American Republic acting as bottle-holders to the monarchy of George III. in an attack on the independence of a republic? Chamberlain, whose calamitous approbation your Government has earned by its sycophancy, is the deadliest enemy to your expansion on this continent which is the natural and legitimate field of your ambition.
Kruger may have put himself in the wrong by his boorish declaration of war; though it is hard to see why, being convinced, and rightly convinced, that Chamberlain meant mischief, he should have felt himself bound to wait for the enemy's reserves. But by putting himself in the wrong he does not put Chamberlain in the right, or make it reasonable for us to sympathize with the strong in rapacious aggressions on the weak.
TO CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.
Your letter of the 3d reached me yesterday. I admit that the alternative before us is dreadful. My opinion of Bryan and that crowd is probably no better than yours. My opinion of McKinley, Hanna and their crowd is, I apprehend, not as good as yours. At any rate, if a cruel fate should force me to choose between McKinley and the imperialistic policy, and Bryan as the anti-imperialist candidate, I should consider it my duty—a horrible duty—to swallow all my personal disgust and to defeat—or, at least, try to defeat—imperialism at any cost. I do not see how I could act otherwise. And I consider it good policy that those who think as I do, should announce their determination beforehand, for the reason that it might have a sobering effect upon the Republican politicians in Congress.
At the Chicago Conference of Anti-Imperialists there were men from about thirty States. All of them, but a very few, perhaps half a dozen, had voted for McKinley. Not one of them is going to do so again. I met a club of
