of others we lost our own. Through our political and moral idleness the executive has taken oveir to himself the function of national legislation. 1. The Policy of "Wait." It is only careless persons who imagine there has been no settled and foreseen design in the steps from God to Greed pursued by the administration. The process itself as written down in published statements and events dispels this fancy. The policy of 'wait' is thus formulated by an administration sheet of war: Those men who feel called upon to warn the people against grave evils which are predicted from the retention of the Philippines seem to overlook the fact that our government may not decide to hold the islands at all, so that the anti-expansion tracts which are being strewn over the* country may be like sweetness wasted upon the desert air. It will be time enough to discuss the question of retaining the Philippines when the powers that be announce an intention to that effect. Meanwhile the people would do well to study the problem in all its phases, and then wait.-April 2I, '99. The time has not yet arrived for us to decide what our future course in the Philippines is to be. Our future action must be determined in large part by the events of the future. The raising of the question as to our future policy at this time, is premature, uncalled-for, unpatriotic, unwise, unjust to the President, and it trenches closely upon the forbidden ground of disloyalty to the government.-March I, '99. This has been the doctrine of all administration bootblacks, editors and office-holders-i. e., of all office-hold THE POLICY OF "WAIT." ers and office-hopers-since the effort to bring imperialism from the American womb began. Under this 'waiting' theory of surgery, what have been the antics and tergiversations of the administration doctorets? The president's press said in August, '98, Loving freedom as we do for freedom's sake, and believing in "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people," we must not force an unwilling acceptance of our sway upon the peoples that we have conquered. In May, '99, the same press-and in this case the same paper-following the motions of the president, had turned upside down and was standing on the thing called its head. In that congested position it was saying: What our troops are trying to do, under the heat of a tropic sun, and in the midst of swamp, jungle and pestilence, is to teach the rebellious Filipinos the real meaning of the term "liberty," and its proper limitations. Refusing to learn this lesson otherwise, the Filipinos, like many other dull-witted, reckless and misguided people, must be taught itwith a cat-o'-nine-tails. Uncle Sam is a pretty good school-master, and has always exhibited an unrelenting determination to preserve order, or break heads. The Filipinos, indeed the inhabitants of the Philippines, are enjoying the blessings of liberty under the government of the United States, in so far as is consistent under the necessary military government. Comedy, farce, wit and humor could not be so funny as this antic press and president. An ass playing the part of the angel Gabriel would caper thus. A cat-o'-nine-tails is the measure of the blessings of liberty under military government, it says by the way. Isn't that a reductio ad something-intolerable-in-the-19th-century, of military government? Or are we going back to the whippingpost for those who impudently ask for self-government? Did the president set the pace for this Dummheit or not? He said at Omaha, Oct. 12, '98, "We must avoid the temptations of undue aggression, and aim to secure only such results as will promote our own and the general good." That, to be sure, is ambiguous. Our own good he places first, and that may be a bag of all kinds of instruments of torture for others. Soon afterward he commanded the Filipinos to submit unconditionally to his military authority. The tide of virtue turned hellward THE POLICY OF 'WAIT." when the question of requiring the Philippines from Spain came up. The president pretended to have one ear connected with a speaking tube leading to Heaven, the other with one attached to the Voice of the People. He posed in the attitude of uncertainty. This was stage play, as we know, for Hanna had given his orders, and it was known in the Heart of the Cabinet that the Philippines would be kept. Delay and apparent uncertainty are correct leading-strings for populace. Populace thinks it is leading if it does not feel the pull. You can lead a cow or a mule if you are gentle and leave the rope slightly slack. The same pretense prevailed over Porto Rico, but it turned out to be only pretense. The Hanna president knew all the time what it would do. This is corroborated 1vw the Associated Press report, July 21, '98: The authoritative statement was made today that the Island of Porto Rico was to be held as a price of the war. The subjoined, practically official statement, was made to the Associated Press today "Porto Rico will be kept by the United States. That is settled, and has been the plan from the first. Once taken it will never be released. It will pass forever into the hands of the United States, and there never has been any other thought. Its possession will go toward making up the heavy expense of the war to the United States. Our flag once raised there will float over the island permanently." If the administration had been fooling the people about Porto Rico, why not about the Philippines? Its policy of philosophic uncertainty wAas just that. Continues the Press statement: The same authority says the future of the Philippines is a matter of development, and that so far there is no certain policy finally adopted regarding these islands.... It is intimated, however, though not definitely settled, that the Ladrones might follow the fate of Porto Rico, and become our permanent possession, being valuable as a coaling and supply station for our ships when en route to Eastern Asia. Step by step; don't force the people; use the psychology of suggestion on them; and in due time the Philippines will be ours. The uncertainty of the president and his commission grew pathetic, more so than the wailings of the subsequent Filipino (lead. In September the chief told a call 382 THIE POLICY OF "WAIT." er that the tenor of the correspondence from the people to hiln had changed, a month before it had been for retention of the islands, now it was against. He was perplexed. He thought, however, that the expansionists zwere just keeping quiet. A Boston reporter chatted with Senator Frye, one of the peace commissioners, on his way through Boston. ' "Will the United States be likely to demand more than Manila and the island of Luzon in the Philippines?" asked the reporter. The senator hesitated and finally replied: "There are other islands in the Philippines that are valuable. The commissioners, you understand, can exact whatever trade benefits they wish, and outside the conquered territory it cannot now be told what will be demanded." The senator throughout the interview gave the impression that Spain would not be required to part with the Philippines. This is significant, as Frye is known to be McKinley's man.' These terrible days of suspense! But if one examines even July with a little care signs are found that matters were less suspended than they seemed. The Associated Press discovered (July 27): "It is virtually admitted by leading members of the administration that upon only one point in the peace negotiations is there likely to be serious friction, and that relates to the future of the Philippines. As to Cuba and Porto Rico, our government feels that there is reasonable certainty of encountering little opposition to our demands." The administration was already conscious at that time of intending to make such large demands on Spain anent the Philippines that there would be trouble. It was already at work lighting up the American mind. The same report adds: "However, there are some evidences that a large element in the United States is of the opinion that the islands should be acquired by the United States, and it is hoped by the president that before it comes to the formulation officially of the United States' demand, public sentiment in this country, through newspaper discussion and otherwise, will have so far crys THE POLICY OF "WAIT." 383 tallized as to enable the government to perceive the popular demand clearly." The mind of the people is being made up in the White House by telling them that other people unknown have made up their minds. We are making progress, slow to be sure, but the president cannot be expected to make up the people's mind in a day. On the 8th of October the president's Sun in New York received a very helpful telegram from Manila: "Beyond question there are only two courses for Americans to pursue in the Philippines, namely, take all or leave all.... It must be all or nothing.... The Viscavas islanders are naturally a peaceful people. They are occupied with the cultivation of their plantations and desire only to be unmolested governmentally.... The Viscayas Islands are the richest of the Philippine group, and are capable of tremendous development. All of them will be utterly laid waste if the Americans do not undertake their government. A great majority of the business of the Philippines emanates from the Viscayas. Here is an empire of fabulous wealth, threatened with utter ruin which can be saved by a single word, yet it is going begging for a savior." This was appealing to the right spot. Some people who only wanted to be allowed to work at agriculture, whoever governed them! This helped McKinley's popular mind much. Military authorities were summoned before our commissioners at Paris to seem to give them information, the intended destination of which was the popular American ear. NEW YORK, Oct. 7.-Special advices from Paris this morning are to the effect that the United States will annex the Philippines in spite of Spain's protests, Gen. Merritt having completely, by his representations to the American Peace Commissioners, overwhelmed the policy of a surrender of that position regarding these possessions.... When Gen. Merritt first began to give his views in his blunt soldierly way, some of the commissioners were inclined to harry him with questions, but as he went on with the picture of the vast possibilities for American interests in the Philippines, when justice and liberty are established there, and explained the simple, obedient and industrious character of the inhabitants who were simply struggling against a pitiless oppression, he swept away all opposition. By October 29 the president had about decided the matter in the public mind. 384 THE POLICY OF "WAIT." "President McKinley is convinced that there is no way for the United States to escape the responsibility of taking all of the Philippines. He has arrived at this conclusion after mature deliberation. He at first favored keeping nothing more than a military and naval base, and thought the United States should in no event retain more than the island of Luzon.... The President has been deluged with letters from all parts of the United States urging that United States sovereignty should be continued. In this same line the President's recent trip was a revelation to him and the members of his Cabinet who accompanied him. The further he went west the stronger he found the sentiment in favor of holding all the Philippines and establishing an American protectorate over them.-Washington special to N. Y. Herald. On the following day the Associated Press said: While the Cabinet gave little attention today to the peace negotiations at Paris, there is no longer any doubt as to the general purposes of this government to retain the entire Philippine archipelago.... The possibility of disagreement of the commissioners and the failure of the conference, however, is now contemplated with greater equanimity than at an earlier stage of negotiations. The administration has satisfied itself that Spain is neither able nor willing to resume hostilities on any scale that would make her a dangerous opponent to the United States. Therefore, supposing the Paris conference fails, all that would be imposed upon our government is an immediate duty to take complete military possession of the Philippines [without even the imposture of cession, by open robbery]. In this manner the American ownership of the Philippines was decided. Who decided it?-the president, wholly, solely, absolutely. And the people, did their sovereign prerogative to guide their own destinies come in anywhere? Yes, in private letters to the Dictator, which he vaguely talked about, and which were sometimes in majority for expansion, sometimes not. Then the Dictator went on journeys, and came home to say that the peolle were wild for expansion, especially in the West. Let us hereafter substitute this method of deciding all things, for elections. Let the president count his letters pro and con and make a journey to Omaha or Atlanta, and on that basis decide without vote of congress or people to build the Nicaragua canal, to construct five hundred new battleships, to raise the standing army to a million, to annihilate Germany and subsequently Russia. I see no reason why he should not do these things and all other things supposed to belong to the people, if he could THE POLICY OF "WAIT." arbitrarily and alone conclude to take the Philippines and bring them under our sovereignty. The decision to keep them for our own was as much a foregone conclusion before the peace commissioners started for Paris as was the resolve to make Spain give them up. That point also McKinley veiled in pretended uncertainty, and paraded that the people were to decide it. When, we ask, are they to decide it? The irony here becomes eruptive, when in the same sentence we are informed that we are to settle it and that it is all settled. The same seeming doubt and human and divine consultation are acted through before the people on the point of retention as formerly over Spain's eviction. The Emperor himself led us to suppose we were to be at least heard on this vital issue. Did he not promise in Boston-"The future of the Philippine Islands is now in the hands of the American people"? Was not that definite? But who expects royalty to keep promises? This was the plea before the treaty was ratified, in order to get it ratified. When Spain has no more to say about it the American people will have an open field for judicious decision. Said the king's press: It is obvious, to any man who uses his thinking apparatus judiciously, that the question as to whether we shall hold the Philippines permanently, can be determined after the ratification of the treaty as well as, or better than, before. Our future policy toward the islands must in any event be determined by the American people, voicing their will through Congress.-Jan. 23, '99. Grosvenor sneered bitterly in congress against those whc cared so little for humanity that at the imminent risk of more war they fought ratification. Rejection of the peace treaty, he said, would plunge the country again into a foreign war. "We have not had quite graves enough." said he, "to suit the ancient methods, nor widows enough to satisfy the feelings of those who desire to precipitate us again into a bootless war."-Jan. 21, '99. It was, as it turned out, ratification that caused another war and has been filling graves, but Grosvenor likes this, so that his 13 386 THE POLICY OF "WAIT." bellowing opposition to war was a feint. The point was, we already had the Philippines by approving the treaty, but when the natives resisted we did not have them, and were forced to fight or lose them. That is, the present war is a booty-war, the sequel to a booty-treaty, which co(nteiits Grosvenor and his widows. The phrase continued to be used tellingly by expansior papers, in their arguments to keep the people quiet. "The president has said distinctly, in a public address, that the decision as to the future of the Philippines must come from the American people. No fixed policy of absorption has been announced."-April 23, '99. The same ditty was sung in July by Mail-Robber-General, Emory Smith. "Tlhe Filipinos are not our enemies. What should be done in the Philippines when this rebellion of a single tribe is subdued, is a question of which I ought not to speak. The final determination of our policy rests with Congress."* The make-believe was much inflated by McKinley's scarecrow peace commission to the Philippines, the best-planned intentional fiasco in the whole bootyscheme. Happily the mind that materialized all these events has not been altogether silent. Hanna contributed a conversation to the Cleveland Leader so far back as September 30, '98, and he then outlined accurately the course he intended the "American people" to pursue and which they have pursued with docility and imbecility. As Hanna is the fountain head of all modern American history, being both the God who stands at the divine end of McKinley's speaking tube to Heaven and the People at the mouthpiece of the Voice-of-the-People section, his words are the utterances of Fate, as his slightest wish is the creator of American destiny. He shall have a life-size portrait: "I do not know what the instructions given to our peace commissioners are," said Senator Hanna, "but so far as concerns the negotiations which will be instituted in Paris tomorrow, I can see no other *Interview with N. Y. World reporter, July i, '99. THE POLICY OF "WAIT." 387 result than that Spain will have to relinquish her sovereignty over not only Luzon Island, but the entire Philippine archipelago. Spain has no reason to expect to be able to retain any portion of the group. She went into the war and lost, and now ought to be prepared to suffer the consequences which such a defeat implies. I regard the Philippines as lost to Spain, and that being a foregone conclusion, in my opinion, the problem which next confronts us relates to the form of government which we will give the islands. "Aside from the fact that the general sentiment of the country seems to be against returning any of the islands to Spain, the United States is under obligations to the insurgents to establish a stable and enlightened form of government throughout the entire archipelago. When the war broke out the Philippine Islands insurrectionists became, in a certain sense, the allies of the Americans, and it is therefore our moral duty to see to it that in the future there will be assured safe and civilized rule, and until the United States determines in just what manner the Philippines ultimately shall be governed, we necessarily will have to consider the Philippines our wards. "During this transitional period, the United States will be called upon to exercise a primitive or rather arbitrary form of control over the islands, and continue it until Congress finally evolves a system of government. In other words, it seems to me we will have to maintain a temporary protectorate over the archipelago, and this will be accomplished by means of the army and navy now in the Philippines and Philippine waters. What will be the ultimate fate of the islands, is, of course, a problem of the future. Whether the Philippines will become an independent nation or a colony of the United States, or whether a long-time American protectorate will be established will be a subject for Congress to decide." "The only obstacle with which we may have to contend is the opposition of the insurgents to our plans." Who will believe in the paraded uncertainty of our Thief Magistrate McKinley after perusal of this declamation from his mentor? From that time till now the American people have been given Washington chocolate drops of 'pretense,' and 'wait,' and 'your time to decide will come', and other confection gaff to keep them from crying, while Hanna's Man Friday carried out the plan which Hanna and the millionaire market-exploiters had formed long before, and had even published. Instead of votes, chocolate drops; popular sovereignty has melted into sweetmeats. Notice several things. Briber Hanna does not pose as a saint, while others slobber about christianity and humanity and our civilized leniency, he brutally says, Spain lost in war and must suffer the consequences, which are spoliation, and that is all there is of it. THE POLICY OF " WAIT." The alministration blathersheets translate that to the public ill this caramel: "We are a nation whose foundations were laid in righteousness, anld we cannot doubt but our mission is to bless the world." The peace commissioners had settled nothing, the people had voted nothing. McKinley says no policy has been formed and he is waiting for instructions from God and the public, but Hanna is able to say precisely what will happen, just as it has happened. We shall take the Philippines from Spain, we shall keep them as our wards, we shall govern them by l)rimitive force; congress may decide the other matters, sometime; the only obstacle is that our allies may fight. _McKinley knew this decision; while he was apparently fumbling in Heaven for guidance, and arranging his countenance in the image of God, he had the tlecision in his coat pocket, in a letter from Hanna. And his coat pocket sometimes leaked. At one time Wilson, his secretary of agriculture, got his hand into it and talked publicly of what was there. A special correspondent of one of McKinley's mouth organs takes dolwn the words. WASHINGTON, Dec. 24.-November 17 last these dispatches contained an interview with James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, in which Mr. Wilson used these words: "President McKinley's policy is to use the Philippines to build up the Pacific Coast. He will use them to make Pacific seaports important and develop all interests of California. The annexation of Hawaii was the first step in this chain of events." But in forty (lays the president could leak out a little more progress from his Hanna pocket, and so he does, for the reporter continues: At the time those words were uttered they comprehended President McKinley's policy in the Far East. They do not comprehend his policy now, because that policy has broadened until today it includes almost the complete domination of the Pacific Ocean by the United States, and while Senator Hoar and Senator Hale are discussing with deep apprehension the effect upon the American body politic of holding "vassal peoples," President McKinley is going ahead with plans which rise far above such considerations, and which. when fully revealed and understood, will dazzle the world by their magnificence, quite as much as the world was dazzled by the audacity of the leaders in the American revolution. THE POLICY OF "WAIT." 3S9 Yes, we are dazzled. Hoar and Hale and the fossil ul)lic may mow and gibber with apprehension and wonder why MlcKinley settles everything, but our allies are already vassalized. Hanna told me to do it and I have done it. Hoar and Hale do not represent syndicates, they represent mere people. \We are not dazzled, however, by what McKinley tried to do, but at the popular stupor and oxishness. The correspondent further says that the president sees the necessity of markets. These markets must be in the Philippines, China and Japan largely....The President hopes that when the Senate fully realizes his plans, and appreciates that he is after commerce, not territory and vassal peoples, it will regard the subject in a different light. Hanna said that congress was to decide things, but was not the time to consult congress before and not after all essentials had been launched? Was not waging a war of extermination in order to gain full possession of their country the most decided way of deciding beforehand what congress was to be allowed to decide? But, as I have shown, the executive mind must never be taken literally, that is, we must never believe his words. Senator Chandler, a defender of the executive, corrects the fallacy of doing so by explaining away the terribly mistaken phrase 'benevolent assimilation.' A fellow senator asked him if he knew what the president meant by that expression. "Undoubtedly," replied Mr. Chandler blandly, "the President thinks as I do, if he is a wise man, and I think he is. The President thinks we ought to bring these people into reasonable likeness to us, but not necessarily to incorporate them, and I hope the Senator will not lay too much stress upon the expression 'benevolent assimilation.' (Associated Press. Jan. 23, '99.) We have certainly learned by now not to lay any stress on anything said by a man whose life and every word for over a year have been a premeditated lie. Since Hanna, this man's master, is at the head of the sy-ndicate of millionaires who rule us, it is timely here to 390 THE POLICY OF "WAIT." refer back to the report of the committee of the Ohio State Senate, which convicted Hanna of bribery to buy his seat in the Senate. Your committee respectfully submits that such a man as Marcus A. Hanna is not fit to represent the great State of Ohio in the United States Senate, and that he should be expelled from that august body. To permit him to hold his seat there would go far toward legalizing corruption and bribery. It will menace the very existence and security of everything, showing that in the election of United States Senators the fascination and power of bribery money have superseded the legislative will. It will produce a sense of grievance and injustice in their minds that may in time threaten the very existence of our Government and the "beautiful fabric" of our Constitution with destruction. With such a man permitted to guide the destinies of this great people how can we dream of further self-government? Judge Culberson of Texas saw how it stood very early (Nov. '98), and said lucidly, "Expansion? Hell! What do I want to talk about expansion for? We've already( expanlded. We're hanging onto the flapping shirttail of progress, and hollering 'Git up!'" No reasonable person can doubt that it was determined before the peace commissioners went to Paris that they were to demand the release of the Philippines by Spain, and that the administration was equally determined that America should adopt the islands even if the ceremony of adoption was a brutal perjuring war of conquest. The peace treaty was still in the air at Paris when Secretary of Agriculture Wilson announced, "President McKinley is as firm in the belief that the Filipinos should not become American citizens as anybody else. He will see that they do not become citizens; he will see that there is no chance of their acquiring statehood, which might follow if we annexed the islands as we annexed Hawaii. When his full plan becomes known, it will place the matter in an entirely different light before the people and before the Senate."-The Paris commission followed out the president's bidding, which he disclosed as rapidly as he thought necessary. They were not men to throw away pie by opposing the administration. Secretary Day, McKinley's THE POLICY OF "WAIT." 39I Obedient Caitiff; Whitelaw Reid, another one, so long as his patron is powerful, though he would turn and betray him as he did Horace Greeley when the star of his patron wanes; Senator Davis a rabid trade-eating expansionist; and so on. One of the administration newspaper fraternity at Washington summed up the executive perplexities in getting obedient men: There appears to be a great deal of delay in appointing peace commissioners. There is purpose in the delay, and it is purpose of a pretty sensible sort. President McKinley's commissioners must be men who will obey orders. That is all that will be needed. No latitude will be allowed them. They will be told what to do, and they must do it. Therefore, it is necessary, before naming these commissioners, to decide upon what is to be done, and then pick the men who will do it. Two commissioners are already chosen. Secretary Day and Senator Davis will obey the orders of the President, no matter what policy he may decide upon.-Aug. 20, '98. The people, occupied with their chocolate caramels and tea, thought that the policy of demanding all the Philippines grew up spontaneously in the hearts of the commissioners from the stress of the occasion; whereas it was an old seed which Hanna had placed in McKinley's pocket months before, and which McKinley sowed and watered by cablegram in the commissioners' breasts from Washington. We see now the power of an American president to make Congress and the nation do his will,and even to make them think that his will is their will. He compels Congress with the rawhide of administration patronage, he compels the people through executive acts which commit the natioln, through acts of congress which he inspires, and through that public deception, the press. Through his agents-the cabinet ministers and congressmen-he instructs press correspondents what to say to the people next, to bring them on a stage further along the dazzling road he has staked out. He never forgets to say that real decision is in the people's hands, through their instrument Congress, and with each new move he declares that he has meatns of conviction-like means of grace-that the peo 392 THE POLICY OF "WAIT." pie are with him. But the so-called people's decision through Congress is the decision of his rawhide nine times in ten, and the conviction that the people want what he orders is a readymade formula stamped on every docunment like a notary's seal. In such language as the following-a Washington dispatch of March Io, '99-he moulds the public, and anyone who chooses may see the relentless blade within the velvet scabbard. Upon authority so high that it is beyond question, the positive statement is made of President McKinley's fixed intention permanently to retain the Philippines. He believes that not only has destiny forced this course upon the United States, but that selfadvantage, as well as duty, [note this!] demand it. But President McKinley has not reached this position at one bound. [Oh no, the people must not think that!]...Assertions made prior to the adjournment of Congress that the President had formulated no Philippine policy may have been true then; they are certainly not true now. The administration fully understands, of course, that the whole question of the future of the islands must be settled by Congress and not by the Chief Executive. [Sic!] But the President has not reached his present position without consultation with the members of his official family, and he and they also understand the powerful influences which the national administration can bring to bear upon the formulation of national legislation. [Note this, also.]... The President believes he has the support of the great preponderance of American sentiment when he contends for the permanent retention of the whole archipelago. When Congress convenes and under the executive club confirms what the executive has done, will that be the decision of the people? The administration has everything in its hands unless the people rise in their indignation and cow the executive and congress into real listening and real obedience. The nothingness of the people is illustrated by the statement of Charles A. Gardiner in an address before the N. Y. State Bar Association at Albany, early this year: "During the last year the American people have resolved upon a most momentous policy-to expand their continental bounds, acquire foreign territory, and take their place among nations as a dominant world power. Expansion is no longer a theory, but a fact. To the press of this country, more than to any other aggregate intellectual force, must be ascribed the development "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 393 of this national policy and for services thus rendered no tribute of praise can be unmerited." I have sought everywhere in vain to know when they resolved it, and now I abandon the search. 'Oh to be nothing, nothing, only to lie at His feet; a broken and empty vessel, for the Master's use made meet!' is religious song which this whole nation can humbly sing to McKinley. That incomparable scoundrel has played his cards and so far won. As a dissembler the arch-fiend is not his peer. He sanded the eves of a senator or two as well as of the nation. Foraker said "that when he (Foraker) spoke of the actions or possible actions of the President, he spoke as one judging from the public utterances of the President, and some knowledge of his feelings and desires with respect to the question in hand. He then quoted from his speech the statement that he did not knowz anybody fromz the Presildent dozwn to his humllble self 7C']ho had any iltenltioll or desire to retain permlatnent control of the Philippine Islands."* As for the rest of us, who have not the honor of being on terms with the Consort of Destiny, our sole question is, can a Runnymede be prepared for King John McKinley? 2. Trust The President." How was the nation kept quiet all this time? By the shibboleths 'Present a united front to the world,' and, 'Trust the president.' It was the president himself who strenuously sought to float these rafts for bearing his revolutionary policy through the breakers of popular scrutiny. The tyrant always says 'Trust me,' until he is supreme, when he does not need to say it. We cannot fail to see in the follies of the American people at this time a reproduction of the extravagances of the Florentines during the last days of their liberty. It was in the autumn of 15I5 and the new pope, Leo, "for the first time after his *Associated Press, Jan. 19, '99. 394 " TRUST THE PRESIDENT." elevation, re-entered his native city, whose citizens, in raptures at his arrival, pulled down the walls to build a new gate. Leo's entrance into Florence set the seal to the transformation of their love of liberty into servitude.. Twelve triumphal arches awaited the Pope in the streets of Florence; there were temples, columns, statues, flags, flowers, tapestries,-the city appeared like one entire decorated palace; and the citizens, in exquisitely magnificent attire, seemed like a band of happy children welcoming their father."* But it was the end of liberty. Their father said, Trust me, I will do everything that is good for you. In McKinley's triumphal marches across America there have been flags and flatteries, arches and tapestries, and the father has said to his children, Let us all unite on the policy I have marked out until it is finished, let us have no questions and no divided counsels, place entire confidence in me and do not deliberate or legislate, let brotherly love and elevated patriotism prevail until I have completed the tomb of your liberties, then you may think again and have your little differences among yourselves. At Clinton, (Ia.), the father said amid raptures and cheers: "We wantt no differences at home until we have settled our differences abroad; when that is all done, we can have our little differences among ourselves."-At Boone he said: "This is no time for divided counsels; this is the solemn hour demanding the highest wisdom and the best statesmanship of every section of our glorious country... If I would have you remember anything I have said in these desultory remarks, it would be to remember that at this critical hour in the nation's history, we must not be divided. The triumphs of the war are yet to be written in the articles of peace."-He said at Red Oak: "But our patriotism must be continued. We must not permit it to abate, but we must stand unitedly until every settlement of the recent contest shall be written in enduring *Grimm, Life of Michael Angelo, vol. i, pp. 436, 437. " TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 395 form and shall record a triumph for civilization and humanity."-At Kokomo it was: "And we must continue to stand together. When we have no differences with anr other nation, then it will be time for us to resume our old dispultes at home."-At Indianapolis,this:"We meet in nc party name. We meet in the name of our country, of' patriotism, and of peace."-At Omaha he was wafted away in a panegyric of the army and navy,-a form of poetry which all tyrants write, and made it the text of a solemn adjuration to follow him like a little child until Hanna's will was done. "Who will dim the splendor of their achievements? Who will withhold from them their earned distinction? Who will intrude detraction at this time to belittle the manly spirit of American youth, or impair the usefulness of the American navy? Who will embarrass the government by sowing seeds of dissatisfaction among the brave men who stand ready to serve and die if need be for their country? Who will darken the counsels of the republic in this hour requiring the united wisdom of all?" Imagine if you can a deputation of Florentine merchants, wearing the insignia of trade, reverently approaching him whose entrance into their city set the seal to the transformation of their love of liberty into servitude, and, divesting yourselves of time and place, produce in mind the effluent praise of the spokesman of the company as he addressed the benignant father. The words would perhaps be these, in which the postmaster of Los Angeles (appointed by the president) at a feast of a hundred business men of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, responded to the toast, "The Presilent of the United States": "I will liken the President to that mythological god holding up the heavens and commonly pictured to us as Atlas supporting the world, for, in fact, the greatness of our country has become such that today it would not be inappropriate to substitute for Atlas the President of the United States with the world upon his shoulders. If this be a country 'of the people and for the people,' then truly it is the people 396 " TRUST THE PRESIDENT." who rule the country, and while the Congress of the United States speaks for the people, the President is the pulse through which their voices pulsate, and as he speaks, so stands or falls the nation, and perhaps no petition has a more respectful consideration by the President than that of the merchants and manufacturers of the United States, for they represent all classes that go to make up this great and glorious nation, which today has no equal upon the face of the earth." * [Sweet merchant, I love you!] This has the true traders' ring. Unbounded fulsomeness of praise for the majestic one in power, and the craven hand extended for especial indulgence and favors to 'our class' who represent the people in an exceptional manner. The loyal sentiment, Be united, cease to think, stand by the President, became the editorial pig-iron of every presidential thinker in the country. They moulded his magnanimous words not only into plowshares and pruning-hooks but into Mauser rifles and gatling guns. It was-stand by the president until the treaty with Spain is ratified, then,-stand by him till a good government is given the Filipinos, then,-stand by till the Filipinos are whipped or exterminated, then,-stand by in preserving our permanent majesty in Eastern waters which flunky congress will vote under the hiss and whistle of the president's club. Which was and is and ever shall be, amen. Stand forever, in the trembling servitude of silence, while the Great I Am changes the face of the world and forces you into channels that are alien, obnoxious, and impossible to those of free and independent life. I can offer no argument for resistence to this indecent tyrannical creed a fraction so powerful as the shameless words of those who would force it upon us. "After the crisis has been safely passed, there will be ample time in which to discuss policies and measures. For the present, loyalty and patriotism have but one right course to pursue, and that is to hold up the hands of our President and his chosen advisers."-"In this grave exigency we can safely entrust the matter to our President, who has exhibited from the beginning of this contest statesmanlike wisdom, foresight and conservatism."-"The President, while he is in office, represents the sentiments, the policy, the will, the majesty, of the *January 19, i899. "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 397 American people. He should therefore be supported, loyally, in the plans and policies undertaken by the government. If the people think best to elect another man to succeed him, pledged to different policies, it is their right to do so. But the administration in power should not be hampered by malicious criticisms, unjust attacks, and other forms of active opposition." "So far as our foreign policy is concerned, we should present a solid front to the outside world If we differ on questions of international policy, we should settle those differences among ourselves, instead of weakening our position by making an indecent exhibition of our disagreements before the world. The people are the supreme power in this free republic, and their will determines the policies and methods of the government. But when the people have placed a party in power, that party should be allowed to have free swing during its tenure of power-at least so far as our foreign policies are concerned. If public opinion changes in the meantime, it has full power to make itself felt at the next general elections." In such a doctrine as this there is no republicanism. It is n1t only monarchy, but monarchy of the most concentrated kind, the 'I am the State' kind, utterly detestable and pestilent to a free mind, and a natural fruit of imperialism. The fact that imperialism has made some dare to enounce such rabid monarchism should suffice to give the doom of infamy to that policy. This is the liberty we are to carry to the world, forsooth! A monarchy already as tough, hidebound, and seasoned as Germany. Yet, truly, we are fighting to save the heathen from Germany and Russia to give them this! Mount the tail of Henry Watterson's American eagle as he goes screaming through the empyrean: "No longer a body of mercenary shopkeepers,... no longer a brood of provincial laggards,... afraid... to put their principles to the test of progress and of arms; but a... world power which durst face imperialism upon its ozv1n ground wc ith Rep-lblicanisam, and with it dispute the future of civilization. It is the will of God."* The attitude of this Ode to Carnage almost stops the heartbeats and paralyzes thought. Bloody as it is, in those fathomless regions of sky it is near God. But boldly braving the eagle's peck let us place this shining imagery of Republicanism-against-old-worldImperialism on the same wall with the doctrine of uni*Speech at Frederick, Md 398 " TRUST THE PRESIDENT." versal silence before the president's foamy fiat. That doctrine commands abject obedience to, the will of one man for four years because we have elected him! If events change the mind of the nation six months after the election and the president does not change, it is the nation's duty for three years and six months longer to walk servilely at the president's tail in defiance of their own will. their judgment, their common sense, their convictions, and their only duty. In that time everything they prize may be overthrown. But they must not croak for in four years they will have a chance to express their altered views by electing a president with a different policy -whom they must then follow like a fish without eyes for another four years. Heaven help us if that is republicanism, but thank God it happens to be only Imperial Republicanism, the new thing invented for our particular harness by our destiny-jockey Hanna-Mack, and our proprietors the millionaires. They are putting us through our paces, Mac on our backs, to win stakes for them in all parts of the world,.winning races and exterminating them. But this is not monarchism in its modern reformed sense. Only the Czar with his knout and Siberia, or William the Maniac of Germany, with his leze-majesty, can shut up discussion, and they do it at the cost of constant ostracisms and imprisonings. We claim to be such improvers on England, why not learn a good thing from her now and again, when she has one? You can't shut up the Opposition there in any such fashion as the royal McKinleyites decree to shut America up. On this trying question of pocketing the Boers, H. Campbell-Bannerman, leader of the Liberal party, said in the House of Commons that 'he saw nothing from beginning to the end of the story to justify intervention. War over South Africa would be one of the direst calamities possible. He saw no reason why friendly and prudent action should not achieve conspicuous success, as a similar course had "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 399 done ill Canada in times past.' Chamberlain of course popped up and delivered the McKinley jeremiad. He declared that 'H. Campbell-Bannerman's language was calculated to embarrass the action of the government.."But that vapid gabble doesn't stop Bannerman or anyone else in England, and they don't shout treason, nor send a man to Dreyfus Island, nor give him three months vacation in prison, nor a free pass to Northern Siberia. It has remained for the most liberal and tolerant as well as the holiest race ever manufactured to republicanize the worse vices of royalty and monarchy. We say, keel) as hibernally still as if you were dead for four years; then wake up and go to the polls and condense all your p1olitical thinking and action for the next four years into a name on paper,-vote it, and go back to the grave of intellect, freedom and principle and lie there another four years, and come out again later like Van Winkle. Those episodes of death and reincarnation shall be the sum and completion of your citizen existence. If you live to be sixty years old your moral and political life will cover forty days; for so many days you will be free and selfgoverning, all the rest a clam. No, not for forty days, but forty minutes only, for you can cast your vote in one minute. And you call this freedom! To give the savage races this we are murdering them! During all the other (lays and minutes of your republican life the name on paper is to think for you, plan for you, act for you, while your clam-brain is preserved in the brine of obedience. "Now, my friends," said the president, at Springfield, '"what we want to do (a voice in the crowd, 'Elect you again'.) (Great applause and cries of 'That's right.') [So Ho! This is what it all means, is it?]-what we want is to have no dispute or differences among ourselves to interfere with our united judgment in dealing with the foreign problems that are before us."' Shall we show the McKinley lodge of republicans that this is absurd? It would *July 28, '99. 400 " TRUST THE PRESIDENT." be lost on the Elect-you-again, Hope-for-office set, but not on all. We must 'have no dispute or differences among ourselves to interfere with our united judgment,' says he, but what are we to do if our judgments are not united? how are we to have a united judgment if we differ? Is it our duty to pretend that our judgments are united when they are not? to be hypocrites before the world for the sake of a spurious appearance of unity? A united judgment if judgments differ is an impossibility, so that the order to unite on a united judgment which wte do not possess is an order to perform the impossible. \What we can do is for some of us to throttle and sand-bag our judgment, and perjure ourselves by declaring we believe what we do not. But which of us are to do, this? W\ho is to decide which? Shall it be the majority? Then we throw overboard the entire cargo of Anglo-Saxonism, the substance of which is free and public discussion, deliberation, the sifting out the true and best by friction of ideas, the effort of those with one judgment to educate, enlighten and convert those with another judgment, or through exchange of thought and new information to be educated to a wiser state of mind themselves. This is Anglo-Saxonism, and it is Republicanism, or a republic isn't a fiddle's length from monarchy and the difference isn't worth a step. Imperial republicanism is a program to shut us off from that immemorial and imprescriptible right. And its fathers do not care about republicanism and liberty at all, but use the savory name to drowse us to silence and servitude. Judge Horton was very explicit in defining the law on this point, in a public meeting of imperialists in Chicago (May 7, '99): "Every man has a right to his co nvictions upon particular questions, but no man ought to publicly utter sentiments zvhich tend to humiliate or discourage the country's defenders in the field or to lessen his country's influence in the family of nations." That is, in domestic affairs, whether to deepen this water "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 401 way or build that postoffice the people may still be republican in the old sense, but in all things relating to our dealings with mankind at large we must absolutely abandon republicanism, because unless we give the impression of being such surpassing Chinese blockheads that we all think on one route it may lessen our country's influence in the family of nations. Are we then to exchange that pearl of mighty price, the central Anglo-Saxon principle. for the vulgar and smutty bauble influence in the family of nations? The strength which grows out of right principles is what has final and invincible influence in the family of nations, if we want that influence, not the cheap and nasty courtier truckling and shuffling with principles which the new monarchical republicanism softly adopts. The way to influence cowards, bullies, thieves and sneaks, it prescribes, is to become a coward, bully, thief, and sneak. For our part we believe it is manifest that the way to influence them is to be brave and honorable, and that the mightiest fortress for a nation is a higher plane of living than cowards and thieves occupy, and if there is any truth it is that that higher plane is not reached by garroting free discussion and the widest advertisement of dissent from public policy, but the reverse, nor is it reached by intolerance and smothering of those who resist the aggressions of encroaching government which wishes to absorb one popular prerogative after another in the film- mask of presenting a solid front to the outer world. Already this new demand has gone to lengths in a land devoted to freedom and tolerance, rough to believe; if not extinguished now where will it be a year, five years, hence? Charles Eliot Norton offered timely words when Congress dragged us into the selfish war with Spain, and brought upon himself the hydrophobia of nearly all the then-God-serving press. One paper said, "Had he lived under almost any other flag than the Stars and Stripes, he would now, in all probability, be the occupant of a prison cell, under conviction for treasonable utterances. It is not altogether 402 "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." certain that he ought not to be in that position, even in this free country.... The patriotic press of the country, irrespective of political affiliations, has taken up the cudgel against Norton and Nortonism, almost unanimously denouncing his dastardly utterances." The editor explains: "The sentiments which a man may properly express in a time of peace are essentially different from those which he may with propriety express in a time of war. Speech which may be tolerated in peace may take on the nature of treason when the nation is at war. It seems, sometimes, as if our government was too lenient in its dealing, or rather in its neglect to deal, with its fire-inthe-rear enemies, in the times that try men's souls." Now imperialism is a state of virtual war constantly, so that there will be hereafter no liberty of speech which some spy calling himself a patriot cannot brand as treason. There will soon be no spot left on the earth where freedom will prevail, men will soon be machines under the benign sway of earth-girdling militarism. An American paper has said, "It is the soldier's duty to go where he is sent, and never to question the orders of his commanding officers." \Ve may add to this, And to do what he is told though it enslaves his country. It is his duty to imprison those who deplore the crimes of war and robbery which his country's rulers undertake, if his superiors order him to do so. 0 Liberty, how long will you survive under this regimen? But the same hydrophobic press declares, "America knows the stuff of which her sons are made. The victories have been won because there is 'a soul in every1 blade.' Of military training the volunteers have had little, but every man has been trained from his boyhood to be a good American citizen, equipped with the knowledge of his country's glory, and ready to shed the last drop of his blood for her in her need." If there is a soul in every blade is it not because we have not yet jailed men for cultivating freedom o4f soul on this continent? It will not last long under the neo-republicanism which proposes to gag and imprison men who are true to their souls. "It is quite true," in the teaching of the soulstifling press, "that the present time is a time, above all others, for the friends of liberty and of democratic institutions to stand firm. But the true friends of liberty and "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 4o3 of democratic institutions are not the dizzy gang of 'antiimperialist' mischief-makers. These men are, instead, the enemies of liberty and of democratic institutions. Their attitude is clearly treasonable in its nature,..." For several months the president's litany, sung from Boston to Whatcom by his editorial choir, has been the duty of conferring law and order upon the Filipinos. Law and order is a state where men do not lynch, where they do not shoot each other when they differ, where life and liberty of thought and speech are inviolable. We assert ourselves pre-eminently the repository of that blessed condition, and upon this base our right to subdue those who prefer a liberty of their own kind, that we may give them the starry gift. Governor Shaw of Iowa is one of the pillars and billies of American law and order, because he is the highest magistrate of a State. He was written to by the secretary of the San Francisco Labor Council and requested to exert his influence to prevent the mustering out of the Iowa volunteers in San Francisco, on the ground that boys will be boys and that San Francisco had many evil attractions which vwould tend to hold them in the city to their own injury and the flooding of the already oppressed labor market. This was reasonable and not treasonable, it would seem, and an honest law-and-order reply might have been anticipated. The protest had the force of being true, for it is well known among the friends of the soldiers that many of those who lay waiting in the San Francisco camps last summer ('98) weakened themselves by their excessive visitations to houses of illfame and sexual diseases there contracted, sc that they fell the more readily before the typhoid germs which enveloped their camps like fogs. Probably the patriotism of gov. Shaw would not allow him to know that one of the attractions of San Francisco Chinatown for boys a few years ago was animals in sexual communion with women, which the visitor was permitted to see for a price. So the law-and-order governor wrote back "TRUST THE PRESIDENT." "Ole of 111v predccessors once said ill a plublic speech: 'If you hlear any one utter one syllable against the governmn111Ct of tlhe United States or agaitnst the president thereof, or (against the cause for whichI otur boys are fighting, or do caultgt int disrespect of the flag that waves over them, shoot hiimt, where he stands. They mtay, arrest y ol, they liay try youl, they may convlict youl but they shall not hanlg \'von. I'Ft Governor of Iozca.' That spirit of patriotismil is n1ot dead in Iozwa. Shaw proves that the spirit of anarchy and hell is not dead in Iowa so long as he lives. He is out of the same womb as those negro-lynchers in the South, who cut off successive joints of live mens' fingers and carved up their roasted flesh to bear away the particles as symbols of their love of right and justice. In Shaw's mouth the utterance of the words patriotism, law and order, is a crime. If words have any meaning, this spirit is the new brand of law-and-order in the United States, the state of protection to life and liberty where if you differ from the powers at \ashington you will be shot by some ruffian 'patriot' and the administration governors will pardon the murderer if he is convicted. France is honey-combed with paid government spies to find traitors. The Ministry of \War has at its disposal a secret-service fund of $200,ooo a year for which it renders no account and which it uses for any corrupt 'cause' which is patriotic to the armly. It is now a current saying in Paris that if there were no secret service fund there would be no Dreyfus affair and "it is becoming more palpable daily, that the root of the whole evil was corruption in high places to find excuses for drawing heavily upon the funds."*' Governor Shaw shows that he is ready to administer such a fund, and when he is allowed to advise murder without rebuke in the form of a criminal trial, it indicates that the country is not far from ready to be governed by secret-service funds. The Chicago anarchists were hanged *London cablegram to N. Y. Sun, May 7, '99 "'TRUST THE PRESIDENT." 405 on the charge of inciting to murder, and all that they said could not be tortured into an appeal so malignant, inflammatory, and direct as this law and order state governor has published with impunity. TO reward his brave billingsgate we appoint him Chief of American Spies. His duties shall be like those of the Paris Chiefs. I. Saint-Just, former Chief of Division French Secret Service, gives them in the September Cosmopolitan Magazine ( 899). Such as mouchard Shaw needs to know to begin business I quote for him. "Practically France is at the mCter'cy of a secret service svten1 TC'hich has its lramtifications all over the coulltry, land is celtralised iti Paris.... In France everybody who has had, has or is likely to have something to do with politics, is provided (against his own will,of course), at the office of the Chief of Police, with a dossier politique (political docket) in which are accumulated documents, private letters, speeches, in fact, every available piece of information-particularly in regard to his private life... Strictly speaking, the Prefecture of Police, although paid by the city of Paris, is under the control of the Secretary of the Interior. The [tMunicipal Coutncil protests rcgularly agailst the disbursilng of the secret funds at the disposal of the Prefect of Police," but obtains no satisfaction... "Paris has been compelled to pay for the maintenance of a governlmental secret political police since the time of Fouche, the Minister of Police of Napoleon I. To accomplish its purpose, the government draws on the city funds, and if the Municipal Council objects to the disbursement of this money, the Prefect of the Department of tlle Seine, acting for the government, refers the tmatter to the Countcil of Statc-a body of jurists appoiltcd by the Presedent-zehich promlptly stamps the decisions of the coun1ciluiclt as nlawful.... "Political spies nu-mber between seven hundred and eight hundred (men and women) in all walks of life... The first requisite is that they have a regular occupation 406 DESTROY TO REDEEM. which they are compelled to follow, so as not to arouse suspicion... Spies never call at the Prefecture, and for this reason the Chiefs of Division have private offices all over Paris in houses exclusively inhabited by police inspectors and employees. The janitor, even, is always a police inspector on the retired list... To give an idea of the magnitude of this system, I can voulchf for the fact that each lnecspaper has its spies; there are spies lln all secret societies, atimolg senators and deputies also, and more than one Secretary has inl former tilmes draztn fromt the secret fu1id.... The first thing the chief of the secret police does, when he wants to keep a close watch on any one, is to secure the services of his mistress, if he has one, and of his servants....As may be expected, nocwhere is the secret service better organized thanl in the Secretary of War's office. Into it flows information from many quarters... From the general staff down, every military official collects information from every available source. Of course, they are not called spies, and indeed would be much offended if classified as such, but in an unofficial way,.. This organization, it is needless to say, is not peculiar to the French W/ar Department; it is characteristic of all zwell-regulated armies." Now Pinkerton Shaw, get yourself ready for work, you know your duties, ferret out a few anti-armyists and have them shot; you shall then have your breast covered with stars of honor and be appointed Brigadier-General. You will get the stars and honest citizens will get the stripes. 'Trust the president,' 'Have a united front for the foreign enemy,' culminates in a Military Inquisition -America at the service of a secret service system in which all the military officers are spies. 3. Destroy to Redeem. Hunted from hole to hole for their iniquity, this is one of the last covers of the administration fox. Postpone thinking till I have battered the ungrateful savages into DESTROY TO REDEEM. 407 submiission, then through your congress (which I will control) you cal deliberate and decide what to do with them. So speaks the wily fox. We know the old liar by this time. The position of our criminal president is this: he refuses to consider any form of mediation, or, indeed, any plan of settlement which does not begin with absolute submission of the insurgents to us, and then only on such terms as he may see fit to grant. This sums up the course of this government in the Philippines, as steered by the executive. Dilating on his usual theme, the flag, the president said recently in Plattsburg, "Wherever it is assailed it will be carried to triumphant peace." That means 'actual submission of the enemy to us. In proclaiming our possession of the Islands (Dec. 21, '98) he said, all persons who do not honestly submit to the United States "will be brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity so far as may be possible." He used the words, \Vithin the absolute domain of military authority, which necessarily is and must remain supreme in the ceded territory until &c." On January 4, '99, in the famous Beneficent Assimilation Proclamation, the president promulgated: "In the fulfilment of this high mission,... there will be sedulously maintained the strong arm of authority to repress disturbance and to overcome all obstacles to the bestowal of the blessings" of et cetera. From then till now this has been the administration dinner-bell to call the great Yankee people to their banquet on Filipino flesh.. Unconditional surrender has been the terms of the United States, to recover the lost honor of the assailed flag. The N. Y. Herald's Manila cablegram blazoned on April 28, "Gen. Otis declared tonight that he wzould listen, to nothing except unconditional surrender from the rebels. He says that the peace emissaries objected to this, saying that it would be contrary to the dictates of honor, and that a forced peace would 408 DESTROY TO REDEEM. no4t be permanent. Gen. Otis said he regarded the move as a play for time." Tlis was the next great pretext for inducing the people to 'wait' and let McKinley fertilize destiny. The newspaper choir sang: It may almost be said that the establishment of the authority of this government in the Philippines comprises the sum total of our Philippine policy, so far as it has developed. The chastisement of the belligerent Filipinos is a necessary step in the establishment of American authority, and "all Americans of sound mind must agree" that the establishment of our authority is an all-essential preliminary of our future policy, whatever that policy may be.-April 12, '99. The time has not yet come for agitating the question as to what we are going to do with the Philippines. There is but one problem immediately before us, and that is the problem which our men on the firing line are solving through dogged persistency and indomitable valor. All other problems relating to the Philippines must wait until this problem-the restoration of peace and good order, and the recognition of our authority as supreme-has been solved. After the guns of our soldiers have been silenced in the paeans of victory, there will be lime enough for the jaws of the "educators," the "reformers," the politicians, the theorists, the college professors, and other garrulous individuals, to get in their deadly work -May 5, '99. If whoever sings out of tune with McKinley is a garrulous individual doing deadly work, we must be allowed to think that the future policy is very much settled. A cabinet officer stated to a newspaper man that 'the government would employ every dollar and every man necessary to bring the islands under the dominion of the United States, and that when the insurgents have recognized the power of the United States the question of their future status will be taken up and discussed.' (In April.) The question which we raise is whether this plea of the duty and necessity of reducing the Filipinos to submission is made honestly or is one more trick of the artful dodger to install imperialism without consent of the people? As usual we can settle this question and condemn the dodger out of his own mouth. In McKinley's message to congress advising war upon Spain,* reciting his reasons for intervening with force, he reviewed the effort of 'my predecessor to bring about a peace through the media*Of April II, 1898. DESTROY TO REDEEM. 409 tion of this government in any way that might tend to al honorable adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolting colony,' and said: "It failed, through the refusal of the Spanish, governmet, then in power, to colnsi(der anyt form of nicediation r, o, indeed, any plan of settlcnentt iwhich did not begin with the actual slubmissiont of the insurgents to the mother coun1try, and then only on1 such terms as Spain herself m1ight see fit to grant. The wCar contilnued unabated."' He reprobates this haughty course on Spain's part and pursues it himself. '\Wherever our flag is assailed,' says he, 'it will be carried to triumphant peace.' Spain stood on the same scaffolding, and, goaded by congress, McKinley knocked out the props. Now he has rebuilt the scaffolding and named it an eternal principle of American liberty. "The people of the United States are an unselfish people. They have never sought territorial accessions, except to the benefit of the peoples that come with it." This was said by Alger last May at a meeting of Michigan Sons of Revolution. He was applauded, and gen. Merritt, who followed, spoke of him as 'the best Secretary of War the world had ever seen.' If we took the Filipino territory to 'benefit the people' are we now whipping them for their benefit, or because we are 'offended' with them for claiming their own? Here is the causal chain: We seized the Philippines as a property-grab and called it for the people's benefit; that was a very 'thin' excuse, and as soon as the natives resisted us we gladly embraced another reason. The new one is, boiled down, pure and simple revenge. But it is revenge as the needed pretext for hanging on to the stolen goods. The Portland Oregonian expounds it: "Had they not armed against us and attempted to destroy or expel our forces; h d they claimed national independence in a dignified appeal to us, before the bar of the world, and given us time to make adjustment of affairs in accord with the many obligations into which we had entered; had they shown by their dignity, self-control and forbearance that they were able to establish and maintain a govern 4Io DESTROY TO REDEEM. ment, we could not have stayed, we should not have wanted to stay. But their attempt to destroy or to expel our people made another matter of it. A nation like ours has one treatment for those who choose to be its friends; another for aggressive and insolent foes. Now we are going to crush this uprising.... The nation, placed in such a position, that would not stand its ground, but flunk and slink away, would present a spectacle fit for the jeers of the world and the vengeance of history.... The first thing to do in the Philippines is to punish our assailants and" etc.... "For the present the prosecution of the war that was forced upon us is our necessary business there; and we have fargreater reason to push this war and to punish our assailants than we had to make war on Spain, for Spain had not done us one-half the injury that has been heaped on us through treachery, insult and ingratitude by these semi savage rascals whom some of our people of peculiar mental constitution so much admire." For most people the reading of this will be annihilation of respect for the whole framework of our destruction motives for redemption's sake. Revenge is acknowledged. They have insulted us and they shall die. We are punishing them because we now hate them, and we hate them because they resented our bullying and robbing. There is no more 'for their good' about it. Now we are fully justified in robbing them-this is the wonderful finality. We now rob them to punish them for resisting being robbed in the first place. If, says the Oregonian, they had shown dignity and requested us to leave (after McKinley had proclaimed that they must absolutely submit), we should have left, 'we could not have stayed, we should not have wanted to stay.' But after McKinley had ordered them to hand out all their property unconditionally, and they had refused by resisting, the whole moral situation is altered. Now they must be ground to powder, now they are insolent rascals whom we must not only whip beastially but rob completely, to prove to them that when we set about robbing, anyone who opposes us ungratefully insults us and shall be robbed totally in castigation. Is this a new trick with us? No, the same course was taken when we were thinking of forcible appropriation of Cuba, and it seemed that the Cubans would resist. Then the papers said, "This, it must be confessed, is a highly interesting development of the DESTROY TO REDEEM. 41I Cuban situation. If the attitude of the Cubans is correctly stated, the conclusion seems inevitable that they are a lot of dastardly fools, utterly unworthy of the sacrifices of blood and treasure which have been made in their behalf by the American government, at the imperative behest of the American people." There are not two conclusions. If not one excuse to rob, then another. The common people, our American common people that is, who are the pawns in this play, should they feel badly over it, can reconcile themselves by meditating the cud that a hundred and fifty years ago not even the pretext of revenge was needed for tyranny and robbing. In about I732 "a memorial from the council and representatives of the colony or province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, was presented " and read to the House of Commons. "The memorial set forth that the province was placed under conditions of difficulty and distress owing to a royal instruction given to the governor of the province restraining the emission of its bills of credit and restricting the disposal of its public money." It "seems to have been couched in the most proper and becoming language," and it "prayed that the House would allow the agent for the province to be heard at the bar, and that the House, if satisfied of the justice of the request, would use its influence with the King in order that he might be graciously pleased to withdraw the instructions as contrary to the rights of the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, and tending in their nature to distress if not to ruin the province. The House of Commons treated this petition with the most sovereign contempt. After a very short discussion, if it could even be called a discussion, the House passed a resolution declaring the complaint 'frivolous and groundless, a high insult upon His Majesty's Government, and tending to shake off the dependency of the said colony upon this kingdom, to which by law and right they are and ought to be subject.' The 412 WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. petition was therefore rejected." It is addled in the report of this in parliamentary dleates: "Ve shall leave to future ages to make remarks upon this resolution, but it seems not much to encourage complaints to Parliament from any of our colonies in the West Indies." On the same day Parliament voted a dowry of ~8o,ooo to the king's eldest daughter, without a murmur.* Does our course toward the Filipinos from the time of criminal McKinley's earliest proclamation seem much to encourage a dignified request that we should take our strangling hands off and leave? "An Englishman," said Burke, "is the unfittest person on earth, to argue another Englishman into slavery." I would that we had proved in this present instance that the Anglo-Saxon is the unfittest person on earth to argue a11,yone into slavery. But we seem ambitious to prove that the Yankee can adduce a hundred solemn reasons for every crime. Will it redound to our honor and the good of mankind to break the Philippine spirit? 'I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit;' said Burke, 'because it is the spirit that has miade the country.' 'For their good' shall we break the Tagal spirit and make them sleeping Hindus? 4. Whoever Enslaves Another Enslaves Himself. "For, in order to prove that the Americans have no right to their Liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims, which preserve the whole Spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of Freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate, without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings for which our ancestors have shed their blood." In this language Burke addressed the British Parliament in our *McCarthy's, "A History of the Four Georges," ii, 42, 43. WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. 413 behalf, and it would seem that what followed might have stamped forever, in the Anglo-Saxon world, the fact that Freedom cannot be safely attacked anywhere. But the monetizing of the American soul and the monopolizing of its money, have obliterated the wisdom and experience of the last century. There are Americans who now speak as follows: "The consent of the governed" is an alluring phrase, but it is subject to misapprehension and misuse. The consent of the governed is a necessary factor of just government only when the governed are capable of intelligent, just, and successful self-government, or when such consent is requisite in order to secure the greatest good to the greatest number.... As a matter of history and of fact, the more intelligent, the more progressive, and the stronger nations of the earth have generally governed the weaker and least progressive peoples, directly or indirectly. It is right that this should be so, for intelligence has, within certain limitations, the divine right of government.-A daily paper. A national senator from Minnesota, named Nelson, argued thus to senators and babes before that company adjourned, with an elaborate constitutional argument citing numerous authorities in support of his position. He maintained that the arguments that taxation without representation was tyranny and that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed were true only in a limited extent. A majority of our people, he said, were without direct representation. Women, minors and imbeciles were without representation in our government and had to bear their share of taxation. They had, in other words, to undergo the burdens of our government without any voice in its control.-Jan. 20, '99. We have decided to class the Filipinos with minors, imbeciles and women, and to rest our divine right to rob and rule them on the imperishable foundation of our higher intellect. This doctrine is a very pharmacopceia of understanding. It reveals why we wrere all to suck our thumtbs and 'wait.' For there are not only higher intelligences in a commonwealth than imbeciles and women, but higher ones also than the average citizens. Therefore by divine right of intelligence these higher ones shall rule the rest and pilot our Philippine Fates. These are our politicians, our McKinleys, our Buffalo Bill Roosevelts, our Rubbish Club Depews, our WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. 414 Clown-and-King Tom Platts, our Doctor of Treachery Whitelaw Reids, and our Peace Crowns Death Commissioner Toads from The Hague. While these higher intellects rule and pule, we are to wait and swing our legs. Because of criminal McKinley's height and grandeur of mind over the rest of us we are to 'Trust him,' solemnly, reverentially. But there are higher minds yet, with a still diviner right, because what Matterhorn peaks of brain they do not carry within themselves they buy. These are the millionaires. They rule the politicians by the divine right of heaven-sweeping intellects, purchased, perjured, and otherwise obtained. Hyena Hanna stands tip on Ararat and rules his trained pup McKinley because of the eminence of hyena brain. The chicken-hawk monopolies rule and eat the people because the thoughts of hawks can fly and those of chickens cannot. And the buzzard press comes in for its share of the game because dead things 'wait' forever. To the light-cleaving billionaires, the president, the politicians and all the common average mass of us, are imbeciles and women. It is this that has brought it about that we are ruled without our consent. Some of us thought the doctrine was beautiful when applied to Tagals, women, and imbeciles, never thinking it might apply in the social hierarchy at home. And if we affirm our right through superior brains to rule the savage, we must grant the right of the panther billionaire whose crafty wiles have over-reached the universe and manacled the human race, to be our master and king. We should have known better than to let this happen had we consulted John Locke beforehand. His diagnostication of our conduct is this: "It cannot be supposed that they [the people] should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. 4 I 5 into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maiaintain it, whether invaded by a single man or many in combination. \\hereas, by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make prey of them when he pleases." I kno()w the amusement which will \wreath the millionaire administration at quoting of a man already two hundred years (lead. I share that amusement. \Vhat thing in co(mml(on except legs and arms has John Locke who wrote the above, with Congressman Doliin, whose dictum w\as: "In my humble judgment, the greatest day in our history was when every member of Congress, without regard to party, voted confidence in the President and authorized him to use the public treasury for the national defense."f That was the first step in a confidence which has demanded larger and larger contributions of confidence till this day, when the president's higher intellect is 'going it alone' and breaking up human liberties like the bull in a china shop. The president has 'imposed his unlimited will arbitrarily upon' us by ta:ing us without our consent for colossal sums to use for murdering Filipinos. In a 'state of nature,' at sound of which the classic Griggs and Smith and McKinley and Gage will tempestotusly guffaw, those who believe this massacre an unmitigated infamy, would have liberty to defend themselves against the tyrant who came to tax them for funds for the slaughter without asking their consent or going through the prescribed forms of government to learn their will in the matter; and in a state of nature they would be 'upon equal terms of force to maintain' their liberty, if they were not allowed to decide for themselves whether the massacre should take *Of Civil Government, Ch. XI. tIn Congress, January 25, '99. 416 WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. place or not. And for that very reason our state is already worse than that of unorganized savages, for we have allowed the executive to seize 'absolute arbitrary power,' and have armed him, to make prey of us when he pleases. "Tyranny," says Locke, "is the exercise of power bevond right, which nobody cal have a right to." Has McKinley a right to tax the American people to carry on a war which they never authorized or sanctioned? "It is a mistake to think this fault is proper only to monarchies: other forms of government are liable to it as wAell as that... Wherever laws ends tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm. And whosoev.er in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, an1d mIakcs uise of the force hle has under his coI1mmand to comlpass that upon the subject which the law allows Iot, ceases in, that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed as any other manl who by force invadcs the right of another."' The McKinley tyrants tell us every day of the Anglo-Saxon liberties we are to convey to the Filipinos after destroying them; now this duty of resistance to tyrants is one of the most sacred of those Anglo-Sa*on liberties and let us exercise it on this tyrant. Whoever pays the unlawful massacre-taxes of this tyrant bows to him and abets him. Whoever yields one inch to that course of crime which he has conceived and instituted in the East, is but a poor and despicable guardian of those Anglo-Saxon liberties which others won with their blood. In the avalanche slide of American liberties produced by conquest the doctrine of the consent of the governed has been trampled on and befouled. The hurry of events has made us lose the point that the question whether we are to govern the Filipinos and others without their consent, great as it is, is secondary to that prime issue now *Locke, Ch. XVIII. WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. 417 being tried-wzchether we are to be gov.,erned hereafter without our own consent. This must be recognized: I.?we are d(raTwt into governing savage peoples wcithout their approval, we shall froml that tinte be governed without our own approval or consent. Let us once more turn to Locke. "That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can by such an unjust war never come to have a right over the conquered will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over wNhomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises wihich unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make ime seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Jlst such/ a title by his sw(,ord has ant utiljust conqueror,who forces ume into slubmission. The illjury and the crille is equal, zwheether conlllitt(ed by th1e wearer of a crown or so/ne petty villain. The title of the offender and the number of his followers make no difference in the offense unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers plluish little ones to keep theml in obedience; but the great onies are rewarded zeitf laurels and triumllphs, because tlhey are too big for the zweak hands of justice iii this w ort0ld, and have the power in thei ir oCwn possession1, 'whicIl s/hould punt ish offenders."' Now what is it we are to learn from this? A government that will conquer and absorb a weak people in this wise, is a pirate and a robber. That government will turn upon its own people. Those composing it will not long be content to leave the people under them free when they begin to experience the joys of conquest elsewhere. If the people of the country sanction the conquest of the weak, they are of the sort that will easily become - prey to their own rulers. England illustrates this. The common people of England are slaves to their rulers. The *Chapter XVI, of Conquest. 14 41 0 WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. rulers love conquest of the weak, the people also love it, and the people at this grade of evolution are readily kept slaves to those above them. Conquest elsewhere keeps the common people low and bloody beasts, and so keeps them under the spell of their bloody conquering rulers. An attempt was made by those Englishmen who believe in peace with the Transvaal to hold a public meeting in its favor. \What happened? "LONDON, Sept. 24.-The attempt to hold a pro-Boer anti-war demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, this afternoon, resulted in a dreary failure. Thousands assembled, but not to support the speakers. On the contrary, the crowd waved Union Jacks and sang the national anthem and "Rule Britannia" like mighty invocations. The speakers, who were quite inaudible, were received with groans, decayed apples and eggs and other missiles. There were cheers for Mr. Chamberlain, secretary of state for the colonies, and hisses for President Kruger. Some soldiers who were present were carried shoulder high by the crowd. "The list of speakers included none of special influence... They were saluted with execrations as soon as they mounted the platform, and were obliged to stand, smiling complacently during the singing of national airs and the wild cheering for Mr. Chamberlain. Their attempts to put their resolutions to a vote were the merest dumbshow." One speaker "was menaced with a forest of walking sticks when he tried to speak. The shouldering of a soldier and a marine, their hands clasped, in procession around the square, provoked frantic enthusiasm, and was altogether an impressive incident, the multitude bursting into the song, 'Soldiers of the Queen.' There were several ugly rushes for the platform, which was surrounded by opponents of the demonstration, who yelled fiercely. Finally the mounted police were telephoned for to clear the square. Batons were freely used, several persons were trodden upon by the horses and thirty arrests were made. The opponents of the meeting finally proposed resolutions in support of the government's policy, which were carried amid wild enthusiasm."-[Press cablegram.] This was the work of British slaves-cowards and slaves. The rich rulers set the people on to this kind of thing and thus use up their strength and their thimble of brains. Foreign conquest is a popular halter, both to lead and to hang domestic animals. Did the significance of naming nations after brutes ever occur to you? England is properly named from the bull. The bull in a rage is stone blind. Mastered by that rage he destroys himself in the struggle to destroy his foe. This is typical quality of the British common mass. To get at Kruger WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. 4I9 they strap themselves to the pillory of poverty, then cheer the aristocrat who comes along and skins them. They are John Ghouls. And among the bodies that they eat are their own. To these miserable wretches Sir \William Harcourt said in vain that 'there was no casus belli,' and called the probable war a 'shameful catastrophe.' Are our people any smaller fools? Our Dewey returns home. He is one of those who obeyed McKinley's orders to conquer the weaker Filipinos. This robber broke into the Philippines and with a dagger and a battleship at their throats tried to make them seal a deed conveying their estate to McKinley. It would give no title, it was ghoulish thieving. "The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some petty villain," says Locke. Dewey represents the wearer of a crown, and, cringingly complaisant to that criminal crown, attempts the dirtiest act in all the shame-growing history of dirt. But he comes home, and the common people of this marrowless continent give way to transports of congratulation, frenzy mounts on tumult and lashes the six-footed beast down the toboggan of delirium. We celebrate the coming of a robber. A herd like that is ready to be governed without its own consent! A people like that has the soul of a slave! Mad with joy at the return of one who aided to achieve undying infamy! Such a people will easily become a prey to government masters who will rule them without their consent. Their consent is willy nilly. They shout for conquest, they adore the pirate conqueror, they obey the conquerors. Love of conquest takes the place of love of liberty. Here is the new sentiment of slavery in one of its new and rife expressions: "Were the right of independence inherent in man it would disintegrate allgovernment..... The reason the United States interfered with Spain in the latter's war in Cuba was not because the Cubans had a right to independence, but because they were entitled to good government;... [The Western Graphic, Aug. 26, '99.] The idea of equality left some time since, now goes the right of independence. It is now plain that man was 420 WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. made for Governments, not governments for Man. The Chicago clergyman \who said that the Declaration of Independence is 'played out,' a 'l)ack number,' or some such thing, belongs to the Western Graphic van. It now only remains to say that fraternity is fudge, and to fold it in the tomb with Jesus and the French Revolution. A leading American Boil, the N. Y. Journal, says it: Erroneous is the general vague idea that men ought to win, and that they do usually win, because they fight for liberty. The best thing in the world for a nation is a licking. Great races and free nations, as Mr. Aguinaldo will kindly notice, are based very often on some patriotic move that failed... Aguinaldo will probably be pensioned. His Gallic predecessor, Vercingetorix, was dragged behind Caesar's triumphal wagon. Aguinaldo will be treated humanely when caught. But he will have to be whipped, because progress and the best interests of humanity demand it. Hengist and Horsa traveled over England wiping out entire populations. It was painful for the thick-headed Britons, with their stomachs painted blue. But it was a fine thing for England. A few years ago the red Indians were fighting desperately to keep these lands to themselves.... But we whites thrashed them, killed them, taught them to drink whisky, and wiped them out... It is not the abstract idea of liberty that wins. Americans did not win against England merely because they were in the right. They did not conquer merely because they were struggling for liberty. Let Garner, the monkey man, teach our apes in the Zoo to repeat the Declaration of Independence, with slight variations. Will that get them out of their cage? No. And Mr. Aguinaldo's feeble paraphrases of Jefferson will not make him rule where Jefferson's descendants have raised their flag. The weak must go to the wall or stay there-it's better all around that they should. Our time may come. It probably will come. But it has not come yet. Before it comes we'll rule in Asia as we rule at home. There will be much injustice, much exploiting of the poor by the rich-all our unpleasant home features. But we shall establish in Asia a branch agency of the true American movement toward liberty. We'll beat that country, we'll own that country, we'll improve that country.... We'll win and rule out there because the young American soldier who fights gamely and dies bravely is better than the thick-skulled, coarsehaired aborigine who shoots him from the bush. In spite of.., America will win in the Philippines and establish "America in Asia." This will come, kind reader, in spite of you, if you happen to be a sentimental, kind-hearted anti-expansionist. For Divine wisdom, which knows only the human race as a whole, wills that the ablest shall lead. They always have led and always will. Sympathize with Aguinaldo, or with the mosquito sadly buzzing as the farmer drains his swamp. But don't try to get away from facts.* *In Chapter IX, "The Bandit Press," the N. Y. Journal-Examiner, which poses as the People's Friend, was shown to be a fraud of the first water. When that chapter was written this new editorial had not come to day. It was easy to show WHOEVER ENSLAVES ANOTHER. 421 Kind reader, if you happen to have thought that the good, the fair, the just, the noble, the high, are of anv weight or consequence in this America or in this world, give it up now. Liberty, fraternity, equality, independence, love, are gone, and brute force reigns. The weak shall go down. Thus it shall be of races, thus it shall be of individuals. What a nation will do to other nations weaker than it, that nation will do to its own weaker units. If you are weak you shall go down before the fiercer, stronger brutes. Socrates went down, Jesus went downv, Paul went down and how many of those we count best perished before the brutes, because the brutes were strong! It was good? They were the weak. They were not strong enough to stand against the brutal strength of the brutes of the world. The best are few, therefore they are weaker than the many, therefore they shall go down, therefore it is right that they go down. "There wcill be illuch itnjulstice, muItch1 exploiting of the poor by fthe r'ch-all our unpleasant homlte features," but, kind reader, it is not for you to kick. If you are one of the rich vou will live on the blood of those who go down, if you are one of the weak you will furnish the blood for those who put you down to drink! Do you object? So does the mosquito object. If you are weak you are a mosquito buzzing in a swamp. That was the value of Jesus, of Socrates, of Paul. This is the Code of Hell, the proposed and prospective Code of America. Do you accept it? that Hearst is an utter fraud and knave, but this editorial exhibits him as a prodigious donkey. This man a reformer! yet an open advocate of expansion and armyism that will bring "much injustice, much exploiting of the poor by the rich -all our unpleasant home features"! He wants this. Why?-because he is himself a measureless millionaire thief. He wants free silver to waft his silver mines blissward, and so he puts on the anchorite's rope of the reformer and goes about in bare feet and abnegating tatters. How can any intelligent man breathe the penitentiary gas made by the Journal-Examiner and its glue-factory genus of paper? How can the working man, stifled already in his own factory-hell and tenement, breathe and believe it, when it confesses itself to be determined and malignant poison for his body and soul? Obliterate these angry American PressBoils, by not reading them. Break up the Journal-Examiner-Sun-Tribune genus of felons by not buying them. In a word, treat them with a universal poultice ot boycott. CHAPTER XX. The Doll of Trade. There have been three notorious steps in our passage from God to Trade. First, we conquered Spain purely to free the oppressed; second, we discovered that it was better for the free to belong to us; third, that it was better for the free to be murdered in order to make them belong to us. These steps mark the progress of the earthappetite in our masters. First it was God's will for us to rescue the weak, then it was found to be his will that we should possess them ourselves, then that we should murder them if necessary in order to possess them, and our motive in doing every one of these things has been the same-the good of the weak, the good of the murdered. It is very important for our future liberties to know how we passed from love to murder and have proved them identical, how with a pure conscience and no malice we have devastated, murdered and despoiled of country those we love, in the name of love. The Christian doll has played a star role in this theatre of fraud. The words recited on the stage by the Christian doll are these: 'I am a Good Samaritan who saw Spain's colonies by the wayside bleeding, and I did not pass by heedless as the wicked nations of Europe had done, but I went and drove away the brute that was beating their protrate forms. This was a Christian act. I am a Christian. I performed this act by the help of the Almighty Father because he wished to have it done. Now the question arises, What shall I as a Christian do with these poor wayfarers whom I have rescued on their way to Jericho. I need servants and I think I will keep THE DOLL OF TRADE. 423 them. They are in such a mournful plight from their bruises that it would be cruel to send them on their way. I will heal their bruises with the balm of education and justice, and restrain them in a Christian spirit from wounding themselves, and they shall work for me and be happy. I am such a strong and enlightened Christian that there is no greater honor in the world than being my servant.' In the course of events some of these poor men declared that they were extremely thankful for what the Good Samaritan had done, and were ready now to go on about their own business which required attention. To this the Christian doll answered: 'I have decided mildly but firmly that it will not be best for you to leave my house. I have cows to milk and stables to clean, and by performing these offices you can learn to live in a civilized manner. I do not keep you from any selfish motive for I am above that, but I shall require you to clean my barns for your own good. I see very plainly that you are not able to carry on business in Jericho. If I permit you to go down there you will fall among thieves again, or fall to fighting one another, and God would never forgive me for letting that happen to you. He would punish me with the contempt of the whole world for having shirked responsibilities which, against my will, he had placed upon me. No you cannot depart. I will appoint a military governor over you to educate you and to lead you out to work in my sugar fields.' Then some of these men, called Philippines, began to struggle to escape out of the Good Samaritan's house and get away. Whereupon the Christian doll called in a force of men armed with staves, who set upon the wayfarers and beat them unmercifully. Some of them they killed, others were belabored so cruelly that they would never be able to move again, and all were bleeding as horribly as when the good doll first rescued them by the wayside. The good doll looked on serenely, praying 424 THE DOLL OF TRADE. most of the time. At length she spoke to the survivors and to the crowd which had been drawn together from all parts by the noise. She said: Christian duty is sometimes very painful. Duty is a difficult thing. "It is sometimes hard to determine what is best to do, and the best thing to do is oftentimes the hardest." There are some who doubt if it is ever best to make those whom you have rescued from death your slaves, but they have no stables to clean or gardens to hoe. "If the doubters were in a majority, there would, it is true, be no labor, no sacrifices, no anxiety and no burden raised or carried; no contribution from our ease and purse and comfort to the welfare of others, or even to the extension of our resources to the welfare of ourselves." [McKinley.] These persons can be of untold service to me, why should I deny them the advantage of being so? To be sure, "Grave problems come in the life of a Good Samaritan, however much he may seek to avoid them. They came without my seeking, why, I do not know, and it is not always given to know." I do not know why I want cowboys and farm hands, I do not know why God put it in my power to rescue these poor men from evil just when I particularly needed help, I do not know why these travelers are so weak that I can force them to remain in my service: these are grave problems, which it is not given us to understand. God only can comprehend such things. I did not seek the problems, God in his good Providence forced them upon ime. Their future is now in my hands. I forced the brute who was pounding the immortal soul out of them to sign a contract treaty which gave them into my possession, and conferred upon me the right to take up the pounding where he left off. He had no right to beat them, but lie had a right to confer upon me the right to beat them, which I forced him to do after severely breaking his head in order to teach him his duty. I did not seek the possession of these men. When the brute refused to sign THE DOLL OF TRADE. 425 them over to me I merely forced him to do it. But my will had nothing to do with that act, it was done by God. God forced me to force him to transfer the possession of the unfortunate wayfarers to me. God evidently wanted me to have them or he would not have forced me to take them away from that evil man by force. It is true the fellow that was beating them wsas a thief and a robber, who had stripped them of their raiment and wounded them, and he had no rights but those of robbery and force and wickedness over them, but by making him sign the treaty I acquired a just and honorable title to what he had acquired by these impious means. This is clear, for if it had not been so a just God would not have forced me to force him to sign the treaty. The future of these Philippine travelers is now in my hands. "That treaty now commits the free and enfranchised Filipinos to the guiding hand and the liberalizing influences, the generous sympathies, the uplifting education, not of me their master, but of me their emancipator." At this point there was an interruption caused by the rising up of several of the wayfarers who had been thought already dead. The Christian doll directed her men-servants to strike these fellows several times very hard upon the temples with their clubs, and if that did not dispatch them to stab them at the heart with knives. She then continued: As I was saying, "the guiding hand and generous sympathies, not of me their master, but of me their emancipator." These people must hereafter do as I say and must work for me for their own good. I did not rescue them from the fiend who was killing some of them in order to make them my servants, but in the divine providence of Almighty God I have since discovered that I need just such servants as these, which I accept as testimony of the Divine will and guiding. Here another interruption occurred, some of the servants coming to inquire what should be done with the corpses, which were getting rather numerous. "Convey 426 THE DOLL OF TRADE. them out to the place in the street where I found that inhuman devil attacking them, and lay them by the bodies of those whom he killed, replied the holy maid. and resumed: I do not know just what work to give these people or just how to manage them. "No one can tell today what is best for them or for me. I know no one at this hour who is wise enough to tell me how I shall decide to govern them. But until I make up my mind a servant of mine named Otis shall see to giving them peace and beneficent government, even if this thrusts upon him the solemn duty of exterminating the majority; he shall afford them every opportunity to prosecute their lawful pursuits of hoeing my corn, encouraging them in their industries of weeding my potatoes and currying my horses, making them feel and know I am their friend and not their enemy, that their good is my aim, that their welfare is my welfare, but that neither their aspirations nor mine can be realized until my authority is acknowledged and unquestioned." Now do not go away and distort my meaning. If I were not so good a Christian it would be wrong for me to do these things. None of my neighbors except a fellow called England could do them without doing wrong. He is also a Christian. Having, as a Christian, saved these wayfarers' lives, their lives belong to me under the Christian law that a Christian cannot do harm to a fellow man. I proved that I am a Christian by saving these lives, now as a Christian I cannot do a wrong, so that when I take their raiment and wound them and kill them and make them my lifelong servants it is not wrong; it is carrying out the Christian duty which I began in saving their lives. These men have some farms in another place which I shall go and take as my own, in fulfilment of mv Christian obligations to them. But I do not want their farms, in fact I am sorry to have to take them, and T do it only because I clearly see the finger of God pointing that way. I shall, however, bravely and courageously THE DOLL OF TRADE. 427 assume the responsibility of the farms which God has thrust upon me, as well as of some gold mines which they contain. Hereupon, to enforce her good principles, the doll took a handsome volume from the table which held the water-pitcher. It bore the name, "Gems Snapped Up From the Sea by McKinley: the Correct Christian Doctrine How to Steal Without Stealing, and Murder Without Murdering; Being His Speeches Revised by Himself and Proofs Corrected by the 'Almighty." She read: "No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to our American sentiment, thought and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag. They are wrought in every one of its sacred folds and are inextinguishable in its shining stars. "'Why read ye not the changeless truth, The free can conquer but to save?'" "Our concern was not for territory or trade or empire, but for the people whose interests and destiny, without our willing, had been put in our hands."' -McKinley's Boston speech. "We have, too, a good national conscience and have the courage of destiny." "Our achievements on land and sea are without parallel in the world's history."Clinton, Ia., speech. "The same high purpose which characterized the conduct of the people in war will influence and control them in the settlement of peace."-DeKalb speech. "While our victories in battle have added new honors to American valor, the real honor is the substantial gain to humanity." "We accepted war for humanity. We can accept no terms of peace which shall not be in the interest of humanity."-Boone speech. "I congratulate you on the condition of the country. It was never better than it is today." [I am president, I caused this, elect me again.] "We have won glorious THE DOLL OF TRADE. triumphs for humanity. \Ve went to war not because we wanted to, but because humanity demanded it. And having gone to war for humanity's sake, we must accept no settlement that will not take into account the interests of humanity."-Springfield, Ill., speech. "There was no malice in our conflict. There was no bitterness or resentment connected with it, and when it was all over we treated our foe as generously as we could have treated a friend." [We merely took away his Philippines to pay ourselves for the humanity of fighting him.]-Red Oak, Ia., speech. "And, my fellow-citizens, wherever our flag floats, wherever we raise that standard of liberty, it is always for the sake of humanity and the advancement of civilization. Territory sometimes comes to us when we go to war in a holy cause, and whenever it does, the banner of liberty will float over it and bring, I trust, blessings and benefits to all of the people."-Chariton speech. I told you so, said the doll here interrupting herself, it is the holy cause that brings territory. I did not want the farms and gold mines of my enemy, but my good deeds brought them to me as a reward and I thank God for them. The Filipinos there whose heads I bound up for a holy cause and then broke for territory, in order not to refuse God's free gifts, are now thanking God for the banner of my liberty which floats over them. This flag is the hope of the oppressed-ask those dead men if it isn't; McKinley said so yesterday at Plattsburg. It is their shroud also, they all hope to be buried in it, and we intend to realize their hopes very soon, and to have it float over their graves. My war secretary Root is determined that the Fall campaign shall end the Filipinos and he will recruit ten new regiments to convey freedom to the oppressed. "WVe follow, all of us, one flag. It symbolizes our purposes, our aspirations; it represents what we believe, and what we mean to maintain, and wherever it floats, it is the flag of the free, the hope of the oppressed, and THE DOLL OF TRADE. 429 wherever it is assailed it will be carried to triumphant peace. We have more flags here than we ever had before." [We need them, we never had so many free corpses to confer the liberty of the flag on before.] McKihiley at Plattsburg, Aug. 16, '99. 'Rebellion may delay, but it can never defeat its blessed mission of liberty and humanity."-Plattsburg speech. "Hitherto... we have avoided the temptations of conquest in the spirit of gain.... We must avoid the temptations of undue aggression, and aim to secure only such results as will promote our own and the general good.... \We never enter upon war until' every effort for peace without it has been exhausted. Ours has never been a military government." "The faith of a Christian nation recognizes the hand of Almighty God in the ordeal through which the United States has passed. Divine favor seemed manifest everywhere. In fighting for humanity's sake we have been signally blessed."-Otiiaha speech. Now, cried the doll exultingly, you see we have got God in a basket, and we are approaching Chicago. There we shall take Him out and make Him perform to the hand-organ of Destiny. Why do'we have a God if we can't use him? "We are bound in conscience to keep and perform the covenants which the war has sacredly sealed with mankind. Accepting war for humanity's sake, we must accept all obligations which the war in duty and honor imposed on us. The splendid victories we hate achieved, would be our eternal shamze and not our everlasting glory, if they led to the 7weakeniing of our original lofty purpose, or to the desertion of the inntmortal principles on ~ which the national government was founded, and in accordance with which enno'bling spirit it has ever since been faithfully adminlistered. The war with Spain was undertaken not that the United States should increase its territory, but that oppression at our very doors should be stopped. This noble sentiment must continue to ani 430 THE DOLL OF TRADE. mate us and we must give to the world the full demontstration of the sincerity of our purpose. Duty determines destiny. Destiny which results from duty performed may bring anxiety and perils, but never failure and dishonor."-"It is not within the power of man to foretell the future and to solve unerringly its mighty problems. Almighty God has His plans and methods for human progress, and not infrequently they are shrouded for the time being in impenetrable mystery.".-"In our present situation, duty and duty alone should prescribe the boundary of our responsibilities and the scope of our undertakings."-Chicago speech. The Good Samaritan doll now fell on the stage and rolled about in transports of delight. Between her sobs of laughter she managed to say so that the audience heard: God is now where I want him, he is between two millstones, Duty and Destiny. One grinds one way and the other the other, and God has to go the way the wheel goes. I can make him dance a jig to opposite tunes with Divine composure. Listen now. Duty determines Destiny, and Destiny determines Duty. Duty determined me to save these fellows, and that imposed on me the grave destiny of keeping them saved and making them work for me-which I would to God I had been spared, though I need them and will not let them go if it takes every drop of blood in my body and every soldier in the United States. Duty determined the destiny of keeping them, and the destiny of keeping them determines the duty of rebreaking their heads lest they get away. This puts "grave responsibilities" upon me. Humanity is a hard taskmaster. I "cannot escape the obligations of victory." If I want slaves I must undergo the pain of enslaving them. Farms and islands do not fly to America on wings, the holy law of obtaining them is to kill the people who own them. "Pursuing duty may not always lead by smooth paths. Another course may look easier and more attractive, but pursuing duty for duty's sake is always sure, safe and honorable." [McKinley.] But THE DOLL OF TRADE. 431 in the end if a slave is thoroughly subjugated he is a good thing. Destiny is doing what you want to do, Duty is saying that it is God's will. But after all, subjugating these unfortunate wayfarers isn't very hard for me. I give orders and my servingmen do the rest. If they get bruised in the melee I do not feel their wounds. To be sure looking at the bloodstained ditches out there in the street where I have the dead bodies thrown 'every red drop, whether from the veins of a man-servant of mine or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart' (MlcKinley in Boston); but under the broad range of future years when these people shall be working peacefully for my enrichment, "enjoying the blessings of freedom, and of civil and religious liberty," they shall bless me, or I will shoot them again. And surely, for the hard and bloody work and suffering of my servants in the good cause of getting slaves for me I deserve reward. I will take the farms and islands of the misguided travelers who rebel against slavery, and raise my handkerchief on a stick to show the world that they are mine. Who will haul it down? "The flag has been planted in two hemispheres, and there it remains, the symbol of liberty and law, of peace and progress. Who will withdraw it from the people over whom it floats in protecting folds? Who will haul it down?" (flcKinley i n Atlanta.) The doll now recovered herself sufficiently to announce that a number of religious people were to he heard from in absolution of the Good Samaritan policy, and she called the "Rev. Dr." Francis F. Clark, founder of the Christian Endeavor Society, who came to the stage with all the weight of pure Christianity upon him, and said: * The very reason why the problem [of expansion] is now confronting us, the very reason why these fair islands have fallen from the nerveless grasp of Spain, is that she has forgotten our Lord's golden Address before 5000 New England Christian Endeavorers in Tremont Temple, Boston, Feb. 2, '99, at anniversary meeting. Subject of the address, "The Attitude of the Young Christian Toward the Territorial Expansion of the United States.' 432 THE DOLL OF TRADE. rule. She has exploited those subject races for her own benefit; she has taken them and oppressed them, and her corrupt politicians have fattened at the colonial crib. Then she beckoned to the Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, a Christian of the inner of inners, who was sitting on the front theatre seat and responded so alacritively that he came not up by the stairs but over the headlights. He spoke of the expanding trade of the country since the war, and said emphatically of the Philippines, "Most decidedly I am in favor of their retention. We owe as much to the people of the Philippines as we do to the people of Cuba." Then he was seized with the spirit of tongues and delivered himself of visions: "Th e war with Spa in was waged by heaven. It was plannled there before the armies and nl aviies lmet. Victory was awarded before there was a declaration of war. It was v.ictory for hulmanity, and death for the oppressor. Such things conme about in their ownl1 good time. The war wcas not settled in Cuba. It was settled int heaven, and the great honor on earth rests with the United States."* The holy doll then took a letter from navy secretary Long to the Endeavoring Christians, out of her dress and placing her foot on a heap of Filipino carcasses, read: "The expansion of our country means the expansion of our system of education, of our principles of free government, of additional securities to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as well as of our commerce." See, she cried, flourishing the letter and laying it down on a body, in bringing these cruelly maltreated men, whom I saved, to their senses and braining them to make them think aright, I give them an additional security of life and happiness! Secretary of Murder says so. Unless we believe our rulers the foundation of morality will disappear. Some of the foremen of the menservants now appeared humbly before the doll, touching the forelocks of their hair respectfully, and asked permission to say a few words *At Hotel del Coronado, Cal., Sept. 8, '98. Interview by correspondent of a Los Angeles daily. THE DOLL OF TRADE. 433 to the theatre. It is granted, said the doll, provided you do not say anything that will injure my chances of slaying the wayfarers. Servant-colonel Mulford, from the canton of Nebraska, announced that his entire regiment of men-servants had resigned and only one man of them all had re-enlisted. Foremen-general Lawton, King and others, who were covered with blood and dust and rainwater, declared that the fight was getting more terrible all the time and that more men-servants would be needed to quell the mutinous wayfarers-in all 75,000 or 100,000. Servant-lieutenant-colonel Eager said: "There is a great deal of fighting yet to be done. It is fighting of the very hardest and most harrowing kind, too. Really it amounts to bushwhacking, such as the American soldiers were required to do against the Indians in the early days in this country. Personally, I do not care to give my opinion as to the wisdom of fighting for the islands. I have no objection in stating, howcver, that all the lmen thilik that the price zwe are paying for our new possessions is far iin excess of what they are worth. I know that the men now would be willing to relinquish the struggle to any other Power that might desire to take up the burden."* The doll now grew very solemn and issued this proclamation to the audience. The war must go, on to the bitter end. I did not begin it, I did not seek it. These travelers rebelled against my authority. I peacefully ordered them to be my slaves, and they insolently refused. This battle is therefore no fault of mine, I am free from all responsibility except to whip them, and make them by force what they wouild not be voluntarily. If you attack a man for his pocketbook and he refuses to give it up you are in duty bound to destroy him, in order to vindicate your honor, and get his pocketbook. It will not be your fault if he is destroyed; why did he resist your just claims to his pocketbook? Especially if you had bought those claims from another thief who had been trying to rob him before. These fellows have brought destruction *The N. Y. Outlook, Aug. 12, 1899, p 821. 434 THE DOLL OF TRADE. on their own heads. They insulted the handkerchief which I had put up on their farms, by attacking me when I took possession. The stain they cast upon that Emblem of me can only be wiped out by an unmerciful beating and absolute submission to my slavery. That is the law of handkerchiefs, Christian nations, brigands, and dolls. I bought these men by compulsion from the thieves they had fallen among and I should never have my dignity among other dolls if I did not prove the justice of my purchase by force. I do not care how many of my men-servants die in vindication of me. It is not I who die. There are seventy million people around here on whom I can draw for servants. If a few hundred thousand die out of those for my honor, it is a very small thing. My handkerchief will feel all the better and I shall have touching material for speeches. A hundred thousand is only one sevenhundredth of the people, a mere song. Who would haul down the flag for that? Go back to your work, boys, and don't let me hear any complaining or you will be unpatriotic and I shall spank you with the shingle of treason. I cannot give up the lands and service and trade these wayfarers will bring me for a paltry hundred thousand other people's children. So the fighting continued savagely until so many wayfarers were killed that the rest lost heart and gave up. The Christian doll then lifted a prayer of thanks to Heaven and remarked, "Sing unto the Lord a new song, for He hath done marvelous things for America."* She continued, I have conquered at a terrible price, and surely I cannot give up what has cost me so much. When I began to reduce these wayfarers to servitude I had no idea of reducing them to servitude. The idea occurred to me afterward when I saw how fiercely they resisted me and how ill-suited they are to governing themselves. Men who can fight like this are natural-born slaves anyway. If I give them freedom now what recompense *Headlines of a daily paper on Spain's acceptance of the Paris treaty. THE DOLL OF TRADE. 435 shall I have for all the loss of other people's lives they have cost me? It would be crime and shame. Moreover, it is my duty to dress the wounds which I have inflicted, of those who survive. They will work better. Humanity is always sweet. I shall be carrying out the sainted mission which I had begun when they rebelled. "The humanity of our purposes and magnanimity of our conduct have given to war, always horrible, touches of noble generosity, Christian sympathy and charity and examples of human grandeur which can never be lost to mankind. Passion and bitterness formed no part of our impelling motive, and it is gratifying to feel that humanity triumphed at every step of the war's progress." (The President.)* They have triumphed serenely. I now have the enemy's farms and islands, gold mines and bodies. Having those I can afford to be magnanimous. I shall give him free schools which he will pay for, and military carpet-bag governors who. will know how to take their own pay. It will be like Alaska, which T govern perfectly. Governor Brady of that plantation of mine tells me that the men who govern that ranch "have no interest in Alaska except to grab whatever they can and get away," that "they are like a lot of hungry codfish," and that "II per cent of the entire government are now under indictment for malfeasance in office."t That is what I like, for then my governors are loyal to all my war policies. It is ideal on a little farm of mine Down East called Luzon. Man-servant-general Anderson assures me that my overseer "Otis is both civil and military Governor in the island. Exercising both of the functions, he is the most absolute and arbitrary ruler on earth, the Czar of Russia not excepted." The Christian doll then retired to a pyramid of New Testaments in a corner of the stage, where she removed several layers of fleshly piety from her body and disclosed the whited skeleton of Trade underneath. All that had happened was then clear. "In Omaha. tN. Y. Evening Post, semi-weekly edition, June I, '99. jAssociated Press account of Gen. Anderson's words, July 25, '99. CHAPTER XXI. Seduced By Destiny. Destiny is a great word. It lights up the sorrows of life by taking away personal responsibility. It justifies crime by making it the work of God. If you have been a vicious spendthrift and squandered your substance on fast women and fast horses, convert yourself to Destiny in your latter days and edify your grandchildren by tracing the footprints of God through your miscreant career and showing them how good it was for your soul to have been a rogue. If you wish Naboth's field or his oil refinery, be a Sunday School Superintendent and a college settlement patron and tell him that the progress of the world demands the concentration of fields and the heaping up of refineries, and that you feel yourself divinely appointed to carry forward progress on the back of your bank account. You would not have bamfoozled Nathan of old, but the parsons who are gathering grains of gold on the shores of civilization, will chipperly rebuke the anguish of Naboth in your behalf. If you want another man's country, take it in the name of God and it shall be well with thee. If you wish the trade and territory of the earth for sordid gain thou art wicked, but if you wish them for sordid gain to glorify God therewith thou art a savior. There is some subtlety in our relation to territory, but the Lord God is a subtle God visiting the sins of the oppressor upon the oppressed. \We desire territory for the reason that propelled the children of Israel, the Vandals, the Huns, Napoleon, and Bismarck, which God knows because he knows all, but he is an accommodating SEDUCED BY DESTINY. 437 Godl in his old age and is pacified byassurance that our illimital)le greed and graspingness are unselfish and impersonal, cherished and allowed only to serve Him. But although this is a distinction upon which all followers of true religion will rest in peace, it is a great gain for the ordinary conscience to know that the entire object of expansion is and has been premeditated commercial avarice, the dipping of which in the essence of divinity is the counterpart of immersing spoiled meat in chemistry to give it the outer gloss of perfection. Now the question for us all is, \Why has there been this pains to disguise the truth from us? The object of our political masters is to get more territory for the millionaires to exploit with monopoly which they still call by the obsolete word trade; God and civilization play no part in the matter as a reality. Why do they dip their monopoly greed in liquor of God and civilization, if the expansion of greed is good in itself? Why do they not come bravely and say that trade is the whole affair? Only because expansion is rotten progress, not good for us, and they know we would not take it were we not deceived. Nevertheless some of the most frank have entirely thrown off the mask of holiness and based the entire argument on trade, and these are persons so related to the administration that their words furnish the last proof that absolute monopoly selfishness has been the only motive, at all times, of those steering the American state. I wish to meet this question at its most critical point. They say that we were forced to expand, against our will; they give the impression that there was no previous and settled intention to take the Philippines when our peace agents went to Paris, and that destiny gradually unfolded itself to our representatives and opened their eyes to what must be. This is all false. The men engaged in it know it is false. They know that they were selected because they would execute the directions of McKinley like so many pulleys and straps in a mill. 438 SEDUCED BY DESTINY. They were selected because they were good adobe. The president's purpose was fixed to require the Philippines, they virtually knew it and went to perform that mission. All appearance of doubt was a sham. They may not have been explicitly instructed to demand the whole group until after they reached Paris, but that was a mere matter of public policy, the people here were not ready for it, but the commissioners knew well that they would be directed to make that demaand. The president had talked the subject over confidentially il all its bearings with them all and severally before they sailed. He may not have said directly, 'We must have the Philippines,' but he had said it by clearly carried implication. The case may be epitomized in five words-The commissioners were McKinley's tools. Cushman K. Davis, U. S. senator from Minnesota, was one of them, and he made his attitude public before going abroad. To a reporter of the N. Y. WVorld he said: Events have made us one of the great powers of the earth. Whatever we may have desired ourselves heretofore, destiny has forced upon us responsibilities that we must recognize and accept. We have become a potent factor in the world's progress. A greater actual naval and military power we are already. We are not strong enough yet, but not an hour must be lost in equipping ourselves to cope with any emergency that may confront us....We must have a large regular army ready at call in the future. We must have as good a navy as any nation on earth. We have an excellent beginning. Ship for ship we need fear nobody. But we must build ships with true American energy. Nothing must deter us.. A gun is the earliest thought of the American youth. Men are only grown up boys.... China is the coveted part of the earth's surface today,... Providence has stepped in to point the future course for us. We must police the Pacific ocean. Its coast has been our vulnerable point. You understand, I am on record as favoring the retention of the territory which has been acquired by the splendid victories of our arms.... Hereafter, I tell you, the maritime, commercial and political interests will not permit their governing power to be indifferent to their honor or their progress. The United States has ceased to be the China of the Western Continent. We are alive, thank God, and must not be insulted by any power in this world, great or small. And it is that change that ought to make every patriot glad. Wars are inevitable-or all history is false.... Can we contemplate for an instant the interference of any power that shall abridge the majesty and glory laid at our feet by the incomparable Dewey? I say, 'never.' Therefore you may quote me just as strongly as you can as saying: 'More battleships, and, after that, more cruisers and battleships again.'* *Associated Press, Aug. 29, '98. SEDUCED BY DESTINY. 439 This roaring Comancle was chosen by the light-seeking president, whose mind was not (openly) made up, to go to Paris to complete the work of justice and unselfishness which we had notoriously begun? Nay truly; he was selected on account of his bowie-knife and scalps because the president intended a Spanish massacre. This redman had worked out his policy, if the president had another policy, or was in honest doubt, why did he choose such a cutthroat to represent him? It is a clear case. Just such a person was needed to enforce just such a policy as the White House and Davis unitedly wished-militarism, spoliation, and the full possession of the Philippine archipelago. Day was another negotiating tool. He announced the disinterested sentiment, "A peace treaty can contain anything which the victors put into it."* That is the plain English of it, for Charles Dilke, when asked if he thought this country should retain possession of the Philippines, replied: 'Certainly I do. The United States will hold the Philippines by right of conquest.' But Day's word beats the last breath out of the moribund doctrines of love and God and civilization and Destinyforcing-us, which had done such cart-horse service to drag the people to expansion. After reading these strident blasphemies of Davis & Day it is with unmitigated pain that we turn back to their divine origin so few days ago. We will select the angel Smith, this time, as envoy from the McKinlev Paradise. This is not Tom. Dick, or Harry Smith, but the wing —wcrded Charles Emory, the barbed-wire one, of whom something has already been heard in the cabinet and these pages. The only sayings in literature that come up to the passage before us are to be found in the devout Buddha, and I forget where Buddha nearly equals this, but I read it once. It seems but yesterday and was was but yesteryear that Smith said, "Whatever we hold, whether it be more or less, will be held, not for territorial aggrandizement, but solely in acceptance of respon*Associated Press, Dec. 6, '98. 440 SEDUCED BY DESTINY. sibilities which Providence has laid upon us. Mlen lightly talk of 'imperialism.' Our imperialism is not territorial lust, but benignant trade expansion and civilizing influence, and our flag is at Manila, not in any spirit of spoliation, not in either the greed or the glory of concuest, but, let it be reverently said, under the controlling force of a providential guidance, with the ripe hour, in the development and requirements of our national growth."* Grey is considered no all-round poet, but in his Elegy he makes a high leap, and like him Charles here gets up among the saviors of mankind, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Mlahomet, for one brief span, as it were by the aid of stilts. This was the immaculate conception of Davis & Day in Paris. '`We are alive, thank God, and not to be insulted by anybody. Battleships, and then battleships and after that battleships, forever. War is the natural state of mankind.' 'A peace treaty can contain anything the victors want to put into it.' The divine child born of God and McKinley has turned out in a short year to be a common earthly tough, member of a youthful gang of housebreaking Yellow Kids. Smith himself does not stay in the blue very long and the closing stanza of his Elegy in a Country's Church-yard is the Devil's birthmark on the Immaculate. I tremble for Smith's divinity and salvation as I quote it:-"It [our imperialism] is treated in many quarters simply as a question of territorial expansion, but that is a secondary and incidental consideration. The great andl overshadowing question is one of colmltmercial opening. The heart of the issue is not mere territory, bitt trade necessities antd facili(ties. Beyond and behind and beneath this departure lies the broad problem of America's destiny in the commerce and the civilization of the world.... \Vhy should we not peacefully and providentially (!!) avail ourselves of the commercial advantages within our grasp? Shall we be worthy of our high mission? I have full faith in my *At Omaha Auditorium, Oct. 5, '98. SEDUCED BY DESTINY. 441 countrymen." Indeed you have, Smith; you think you know a thief lwhen You see him-most memlers of your tribe do. O tempora. 0 mores! Is it possible that the Buddha of two seconds ago talks thus? Who can wonder that the Immaculate Conception turned out a sandbagger? Never was fall from the sublime to the predacious more perpendicular. Before we tackle Destiny we must fortify ourselves with wisdom, at least with information, as to what kind of steam was moving the wheels of the great Fact. We are now no longer wading among small men, senators, congressmen, parsons and such, but in the presence of the mighty, Cabinet Secretaries, Ministers to Siam and Iam and elselwhere. Secretary Wilson (of Agriculture and Armyculture) is a lovely man to quote on 'W\hat I know about Farming,' which is always this (taken from an address to Chicago farmers at the auditorium): It is the trade of the world we want. This is a commercial age....The possession of the Philippines is a great advantage to American commerce. The Philippines are extremely rich and will pay all expenses of governing them, including the maintenance of armies. I think the United States has the same duty toward the Philippines as toward Cuba and Porto Rico. The people are half savage and they need civilized rule. Trade is a great civilizer. The flow of trade will carry Americans out there with it; they will stay and help civilize the people. The schoolmaster is also required there, aud when the people are civilized then we can discuss the question whether or not we shall govern them or leave them to themselves. The Philippines will be very productive under American rule. Look how Cuba has improved. The income from Cuba last month was $I,ooo,ooo. Cuba will cost us nothing to govern, and as soon as the people realize that the fewer soldiers they have to support the more money they will have for internal improvements, they will be good.-July, I899. I read agricultural works continually but none of them has taught me so much about rotation of cops and the fertility of spoils as this. We find here also the missing link. It is this half-monkey: "Trade is a great civilizer." This is the missing link between the heaven of humanity from which we set out to Cuba, and the hell of conquest where we are stalled in the.Philippines. If trade is the All Good, the more we get it into the savage the more of God we inject at the same remedial squirt. Trade medi 442 SEDUCED BY DESTINY. cated with God is the link. Several of these links make a chain and several chains make a slave. This is the wherefore we have been seeking of our oneness with a subtle God. Do what you will in trade, war and slavery, but smear it over with the extract of Me. Say Trade is a great civilizer, a great diviner, a portable schoolhouse. Trade will pay its own, God's, and the army's traveling expenses, for the savages are rich. \Vell, God and the armies like travel, and are equally in love with human blood-offerings as far back as our acquaintance extends. Enough of Smith. Now for John Barrett, once minister to Siam. His colnection with Destiny is as esoteric as a chimney-sweep to a chimney. There, is not much God in what Barrett has to say, and that omission is a grateful rest and refreshment. We have had God, God, God, in this expansion, imperialism, humanity, trade, destiny tomnoddy business, always a pewter idol God with cant eyes and weathervane ears and wind-mill tongue until the very name God is grown a disgusting symbol of treachery, and we have a parcel of pewter ugliness as high as a temple. Barrett gives God a much-needed vacation; and may be considered the only existing imperialist humanitarian, for he takes pity on the Almighty and lets him out from the service of Hell, temporarily. He only sends God on one errand-as usual to fetch Destiny, a tired pathway. Upon our policy depends our position in that great ocean, where, by the hand of God, by destiny, and by fortune, it is intended that we should be first.... It is an issue of the hour. It is now or never.. What a vista of opportunities here opens before us.... Given this mighty nation of ours in that incalculable position of strength resulting from permanent sovereignty over the Philippines, and perpetual enjoyment of freedom of trade in China, and you will have a nation whose power and influence will be paramount, not only in the Pacific, but throughout all the world. Manila occupies a strong place for both trade and strategic purposes.... In comparison with the opportunities afforded by other Asiatic countries, the Philippines provide more than their natural share of opportunities for the investment of capital for the development of various enterprises... Many a doubting Thomas,... on a personal investigation of the field not confined to Manila, but the great country back of it in Luzon and the other islands, has frankly acknowledged his error and that here is one SEDUCED BY DESTINY. 443 of the greatest undeveloped fields of investments that remain outside the borders of the United States. Holding and developing the Philippines is not mere imperialism, not mere expansion, in the popular use of these misleading terms, but taking legitimate advantage of a splendid material opportunity where unavoidable moral responsibility has compelled us to assume the sovereignty of these rich antilles of the Orient.... I believe that we have the power of discrimination, the capability of taking what is best, and leaving what is worst, of so guiding our policy, that in this great race of nations for supremacy in the world's competition we shall be forever a strong first. The climate is not such as to interfere with the investment of capital,... The United States has assumed a mighty and unavoidable responsibility, not only to themselves and the natives, but to the world, in occupying the Philippine Islands. They could not return them to their former sovereignty, sell them to another power, nor yield them to native rule, without shirking such responsibility and taking a backward step from which the nation would never recover.* The devil shall have his due. This mighty apocalypse is the effulgent transubstantiation of the caterpillar of crawling duty into the diamond butterfly of unshackeled. trade. It is a portentous event, worthy of celebrations, cannon salvos, and an immortal victory over something with many of the enemy dead. Here god at length peters out utterly and Trade ascends the throne. Goodby god, you flirted with Trade and you are deposed by Her. Henceforward you are a pretender only, to the chief emoluments of the universe, a cosmic tramp without property or reverence. No more prayers and contribution-boxes to you! It is your own fault, old fellow. You deserve no sympathy. You let McKinley fool with your name and Hanna fool with your person. Your head seemed turned by the attention speculators paid you. As the Sun of Intelligence, where was your sight? As the. Father of Morality where was your character? You can now go off and get your companionship with Zeus and Saturn and Thor and Woden in the infirmary of old gods. They all betrayed mankind sooner or later, but none but you ever sold out to a Mark Hanna. Your title emeritus ought to, be forevermore Goose god. But the naked Barrett is getting cold, let us return to console him. *June 7, 1899. 444 DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. Barrett is not a cardinal in the college of knaves reigning at this time, but he belongs to the arrant gang of has-been, would-be, and perhaps will-be reigners, and shows the rot in the rival and outside party. The political brigands are a compound of parties, it is found that brigandage flourishes better under two or three names. The brigands out are always pretentiously hostile to the brigands in and call them infamous; the people think the 'outs' are their saviors and boost them in-when the game is reversed, so that none but brigands ever rule. But Barrett, so sure a cock must have a great judgment; let us give it a shake and see. Here is a find, his speech in Hongkong. on February 4, '99, comes to the surface. He 'declared that the difficulties ahead of the United States in the Philippines had been grossly exaggerated for the purpose of defeating the ratification of the peace treaty with Spain.' (Associated Press). O Barrett, your wisdom is not so much as that of a common poodle, for it knows enough just to eat the comfits of its mistress and not to bark, but you eat all the political comfits you can get and bark-and every bark is an ignorant bray. 1. Destiny By Daylight. The decayed matter is now removed and we stand before the rugged front of excavated Destiny. God and every other integument is peeled off so that we have the monster skinned, and the proposition is that this animal forced us into the Philippines and forces us to stay. By the light of McKinley and Hanna, Davis and Day, Smith and Barrett, and many another smelling tallow candle which these pages have sconced and snuffed, there would be no lie anywhere if we now dropped the alias Destiny as we have God, and said Trade-Greed is Destiny, TradeGreed forced us into the Philippines and that alone, and it alone forces us to stay. Destiny is the Hog-in-us, and the tlog-in-us is our merciless cutthroat capital-monopolist millionaires. We could move out of the Philippines honorably this evening and not pay another night's lodging of DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. 445 half a million, for our army now costs us that every 24 hours, if our Millionaire-Destinies and Furies would let us, or if we had a ballast of youthful sand, grit, spunk to kick our Destinies out. But this treatise does not take' things for granted which the Destinies have posted in the vernacular. When tattling Whitelaw Reid opens the doors of the Destiny receiving vault this narrative is contented to walk in and examine the remains and report what it sees, in Reid's own pat and patristic epitaphs. Reid's confabulation with the Chicago Marquette Club-'ems did not at the time stimulate the gastric anxiety of American capitalists very cogently, because the Providence of Hanna was being heard through the teeth of McKinley before the Boston Home-Market Gudgeons; nevertheless Reid's confessions were a resurrection of political skeletons that had been supposed to be past identity. Remember, the question is, what and who made us insist on the Philippines from Spain? what and who made us insist on keeping them as ours? and, why did these forces so compel us? The McKinley public answer is that a higher power led and as it were seduced us, we innocent and reluctant. Now Reid was one of the Peace Commissioners, one of McKinley's toe-sucking tools, and his answer is McKinley's soul speaking, not his public voice, it is a hidden eustachian passage at the nozzle of which we can hear McKinley think. And the reproductions of this phonograph certify the attitude of this book, that out of perdition there never breathed a greater liar than this same McKinley. Reid speaks. "If we have brought back too lzmuch, that is only a question for Congress andl olr own people. If we had brought back too little, it might have been again a question for the army and the navy. No one of you has ever been heard to find fault with an agelnt because in making a difficult settlement he got all yol zwanlted, and a free option onl something fnlrther that everybody else wanted! Do you know of any other civilized nation of the first or even 446 DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. the second class that wouldn't jump at that option on the Philippines?" Reid here avows that the commission, in demanding the Philippines, was exceeding its orders from the American people, and knew it. 'iAll the people wanted' did not include these islands. The people in honest good faith had no wish or intention to despoil Spain wantonly, either for indemnity, for strategic, or for trade, purposes. But the commission did not intend to be governed by the people, it lent its flunky ear to the speculators who spoke through the president and who did want new territory for their capital to exploit. The speculating millionaires countermanded the known orders of the people as expressed in public opinion not to take the Philippines, and commanded McKinley to compel the cession of those lands. This high-handed insolence they did not dare to father candidly, nor did the commission dare. They therefore called the orders of the speculators Destiny, and said that we were forced there by a power greater than ourselves. Reid swears to this statement when he says that they brought back all we wanted, and more than we wanted, namely, that which other people wanted; and he justifies the impudence of the commission by saying, Do you know of any other civilized nation that would not jump at that option in the Philippines? Then we, a la Reid, are to be governed by the dirty linen of Europe, and to snatch at anything we see them snatching at! But this decapitates that other faithful lie, that the intention was to give the people the deciding voice. It is clear that they were determined not only to 'get an option' on the islands without the people's consent, but to force the islands into the national stomach willy nilly, whether the people decided to want them or not. How do we know this? It follows from three considerations: First, Because they exacted the islands of Spain without the people's consent; Second, Because the administration then made another step beyond the orders of the people, by fighting for the property which the people had never de DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. 447 dared they wanted; Third, Because they all pretended that the people required and commanded both. The second point is crucial. At most, all that the people ever did was to tentatively accept the option forced on them against their will by the commission. That is the very utmost that the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty amounted to, and it was strictly tentative. The senate confirmed in order that the people might have a chance to declare their will in the matter, strictly and exclusively that. But the Washington thieves seized upon the ratification as license for acting as if that senate's tentative ratification were the people's approval and decision to take and keep, and on that needle point based their claim of right to war down the resisting natives. This second breach of good-faith and law was of that gratuitous and unbounded kidney which leaves no doubt that usurpation was premeditated. It was too gross and outrageous an excess to have happened by accident, and two accidents of the same kind, skilfully concatenated to the same muchdesired end, do not happen immediately together without predestination. Why did the execrable president pretend that he would be governed by the popular will in his peace treaty with Spain, and then ever since pretend that he was so governed? Blabbing Reid discloses that the Execrable was not so governed and knew that he was not. That is articulate evidence that the Execrable knew he was defying the popular will in ordering sovereignty over and then subjugation of the Filipinos. For that was going far beyond the option taken by the commission. That was assuming possession, which an option does not confer; it was assuming that the people had accepted not only the option but also the property, and no man was better aware than the Execrable that this was the delicate point, where the matter hung and was not settled,-the point whether to take the property. McKinley walked over the option, booted, and accepted the property in his own name, and to justify himself forged the option into a document of 448 DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. final acceptance by the people. I said that two so-called accidents concatenating to a much-(desired end are heavily cumulative proof of design. What was this muchdesired end? \Vas it clear in the pachydermic Commission's mind, and therefore in their schoolmaster's, McKinley's, mind? Reid serves up the end they had in view waarm. He introduces it with a lawyer's buffer, by suggesting the seemingly just idea of indemnity. But indemniity was ruled out of court by the many sacred promises of the Execrable and his pal-polyps-made only to be broken-never, never, never, so help us God, to take an indemnity for this first war ever waged for humanity! Rcid-"Or would you have had your agents in Paris, ihe guardians also of your material interests, throw away all chance for indemnity for a war that began with the treacherous murder of 266 American sailors on the Maine, and had cost your treasury during the year over $240,ooo,ooo? \ould you have had them throw away a magnificent foothold for the trade of the farther East, which the fortune of war had placed in your hands: throw away a whole archipelago of boundless possibilities, economic and strategic; throw away this opportunity of centuries for your country? Would you have had them, on their ozwn responsibility, then and there decide this question for all time, and absolutely refuse to, reserve it for the decision of Congress, and of the Amnerican pe.ople, to whomi that decision belongs, and twho have the right to an opportunity first for its deliberate consideration?... At the same time they [the Peace Commissioners] neither neglected nor feared the duty of caring for the material interests of their o7wn country-the duty of grasping the enorzmous possibilities upon which we had stiumbled, for sharing in the azwakening and development of the farthest East. That way lies now the best hope of Amnerican comlnerce.... a trade...largely with less advanced peoples comprising nearly one-fourth the population of the globe, whose wants promise to be speedily and enormously DESTINY IN DAYLIGHT. 4-49 developed." The end much desired by our governing syndicateurs is 'grasping these enormous possibilities,' the 'hope of American commerce' and the hope lastly, ultimately and alone, of that pigmy band of pirate monopolists who own American commerce. And this muchdesired end fully accounts for the, two 'accidents' of the Execrable and his Colmmission in bringing back what the people never sent them to get, and fighting for it afterward when the people had never said they wanted it, and had never told them to fight for it. Here also we strike tne tap-root of Destiny. It is merely these 'enormous possibilities' for capitalist exploitation. Here above all we see who and what made Destiny march and trot, \ve have the 'hand of God' materialized as it never was since gospel times and can examine its very anatomy. This finger is called Day; that Frye; this twisted thing, Reid; that lump, Davis; Gray is a finger nail to scratch its master with; McKinley is the putty palm, and the whole thing is Hanna and his ligature of capital cormorants. Never was such a scurvy thing as this Destiny running around the universe loose. Signs should be erected everywhere-Shoot it at sight. It's such a nasty coward too, smirching every principle of common squareness in the night, and coming out in the morning as their friend and defender. But seriously then, God and Destiny and the rest are exculpated; they never had the littlest part in ramming us down the pit where we are; these gambler speculators of commerce and politics did it all; we were seduced, but by no cloud of heavenly Spirits; a cloud of gold-brick spellbinders unbottled the avaricious smells of hell and in our poisoned delirium we mistook the Chinese stinkpot they had hanged to the rim of our hats for a pillar of fire by night in heaven. But I trow the children of Franklin and Washington and Jefferson will not follow a stinkpot when they know it. If a stinkpot. led us in, God calls us out. Destiny never ordered this branch of the AngloSaxon race to live in the caverns,of mephitic perjury, 15 DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. scouring Latin daggers of assassination; our cousin England rents and amply occupies those compartmqnts of sulphur and slime. Away then forever with these asses' love-songs which rise from every imperialist quarter perpetually: "The position which we occupy in the Philippines is not one of our own choosing. We have been forced into it by the exigencies of war,..." Reid asks, Would you have had your Commissioners, on their own responsibility, then and there decide the question of throwing away a whole archipelago of boundless possibilities? This is specious and dazzling but wholly empty. They had, by Reid's confession, orders from the American people not to take, the archipelago, because in taking it they consciously exceeded orders. They did act on their own responsibility, only in the other direction, against the people, and according to their own private wishes. All the prattle of opportunities thrown away is bombast. What about the infinitely greater 'responsibilies assumed,' which these same imperialist highbinders only justify because they were forced on us? Reid says the possession of the Philippines would 'enable us to convert the Pacific Ocean almost into an American lake,' and that we are 'entitled to it.' How and why are we entitled to it? Because he thinks our fist is big enough to engrave a title on the opposition nose. Japan and China have the same title to make it a Chinese or Japanese lake, to police it, and to snatch the stolen Hawaii from us as a stategic Manila stepping-stone to our ports. If Reid and his mud-eaters were not the supple shysters of commercial pigs they would know that the day of national appropriation of oceans is past; if he were a world-man instead of a Reid-man, a salient lighted spirit instead of a Feed-man, he would know that trade does not depend on navies and armies, and will depend less and less so, and that even now, paradoxical as it may seem to his greedy little brain, both these tongs of torture defeat and retard trade instead of helping it. They are, as Buncombe Beresfbrd said, the insurance you pay on DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. 45' trade, and of course it has to be added to the price of the goods which you are trying to sell abroad, unless you take it out of your working people at home. If you do the former, the more navy you have the more you must charge your foreign customers, and any nation that has less insurance expense (less army and navy) will undersell you. If the latter, you will grind down your working people until you have made your country a vast slum, and they will then revolt and cut your throats and send your bone-built capitalist system to eternal sheol, to which it is fast on its way in any event. The Czar's peace rescript was partly a wild prayer for deliverance of the upper class robbers fron the conting terror. Give us this day our daily bread and all other men's daily bread, and deliver us from the retribution which these men starved for centuries are at any moment liable to overwhelm and destroy us with. The Czar is aware that the common hinds who are bearing these armaments will bear them not much longer, and to save royal and capitalist necks he appeals to the nations: "National culture, economic progress and the production of wealth are either paralyzed or checked in development. Moreover, in proportion as the armaments of each power increase, the less and less they fulfil the object the governments have set before themselves. The economic crisis, due in great part to the system of armament a outrance, and the continual danger which lies in this massing war material, are transforming the armed peace of our day into a crushing burden which the peoples have more and more difficulty in bearing. It appears evident that if this state of things were to be prolonged it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm it is desired to avert, and the horrors whereof make every thinking being shudder in advance." This is what flunky Reid's plan of policing the Pacific Ocean into an American lake will end in. But before it reaches that end it will defeat itself by the horrible burden of military insurance which it will impose on trade. On account of the For-Trade Massacre our devilish bosses are perpetrating in the East, taxes at homne have been vastly raised and the common people are paying the piper. We now meet an insulting tax to hell kill a fellow human being at every other purchase. \We send a bullet to the Philippines when we send a telegram, a 452 DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. telephone, a money order, an express package. Every bank-check drawn is a probable murder. This is sick business, but it doesn't begin to, pay the new bills. The United States Treasury is falling behind and we shall have to have new taxes, and new national loans-to insure our trade. In many a mind not much given to high and heavenly things the blackast eye the 'new policy' ever received has just overtaken it. For the administration has had to throw out feelers for new war taxes or a newv war loan. The N. Y. Tribune* informs the farmers that where the funds for the largely-increased army now going to the Philippines are to come from, is causing 'some concern' among the treasury's chief officials. And it may well, since "The receipts of the government did not meet the extraordinary expenditures when the army was smaller." The revenues last year were as follows: Receipts from ordinary internal revenue taxation (roundly) $173,000,00o; special war revenues $Ioo,ooo,ooo; besides customs duties and miscellaneous receipts, in spite of which a big deficit occurred. There was a bond issue of $200,000,000, spent to whip God and Humanity into Spain, and love of territory and trade out of her. "The only source, therefore," says the sorcerous Tribune, "from which additional revenue can be derived, is from war taxes or bonds, or both." In that magical outspurt of love which is the eighth wonder of the world, Congress "authorized the issue of $Ioo,ooo,ooo worth of certificates of indebtedness and $400,000,000 worth of bonds," to liberate Cuba from the bloody hand of Spain. Two hundred million dollars' worth of these bonds were sold, and the other $200,000,000 worth are now needed. But for what? The bloody grip of Spain is loosed, what further need in Humanity's name? Why, to clasp on our bloody grip, and the Washington nincomposities maintain that the present war is part and elongation of the other one. and that they have a right to sell the remainder of the bonds voted solely to free Cuba, to raise the money to *August 23. DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. 453 enslave the Philippines, which never was and by God's grace never will be voted by the American people. What penalty is large enough for these Treasury looters? A dozen years in the penitentiary and the whipping-post would be the minimum. I am in favor of reviving the whipping-post for the greatest criminals, those elected fiends who cause wars for capitalists' gain. During the two months of the new fiscal year the army has cost over $3I,000,000, or half a million a day. The large force of troops just added will hugely increase this. And this sum is paid as insurance on American trade! It must be added to the cost of goods sold in the Orient, or added to the backs of the working masses of America. It is just the beginning of the price we must pay to make the Pacific Ocean an American lake. If we charge the Philippines and China more than other nations do for our goods, we lose the trade or must persuade the Asiatics to buy our stuff with the cannon's mouth. But if foreign nations have cheaper labor they can offer to undersell us. We must then forfeit our trade and lose our insurance, and the Pacific Ocean as smug Reid's lake isn't worth one dead man; or we must resort to the cannon and fight the world to keep the Powers off of Our Pond, and then the insurance will rise to a bigger figure than all our foreign trade with the whole planet; or we must put it on to our working people, and reduce them to the foreign level, which we claim to abhor and which will certainly create the revolutionary tinder that covers Europe and brings the Czar paralysis of dismay. We have our choice. This is what we must thank the Peace Commission for bringing upon us by acting beyond our orders, and presenting us with monopolists' expansion. And Reid says, "Are we to lose all this through a mushy sentimentality, characteristic neither of practical nor of responsible people-alike unAmerican and un-Christian, since it would humiliate us by showing lack of nerve to hold what we are entitled to,..?" And he says: "First, hold what you are entitled to." 454 DESTINY BY DAYLIGHT. And he says: "Another [bugbear] is that our American workmen will be swamped under the, immigration of cheap Eastern labor. But tropical labor does not immigrate to colder climates. None have ever come." Are not Chinese and Japanese tropical enough, and have they not come? "If we need a law to keel them out, we can make it." But if we cannot prevent our rulers from seizing nations without our consent, how can we compel them to make laws to keep the natives of those nations out, if they want them to come in? And what laws do millionaires customarily keep? And were not the tropical blacks brought in against all efforts of wisdom, right, and humanity? But, says Reid again, "It is a bugbear that the Filipinos would be citizens of the United States,.." "Resist the crazy extension of the doctrine that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed to an extreme never imagined by the men who framed it, and never for one moment acted upon in their own practice." And finally he says, "Now, if ever, is the time... to make our Government worthy of the new and great responsibilities which the Providence of God rather than any purpose of man has imposed upon it." CHAPTER XXII. Grandchildren of Israel. Besides ourselves history has known but one other absolutely chosen people, and they were the Jews. God talked as familiarly to Moses and Aaron as he does now with McKinley and Reid, and although it was a good many thousand years ago, his injunctions have hardly varied or improved their morality at all. The Lord spake unto Moses in the 3Ist chapter of Numbers and said, "Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites:.. And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males...And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses and Eleazar the priest,.. And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host,.. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?.. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." In the fortieth year of his reign and the first chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses makes a speech, rehearsing the history of God's promise, God's anger, the bigness of the bed of Og king of Bashan, the smiting of him with the 456 GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. help of the Lord, the distribution of his lands to two tribes and a half, and the ten commandments. Sihon king of Heshbon was a well-meaning and peaceable gentleman of the pl ins, but the children of Israel wanted his lands and they employed the Lord to harden his heart that they might have a Philippine excuse for taking them and destroying his people. "But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the Lord thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand, as appeareth this day." Ch. ii, v. 30. The purpose of Moses and the Israel children was to civilize the Heshbonites and to protect their lives and property, which they did in the following elect manner: "Thin Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz. And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain: only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took... the Lord our God delivered all unto us." This was the way trade was carried on in those Oriental days. Life was thought to be safer after death than before it, and was therefore destroyed for its greater protection, as in the year 900o of the Lord thy God. The life of a customer was never considered safe in those days while he was alive. All trade and commerce conducted by Moses had an Act of the Almighty at both ends. His first act was to harden the heart of the customer who did not wish to surrender his lands and his virgins to the children of Israel and go away and kill himself. This unbusinesslike attitude required the slaughter of the customer, with all his men and his women and his little ones, unless the children of Israel desired more wives to bear seed for the further expansion of God. The work of slaughtering all the customers and their families was the second Act of the Almighty, for he always GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 457 delivered the customers into the hands of the children of Israel, after he had hardened their hearts. The Almighty did not take the field in person, but as it were conducted affairs from Washington, as President and Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the nation. Even Moses stayed at home a good deal of the time and wrote commandmenlts, like Alger and Root. He directed affairs by telegraph, after the mode of Miles and Corbin. Out of each tribe Moses and the Almighty selected the best sluggers and sent them to the front under Officers of Hosts. The names of these officers have mostly perished, if indeed they were ever preserved longer than the trials against them for larceny and peculation on their return. These sluggers went forth and smote their customers and destroyed them hip and thigh under the inspiration of the Almighty, and then, by wire from Moses, slew their women and children. This sealed the bargain, and the lands of the abolished passed to their purchasers and were divided among two tribes and a half. Just as the news of the successful engagement reached Moses in his phaeton he was in that part of his speech to the patriot millionaires and lbankers of the children who had remained at home, telling them how the Lord thy God had passed the commandments over to him out of the smoke. "I am the Lord thy Gd. Thou shalt have none other gods before me. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. Thou shalt not kill. Neither shalt thou steal. Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor. Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or his Philippines, or anything that is thy neighbor's." And the Lord spake through Moses to the children of England, "0 that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me. and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever! Ye shall observe to do therefore as the Lord 458 GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. your God hath commanded: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left." A great noise was then heard out in the Bay and all the children rushed away to the edge to see what was coming. It was made by a captain-of-the-host named Dewey who was returning with twelve hundred islands in his ship, to be afterwards captured. At this news the children of Israel began to follow the Lord their God with all their hearts and to keep all that the hosts of sluggers had obtained by observing the commandments not to kill or steal. They tore off their clothes and painted themselves from head to foot with flags, and ran up and down the streets of Jerusalem in great processions, yelling. They climbed on to church steeples and threw themselves down to the ground in the name of the Lord, to show that no evil could come to those who obey the commandments They rushed to the ships of the Admiraculous and out of the plunder which he had brought home from Midian presented him with a beautiful palace near Solomon's temple. Obedience to God had now gone so far that every child of Israel was sitting in mid-air on his own head, and with things in this posture Miraculous was summoned to meet the Almighty without smoked glasses. Moses Root and Lyman Eleazar Abbott were present at the interview. and all the children of Israel surrounded the pagoda. The Almighty presented the Hero of Twelve Thousand Future Islands with a sword and said, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder. I am a jealous God, thou shalt not steal. And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord." Deut. vi. GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 459 All the tribes of the grandchildren of Israel were now in a state of foam bordering on fermentation and Moses mounted his Pullman train for Chicago. He was accompanied by all the elders of the congregation excepting Joshua Gage, the son of None, who was born of a cloud of gold and honored his father and mother. "The train, which will be the home of the distinguished party throughout the trip, is one of the most sumptuously equipped ever run from the Pennsylvania station. It consists of the private car Campania, occupied by the president and his wife, the combination car Atlantic, sleeper Ixion, compartment cars Chili and Omaha; the last two for the use of the Cabinet, all of whom were on the train except Secretary Gage, who is in the West; and the dining car Gilsey."-Land of Promise Press, Oct. 5, I899 B. C. At Beth-Chicago Moses was called on to make another speech, and he modestly replied, "I do not like to interrupt the singing of the American hymn by making a speech. I can only express to you the very great satisfaction it is to me to witness this magnificent demonstration of patriotism and love of God." "My friends, it gives me very great pleasure to meet with you on this memorable day. The noblest sentiment of the human heart, after love of God, is love of country,.." "It is impossible to trace our history since [the Declaration of Independence] without feeling that Providence, which was with us in the beginning, has continued to the nation its gracious interposition. When, unhappily, we have been engaged in war, he has given us the victory." "From Plymouth Rock to the Philippines the grand triumphant march of human liberty has never paused." "May we not feel assured that if we do our duty Providence, which favored the undertakings of the fathers and every step of our progress since, will continue his watchful care and guidance over us, and that the Hand that led us to our present plane will not relax his grasp till we have reached the glorious goal he has fixed for us in the 460 GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. achievement of his end?"* 'Great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, —when thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord.' Going down the ages backward six- or sixty thousand years, we find the McKinley policy stripped to the waist in a prize-ring and macerating land and love, life and the ten commandments, out of a prostrate 'enemy. Take what you want by force, kill your opponents, praise God for your success and attribute the deed to Him, make colmmandments that thou shalt not kill for the Lord thy God abhors killers, and when you have eaten your fill of the good things taken from the killed, say one to another, Beware lest thou forget the Lord. This doctrine is the offal of morality. The children of Israel were a band of bloody throat-cuts in a throat-cut age, who laid the foundations of a religion of throat-cutting, stealing, selfjustification, and self-protection. They could kill every other living thing, but the covetous cowards feared for their own lives and invented the commandments to protect themselves from each other. They invoked the same Fog-God as author and guardian of these opposite laws. \lWhat change has there been since tlat mighty ropedancer Moses balanced his pole and kept a glass ball up in the air? No change but progressive evolution along the same rope. Moses could keep but one glass god in the air, and he was eternally afraid it would fall to the ground and shatter itself into a hundred polytheistic pieces. Modern Moseses can keel) three, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nor is there danger of their breaking, for time and human intelligence have hardened the glass into bullet lead. The formless fog God of the predacious Israelites, condensed by Moses into a spectre of retribution hanging over those who stole the property from each other which they had stolen from others, finally froze into a lead idol with one body and three heads; perched in the impalpable deep of the sky, with a Justin*Chicago Corner-stone and Auditorium Mosaics, Oct. 9, Io, '99. GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 46r ian code of all modern ideas and emotions divided among its heads in such a manner that one head could be a cowardly mean and murderous reptile, and another head forgive it, and the third sit in a mush of steaming love unifying the thief and the thieved, the murderer and the murdered, and teaching the damner and the damned new prayers to keep up with the advance of modern psychology. Moses and the children had few and simple feelings, the modern has numerous and complex ones, and it requires a complicated three-headed God with bullets here and gatlings there, the law of love in one eye and a streak of dynamite in another, guns belching hell from his forehead and his exposed bowels of mercies shedding suffering tears of compassion underneath, tears manufactured in the main stomach out of the good things stolen from the houses which thou buildedst not, the vineyards which thou plantedst not, of those enjoying the beneficent assimilation of hell from the serene and sinless dynamite forehead of the Living God on top. The fragile amulet which Moses tossed up nervously with wary eye to astonish and tame his menagerie of beasts, could comfortably contain the mnost glaring contradictions, for the eyes and minds of wild beasts are not disciplined to elegant discriminations. The inscriptions on the glass-God were, Black is white, Pain is pleasure, Suffering is sweet, The most beautiful feelings are radiated from mortifying wounds, Thou shalt not kill,-thou shalt kill all thy enemies including their wives and daughters and babies, Thou shalt not steal,-but tlleu shalt take the land and the cities and all that thy neighbor races have for thine inheritance, and the Lord thy God who commands thee not to steal will deliver them into thy hands for thine inheritance. Now cubs of wild beasts, those crude semi-humans of six thousand years ago, uncivilized, unlettered, unnewspapered, uncommerced, unKiplinged, without a church, properly speaking, or a university, or a foreign mission, or a red cross 462 GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. society, o)r a police system, or a standing army, or a president to re-elect, or billionaire babes kicking to be born (andl causing the body politic fits, I say those Israelitish cubs had not vet the mental faculties to tell black from white, steal from not-steal, kill from kill not. We wonder, pity and forgive them. Born of primeval blackness, they did the best they knew, to get rich, and succeeded in a way to make us sick with envy. A present student of Solomon's temple has learned that the value of that residence of the Lord thy God and his clergy, together with its contents, was over $50,000ooo,ooo,ooo. Since then Christ has been here, to open our eyes, we have had common schoolmasters and civilization, we have art, science, spectacles, telescopes, theology, political economy and associated charities. We therefore know black from white, by feeling if not by logic, and by logic if not by feeling. Kill and not-kill belong to two separate circles, that is, one excludes the other, that is they are different, that is they are not the same. Jesus felt this and Aristotle demonstrated it with geometry. Steal and not-steal are also two opposites. The cub doctrine, thou shalt not steal from one person and shalt steal from another, which the unfledged Moses propounded and disseminated, is a joke to the civilized senitive-plate. We know too that love and kill are contradictory; a man doesn't kill what he loves; he sometimes dies for it and that is a mark of love, but if he kills it, that is a mark of hate. The disciplined modern conscience knows this. On these ameboid rudiments you won't catch civilization asleep. Then the 'greatest nation that the world has ever seen' spake and said: "Spain, Thou shalt not kill. Filipinos, thou shalt surely die; for the Lord our God hath given thy land and thy cities and thine olive trees unto us for a possession and inheritance forever. Blessed be the name of the Lord." "Our troops [in Luzon] represented the truth and conscience, the pure patriotism of.their coun GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 463 try." "Our kindness was reciprocated with cruelty, our mercy with a Mauser." "They assailed our sovereignty, and there will be no useless parley-no pause until the insurrection is suppressed and American authority is acknowledged and established. The misguided followers in rebellion have only our charity and pity. As to the cruel leaders who have needlessly sacrificed the lives of thousands of their people, at the cost of some of our best blood, for the gratification of their own ambitious designs, I will leave to others the ungracious task of justification and eulogy." The cruel leaders who, at the cost of some of our best blood, have defended their land and cities from our Israelitish invasion, as saith the Lord! Noble volunteers, "you, and your brave comrades engaged on other fields of conflict, have enlarged the map of the United States and extended the jurisdiction of American liberty. Other brave men have gone to the front." "Our prayers go with them, and with more men and munitions, if required for the speedy suppression of the rebellion, the establishment of peace and tranquillity, and a government under the undisputed sovereignty of the United States, a government which will do justice to all and at once encourage the best efforts and aspirations of these distant people and the highest development of the rich and fertile lands."-McKinley, Pittsburg, Aug. 28, 99. "I thank you for this most warm and generous welcome. We ought to be a very happy people. \e are a very happy people. The blessings which have been showered upon us have been almost boundless, and no nation in the world has more to be thankful for than ours." "Not only have we prosperity, but we have patriotism; and what more do we want? We are at peace with all nations of the world and were never on better terms and in closer relations with each other and every one of them than we are today. We have a little trouble in the Philippines, but the gallantry of the brave boys who 464 GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. have gone there will, I trust, soon put down that rebellion against the sovereignty of the United States."Aoses at /Vincennes, Ind., Oct. I, '99. It is a little thing, a trivial thing, a playful thing, the slaughter of all the hosts of thi king of Bashan! "And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, threescore cities,.." Deuteronomy iii, 4. 'So the Lord cur God delivered into our hands the king of Bashan.' Verse 3. I do not think that any one has ever lived who could describe in words or limn on canvass the fraud and malice and iniquity of the American Saxon as these his deeds discover him. Senator Lindsay of Kentucky essayed it and succeeded in saying: "Commercial progress has no halting place. Conmmerce is not the servant, but the master of national policies." (Speech at Buffalo, Aug. 29.) Senator Manderson tried it on the same spot and his caitiff abortion was only this: "The period when nations will war no more is probably far in the dim and distant future. National jealousies, commercial competition, desire for expansion, imperialistic ideas, will not down while men, combating individually for supremacy, give to the states the same combative instincts and desire for advancing power." Our light and civilization and science, our annexations of Jesus and the Holy Ghost to the pirate God of Moses, have not carried us beyond that wandering guerilla one inch. Thou shalt not kill any but outsiders who have desirable land and property, engage the Lord to kill them with thy aid, an.d beware lest thou, forget the Lord when thy barns and thy temple and thy stomach groan with the fulness of stolen things. This was the great commandment of Guerilla Moses and it is ours. Six thousand years have not elevated mankind above the level of those nomad Hebrew women-murderers. Nurtured on that ancient mad-house defilement, Hebrew religion and morality, we kick and scream and rave in ravishing license of unbounded robbery murder GRANDCHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 465 on the darling bosom of the loving Lord thy God. The once great, brave, sweet, free, hopeful and yearning soul of the Anglo-Saxon, of those who fought for world-liberty, is now so dead that it stinketh to the outposts of the skies. The deeds of our royal masters in the East, permitted by us, have made the nation deserving of a rain of brimstone from above to cleanse the world of our contagion. But the Lord thy God delighteth in the stink, for He permitteth it to prevail. CHAPTER XXIII. Is Liberty to Die? America then, the pure and beloved, the unsullied divine child of Destiny, is at death's door with vile diseases, caught by the pure child when it was going about nights seeing the world as fag of its envied instructors, the European Powers. It has drunk of the exudations of British scrofula, and who can live after that? In this place it caught the Dreyfus chancre, in that noisome alley the English Boer complaint, in a third the Russian tubercle of autocracy. The lovely offspring of liberty and manly revolution is ulcered from head to foot, and each ulcer is one of those mean malignant ones taken where honor and purity would not have been. Will America survive this? There seems to be just one hope-that the excess of foulness of the eating sores may arouse a reaction. The realization that we are the peerless hypocrites of the world, above our rivals the Franco-English, the DreyfusBoer Hag of the Planet, may stir the dregs of life in us, but is the good brain substance we had so eaten away that we ca(ulot realiWe? We can realize that France is a black-blooded JusticeKiller, and clearly see just why she is that; we can realize that visceral old England is a bloody Planet-Bloat, a never sober landlord harpy, with purple-red bottle nose, the decayed proud flesh of its face blotched hideously with the emblems of its excesses, that the bowelly old sot is dying of gluttony, a dropsical epicure and gormand that lives only t( stuff its cancered belly and makes the whole world work to feed its insatiable sores. We can see IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 467 these loathlsome realities, in others, and smell them, but not the same odious ugliness in ourselves. Is it possible to bring this sense of realization home, in time? Let us make one final effort, describing the last stages of the disease, as they are on October 18, I899. Let us first show in the last light of those two rotten humbugs, England and France, that we do see through them at least, and lippingly abhor them, then that our Philippine jimjam is nothing but the Dreyfus-Boer snake turned over cih its back, then that our conscience and perception break off short just at the moment we should apply our abhorrence to ourselves, and having shown these things let us in honor of our pure childhood cease reviling FrancoEngland, make a tabula rasa of the flag, and where the stars and stripes were paint the lies that are now our national principles. France, England and America should now form one triplet nation, for they rest on the same foundation sands, and they should have one triplet-flag. In the centre of this three-in-one cloth there should be a picture of George Washington's army shooting Filipinos; on one side General Mercier and George \Vashington should be sitting together torturing the body of Dreyfus,nld convicting him while drinking a toast of French wine to the proofs of his innocence; elsewhere W\ashington and his army of forefathers should be seen enlisting under Chamberlain, Salisbury and Rhodes, to go out to Africa and shoot freedom into the Boers. In various parts of the liberty-triplet flag, on a small scale, MicKinley should be making speeches out of palace-car windows, eating dinners like an English queen, stroking the fur of returned volunteers, and kissing the babies of those who remained in Manila, dead. One whole compartment of the grave-scented flag should be reserved for A History of His Lies, and, How a President Made Apaches of Yankees, the exact proportions of flattery, suppression, invention, bullion patriotism, political influence, Heaven-juice, and treason-threats, 468 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? used first to donlkeyfy and then to Apachefy the astute Yankees, being accurately given. W\hat McKinley Has Learned from Kaiser the Ego should be indicated on medals in the form of a composite tombstone of Dreyfus, President Kruger and Aguinaldo, the inscriptions thereon being our Ego's words of paternal chin-chucking to volunteers come home. "How I Stopped Their Mouths," will be the caption epitaph, "and prevented them from telling true stories by filling their mouths with the lard of Majesty." I at Fargo: "I have come here especially that I might look into the faces of the North Dakota volunteers, who saw service in the battle line in Luzon. You did your duty and you filled MY heart with joy A hen you, with other volunteers, sent ME word that you would not quit the battle line in Luzon until I could create a new army and send it there. You refused to beat a retreat or shirk your duty in the presence of the enemy. No matter who wanted you to go home,.... No soldiers of any country ever had any more delicate or trying duty." 'I kiss you, good boys, don't talk any more about What Happened in Hell and How the Generals Concealed it.' First, then, that our glass moral eyes can still perceive the imperishable nastiness of England and France, although charmed-blind to our own. A paper belonging to McKinley, the Chicago Inter-Ocean, says, "The issue is one of principle. The Boers are dete1ri1minecd to be ilndependent. For more than fifty years they have striven to keep British hands off their altars and their firesides... The declared purplose of the Boers is to resist this freebooters' raid to the end. So we have a great eiltpire and a small republic on the brink of zuar simply because the rLepublic zwill lnot yield up its constitutiont altd its independence to Great Britain. On one side we see a religieus and patriotic people fighting for republican institutions; on the other side, a strong mtonarchy striving by force of ar1sll to crush, rob, and iltnperialize that people; IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 469 on the one side, a nlationl going forth to loot; on the other s;de, a people stand(ilig fast for their altars and their fires; on the one side justlice,; honesty and self-defense; on the other side greed, aggression, and wzvaton onslaught. That is the line on which the war is to be fought and the victory won.' (Oct. 4, '99.) Now this is the fac-simile of our relation to the Filipinos, visible to an eyeless protoplasm or a mummy-bone, but not one imperialist in America can see it, on his oath, and his oaths are as large and loud as thunder-clouds, to frighten all others out of seeing it. Just two columns away from the InterOcean's Pecksniffiad against Boered England is this doinestic hen-cluck on the subject of Animalculus Dewey's aplotheosis: "But what do we see after months of deliberation, after the cost has been counted, and after the ft:ture has been considered in critical calmness? Simply an overwhelming, unprecedented, indescribable outburst of popular approval bestowed on the man, his achievement, and the policy for.wltich that achievemncllt stanzds.' What can make hypocrisy plainer to eyeless plasm and ashen bone than this?-yet bright-eyed American civilization reports that it cannot see it! Dolddering McKinley civilization reports of itself through the Chicago Times-Herald, "Commercial expansion of a Christian nation alwavs necessarily carries Christian ideas of governmnent and society to the people who have been brought unlder the flag. Our gov',ernll tlent is a product of Christianlit3. A4ll otur lawzs antd systeitl of jiurisprudence are blased upon the Te7l Cotllmmalidments. We cannot get away from our national obligations to Christianity. Christianity and commerce have gone hand in hand, the one blazing the way for the other in all the centuries. God is certainlll' in Christian expalnsion.' (Oct. 4, '99.) Blazing its way ever since gunpowder was invented, at least. As to France. a noted fence-straddler in New York, 47o IS LIBERTY TO DIE? which straddles for a large population, Harper's W\eekly,* asks, "What is it that has brought her to permit this cruelty? Why is it that she is, for the moment, the most disgraced nation of the nineteenth century [England and America excepted], the scorn of nearly all the rest of the world [America and England included]?" Then answers the Straddler: "The military monster which France has built up is guilty of this crime. It is this army. which has absorbed the youth into its ranks and drawn them out of the industries of the country, has made disarmament practically impossible in Europe, and has at last struck at law and justice.. It has absorbed about onefifth of the revenues of the government, and it demands the services of all of the men of the country between the ages of twenty and forty-five..In time this monster has come to represent France, so that we have the strange inc( nsistency of military control over a republic [etc.].." The army is a 'high-handed' "military hierarchy, which has only to nod and a whole people, with their President, their Parliament, and their courts of justice, lie prostrate in the uniformed armed presence which has been created for their protection, and for the gratification of their hopes of revenge.. It claims absolute irresponsibility. It other words, it insists that it is the ultimate powerthe power from which there is no appeal. It stands towards France as the Tsar does towards Russia,.. Its chiefs may commit any crime, and the civil power may not prevent or punish them if they deem that such lunishment will disturb the discipline of the army. So the republic exists to maintain an armed force that does all in its power to overthrow its fundamental institution-the theory that a democracy governs itself by means of laws to which all-governors and governed, soldiers and civilians-are subject." Some day "the republic will realize with horror that instead of being truly a self-governing people with rights, and with courts to protect *September 23. 1899. IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 47r them, the Firench are the helpless subjects of a militarism the most brutal and cynical that the world has ever know ()." Harper's \Veakly perceives all this of the French army with a microscope eye and divulges it to its constituent straddlees with a locomotive-eagle scream-and favors building up an American army and a naval realm beyond sea. Its jelly-fish mind remarks "It is true, of course, that there is no inconsistency in military rule in a republic so long as the army itself, and as a military body, is alone subject to it." There is no inconsistency in a lion holding a doe in its jaws so long as the lion does not close its jaws. If the lion and the army would only be contented to eat themselves there would be no inconsistency in any innocent thing like kids and citizens sleeping in their mouths. If a ton of rock would stay in the air Vvithout anything to support it there would be no inconsistency in a Sunday-school picnic sitting in its shade. But the nature of armies and lions is to devour, as surely as it is the nature of rocks to fall, and they will not abrogate their essence in favor of the superiority of American Philippineism over French Dreyfusism. Hypocrisy may smile and gnash its linotypes, an American army will repeat France, and is repeating Boer-England. The fact is, we only escaped till I899 by accidents and miracles, the deciding accident being that millionaire military necessities had not matured. We came near a military coup and dictatorship at the termination of the Civil War, and should have had it if hero Gen. Sherman's influence had been sufficient. "He wanted both the Federal and the Confederate armies to be united, and not disbanded, at its close. The purpose for which he wished this was somewhat comprehensive. He thought they should push the French out of Mexico, that they should evict Spain from Cuba, and that they should even serve on Great Britain a kindly but peremptory notice within a brief period to quit the entire dominion of Canada.. 472 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? And if the late Ulysses S. Grant and the late Charles A. Dana had not deftly made General Sherman's negotiations with Joe Johnston in North Carolina conform to those concluded with Lee at Appomattox Court House, there is tno telling what those tweo doughty captains 1miglht have desig2ned-and done- Tith their boys behind them. All the personal influence of Grant was subsequently required to convince Sherman that it would not be a goodl thing to 'clean out' Congress. and, later, to 'clean out' Andrew Johnson. Sherman wras a genius in arms and an infant in statecraft."* American sheep and citizens who contemplate sleeping under a standing army and a ton of rocks had better take this item to bed with them. That doesn't exhaust the earlier prospects of an American dictatorship through wars, however. Seward set out to obtain one, for himself, at the beginning of our Civil earthquake. A thrilling account of Seward's patriotic resolve to rescue the country from war by means of war and to play the king is given by Frederic Bancroft inl a fresh rehearsal of bed-rock and lion-jaw principles.* Before Lincoln buckled on independence Seward was the acknowledged chief of the Republican party. "He had a great reputation as a political seer, and his pride did not lag behind his reputation." He had adopted the policy of saving the Union and averting war, and if this policy slumped his prestige slumped with it. The Confederates demanded recognition of independence, and pending that recognition, as a condition of refraining from hostilities, they insisted that the Federal government should re-enforce neither Sumter nor Pickens, which were in Federal hands. Seward assured the agent of the Confederate Commission which conveyed these terms that its wishes should be complied with, and on three separate occasions gave the agent to understand that Sumter would be evacuated. While he was making these promises Lincoln was ordering preparations for the relief of the two forts, and Seward was aware of these orders. If they were IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 473 carried out it signalized the decline of his star and he sought to defeat them. He instigated Gen. Scott to alvise the abandonment of Sumter. Finally, at the eleventh hour, to avert the horror of his decadence and save the nation from the merciless havoc of war, he made the following recommendations to the president, headed, 'Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration. April I, i861." "Fifth.... My system is built on this idea as a ruling one, namely, that we must CHANGE THIE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON SLAVERY, OR ABOUT SLAVERY, FOR A QUESTION UPON UNION OR DISUNION. "In othler 'words, from1 Tc!what would be regarded as a party qllestion to onel of patriotismt or lluio1n. "FOR FOREIGN NATIONS." "'I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once.-I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico and Central America to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention.-And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France,-Wlould conveitn Congress and (eclare w7ar against them.-But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it.-For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly.Either the president must do it himself, and be all the while active in it, or-Devolhve it on some i1me1ber of his cabinet. Once adopted, debates on it mts11t eznd, and all agree and abide.-It is not in my especial province; —But I nei.ther seek to evade nor assum1e responsibility." Bancroft says: "Seward's theory of the unifying effect of a foreign war had long been revolved in his mind. At the dinner of the New England Society, in New York City in December, he had declared that if New York 474 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? should be attacked by any foreign power, 'all the hills of South Carolina would pour forth their population to the rescue.' During the war of I812, Jefferson had maintained, Seward said in his great speech of January 12, I86I, 'that States must be kept within their constitutional sphere by impulsion, if they could not be held there by attraction. Secession was then held to be inadmissible in the face of a public enemy.'" To accommodate Seward's ambition for leadership and prevent a war at home, the whole world was to be set on fire, 'two hemispheres were to blaze with war,' the slightest and absurdest pretexts, which in actual reality soon faded away and were heard of no more, were to be used to light the conflagration. It happened by an accident which very seldom happens that a remarkable and powerful man was at the helm and the ambitious revolutionist was thwarted. As a rule the ambitious revolutionists succeed, because powerful and right-minded men rarely occur and infinitely more rarely are at the helm in critical times. In the present event the ambitious revolutionist is himself at the helm, with no man above him to turn him down, and he has succeeded. But what I wish to lay stress upon is that this Seward episode shows that all the possibilities and material of military revolutions are here in republican America, and that men of great influence, either blinded or unprincipled, are always present to use these possibilities. Sherman and Seward, respected, beloved men were ready, and how many more,, detected and undetected by history, have also been ready? Mere chance protected us until the Hanna Judy ascended the White House. The Seward episode, further, betra,' that final device of all rulers, to keep progress in chains at home by foreign wars. Wrongs at home were to be shelved, slavery was to wait, and unoffending neighbor nations were to be set upon to maintain the existing status at home and William H. Seward's supremacy in the Republican party and reputation for seer. The bloodshed IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 475 and cost of a tremendous two-hemisphere war would equal the cost and carnage of a civil war, so far as Seward could foresee, and the moral principle of slavery would remain unsettled: the foreign war would therefore be a gratuitous shedding of human blood, leaving it probable that as much blood would have to be shed later to compose the slavery issue. All that Seward could possibly hope to gain, besides his dictatorship, was a temporary preservation of the Union. On this slim hope he swept principle out of the house and went in to kill Europeans. The people of all the nations were Seward's golf balls, to be knocked about the world and across its borders for Seward's najestic merriment. Bear this golfing with human lives in mind until we give its final application to McKinley. It next befalls us to reproduce the character and conduct of our noble army of Philippine occupation with an accuracy which has. been before impossible, and to show that we already have a monster thing in every lineament as evil as the French excrescence, and only smaller. The charges which we have built up from many sources are now made with utterly naked frankness, by a government agent of the United States, sent to investigate secretly and supplied with every means for doing so effectively, and who now reports to Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn.* CAN WE DESTROY THEM? "It will be a great deal easier to restore peace when you have 65,0oo or 70,000 soldiers in the islands; but that the rebels will ever give up their arms I do not believe. They will give up those arms that the Americans corral and take from them; otherwise I think they will hide away their Mausers for another revolution... At first I accepted the sayings about the Filipinos and their leader, but from my personal observation and my experi*The document is published in the San Francisco Call, October 13, which states that through an influential man it obtained a verbatim copy of the agent's report. 476 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? ences among the natives,.. from the mudsills to the palaces, I am inclined to think that their national aspirations are very much stronger than most people imagine.' -"A large part of our army openly sympathizes with many of the Filipino contentions. This is especially marked in the volunteer regiments, and is also very narked among the older men of the regular army.""These men who signed the round-robin against censorship are to nm certain knowledge reliable men." ZONE OF HOSTILITY. 'I do not agree with Dr. Schurman if he thinks that the sphere of hostility to America is a small one. In fact, the gruff behavior of our people, especially in Manila, is very offensive to the people of the islands. I am upheld in this belief by men unbiased like the French, German and Russian correspondents, men who really like the Americans. Most of the unprejudiced Americans think the same way.' "The Tagals who are at the head of the revolution are the smartest, brightest and best of all the Filipinos. They have great power with their tribes. It is not true that this power is gained through terrorism. It is gained because there is a spirit of nationality abroad in the Philippines today. This is what made it so easy for Aguinaldo's emissaries to gain control in Panay, Cebu, South Luzon and Mindanao... At present the zone of hostility to the United States authority is very wide in the islands, owing in part, I think, to our lack of success in dealing with the people. Hatred of Americans has developed and increased as we have advanced in our occupation. The abolition of cock-fighting and the retaining of taxes has grievously offended the Filipinos. While we have allowed our soldiers all to gamble, the Tagals watch us at our cards and 'craps' and fully realize that cock-fighting is no worse." THE LIE THAT CEBU WANTED US. "I am surprised that John Barrett should state in the IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 477 Review of Reviews that the people of Cebu asked our protection. On the contrary, I have read the records of the American occupation of Cebu in the diary of the German Vice-Consul, who is a Scotchman, a British citizen and the only foreigner I found enthusiastic for American rule in the Philippines. Mr. Cummings made an entry like this: 'Cebu was surrendered to the Americans, under protest, by the influence of Majie and Llorente, the two ablest Filipinos in Cebu. The young men of Cebu advised to burn the town, but wiser counsels prevailed. Majie said to the commander of the Petrel that, finding themselves abandoned by Spain, they had joined the Filipino republic. They had no orders from Aguinaldo, but would yield only under protest, owing to the greater force of the Americans. At 9:40 the Americans landed forty sailors, who raised the Stars and Stripes amid a sullen and angry populace who wanted to attack the Americans.' -This is quoted to show you what a vast amount of misinformation there has been regarding the Philippines,.. John Barrett, by the way, is simply a tendril pettifogger clinging to any administration that will support him. VWhoever hears him speak sees this at the third word. An agile climber is he, in collars and cuffs-such collars and cuffs! When you see them you ask. \Where is John Barrett? * *Proofs that John Barrett is a political pettifogger. i. In a speech in Los Angeles he said in substance: ' You must not give too much weight to what the common soldiers say. They are having a hard time out there, bearing the brunt of the burden. If I zere a common soldier I do not think I should be in favor of retaining the Philzpines myself' You see, the market-sharks and their political pettifogger tendrils do not bear the burden, and they want expansion. Don't pay much attention to the beggar devils of soldiers who are fighting the battles and know the conditions! Listen to me, J. Siam Barrett, with my collars and cuffs and political appointments and entertainments by Chambers of Commerce. The financial starch is not taken out of me by fighting, I talk, I can see things as they are. 2. J. Siam further said: 'You must not believe the stories that are told about the natives; they are not the low people they are commonly depicted. They are a very moral people, and where they are not so the vices have been largely introduced by the white man.' At this point there was warm applause for emphasis from some members of the audience who felt the meaning, and Barrett was visibly disconcerted, and stammered and hemmed. Yet what did he afterwards say? "It is my conviction and my doctrine, as a result of closest study upon the field of action, that the United States is face to face with a moral responsibility which in 478 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? OUR MILITARY BLACKLEGS. "Rumors of dishonesty and corrupt officialism in our army are so common in Manila that it seems to me that there must be some truth in them. Thus, we hear that an English contractor sold I50 mules to the Government, but had to pay $6000 to have his contract accepted. The truth of this transaction I cannot be certain of, but I feel quite certain about one thing which was told me by a most responsible person, Mrs. Dr. Beere, chief of the Red Cross Society of Colorado. She said that a Chinese woman who contracted to sell vegetables, eggs, etc., to the American hospitals came to her and asked her to try to influence the proper officials to continue her contract. She said to Mrs. Beere that she had been paying the Americans 20 per cent. commission on the goods she sold the Government, and they wanted 25 per cent, which was more than she could pay and make a reasonable profit. I think the impression was growing among the Spaniards and Filipinos, as well as our own people in Manila, when I left, that some of the American civilians and soldiers could give the Spaniards cards and spades and beat them at the game of theft... "-"I know that our soldiers are descending from the poetry of history to. the prose of shame. They oftentimes levy blackmail on the people of the city, going, for example, into a Chinaman's house and charging him $5 for the tax of his piano.... Of course, it is very difficult to see how these things can be helped. [Armies always do it!].. I saw on the books of the Red Cross Society of California today an account of how two young fellows, one an army officer and the other a Red Cross officer, had stolen the supplies of the Red Cross Society and sold them, and have now gone into business and are prosperous business men in Manila." honor to itself the natives of the Philippines and to all the world it cannot possibly shirk." Ethic sentiments like this were from time to time shaken into the speech like pepper into commercial dough. If you need more proof that Barrett is a petty fogger, attend one of his speeches yourself, or read one of his procrustean adorations of Dewey to sell a book. We protest against taking the words and writings of such obvious brief-holders gravely. IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 479 MILITARY BULLIES, OF COURSE. "Toward the end of July in Manila the soldiers seemed to degenerate. The war began to assume the ugly phases of a race war. The new regiments do not have the caliber of men that the volunteers had. They are more apt to kick and cuff the natives. Langley Jones of the Associated Press assures me he saw on the Escolta, from his room in the English hotel, over a hundred unjustifiable assaults by Americans on Filipinos. I can believe it, for I had my servant man assaulted and beaten three times on the journey from my room, No. 15 Plaza Santa, to the steamship Sherman in Manila harbor. The second day after the first negro regiment landed in Manila I saw a negro soldier take t the money belt off a Chinaman in front of Major Devol's office amid the laughter of our own people, civilians and soldiers. Corporal Harvey of Major Devol's office threw a Filipino on the paving stones just because he was in the way. An assistant clerk in the same office struck a Filipino standing beside me on the stomach. On being remonstrated with he exclaimed, 'He is only a damned nigger.' "-"A Boston lawyer told me that he had many cases come to his office on the Escolta of natives who had been maltreated."-"General Lawton told me that he had hard work to stop looting. One of the Kansas boys told me,.. 'the boys burned the wooden Christs and stole the brass Jesuses off the crucifixes.' " They also 'monkeyed with the dead.' What fun! Not only shooting civilization into people, but rifling their corpses after you have got it in. Isn't Uncle Sam a bully lover? RAPERS ALSO. "An American chaplain in Malabon, whose name I withhold, told me that in his first parish work he had been told by the natives of Malabon that their wives and daughters had been raped by our soldiers. He could authenticate only five cases. The papers of that date (Sep 480 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? tenmber I5) say that two men in Manila have been condemned to death for maltreating native women. I saw again and again the brothels of Manila crowded to the ooors by our soldiers, and the saloons also. All these things may be unavoidable at times."-Beneficent assimilaticn war-times, that is. And this the form assimilation will take. The wives and daughters of the Filipino "niggers" will be assimilated by the males of the higher race, as the wives and daughters of the colored race were by the planters during slavery. It will be in brothels and elsewhere, and this mixing of the blood will be called civilization. Every brothel should contain an American clergyman, paid by the Government, to pray over the ceremony and thank God for human progress. "These people are not as our people. Our very voices rasp them. Individual Americans, civilians and soldiers, treat them arrogantly, as if already they were our slaves. The Filipinos never forget; they never forgive; they are highly sensitive, easy to flatter, but impossible to fool; they are very bitter, very brave, very persistent. We need on our side great tact, absolute discipline, stainless honor, incorruptible honesty-otherwise a legacy of hate and bloodshed. This is as certain as the decrees of God." A CHANCE FOR OUR TAIL-BETWEEN-ITS-LEGS CONGRESS. "Our Congress ought to be called at once to give the Filipinos some promise of government. It is claimed by men familiar with the subject in Luzon that our Government has not promised them anything except the most attenuated generalities. The Chino-Tagals, who are the leaders in the movement, are among the shrewdest men on earth. They know the difference between an absolute statement and a diplomatic evasion, and unless some promise is made of a very definite character, in my judgment the war will not cease with the conquest of Aguinaldo." CREAM OF SCUM GENERALS. "There is a good deal of jealousy between the high of IS LIBERTY TO:DIE? 481 ficers of the army, and that makes it difficult to force matters to a focus with the Filipinos. Thus, for example, when Lawton went to San Isidro MacArthur's division moved up the railway to San Fernando, driving the enemy before it and letting him escape across the open fields, whereas it seemed to those who were on the ground that the only logical reason for Lawton's movement was to get down from Arayat to Mexico, and from Mexicol to San Fernando, and thus flank Aguinaldo and hold him between Malolos and San Fernando. The military men 'and foreign attaches whom I have talked with about this maneuver all seemed to feel that we had accomplished absolutely nothing by Lawton's expedition north and MacArthur's movement on San Fernando. These operations, it is true, gave us ten or fifteen miles of railroad, but it left the enemy as secure and defiant as ever." That we have a 'queer lot' out there in Manila is now amply evident. Is there a common understanding among all the generals for "political and diplomatic considerations" to keep Aguinaldo in the field? Are they all conniving with McKinley and Otis to lengthen out the organized resistance of the enemy until Congress convenes and is dragooned by the Administration into making another great raise in the size of the standing army? One great general starts ostensibly to bag Aguinaldo and another great general cuts a hole in the lower end of the bag and lets him out.. It is General jealousy, or McKinley-Hanna intention? In either case what a box of peacocks we have running this expansion war-enough to make the country retch! The haloed busterheads go flapdoodling across the Luzon to give American heroworshippers and taxpayers ecstatic jerks, and here's what they actually perform: "The marines waded through more rice fields, forded the river in water up to their shoulders, and carried the forts, meeting with feeble resistance, the first encounter having disheartened the enemy. Squads were sent to Noveleta and burned the 16 482 ' IS LIBERTY TO DIE? town and huts all along the roads, from which the enemy commenced the firing. There a junction was formed with the scouts, who had been sweeping the swamps and thickets. Then the marines returned to Cazvvte, thoroughly exhausted... The American loss was three officers and nine privates wounded, one of the officers being mortally hurt. The loss of the enemy is unknown, but the bodies of three Filipinos were seen." (Oct. 8.) Schwan cut down with his whip into water, and when he took his whip out the water was all there just as it had been before. A few Filipino drops had perished out of space, but particles had peeled off of the living American whip-three officers and nine privates, some mortally. McKinley will say of this, "American valor.and heroism have never touched sublimer heights or shed brighter luster on the American name than during the past two years." It will seem that great things are being done and the military spirit will take on fat, and the facts that Otis, Lawton, MacArthur and Schwan are whipping water will be jugged. "Manila, Oct. 4.-Several hundred insurgents have reoccupied Porac, which was captured by General MacArthur on Sept. 20th and evacuated by the Americans the following day."-"Manila, Oct. 9.-This afternoon a body of insurgents was seen near La Loma church, four miles from the heart of Manila. They opened fire, the bullets falling among the tents of the Twenty-fifth infantry. The Americans manned the trenches and replied at a range of I,200 yards. The insurgents volleyed and the Americans used their artillery. The fight lasted an hour, after which the insurgents retreated. One man was wounded. The scouts of the Twentieth infantry are now reconnoitering." The brilliant work of all our arms in the Philippines, all our dead, our huge daily wartaxes, have not prevailed to drive the natives away from the very borders of Manila! 'Political and diplomatic considerations' have triumphed. IS LIBERTY TO DIE.? 483 The filth of our military orgy is merely the French army learning to walk in America. It shows that we only want opportunity to be as thoroughly degraded as France. In spirit we are already so. A slight wound is made in our flesh by a scratch of war, and the condition of our blood proclaims itself. A terrible sore breaks out. With the right man to take advantage of this blood decay, a Sherman, a Seward, a Hanna, liberty will soon be finished. I say then stop sneering at France and embrace her. We live in the same sewer, we eat the same rats. England in this Boer affair is a looking-glass for the Yankee. It is pleasant to think how time has brought the old rake and the young rake together. When we were the Boer nation, a century back, which the bull was goring, we thought we held different principles from that beast; since we have found it expedient to gore the Filipinos we find excuses for the bull. Come and sit before the mirror. England's case with the Boers is zero. Taking the rind off, it is the determination of the British CapitalistGovernors to obtain full sovereignty over a wealthy country, that British capitalists may melt the wealth out of it. Great numbers of the English, consummately bigoted with greed though they are, know that they have no honest case, and feel shaky and wicked in view of British aggressions and transgressions.-So far there is flawless identity with us. Our case in the Philippines is zero, and less than zero, many Americans feel it and are aggrieved.-The British rulers recognize these qualmish symptoms and know the bull-broth that will relieve them. They will prick and jab the Boer republic with insulting demands until the Boers retaliate, the retaliation will place the Boers in the wrong on every point of the controversy, the British people will feel grossly outraged by the Boer crime of retaliation, and the whole British nation will unite in one righteous-bull sentiment 484- IS LIBERTY TO DIE? of retribution to punish the unheard of insolence. This transpired, act for act. First jabs and insults, and when the Boers saw that the English intended their death and resented, then a united nation of English hypocrites to wipe the Boers from the slate of the earth for resenting, Fix your eyes on this part of the mirror and you will see the bibled bull snorting through the press. The London Standard Bull said: "The Transvaal's worst enemies could hardly have supposed that its arrogance would lead it to such an extravagance. The note is written in a style which would be offensive if it came from a first-rate power, and is inconceivably ridiculous as emanating from a trumpery little state which exists only by Great Britain's forbearance."-The Telegraph Bull said: "President Kruger has slammed the door in the face of Great Britain with the violence of infuriated folly."-The Times Bull said: "It is the Transvaal, not we, who snap the last frail thread of negotiations. They have declared war upon the British empire and they must feel her arm and pay the penalty of their aggression."-"Speech and song lack utterance now for loathing,.. Strike England and strike home," swirls swivel Swinburne in a sizzling sonnet. These penciled snorts are faultless from a nation which intentionally goaded the 'trumpery little state' to declare war that the onus of the war act might be made to rest on it before a fool world. But witness how the shuffle unites the British empire of shams: "This news is received at London with cynical amusement by the imperial officers, who perceive that Kruger has delivered himself into their hands, since the responsibility for war must rest with the government which sends out so peremptory a summons to evacuate South Africa and then sets its own soldiers in motion. This dispatch is well calculated by its contemptuous terms and its lack of reason, to unite the British nation. There IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 485 can be no more peace talk in any quarter and the Liberals will join forces with the Unionlists in supporting active war meastures."* This is the primordial way to euchre the peace snoods. Make it impossible for the other fellow to do anything but declare war-then all the snoods conflagrate their 'peace' and rip and snort for their poor 'insulted Government.' 'Lord' Nosebery nasals forth his usual canine oratory: "In the face of this attack upon the nation the people will undoubtedly clear their ranks, and relegate party controversies to a more convellient season." He cribbed this plagiarism from ninety-six of McKinley's speeches. McKinley borrowed it from Seward, Seward from Jefferson, Jefferson from a Westminster Abbey of British prime ministers, they got it from France, France from Rome, Rome from Greece, Greece from Moses, Moses from the Devil. Another dispatch from the British seat of war uses the words in which the devil originally clothed the idea: London, Oct. 12.-"There is a general revulsion of feeling throughout the country respecting the controversy. The nation is suddenly united as one man in defense of the empire. The outgoing soldiers received the greetings of enthusiastic and excited multitudes. War is now welcomed, since Kruger has justified English resistance to a secession movement within the empire. The English confidence is no longer disturbed by any misgivings respecting the justice and necessity of war. President Kruger, by a single bad stroke, has convinced everybody... that England has a righteous cause. The greatest English battle for the empire since Waterloo is coming on and with 85,000 regulars in South Africa victory will be certain." And what does Salisbury, of whom a London paper wrote No one can doubt his Christianity, say? "The Boer government was pleased to dispense with any explanation on our part respecting the cause or justification of our war. They have done what no provocation on our part could have 486 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? justified. They have done what the strongest nation has never in its strength done to any opponent it had challenged. They issued a defiance so audacious that I could scarcely depict it without using words unsuited for this assembly, and by so doing they liberated this country from the necessity for explaining to the people of England why we are at zvar. But for this, no one could have predicted that we would ever be at war."* Zounds! Salisbury is as great a bloke with the lie as our own McKinley. In some worlds this would surely be called fun. A generation or two ago the cable loads of British bombast on ice which came over regularly kept the American people in good spirits. Then to a man this nation would have seen with mighty wrath this bloody stampede of a great empire against a tiny free state; the true words of Boer Consul Montague White at London would have awakened the American soul. Said he, "The expected has happened. I only hope the hellishness of this premeditated crushing-out of a hardy republic is now apparent. Let me remind America that the onus of war lies not upon those who fire the first shot, but upon those who compel it to be fired." Now what awakens at least half of the soul which our own greedy conquests have left us is a call from Great Britain that we pay our bills. Asquith presents the dun, snaring American eagles at Newburg: "The Americans have not forgotten, and I believe will not forget the attitude which this country, almost alone among the nations, assumed toward them recently when they were enduring times of crisis and emergency similar to those which seem now before us. The sympathy shown in those hours of danger and need engendered a warmth of gratitude and, I might say, also, a tenderness of sentiment"-in other words, Pay up, Sam, we helped you stone Spain and rob his Philippine orchard, now keep the European dogs off while we stone Kruger and empty his money-drawer. "Looking back IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 487 ward, two years," continues the tender bill-collector, "'there is nothing which we have more reason to congratulate ourselves upon, nothing that has added more to our international assets, than the fact that we established this tie of affectionate reciprocal sympathy with our great kindred nation beyond the Atlantic." Yes, Herbert, we'll do it; go to McKinley. Your English bull-drove helped him euchre liberty and the Constitution out of his own children, and he now has a treasurehouse full of war-spirits to pay you with. Who can be so dull as not to see ourselves in this English mirror! English nastiness and French nastiness unite in the Philippines under our mixing spoon. The original right or wrong of the question made no difference, vanished, never had existed, after the trumpery little Filipinos insolently insulted the crunching sovereignty of the United States! then it became a simple question of 'the integrity of the empire,' the integrity of a cut-throat's knife. The resistance of the Boer-Filipinos to our 'lawful sovereignty' (which we shall examine by the torch of Day presently) put all moral questions in the rear and united all the nation but its copperheads and honest men in the defense of the American empire. An elephant was playfully stepping on different parts of an earthworm, and the worm bit its foot. Now, trumpeted the monster, all the rights you ever had are forfeited, I am no longer disturbed by any misgivings respecting the justice and necessity of killing you, you insolently bit me, and by so doing you liberated me from the necessity of explaining to my muscles why I crush you, there are no more party controversies between my legs, every pound that I weigh is convinced that my cause is righteous, my whole body unites in standing on you. Thy hell be done, prays the elephant, and does it. Worm, you rebelled. What earthly objection could you have to my stepping on your tail and your head? Fellow citizens of Iowa, "I like the sentiment of your 488 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? platform here: 'Sustain my foot.' That is what we are doing in the Philippines today and that is what we will continue to do until we conquer the rebellion against the Ssovereignty and authority of my foot. It represents no tyranny, but liberty and civilization, and stands for hope to earthworms." (The Beast at Ackley, Ia.) "My Fellow Feet: Having been united in stepping on the head and tail of the earthworm, shall we stand together until the job is finished? (General cries of 'Yes.')" (The elephant at Waterloo.) "I believe, my fellow members, that this earthworm crawled under us in the providence of God. We did not seek it. It is ours with all the responsibilities that belong to it; and as a great, strong, brave elephant, we mean to meet them." (At Cedar Falls.) One thing the British bull has not done to compete with the American elephant: it has not professed to be goring the Boers for their good. That blasphemy has been saved for us. We alone of all the earth have said to the dying worm, we are killing you to make you happy, to educate you, and above all to save your life. In an early chapter of this narrative (III), it was shown that duffer McKinley put his elephant foot on the Filipinos without authority from God or people, Constitution or Congress. He proclaimed sovereignty over the Philippines before the ratification of the Paris treaty. The Senate had not sanctioned the action of our Paris Commissioners, and whether by conquest or purchase,whichever ground we choose to base our right on,the Philippines were not under our sovereignty. Congress alone could assert that sovereignty, and entitle the president to proclaim it. The assertion of Congress would not give us sovereignty over a people wishing freedom, but that alone could, by our fundamental organic laws, authorize the president to verbally claim it. But if our claim to the Philippines was based on purchase instead of the force of conquest, then even more IS LIBERTY TO DIE? 489 had we no shadow of right to publish a claim to those islands before our Congress sanctioned the proposed purchase, and Spain also sanctioned it. Jackal Whitelaw Reid declared this in calling the action of the Comnmission regarding the Philippines merely the bringing home of an "option" on them, to set before the American people. But now McKinley's little screw-driver Day, the leading Commissioner, comes up to say in explanation of the Commission's work: "It was not claimed that the United States had a right to the Philippines as a matter of conquest. The United States has never undertaken, so far as I know, to wrest from a foreign country lands or possessions simply by right of conquest. Had we been disposed to do so, it must be remembered that we were in possession only of the city, bay and harbor of Manila, under the protocol of August I2, I898, providing that the United States should occupy and hold the same pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace which should determine the control, disposition and government of the Philippines. The capture after the signing of the protocol by General Merritt and his forces, whatever its legal effect may have been, included no more territory than we were entitled to hold under the protocol.. By the cession, for a consideration, we obtained an indisputable title, which must be respected by all other nations." Before the cession, that is before our Senate had ratified the treaty, and before Spain had ratified the action of its commissioners, we had then no right of sovereignty. McKinley's proclamation then, according to Day, was, as we said in the beginning, the act of a forcible thief. Hence the Filipinos were fully right in their resistance, on every international ground. We may pass by Hanna's admission: "When the war broke out the Philippine Islands insurrectionists became, in a certain sense, the allies of the Americans"; we may drop elephant morals and attend only to elephant law, and we are wholly 490 IS LIBERTY TO DIE? condemned, without a hole or a crack to squeeze out through. And adding to this the fact that our Senate's ratification of the treaty only ratified an option, and that as Reid, McKinley, Hanna and all admit, the purchase could only be confirmed by the people speaking through Congress, a thing yet to transpire, we have been playing a game in the universe which would make even the hog and elephant species hide their heads and die. All the people who sanction the president by silence and permission, are one with him in the crime. Finally, it has been our charge throughout, that this insatiable murderer at the White House never intended the American people to decide this question of expansion, that he intended to saddle imperialism on to them, and buckle it so fast before they felt the weight that though they bit and kicked and rolled later, it would not come off. Now hear the rabid fiend saying as much: To Dewey-'There was no flaw in your victory; there shall be no flaw in maintaining it;' and at Cedar Falls, Ia.: "My Fellow Citizens:..It is no longer a question of expansion with us; we have expanded. If there is any question at all, it is a question of contraction, and who} is going to contract?" As we look back it was always plain enough, was it not? what was being done. Now it is done. 'Wait'yes; 'Trust the President'-yes.; 'Suppress the rebellion first'-yes; 'Vindicate the flag'-yes; 'The people will decide our course, later'-yes; and meantime the yoke was being fitted to us while we stood like stocks. Now, says Senator Davis, 'Congress, at its coming session will probably not attempt to! establish a civil government in the Philippines, but will leave them under the control of the President, who will thus be enabled to continue military government for an indefinite period,' and the structure of military imperialism so well begun by the president can be completed by him. IS LIBBRTY TO DIB? 491 And here it will rest if the American people are dead. But if they still live this administration will be cast into the depths of the sea, this murder-president will be borne down with a penalty equal to his crimes, his villainies will be rescinded, the millionaires for whom this endless pageant of blood is celebrated will be hauled from their thrones with him, his Seward trick to withdraw the public mind from the. question of American slavery to billionaires will be foiled, and a new American era will be opened, one of liberty at home as well as abroad from those leprous market-leviathans by whose consent the beggar world now plods humbled through space. I I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 11 1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I z I >_ 0 a Iuw 3 Ut r-_ Cr) N.j tS 3 9015 01637 5985.*j DO NOT REMOVE OR MUTILATE CARD IMPE R ALI SM AN D! ' 'L i B iERTY I Swift: 9 01, 1 3,