CHAPTER XXVI.

"LEST WE FORGET."

BY CHARLES A. TOWNE,

EX-REPRESENTATIVE OF CONGRESS FROM MINNESOTA.

Not so much by formal provision of law as by the grateful and reverent affection of the American people, this anniversary is consecrated to the memory of Washington. A name not unknown or unadored in the world that is even older yet, though it make our newest problems for us, for out of Asia comes to-day a cry startling the silence of abysmal centuries and echoing a prophecy of long ago, when our Aryan progenitors began their restless progress round the globe, the cry of a struggling people imploring the freedom wherewith we ourselves are free and invoking the venerated shade of Washington to witness between us and them.

This day, 167 years ago, George Washington was born, and ere this year be passed time will have marched a century from his grave. It is my humble but firm opinion that not since his death has the advent of his birthday been marked by circumstances so novel, so interesting, so momentous and sinister as

now.

Not in all that time has there arisen a crisis in the history of this country so needful of his wisdom, so apt to his counsel, and so menacing to his glory, as that which to-day confronts the Republic that was founded by his valor and that has touched the heights of greatness through obedience to his precepts.

Profoundly convinced that as a democracy we have reached the parting of the ways, and that upon the decision by the American people of problems now imminent depends the future weal or woe of our country, and hence that of the human race for ages to come, I propose to speak out plainly and emphatically as to what, in my judgment, the present situation is and means and as to what it is incumbent on the citizens to do in respect of it. I adopt this course the more freely to-day, inasmuch as the main question has not yet become a partisan issue and thus rendered, as to many persons, unapproachable by honest inquiry and insusceptible of unprejudiced consideration; albeit, as I have observed with infinite regret, a very great number of people have already jumped at conclusions in this important matter, actuated solely by what seemed to be from day to day the tendency of their party leadership.

I am quite aware, my friends, that by a considerable proportion of the public press the language of distrust of present tendencies is ridiculed as a form of hysteria or denounced as an attack on the Government, and that a man who ventures to raise a cry of warning is either charitably characterized as a fit candidate for a lunatic asylum or violently assailed as an enemy of his country. It has been long, however, since such opposition lost its terrors for me; and I shall bear with cheerful resignation my share of whatever opprobrium shall continue to be heaped upon those, who on this subject, are outspoken and resolute.

It is usually difficult to estimate the drift and force of the currents of social and political change. Their ordinary flow is so still and regular as not to attract the attention of any but the closest observer, so that

his accounts of the results of his observations are met with general apathy or incredulity. But now and then events occur that so accelerate the speed of tendencies as to make them obvious to common scrutiny. Wars, for example, are such events. It is as if suddenly the restraint of banks and counter currents were swept away and the dominant flow became a torrent. At such a time there is need of cool heads. The general disposition is to go with the stream, and those who before drifted unconscious of direction now madly abandon themselves to the course, calling it Providence and themselves the children of destiny.

Edmund Burke once said that no war ever leaves a nation where it found it. This is true in many ways, but in none more significantly than in respect of the dispositions and even the inherited instincts of men. A forceful illustration is the recent war with Spain. Thousands of humdrum citizens to whom one little year ago even Porto Rico seemed far beyond our natural sphere of influence, are to-day clamoring for the annexation of the Philippines, whose geographical whereabouts were then no better known to them than those of the Islands of the Blest, and about which even now many of them have notions very little more definite than is their knowledge of Swat or Timbuctoo. A few, indeed, there are among us that not long ago, considering the multiplying difficulties of industrial and economic problems, were gravely doubtful of the ability of democratic institutions to maintain themselves on this continent, but who now, led by what reasoning and justified by what consistency I know not, are eager to complicate an already desperate situation with a whole hemisphere of novel perils.

An American Senate that solemnly declared less than a year since that our occupation of Cuba, the

very territory which was the subject and the inevitable theater of war, should be confined to the pacification of the island, refused a few days ago to give its assent to a straightforward resolution disclaiming any intention to exercise permanent sovereignty in the Philippines, which were in no way associated with the cause of the war and only incidentally involved in its. prosecution.

An American President who, in April, 1898, went reluctantly to war for the liberation of one people, proclaimed in January, 1899, the subjugation "by conquest" of another people, and is to-day engaged by sea and land in forcing the authority of this great Government upon an inoffensive race struggling to be free and vainly interposing between their naked bodies and our merciless guns the familiar and once respected guaranties of the Declaration of Independence.

Ah! what a fall is here, my countrymen. Within the circuit of a single year to have declined from the moral leadership of mankind into the common brigandage of the robber nations of the world.

The contest out of which it is claimed there comes to us this Christian duty of slaughter and subjugation began nobly. Not since the devoted manhood of Europe in holy enthusiasm vowed to redeem the tomb. of the Saviour from the pollution of the infidel has history witnessed so chivalrous and unselfish a war as that which was commenced by the people of the United States to free the island of Cuba from the tyranny of Spain. It was not to be a war of conquest. Orators in and out of Congress pictured in glowing colors the disinterestedness of our action. The newspapers vied with one another in strengthening the doctrine of international law justifying intervention on grounds of humanity. The pulpit added its fervid sanction to the high resolves of the new crusade.

In the resolutions that practically constituted a declaration of war the purpose of this Government was clearly expressed to be the expulsion of all Spanish authority from Cuba and the achievement of the freedom and independence of the island; and the famous fourth resolution was as follows:

That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people.

The brave deeds of our soldiers and sailors that followed this declaration shone with a special glory because of it. For it is the object of a war that characterizes it. Unjust wars are never glorious. While it is true that the history of warfare on the land records few finer exhibitions of personal bravery than those witnessed on the hill of San Juan, and that the naval battles of Manila and Santiago will sustain comparison with the most famous engagements of the greatest captains of the sea, yet succeeding ages will recall that what, in the ability and heroism of Dewey and Schley and Roosevelt and their brave associates, added a new title to the grateful remembrance of mankind was the consciousness of facing death in every awful form to win the prize of liberty for an alien people. Let us make them secure in this high heritage. Let us see to it that the chaplets placed upon their brows by the genius of self-sacrifice be not withered by the touch of greed or stained with the blood of innocence.

The possession of the Philippine Islands was in no way necessary to the success of the war nor within its purpose. Admiral Dewey went to Manila in pursuance of his well-known instructions to "find the Spanish fleet and destroy it." In his subsequent oper