surgents whom we have just emancipated from oppression we never for a moment believed that they would turn upon the flag that had sheltered them against Spain."

The opponents of the treaty became also the victims of this indignation, for it was urged that their determined opposition to the treaty was the greatest incentive to the Filipino insurgents to give trouble. The enemies of retention, on the other hand, charged that the imperialists were to blame. "The responsibility," replied Mr. Bryan, “rests, not upon those who oppose the treaty, but upon those who refused to disclose the nation's purpose and left the Filipinos to believe that their fight against Spain, instead of bringing them independence, has only brought them a change of masters. It was the desire to be independent that led the Filipinos to resist American authority, and their desire for independence was not inspired by any American opposition to the terms of the treaty." 10

The importance of the native resistance has always been minimized before the American people. From the very beginning of the Philippine question, the retentionists endeavored to show that the majority of the Filipino people were on their side,

10 From Mr. Bryan's speech before the Good Government Club, Ann Arbor, Mich., February 18, 1899.

for they dared not contradict the principle that wherever the American flag flies there the wishes of the majority must be respected. After all, every argument for the Filipino side is summed up in the principle expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Mr. McKinley was loudest in his assurance to his people that his manifestos and the forcible extension of American sovereignty were welcomed by the majority of the Filipino people. After nearly a year of constant fighting, when most American officials had confessed that they had undervalued the determination and tenacity of the Filipino insurgents and when he himself had already sent about 80,000 soldiers to the Islands, he still asserted that the majority of the Filipino people favored American rule. “I had reason to believe," he said in his message of December, 1899, "and I still believe that this transfer of sovereignty was in accordance with the wishes and the aspirations of the great masses of the Filipino people."

E

VERYTHING so far promised that the retention of the Philippines would be a chief issue in American politics. By securing the ratification of the treaty of peace and refusing to pass any resolution that would pledge "near" or ultimate independence, while at the same time insisting that they did not want to make the Filipinos citizens of the United States, the Republican party had plainly indicated that its policy towards the Islands was a policy of imperialism.

The Democrats, in general, welcomed the issue of imperialism and were willing to make it the main point in the coming presidential election of 1900. Among the Republicans themselves were a small but fervent group of opponents of President McKinley's Philippine policy. A most tenacious campaign against American colonialism was the one carried on by the Anti-Imperialist Leagues. The first Anti-Imperialist League was formed in Boston in 1898, "to oppose, as inconsistent with American ideals, the forcible extension of the sov

ereignty of the United States over foreign people and in particular to work constantly for the early and complete independence of the Philippine Islands."

Within a year the league had become a national organization with about one hundred branches in the principal American cities, chief among which were New York, Philadelphia, Springfield, Chicago, Cincinnati, Washington, D. C., and Los Angeles. Among the foremost promoters of antiimperialism were: George F. Hoar, Grover Cleveland, Samuel W. McCall, George S. Boutwell, George F. Edmunds, Wayne McVeagh, Andrew Carnegie, J. G. Schurman, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Goldwin Smith, Edward Atkinson, Nelson A. Miles, W. D. Howells, F. B. Sanborn, Moorfield Storey, John F. Shafroth, Augustus O. Bacon, E. W. Carmack, Donelson Caffery, Jane Addams, Edwin Burritt Smith, Thomas Mott Osborne, Herbert Welsh, Davis Starr Jordan, Henry Wade Rogers, Charles A. Towne, George G. Mercer, Edwin D. Mead, James L. Slayden, Rufus B. Smith, W. J. Bryan, Champ Clark, George L. Wellington, B. R. Tillman, George Turner, R. F. Pettigrew, William E. Mason, John Sharp Williams, Robert L. Henry, W. A. Jones, John J. Lentz, Horatio C. Potter, Francis G. Newlands, Henry D. Green, T. M. Patterson, David A. DeArmond, Thomas W.

Hardwick, John A. Martin, Eugene F. Kinkead, J. Harry Covington, Erving Winslow, and Isidor Rayner.1

The campaign carried on by these men consisted in the making of speeches and the distribution of pamphlets, especially the latter. The anti-imperialist movement will be long remembered by the number and quality of pamphlets scattered all over the United States. Mr. Winslow thinks that fully 7,000,000 of them have been distributed. The AntiImperialist League sent investigators to study conditions in the Islands, and these brought back reports that have been of great use to the cause of Philippine independence. The league welcomed Filipino visitors to Boston and endeavored in every possible way to make the desires of the Filipino people known to the Americans. Mr. Sixto Lopez long carried on his work in America under the auspices of the Anti-Imperialist League.

A national conference, of anti-imperialists was held in Chicago on October 17 and 18, 1899, presided over by Edwin Burritt Smith, with about 160 representatives from all over the country. Here the anti-imperialist movement was formed into a national organization, under the name of the American Anti-Imperialist League. A committee

1 From The Anti-Imperialist League by Erving Winslow, "The Filipino People," September, 1912, Vol. I, No. 1.