The Story of the Philippines

center of political plagues and pestilential fevers, whose contagion has at frequent intervals reached our own shores.

In the Philippine Islands the situation is for us absolutely novel. It cannot be said to be out of the scope of reasonable American expansion and is in the right line of enlarging the area of enlightenment and stimulating the progress of civilization. The unexpected has happened, but it is not illogical. It must have been written long ago on the scroll of the boundless blue and the stars. The incident. of war was the “rush” order of the President of the United States to Admiral Dewey to destroy the Spanish fleet at Manila, for the protection of our commerce. The deed was done with a flash of lightning, and lo! we hold the golden key of a splendid Asiatic archipelago of a thousand beautiful and richly endowed islands in our grip. This is the most brilliant and startling achievement in the annals of navies. Never before had the sweep of sea power, ordered through the wires that make the world's continents, oceans and islands one huge whispering gallery, such striking exemplification. There was glory and fame in it, and immeasurable material for the making of history. We may paraphrase Dr. Johnson's celebrated advertisement of the widow's brewery by saying: Admiral Dewey's victory was not merely the capture of a harbor commanding a great city, one of the superb places of the earth, and the security of a base of operations to wait for reinforcements commensurate with the resources of the United States of America-the victorious hero fixed his iron hand upon a wonderful opportunity it was the privilege of our Government to secure at large, according to the rights of a victorious Nation for the people thereof a chance for the youth of America, like that of the youth of Great Britain, to realize upon the magnificence of India; and this is as Dr. Johnson said of the vats and barrels of the Thrale estate "the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.” It is a new departure, but not a matter for the panic or apprehension of conservatism, that the Stars and Stripes float as the symbol of sovereignty over a group of islands in the waters of Asia, that are equal to all the West Indies. If we are strangers there now we shall not be so long. We have a front on the Pacific Ocean, of three great States Washington, equal to England; Oregon, whose grandeur rolls in the sound of her famous name, and incomparable California, whose title will be the synonym of golden good times forever. The Philippines are southwest from our western front doors. They have been the islands of our sunsets in the winter. Now they look to us for the rosy dawn out of which will come the clear brightness of the white light of mornings and the fullness of the ripening nocns, all the year around. With our bulk of the North American continent bulging into both the great oceans, it was foreordained since the beginning when God created the carth, that we, the possessors

of this imperial American zone, should be a great Asiatic Power. We have it now, in evidence, written in islands among the most gorgeous of those that shine in the Southern seas-islands that are east from the Atlantic and west from the Pacific shores of the One Great Republic-that we may personify hereafter, sitting at the head of the table when the empires of the earth consult themselves as to the courses of empire. Our Course of Empire is both east and west.

The contact of American and Asiatic civilization in the Philippines, with the American army there, superseding the Spaniards, will be memorable as one of the matters of chief moment in the closing days of the nineteenth century, and remembered to date from for a thousand years. It is my purpose to write of this current history while it is a fresh, sparkling stream, and attempt something more than the recitation of the news of the day, as it is condensed and restrained in telegrams; to give it according to the extent of my ability and the advantages of my opportunity, the local coloring, the characteristic scenery; the pen pictures of the people and their pursuits; sketches of the men who are doers of deeds that make history; studies of the ways and means of the islanders; essays to indicate the features of the picturesque of the strange mixture of races; the revolutionary evolutions of politics; the forces that pertain to the mingling of the religions of the Occident and the Orient, in a chemistry untried through the recorded ages. It is a tremendous canvas upon which I am to labor, and I know full well how inadequate the production must be, and beg that this index may not be remembered. against me. It is meant in all modesty, and I promise only that there will be put into the task the expertness of experience and the endeavor of industry.

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