would not repay the outlay forced upon us by the war; but we have all along refused to take Cuba. What else has Spain with which to repay us except the archipelago, which lies at our mercy with its capital in our possession? Its area is just about two and a half times that of Cuba, but instead of being near our coasts it is halfway around the globe from us. Some of our people think it worthless to us, and probably few that it could be valued so high as the remaining two hundred or two hundred and fifty million of our cash outlay; but it is an asset of some sort—whether to develop or to dispose of-and we ought now to retain the power to do either as the Government and the people on fuller knowledge may determine.

Are at the end of six weeks of fruitless negotiation (one-half longer than it took France and Germany to agree upon their first treaty of peace after their last war); this suggests to me now the desirableness of our calling time on the Spanish commissioners, and giving notice that we must either make some progress or close the protocol. At the same time, in our own interest, we must shrink from renewing the war, even in name, over our prostrate foe, and must take into consideration the great desirableness of securing a definite and permanent treaty of peace. To do this I would be willing to make some concessions from our just dues if sure they could not be misinterpreted and used as a pretext for greater delays and further unreasonable demands.

I would be willing, as one proposition, under such conditions and only as a certain means of speedily securing a treaty, to leave Spain, Mindanao and the Sulu group in the southern part of the Philippine Islands-that is to say, the Mohammedan part of the archipelago, being about one-third of it—and take instead all the Carolines and the Ladrones, while making stringent requirements as to the freedom of religion as well as forbidding Spanish restrictions on trade with the rest of the Philippine Islands. I would not compromise our position on the Cuban debt by doing anything to recognize that of the Philippine Islands, it being apparent that it was used to prosecute the war against insurgents, partly in the Philippine Islands and partly in Cuba; but rather than lose a treaty and resume hostilities I would, as another proposition, be willing to take the Carolines in addition to all the Philippine Islands, and in return for the Carolines and for past pacific expenditures in them and in the Philippine Islands I would be willing to give a lump sum of from twelve to fifteen million dollars,

providing ultimately for this sum out of the revenues of the islands; and, finally, as a last concession from this second proposition, I would not sacrifice the treaty for the sake of retaining Mindanao and the Sulu group.

Whitelaw Reid.

(5) It is my opinion that the existing situation requires that the United States present without much delay an ultimatum insisting upon the signature of a treaty for the cession by Spain of the entire Philippine Islands archipelago, Porto Rico, and Guam and the relinquishment of sovereignty over Cuba. I am also of the opinion that we should pay no money to Spain on account of her debt or on any other account whatsoever, and that we should so declare in an ultimatum, if necessary. It now appears that Spain has paid nothing for any pacific improvements in the Philippine Islands. They have all been paid for by the proceeds of local taxation of the islands. I believe that one of the purposes of Spain in protracting these negotiations is to entangle the United States with some of the European powers. The Spanish commissioners have reoccupied their first position, that the United States shall assume or be bound for the so-called colonial debt, and it is plain that so long as her commissioners thus contend the negotiation stands just as it did as its beginning. I do not believe we shall ever get a treaty except as a result of such an unyielding ultimatum. Friday morning, 29th.

C. K. Davis.

The treaty was very much as the President cared to have it. He made some concessions, but carried the substantial points. The powerfully drawn opinions of Davis and Day were allowed to float aside. This chapter of history should put an end to the impression, which has been with such assiduity cultivated, that the President was easily managed. The fact is he managed the managers, and the "Bosses" knew the limitations of these pasture lands. President McKinley was not a yielding disposition. He had that reputation very erroneously. The fact is that he was very firm in his convictions, that his courtesy and consideration for others caused a misunderstanding. He always stood out for the important points, gaining them by conceding those of minor importance. If he yielded what seemed to be an important point, it was to gain one more important. He had his way to a most remarkable degree, while seeming

to be compliant. His policy, his personal force, dominated Congress more than any President I have ever known, and without creating ill-feeling. Men were yielding to him, and giving him his way, when they thought they were overcoming the presidential will. No matter that he set his mind on having go his way, ever failed to do so. He wanted reciprocity to be sure, but up to the time of his death he had not set his heart upon it, but his Buffalo speech showed that he was going to fight for it. It was in a sense unfortunate for him that there was a misapprehension as to his being pliable-it gave him the reputation of being easily influenced, but that diplomatic pliability enabled him to secure his way with less difficulty. He won, and those who did not wish him to do so did not learn until later that he had. The general public has regarded Senator Hanna as all-influential, but Hanna often truly told his personal friends that he could not move McKinley, and, in consequence, was thought insincere when he had simply failed. The latter quietly and unobtrusively ruled, and ruled his cabinet equally with others. That which is thus proven in the history of war is demonstrated also in the story of peace.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY.

His Dying Recognition of "God's Way"-The Death of Mr. McKinley an Impressive Testimony-The Poetry About the Tragedy-The Keynote of Faith in Life-Dr. Talmage on McKinley's Religious Character.

"It is God's way," were the dying words of William McKinley, President of the United States, and there was a momentous depth in the simple words. There was no man on the face of the earth who had fairer and grander prospects for doing good than he. His speech of the day before declared how busy his mind was with the great future of his country, how he had mapped out for himself an enormous task of good-will labor. He had succeeded in so many things, he had confidence in the achievements of the hereafter in America. In a moment had been revealed to him the vision of sudden death. It came in a bloody mist of murder. He told his faithful secretary to be careful how the truth would reach his wife, and he bore up bravely. He had been at school in war, and said to the surgeons when they had him on the table, and when he knew they were men of science, that he was in their hands. All at last was in vain, and the dark way he was to go was "God's way." He was a believer in Christianity, humbly, truly, devotedly. He was an observer of the golden rule. It is said of him that for thirty-five years he never failed to find a service of religion. on Sunday, and there are few men in the world of whom that can be said so unreservedly.

There is this to say as to the result: The death of McKinley-wonderfully as the Master died-has given an impulse to Christian feeling, and lifted up broken hearts and comforted mourners by the sublime example extraordinary in the annals of the profession, expansion and elevation of the influence of the Christian faith.

The tragic death of President McKinley has moved all sorts and conditions of the American people to express their emotions in verse. During the past week the Inter Ocean mentions that it has received about one hundred poems upon various phases of the sad event. Not one of them, so far as a rather extensive acquaintance with current literature

can judge, has come from a "professional" poet-one to whom the writing of verse is the principal business of life. Such poets doubtless realize from experience the difficulty of doing their best work "offhand," and are waiting until their emotions are clarified by reflection that they may then, perchance, be able to sing of the nation's fallen leader some song that will give the singer lasting fame.

Such an attitude betokens an ambition altogether worthy, but the average man knows not its impulses. He simply seeks to express his feelings, and if he possesses anything of the lyric on such occasions it dominates. He pauses not to think of niceties of form, but out of the abundance of his heart his mouth speaks and his pen writes. Two or three of the poems received are the productions of working newspaper men, who do not consider themselves poets in the highest sense, but whose training has given them facility of expression and whose emo tions move them at such times to poetic endeavor. But the great majority come from men and women-whether of formal education or lacking its advantages-who would not ordinarily dream of trying to write poetry. They are men of business and of the professions and of the mechanic arts. They are women engrossed with the care of homes and children. The grief that moved a nation has lifted them for the nonce out of their everyday lives, and with hands often unaccustomed they have taken up the pen to try and tell what they feel.

Many of these poems, however, while technically defective in some respects, contain fine and original ideas. They are diamonds in the rough, which need but a little more polish to bring out their latent beauties. Although the writers were not poets by profession, the great impulse of a nation's grief has made them such for the time. And to the reflective and patriotic mind those "artless strains of unpremeditated song" are more valuable than the products of the deliberate skill of the professional writer. They are songs right out of the people's hearts, and it is a great thing for any man to have inspired so general and genuine an outburst of sincere feeling.

These songs we reproduce with the annotations that accompanied their original publication.

Of all the poems received the first that follows seems to strike most clearly the general note of emotion over the nation's loss. Critics of the kind that censured Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" may also say that these lines contain nothing positively new. Yet as the "Reces