CUSHMAN K. DAVIS

OUR RELATIONS WITH SPAIN

[From a speech delivered at Detroit, February 22, 1898.]

OUR relations with Spain have from the foundation of this Government ever been exceedingly vexatious. We have suffered from her procrastinating diplomacy always. While nothing of an overt act of war has ever transpired between the two nations, there have been several occasions when they have been perilously near that act. There has been raging for the last three years upon the island of Cuba an insurrection of Cubans, striving for nationality and liberty, which has been met by Spain with measures of unexampled atrocity and horror that have profoundly stirred the indignation of the human race, and particularly of the United States. These are the plain facts, plainly stated, and it is well to state them plainly. Such things have transpired before in this world; in Poland; in Hungary; horrible and unexampled massacres have been perpetrated in Armenia.

But my friends, I propose now to speak to you a few moments from the head, and not entirely from the heart, and want all of you to listen to me in the same spirit. It would be no easy task for a more accomplished speaker than I am to fire your indignation and precipitate your judgment to conclusions which the interests of your own country will not warrant. However profoundly our sympathies may be stirred, and

the majestic force of our moral influence may go out to sustain any people struggling for liberty, or in protest against the infliction of horrors upon them, we are still brought back to the question: What is for the best interests of the people of the United States, their honor and their dignity? What would George Washington say if he were dealing with this question to-day? No entangling alliances, no complications with foreign powers. When the South American republics revolted in 1810, the questions of the relation of those countries to ours were treated by James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, and there were brought to bear upon those statesmen-the history of those times reads much like the present-the imperious clamors of an excited and sympathetic people for an action in that direction which was not required by the interests of the American people, and would not be justified by the laws of nations.

And accordingly, upon a scene where history duplicated the events of recent years, it was not until 1824 or 1825 that this country recognized the independence, or even the belligerency, of those striving nations. And history has justified the wisdom of that course. Where American interests are attacked, where the hand of arbitrary power is laid upon an American citizen, where our national honor or dignity are affronted, and reparation is denied, then, I say, as we all said in the early days of the rebellion, when the question was asked: Is it peace or war? Better war, by land and by sea, war with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones."

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But so long, my fellow-citizens, as no American citizen is incarcerated or deprived of his liberty, so long as not a single American interest is invaded-speaking from the head, and not from the heart (for God knows my heart beats as warmly for them as the heart of any person in this room)-speaking for the interests

of my own country, I implore this audience to be moderate in what we do or what we purpose. I am not commissioned here to bring you any word. I am speaking now of my own personal convictions, solely. I have seen that faithful, well-poised, Christian gentleman and statesman, William McKinley, weighing in the balances this weighty question. I have seen him disturbed by that awful calamity that has recently befallen this nation. I have seen him weighing these questions, with admiration and approval. It has always been a propensity of the American people, in times like these, to drive their President. It is part of their privilege, and perhaps it is well that it should be so. A large proportion of the American people endeavored to drive George Washington into a war with France, at the close of the last century. A large portion of the American people endeavored to drive James Monroe and John Quincy Adams into a war with Spain, in the first twenty-five years of the present century.

Let us take the advice of Captain Sigsbee, and suspend our judgment upon recent matters. If it shall be found that sinister event, and our dark forebodings and apprehensions are justified by the investigation, then I assure you, my fellow-citizens, that the administration of William McKinley will not be found wanting in any act which will conduce to the dignity of this nation. Does any man suppose-or if he undertakes to suppose, I beg him to stop and think—that William McKinley, the boy-soldier who stood as a volunteer upon the fiery ridges of battle in the dark days of this Government; that John Sherman, a name built like masonry into the perpetuity of our institutions; that your own townsman, Russell A. Alger, that John D. Long, the Secretary of the Navy, that the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives lightly feel or slightly put aside these great questions? It is mighty easy, my fellow-citizens, with no sense of responsibility upon

a man with no possible consequences of a physical character, to say that this or that should be done right off; but impose upon a man in the position of the President of the United States, or his Cabinet, impose upon your Senators that responsibility upon which depends the dreadful issues of peace and war, and I know that sober judgment will approve of the course taken.

[Extracts from a speech delivered before the Union League Club, Chicago, February 22, 1899.]

I.

THE TREATY OF PARIS

MR. PRESIDENT, the American people and humanity have, within the last twelve months, advanced an immeasurable distance, never to recede. Nations, like individuals, do not shape their own destinies. Wisely as they may plan by constitutional requirements, by statutory enactments, by party policies, nations are often subjected to processes and destinations, providential and evolutionary, which no resistance can impede, which no reluctance can long obstruct.

It is worth all that this war has cost that the hateful line between the North and the South has been entirely and forever obliterated; that a condition of sentiment and feeling has been brought about by the fusion of an all-embracing patriotism, where those who fought for the Stars and Bars now fight and have fought under the Stars and Stripes, where the grandson of Grant serves upon the staff of the nephew of Lee; where Joseph Wheeler leads the forces of the United States to victory against the defences of Santiago.

Mr. President, the Spanish war was a just and necessary war. It was sedulously avoided by the United

States. To prevent it we repressed our sympathies. Against all manner of provocation, of outrage to American property and citizenship; against the taking of the lives of American citizens, against the destruction of scores of millions of property, the American people, with great reluctance, abstained from war until it became indispensably necessary, not only for the cause of humanity, but for national honor. We bore indignity heaped upon indignity until their perpetrators thought that they were inflicting them upon national pusillanimity. It was not until that appalling and colossal crime, the destruction of the Maine, aggravated by the attempt of Spain to impute that overwhelming massacre to the incapacity and want of discipline of the American navy-it was not until that event that all of the stupendous wrongs and outrages which, not only we, but humanity, had suffered, made it necessary for us to declare war against Spain, in the name of humanity and national honor.

It was a humane war. It was a war in the interest of Christianity and civilization. It decreed the extirpation of Spain from nearly all her insular possessions in both hemispheres, and all mankind knew-the nations knew-upon which side of that contest humanity was arrayed. The results of that war were sudden, spectacular, and complete. No war was ever so shortly ended; no war ever worked such total annihilation of one of the opposing forces. And finally the time came when Spain was obliged to sue for peace. The result was that the President of the United States appointed and empowered five citizens to proceed to Paris to negotiate a final treaty with that monarchy.

The first point of conflict that we encountered was the insistence of the Spanish commissioners that the relinquishment of the sovereignty of Cuba should be made to the United States. This amounted to a cession, and—it was asserted-involved the assumption