CHAPTER XXII.

WHAT WILL THEY DO TO US?

BY HON. GEORGE FRANKLIN EDMUNDS,

EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM VERMONT.

1. These 1,200 islands, more or less, are in the heart of the tropics and occupy a region of seas nearly 1,000 miles long north and south and about 300 miles wide. They are about 7,000 miles distant from our Pacific coast and are about 14,000 miles distant from our Atlantic coast via the Suez Canal, controlled by a foreign power. Only a few of the islands are large enough to play any important part in the problem. These are Luzon, Camarines, Mindoro, Samar, Leyte, Panay, Mindanao and Palawan. The latest encyclopædias estimate the area at about 114,000 square miles and the population at 7,000,000.

2. They have all the climatic evils and diseases of tropical countries and are frequently afflicted by violent hurricanes and earthquakes. They are, as all human experience has proved, absolutely incapable of being colonized and built up into communities of Americans or of any of the people of cool climates.

3. They are already inhabited, as already stated, by about 7,000,000 of people-being more than sixty to the square mile of the whole area of all the islands. The population, therefore, is already denser than that of the State of Michigan. The population is composed of Spaniards, other Europeans, English and Americans, half-castes, Chinese, Malays, Japanese and aboriginal natives. Of the total of all this conglomerate of races the Europeans and Americans compose less 481

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than 2 per cent after more than two hundred years of European occupation, and very few of these were born there. Even in Manila, the capital, 67 per cent of the inhabitants are Malays, 30 per cent are Chinese and half-breeds, Spaniards; Spanish half-breeds and creoles 3 per cent only, and of other white men only a trace and of white women substantially none.

4. The five or six islands of the group of any considerable size are already fully populated by the races and mixtures above mentioned.

5. They are people who never have been and never can be in need of or the consumers of American productions to any appreciable extent.

6. The islands are very fertile and produce principally the fibre known as Manila hemp, coarse tobacco, coffee, sugar and tropical fruits; and they have extensive forests of tropical woods analogous to those of the vast forests of Central and South America.

7. These resources comprise the only value of the islands except that of furnishing a location for fortresses and naval stations for a nation ambitious to become the political and military mistress of the world, A new Alexander or Napoleon, if he possessed inexhaustible resources of men and money, might wish for them for this purpose.

8. The sincerely professed and sole purpose of the war was to make Cuba a free and independent state. Admiral Dewey did not go to Manila for purposes of conquest at all. He went there with his gallant little fleet to capture or destroy, if he could, the Spanish fleet. He did it in a way that astonished the naval powers of the world. But he only acquired military control of the bay and city of Manila and its environments. Nearly all beyond that was in possession of an organized rebellion against Spain.

9. At that time, and long before, an active and powerful rebellion was in progress in the islands, and so far as present information goes it now holds sway over a large part of Luzon and quite or nearly the whole of Panay and of other large districts of these principal islands. It appears to be true that the rebel co-operated with our forces in the overthrow of the Spanish rule at Manila under the impression that our operations at Manila were not to help Spain to put down the rebellion and then take possession for ourselves, but were only to cripple the Spanish power as an incident of war in bringing Spain to renounce its control of Cuba, which Congress had said in its declaration in respect to Cuba was its sole purpose.

10. That the people of the islands who were carrying on the rebellion in order to be free and independent do not desire to be annexed and to become a territorial dependency of the United States of any kind, and that they intend to resist annexation appears to be indisputable.

What I have said so far will not, I take it, be disputed by any intelligent person. What then in the present state of affairs is to be done?

Are we to make war upon the people of the Philippines as Spain was doing, in order to subject them to our dominion?

This apparently we must do to make them a people (whether citizens, subjects or slaves) of the United States.

To justify this "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" should compel our Government to state definitely the grounds upon which we make the attempt. We have assured the nations of the globe in the most solemn manner possible that we made war not for conquest or extended dominion, but solely to

set the people of Cuba free-of whom Congress declared that "they were and of right ought to be free and independent."

At that very time the Philippine rebellion was stronger and better organized than that of Cuba. Recent events have proved that the Philippine rebels are as capable of self-government as the people of Cuba. When the United States aided in the attainment and recognized the independence of the Spanish provinces of Central and South America our Government did not set itself up to be the final judges of whether or not they were capable of self-government, although it was perfectly well known that self-government by the people of those provinces could not be such, and never could be such, as the races and inhabitants of temperate zones could establish and maintain.

To force our dominion, then, upon the people of the Philippines would be in opposition to the everliving principles on which our own nation was founded, and under which it has in a little more than a century grown so great in an ever-increasing native and homogeneous people, established in a temperate zone of the earth, and capable from this cause of continuous development in industry, increase of knowledge, in social order, justice and morality. If we now proceed to conquer (as probably we can at last, although Spain. has failed to do it after more than a century of effort), what shall we say to them is the motive of our conduct?

How are we to explain it to the world, having "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind," as Jefferson and our fathers thought necessary in our Declaration of Independence?

Can we be justified in forcing by the sword our particular and excellent ideas of government, morality