III.

COLONIAL IMPERIALISM

EVERY step in the career of colonial imperialism will bring us into conflict with our own institutions, and necessitate constitutional change or insure practical failure. Our Government, with its checks and balances, with its prudent and conservative divisions of power, is the best in the world for peace and self-defence; but the worst in the world for what the President called, a few months ago, "criminal aggression." We cannot compete with monarchies and empires in the game of land-grabbing and vassal-ruling. We have not the machinery; and we cannot get it, except by breaking up our present system of government and building a new fabric out of the pieces. Republics have not been successful as rulers of colonies. When they have entered that career they have changed quickly into monarchies or empires. The supposed analogy between England and America is a fatal illusion. British institutions are founded, as Gladstone has said, on the doctrine of inequality; American institutions are founded on the doctrine of equality. If we become a colonizing power we must abandon our institutions or be paralyzed by them. Imperialism and democracy, militarism and self-government are contradictory terms. A government of the people, by the people, for the people is impregnable for defence, but impotent for conquest. When imperialism comes in at the door, democracy flies out at the window.

Let us be on our guard against the flattering comparison with England. The English people have a natural genius for governing inferior races-a steady head, an inflexible hand, and a superb self-confidence. What proof have we given of any such extra

ordinary genius in our dealing with inferior races? Does the comparison of the treatment of the Indians in Canada and in the United States give us a comfortable sense of pride? Is the condition of drunken and disorderly Alaska a just encouragement to larger enterprises? Is our success in treating the Chinese problem and the negro problem so notorious that we must attempt to repeat it on a magnified scale eight thousand miles away? The riffe-shots that ring from Illinois and the Carolinas, announcing a bloody skirmish of races in the very heart of the Republic-are these the joyous salutes that herald our advance to rule eight millions more of black and yellow people in the islands of the Pacific Ocean?

Expansion means means entanglement; entanglement means ultimate conflict. The great nations of Europe are encamped around the China Sea in arms. If we go in among them we must fight when they blow the trumpet. Lord Salisbury says with characteristic frankness: "The appearance of the American Republic among the factors, at all events, of Asiatic, and possibly of European diplomacy, is a grave and serious event which may not conduce to the interests of peace, though, I think, in any event, it is likely to conduce to the interest of Great Britain." Colonial expansion means coming strife; the annexation of the Philippines means the annexation of a new danger to the world's peace. The acceptance of imperialism means that we must prepare to beat our ploughshares into swords and our pruning hooks into spears, and be ready to water distant lands and stain foreign seas with an everincreasing torrent of American blood. Is it for this that philanthropists and Christian preachers urge us to abandon our peaceful mission of enlightenment, and thrust forward, sword in hand, into the arena of imperial conflict?

Men have told me that it is a useless task to discuss

the question that we have been considering this morning. It is too late. A distinguished diplomatist (one who believes that the war with Spain might have been avoided if he had been given more time to complete his negotiations) said to me the other night, "You argue in vain. It is no more possible to check imperialism than it would be to stop the chip that has gone over Niagara Falls.” I, for one, refuse to believe in the disastrous simile. There is still time to avert, or at least to modify, the catastrophe if the people will but realize what it means. There is still time to utter a sincere protest against the final commitment of the Republic to the new and perilous policy of undisguised imperialism. There is still time to call for a halt and an intelligent discussion, before an archipelago of conquered islands on the other side of the globe is made a permanent part of the domain of the United States of America.

Anonymous patriots have written to warn me that it is a dangerous task to call for this discussion. It imperils popularity. The cry of to-day is, "Wherever the American flag has been raised it never must be hauled down." The man who will not join that cry may be accused of disloyalty and called a Spaniard So be it, then. If the price of popularity is the stifling of conviction, I want none of it. If the test of loyalty is to join in every thoughtless cry of the multitude, I decline it. I profess a higher loyalty-allegiance to the flag, not for what it covers, but for what it means.

There is one thing that can happen to the American flag worse than to be hauled down. That is to have its meaning and its message changed. Hitherto it has meant freedom, and equality, and self-government, and battle only for the sake of peace. Pray God its message may never be altered. May the lustre of its equal stars never be dimmed by the shadow of the crowned imperial eagle. May its stripes of pure red and white never be crossed by the yellow bar sinister of warfare

for conquest. May it never advance save to bring liberty and self-government to all beneath its folds. May it never retreat save from a place where its presence would mean disloyalty to the American idea. May it float untarnished and unchanged, save by the blossoming of new stars in its celestial field of blue. May all seas learn to welcome it and all lands look to it as the emblem of the Great Republic; the mountain-peak of nations, lonely, if need be, till others have risen to her lofty standard. God keep her from lowering her flag from that proud solitude of splendor to follow the fortunes of the conquering sword. God save the birthright of the one country on earth, whose ideal is not to subjugate the world, but to enlighten it.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

THE BETTER PART

[Delivered at the Peace Jubilee, Chicago, October 16, 1898.]

ON an important occasion in the life of the Master, when it fell to Him to pronounce judgment on two courses of action, these memorable words fell from His lips: "And Mary hath chosen the better part." This was the supreme test in the case of an individual. It is also the highest test in the case of a race or a nation. Let us apply this test to the American negro.

In the life of our Republic, when he has had the opportunity to choose, has it been the better or worse part? When in the childhood of this nation the negro was asked to submit to slavery or choose death and extinction, as did the aborigines, he chose the better part, that which perpetuated the race. When in 1776 the negro was asked to decide between British oppression and American independence, we find him choosing the better part, and Crispus Attucks, a negro, was the first to shed his blood on State street, Boston, that the white American might enjoy liberty forever, though his race remained in slavery.

When in 1814, at New Orleans, the test of patriotism came again, we find the negro choosing the better part, and General Andrew Jackson himself testifying that no heart was more loyal and no arm more strong and useful in defence of righteousness. When the long and memorable struggle came between Union and separation, when he knew that victory, on the one hand,