Imperialists with whose statements, so far as they can be tortured into reasoning that we had no business trying to govern people 7000 miles away, I am in entire sympathy. Moorfield Storey's acute logic and large present intelligence would make one almost feel that Charles Sumner was on earth again interpreting the Constitution and the acts of the President by the truths of the Declaration of Independence. His opposition to our work in the Philippines was sincere and was urged by a sacrifice of present ease and earthly honors. For he was of the stuff of which martyrs are made and, in earlier days, would have suffered for his opinions at the stake. Carl Schurz, according to a personal friend, was a revolutionist and thus he showed himself in his opposition to the Philippine policy. His speeches were those of an orator and his well-rounded periods put his position with great force. His argument, which was generally concurred in by the anti-Imperialists that we should treat the Philippines as we had treated Cuba, was well put, attested as it was by the despatch of Admiral Dewey that the Filipinos "are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of selfgovernment than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races."1 But Schurz's plan in giving selfgovernment to the Philippines was "to make the Philippine Islands neutral territory as Belgium and Switzerland are in Europe." 2 Schurz fortunately did not live to see the guarantee of Belgium's neutrality treated as a mere "scrap of paper," nor did he become disabused of his profound admiration for the German Emperor, Wilhelm

1 Despatch of Dewey to Sec. of Navy, June 27, 1898.
Speech of Oct. 17, 1899. Speeches, etc., vi. 108.

II. "Whether the Emperor of Germany did not at one time wish to acquire the Philippines, I do not know," he said. "But if we offered him the Philippines to-day with our compliments, he would doubtless ask, 'How large an army do you have to employ to subjugate the country?' The answer would be, 'At present 60,000 men; we may need 100,000.' The Emperor would smilingly reply, 'Thank you. Offer this job to someone who is as foolish as you have been.' He would probably be too polite to say so, but he would doubtless think so." At this time a majority of the best informed people in the United States and England believed that Germany would take these islands if she could get them and apply, if need be, the ruthless methods which the Emperor told his troops to employ in China. "Spare nobody," he said, "make no prisoners, use your weapons in a manner to make every Chinaman for a thousand years to come forego the wish to as much as look askance at a German.'

The opposition of Senator George F. Hoar was pathetic. A true Republican, he loved McKinley, who, late in 1898, was committed to taking the Philippines. When he saw the President during December of that year and was taken by the hand with the question, "How are you feeling this winter, Mr. Senator?" "Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President," "The tears came into his eyes and McKinley said, grasping my hand again, ‘I shall always love you whatever you do."" Hoar planted

1 Speech of Sept. 28, 1900, ibid., 248.

2 July 2, 1900. The Kaiser's Speeches, Wolf von Schierbrand, 260 (1903).

Autobiography, ii. 315.

himself on the Declaration of Independence that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." He was a true disciple of Charles Sumner "to whom," he said, "the Declaration of Independence was another gospel." We ought to have treated the Philippines as we did Cuba, he affirmed, and had we done so, a government under Aguinaldo and his associates would have been formed as stable as the governments from the United States to Cape Horn. A democracy, he declared, "cannot rule over vassal states as subject people without bringing in the elements of death into its own constitution." This idea was extensively elaborated by Carl Schurz, but it had great force coming from a true American and a loyal Republican like Senator Hoar.

2

In truth there is something admirable in these three men pleading for the rights of eight million brown people as they had hitherto for four million blacks. It is the old story of the superior taking the part of the inferior, and it involves the subjugation of race pride and putting one's self in the place of the brown or black man.

McKinley had aspirations after culture and was especially fond of college men. He decided to send a Commission to the Philippines, at whose head should be Jacob G. Schurman, President of Cornell University. During January, 1899, Schurman was summoned to Washington and such an invitation was extended to him. He demurred first because he feared that he could not leave the University and then he said, "To be plain, Mr. President, I am opposed to your Philippine policy; I never

1 Speech in the Senate, Jan. 9, 1899; see Senator Lodge's argument on "consent of the governed." Speeches and Addresses, 326. 2 Senate speech.

wanted the Philippine Islands." "Oh," was the reply, "that need not trouble you; I didn't want the Philippine Islands either; and in the protocol to the treaty I felt myself free not to take them, but in the end there was no alternative." The American people certainly would not consent to leave the Philippines to Spain, the President argued, and, as that was no longer a question, if "American sovereignty were not set up, the peace of the world would be endangered." We, so he implied, certainly owed responsibilities to the world at large. The President desired this Commission to act as an advisory Cabinet and he especially wished to know what sort of political relations it was wise to establish between the United States and eight million brown men of Asia. He desired aid in shaping such a policy and at the same time a tactful coöperation with the naval and military authorities at Manila. Schurman accepted the Presidency of the Commission and McKinley named as his associates Admiral Dewey, General Otis (who was the military commander in the Philippines), Charles Denby and Dean C. Worcester of the University of Michigan.

When Schurman arrived in Manila he found a war in progress which was an interruption to his peaceful errand. The American and Philippine armies had faced each other near Manila for a number of weeks in hostile array. The Americans had bought the sovereignty of the islands from Spain but the Filipinos supposed that in the event

1 The first Commission adopted that figure (15). The Census of 1903 made the population somewhat less. Enc. Brit.; Blount, Amer. Occupation of the Philippines, 567. Williams wrote that the population to the square mile was about 66, to 350 in Java, 290 in Japan, 200 in India. Odyssey of the P. Com., 306.

* Schurman, A Retrospect and Outlook, 2.

of American success they were to be granted their independence. The fight which broke out on February 4, 1899, was therefore one between sovereignty and independence. The feeling which became pretty general among the Filipinos may be stated thus: "If the Americans are going to look on us and treat us as the Spaniards have done for three hundred years we do not want them here." Aguinaldo was the head of the Filipinos and he was a Malay of marked ability. A born leader he knew how to consolidate the different factions in the islands. While he was far from being the "George Washington of the Orient," as some of the anti-Imperialists in America called him, he probably conducted as well as possible the war for independence. But it is a question whether he and most of his followers would have opposed the Americans had they known that they came there not to exploit the islands but to assist them in their progress toward civilization. The Filipinos, however, had been fed with promises until they had come to distrust the white man; and the minute blood was shed the sympathy of the mass ran with their brown brothers. The Filipino soldiers were, however, no match for the Americans, and while they had modern rifles they did not know how to use them, so that casualties on their side were large and entirely out of proportion to the losses of the Americans. By the end of 1899 organized resistance to the United States Government came to an end, and thereafter the insurrection took the form of guerilla warfare which, in many cases, degenerated into brigandage. In November of this year Aguinaldo disappeared into the

1 Unofficial Letters of an Official's Wife, Edith Moses (1908), 74.