gress shall determine the citizen status interferes with my position. On the contrary, this recital presupposes that Congress will legislate with reference to these acquisitions as though the cession were perfect.

I have attempted briefly to give some of the reasons which appear to me controlling against the making of this treaty. I have not dwelt upon the threatened abandonment of the Monroe doctrine, nor have I shown, as I might, the difficulties of colonial government in the tropics by any government. I find no embarrassment in solving the situation, bad as it is, upon lines heretofore indicated. Spain and all other nations can be warned off and a local government can be established. I see no want of dignity upon the part of the United States in insisting that as far as the Philippine Islands are concerned they shall be treated as Cuba is treated. If it be said that we have our commissioners, I answer that we should act under our constitutional authority and to the best of our ability. That this does not imply discredit, but only implies regardfulness of duty.

These questions, I take it, must be determined from some other standpoint than that of individual preference. Those of us who believe that a new, untried, and dangerous policy is about to be inaugurated can not find any answer in the assertion that we have appropriated other and more congenial territory, areas fitted for civilization and easy of access and free from a dangerous and permanently nonassimilative population. Never before did we seek a distant sea and an Oriental land, tenanted by millions who are not of us and who deny our authority. I am not attracted by the colonial experiences of the world.

Spain herself believed in expansion. Imperialism brought her down.

In these days when military power and splendor

engross so much attention, at this time when all over the world are repeated the stories of American valor, now when the youth turns with aspiring eye toward the gratification of his ambition to the tented field, when the soldier and the sailor rejoice in their great accomplishments, it is well for us to look back-to reflect. The fathers of the Republic had studied the history of mankind. They read from the standpoint of threatened liberty. They deliberated from the vantage ground of disinterested honesty. They fought, too, in vindication of their opinions. Their life terms were not less than those of this generation.

Greater men have not been here. These statesmen were well aware that other nations had been free and that in the days of frugality and honesty they were happy and prosperous and soon became strong. They knew that republicanism in its purity must ever beget power and affluence and that nations as well as individuals are often seduced by the lavish offerings of ambition to attempt military despotism and to regard as ill suited the safe teachings of less flattering hours.

They were profoundly versed in the narrations which told of the rise and fall of people-the sacrifices of independence the terrors of corruption and decay. Shall we not heed their admonitions? Are we too wise to regard them? Can we credit the promise that imperialism will benefit the cause of freedom? The world saw upon Helena's lonely rock the greatest soldier, perhaps, of all history. When his life's race had nearly run, he who too had believed himself a man of destiny, gazing upon the glistening sea which guarded his restless spirit, said, almost with his dying breath, that the world would never know what he had in store for man.

In the seven-hilled city more than once the tyrant with bloody sword uplifted claimed the blessings of

posterity. The glorious court of Fontainebleau was refulgent with a brightness which indicated the effort of power to conceal a condition which eventuated in a culmination which threatened the thrones of the Old World.

The United States will never be too prosperous or strong to adhere to constitutional restraints and to work out its mission with the aid of intelligent and honest men. It is in the hope that we may aid to preserve forever stainless in its purity and unconquerable in its integrity the Republic of our fathers that I register here my protest against what I conceive to be a disastrous innovation.

CHAPTER XX.

LARGE STANDING ARMIES A MENACE TO

A REPUBLIC.

BY HON. ARTHUR P. GORMAN,

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MARYLAND.

I have not consumed much of the time of the Senate in the discussion of the pending resolutions. I have had no intention of doing so, and would not now but for the occurrences of the last two days in this chamber. The remarks of the Senator from Nebraska, who addressed the Senate this morning, in connection with the remarks made by the Senator from Colorado seem to make it necessary that I should say one word before we shall have entered upon the real consideration of the treaty in secret session.

It has grown to be an unfortunate custom that the newspaper criticisms of public men find ready conduits in this body, so that their utterances may be recorded here upon our records. No matter how severe the criticism, how unjust the comment, it seems that at times they are to find their way into this body and to be repeated by honorable members of the Senate.

My attitude upon this treaty was well defined in a public utterance before the treaty was negotiated so far as it refers to the acquisition of the Philippine Islands. My opinion upon that question was known and freely expressed by me to one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty before he left this country for Paris. I have had no cause to change the opinions then expressed publicly and privately. They were opinions formed after mature deliberation; opinions that I be

lieved were in the best interests of my country; opinions to be maintained by me, no matter what the influence may be upon the other side.

In my course in public life Presidents of the United States and their cabinets have had no terrors for me. I have opposed them when they were of my own political faith, when I believed that the measures presented were too extreme and would put in jeopardy the business interests of the American people. I oppose this treaty in the form in which it comes to us, and under which we are to acquire the sovereignty of the Philippine Archipelago, filled with people who never can assimilate with us, because I believe its adoption and the acquisition of the territory would be more disastrous to my country than any other measure which has come before the Congress of the United States or the Senate of the United States from the formation of the Government to this hour.

The Senator from Colorado, in his carefully prepared speech, as I take it, after having described the conditions attending the consideration of the treaty, said:

Bar England, there is not a country in Europe that is not hostile to us. During all this war they stood in sullen hate, hoping for our defeat and that disaster might come to us; and to-day they wait with eager and rapacious gaze, hoping that some event may yet prevent our reaping the fruits of the treaty which has been agreed upon by the commissioners of the two countries. Yet, while this critical condition of affairs exists, it has become evident within the last few days that certain political leaders in this chamber believe that a new issue should be brought before the American people to be determined at the next Presidential election. They intend that the American people shall be called upon to pass on the questions arising out of the war, and that this shall be the issue of the next campaign.

But

For one, I believe that issue a fair one, and I am ready, as all good citizens ought to be, to meet the views of the whole American people upon the question of the conduct of the war, of its achievements, and of the policy this country should pursue at its close. it is deplorable that in formulating such an issue and in pursuit of such a policy those leaders should find it necessary to seek to dishonor this Government and the administration which has guided us so wisely through the troubled sea of international complications and brought us to the threshold of an honorable peace; that they should seek to degrade us in the face of the nations of the world; and that they should attempt to bring about some fancied political advantage by an effort to defeat the ratification of a treaty which, if unratified, must bring back a condition of war as it existed before the report of the commissioners, passive it may be, but full of uncertainty and full of disaster to the interests and the welfare of our country.