we would have had in the other case; but the islanders will hate us as their bloody oppressors, and be our bitter and revengeful enemies for generations to come. You may say that this will be of no commercial importance. Let us see. It is by no means impossible, nor even improbable, that, if we are once in the way of extending our commerce with guns behind it, we may get into hot trouble with one or more of our competitors for that Asiatic trade. What then? Then our enemies need only land some Filipino refugees whom we have driven out of their country, and some cargoes of guns and ammunition on the islands, and we shall soon—all the more if we depend on native troops—have a fire in our rear which will oblige us to fight the whole old fight over again. The present subjugation of the Philippines will, therefore, not only not be a help to the expansion of our Asiatic trade, but rather a constant danger and a clog to our feet.
And here a word by the way. A year ago I predicted in an article published in the Century Magazine,[1] that if we turned our war of liberation into a war of conquest, our American sister republics south of us would become distrustful of our intentions with regard to them, and soon begin to form combinations against us, eventually even with European Powers. The newspapers have of late been alive with vague rumors of that sort, so much so that a prominent journal of imperialistic tendency has found it necessary most earnestly to admonish the President, in his next message, to give to the republics south of us the strongest possible assurances of our friendship and good faith. Suppose he does—who will believe him after we have turned our loudly heralded war of liberation into a land-grabbing game—a “criminal aggression”? Nobody will have the slightest trust in our words, be they ever so fair. Drop your conquests, and no assurances of good
