Thus, in the first place, he contrived to turn the much-vaunted unselfish war of liberation into a vulgar land-grabbing game, and to strip the American people of the unique glory of a most generous act, grand in its unselfishness. Does he think such a breach of faith can be pleasing to the sight of an all-righteous Providence? Or does he imagine he can deceive an omniscient God by the wily plea that the pledge of an unselfish generosity applied only to the western hemisphere, and that the liberating of one people gave us a right to subjugate another?
But more than this. Recognizing the fact that Dewey invited Aguinaldo to the Philippines to help him in his operations by organizing the insurrection against the Spaniards; that the Filipinos did do effectual service as our allies, being permitted to believe that they were fighting for their own independence; that we left them undisturbed in that belief until we had sufficient troops on the spot to need their aid no longer, and until Manila was taken, and that then behind their backs we bought them from defeated Spain to subjugate them as our own subjects, every fairminded man will agree that this was an act of downright perfidy. Does President McKinley think that so treacherous a use of power by the strong to despoil the feeble of their rights can be looked upon with favor by an all-just God?
The excuses given by the President and by his spokesmen for this faithless deed are worthy of the deed itself. They show how far the moral sense of men may be debased by the defense of a bad cause. I have read with care the famous “preliminary report” made by the Philippine Commission “at the request of the President” just before the last November elections; and I must confess that some passages of it have filled me with painful astonishment. That report, for instance, in order to justify what has been done, asserts “that no alliance of any kind was
