EDWARD O. WOLCOTT

THE WAR INEVITABLE

[From a speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 15, 1898.]

MR. PRESIDENT, the great mass of the people of this nation do not desire war, but they see no way how, under the Providence of God, it may be averted. They have stood, and stand to-day, loyally by the President. His position, frictional and difficult at best, has been administered by him as became an incumbent of that high office. Brave himself, he abhors war; but he abhors unrighteousness more. He has dealt in most courageous fashion with that popular clamor which would have been so easy for him to follow-a popular clamor, natural and patriotic and loyal, but necessarily uninformed and unreasoning. All these influences he has met with that splendid conservatism which comes to all good men when responsibility and power are imposed upon them. He has met them, not alone with the courage of a man who has known the smoke of battle, but he has met them with the fortitude and courage of the Christian who desires to save, if possible, the lives of every American committed to his charge; and, Mr. President, that confidence and that affection and that respect have been reflected in the forbearance and tolerance and courtesy of this body throughout all these trying weeks.

But, Mr. President, when there came the awful explosion in the harbor of Havana, a friendly port, in

time of peace, the die was cast. After that, what could be said? If that had stood alone, it is possible it might have been adjusted without war, but not by any method which the Spaniard has yet attempted. When such an outrage was committed there was but one duty left, and that was the duty of exculpation. If not, the only course of a self-respecting people must be to invoke the God of Battle. For the disaster to our battle-ship we want no money. There is nothing that can repair our wrong. Yes; one thing. If Spain would free Cuba to-day, we would offer up our two hundred and sixty sailors as an offering upon the altar of Cuban freedom. But because of that disaster unatoned for and unexplained, the determination is burned into the hearts of the American people that war must come or Cuba be made free and independent. No other answer will be accepted.

Mr. President, this national honor which we evoke is intangible, it is unwritten and unexpressed, but it has within it the force and the violence of the whirlwind and the storm. It is "that chastity of honor which feels a stain like a wound." The existence of it makes nations survive and fit to live. The loss of it makes nations fit to die and perish from the face of the earth. It is for these reasons that good men, hating war and loving peace, can see no way under heaven whereby war may now be avoided. This war is one which can bring us no material gain. It will bring us the loss of millions of dollars in our commerce. It will sweep our ships from the seas. It will create unrest in business. It will destroy industries. It will be followed by that lessening in morality which always accompanies the conclusion of a war. We will leave thousands of our young men dead of fever or by the bullet in the tropics, and we shall be fortunate if we are not compelled to face serious complications with other European countries.

All these things we must count in advance, and we have counted them. And when the day of the result shall come and Cuba is free, we will have fought a country which can never indemnify us in land, a country which can never indemnify us in money, for she has no money. We must find our only satisfaction, and it must be the supreme satisfaction of a free people, in this, that we have poured out our blood and our treasure to relieve the cry of suffering humanity. The war which is already upon us must be fought because it is the manifest destiny of this Republic to stand forever upon the Western Hemisphere a sentinel of liberty. It must come. For if we fail to listen to the voice of the suffering or the cry of the down-trodden upon this contirent, we shall be untrue to those principles of liberty, humanity, and Christianity upon which this country is founded as upon a rock.

THE TREATY WITH SPAIN

[From a speech made in the Senate of the United States, February 4, 1899.]

MR. PRESIDENT, in the months preceding the opening of hostilities the prospect of war with Spain had no charms for me, and now, in common with millions of the American people, I move with reluctant feet along the path which our national duty seems to point, not because I do not recognize the necessity of following it, but because it is new and untried. Within two months after the declaration of hostilities the Providence of Cod and the prowess of our soldiers and our sailors brought us overwhelming victory. The commissioners appointed by the President to negotiate a treaty were al men eminent for character, attainments, and ability. Ve may judge something of them by the three mem

bers of this Chamber, representing both political parties, who were chosen to serve upon that commission. There is not a member of the Senate who would not trust those gentlemen with the most intricate and delicate matters pertaining to his own personal welfare, or who does not recognize their eminent fitness for the negotiations with which they were intrusted.

The Constitution of the United States empowers the President to make treaties, subject to the concurrence of a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. This provision was inserted because our fathers believed that, however much we might differ on questions of internal policy, however much in the affairs of our own country we might dispute and argue, when we came to face a foreign foe or our relations with other countries we would stand as a unit together, sinking and obliterating party and party lines.

Never in the history of our country was it so inportant as now that the Senate of the United States should present an unbroken front. We owe a debt to our kin across the sea that, perhaps, we may some day partially pay. When the war clouds lowered and the air was full of hate, our brothers in race, language, and destiny, in quiet English fashion took their place beside us, elbow touching elbow, and back of us were the services of their trained diplomacy and their genuine and unqualified friendship; and had it not been for the moral support which Great Britain gave us during this conflict we would not have emerged from it without an international contest of large dimensions. Bar Eng land, and there is not a country in Europe that is not hostile to us. They stood in sullen hate, hoping for ou defeat; to-day they wait with eager and rapacious gaze for something to prevent our reaping the fruits of the treaty agreed upon by the commissioners of bot countries.

Mr. President, no matter what any man may say, thi

war was a war solely of humanity. It cannot be too of ten reiterated that it had its inception in unselfishness, and it finds its conclusion in equal unselfishness. The course of events, unexpected and necessarily unforeseen, leaves us at the conclusion of this war charged with a duty toward nine million people in far-off, distant seas. We found them cruelly oppressed by Spain. No man with bowels of compassion would want to turn them back to that country. We know but little about them. But it is believed by men at least as wise as we, that there exists there a condition which, if left to itself, would result in internecine strife, perhaps extending over a generation, with its accompaniment of bloodshed and murder and rapine, and that the people there are as yet apparently unfitted for self-government.

They realize that if we to-day abandon those islands as a derelict upon the face of the waters we leave them open to the land-hunger and the greed of the countries of Europe, with the probability that our action would plunge the world into war. For one, I am willing to face the responsibilities of this treaty with all that its terms imply. We shall not put our hands on those people except to bless them. American institutions mean liberty and not despotism, and our dealings with those islands can only serve.to lift them up nearer into the light of civilization and of Christianity.

Mr. President, it has been frequently said in the progress of this discussion that our continued occupancy of those islands is contrary to the spirit of American institutions. Who shall say this? This Republic represents the first and only experiment in absolute self-government by the Anglo-Saxon race, intermingled and re-enforced by the industrious of all the countries of the Old World. For more than a hundred years we have endured, and every decade has brought us increasing strength and prosperity. Who is to say that in the evolution of such a Republic as this the time has