that the people have never consented, nor have those directing affairs dared trust the plain issue of annexation either to the people or to Congress. Their schemes must pass through indirection, or not at all.

We need a cheerful and successful brigand like Cecil Rhodes to pat us on the back and stiffen our failing nerves. He is not afraid. Why should we flinch from the little misdeeds we have in contemplation?

Alfred Russell Wallace, in the London Chronicle, expresses the

"Disappointment and sorrow which I feel in common, I am sure, with a large body of English and Americans, at the course now being pursued by the government of the United States toward the people of Cuba and the Philippine Islands.

"The Americans claim the right of sovereignty obtained by the treaty, and have apparently determined to occupy and administer the whole group of islands against the will and consent of the people. They claim all the revenues of the country and all the public means of transport and they have decided to take all this by military force if the natives do not at once submit. Yet they say that they come 'not as invaders and conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, their employments and their personal and civil rights,' and for the purpose of giving them 'a liberal form of government through representatives of their own race.' But these people who have been justly struggling for freedom are still spoken of as 'insurgents' or 'rebels,' and they are expected to submit quietly to an altogether new and unknown foreign rule which, whatever may be the benevolent intentions of the President, can hardly fail to be a more or less oppressive despotism.

"It may be asked what can the Americans do? They cannot allow Spain to come back again. . . They are responsible for the future of the inhabitants. But surely it is possible to revert to their first expressed intention of taking a small island only as a naval and coaling station and to declare themselves the protectors of the islands against foreign aggression.

"Having done this they might invite the civilized portion of the natives to form an independent government, offering them advice and assistance if they wish for it, but otherwise leaving them completely free. If we express our disappointment (as Englishmen) that our American kinsfolk are apparently following our example, it is because, in the matter of the rights of every people to govern themselves, we had looked up to them as about to show us the better way by respecting the aspirations towards freedom, even of less advanced races, and by acting in accordance with their own noble traditions and republican principles."

From France, M. de Pressensée voices the same feeling in an article in the Contemporary Review :

"In the United States of America we see the intoxication of the new strong wine of warlike glory carrying a great democracy off its feet, and raising the threatening specter of militarism, with its fatal attendant, Cæsarism, in the background. Under the pretext of 'manifest destiny,' the great republic of the Western Hemisphere is becoming unfaithful to the principles of her founders, to the precedents of her constitutional life, to the traditions which have made her free, glorious and prosperous. The seductions of Imperialism are drawing the United States toward the abyss where all the great democracies of the world have found their end. The cant of Anglo-Saxon alliance, of the brotherhood-in-arms of English-speaking people, is serving as a cloak to the nefarious designs of those who want to cut in two the grand motto of Great Britain, 'Imperium et Libertas,' and to make 'imperium' swallow 'libertas.' In the United Kingdom a similar tendency is at work. Everybody sees that the present England is no longer the England, I do not say of Cobden or Bright, but of Peel, Russell, Palmerston, Derby, or even Disraeli. A kind of intoxication of power has seized the people. Mr. Chamberlain has known how to take the flood in time, and to ride the crest of the new wave. The Unionist party is disposed to believe that it is to the interest of the privileged classes to nurse the pride of empire; first, because they govern it and profit by it; secondly, and chiefly, because nothing diverts more

surely the spirit of reform than the imperialist madness. It is a curious thing, but a fact beyond dispute, that when the masses are on the verge of rising in their majesty and asking for their rights, the classes have only to throw into their eyes the powder of imperialism, and to raise the cry of 'The Fatherland in danger,' in order to bring them once more, meek and submissive, to their feet."

If

Do we say that these obligations were entailed by chance, and that we cannot help ourselves? I hear many saying, "If only Dewey had sailed out of Manila harbor, all would have been well." This seems to me the acme of weakness. Dewey did his duty at Manila; he has done his duty ever since. Let us do ours. his duty makes it harder for us, so much the more we must strive. It is pure cowardice to throw the responsibility on him. Who are we to "plead the baby act?" If Dewey captured land we do not want to hold, then let go of it. It is for us to say, not for him. It is foolish to say that our victory last May settled once for all our future as a world power. It is not thus that I read our history. Chance decides nothing. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, were not matters of chance. They belong to the category of statemanship. A statesman knows no chance. It is his business to foresee the future and to control it. Chance is the terror of despotism. A chance shot along the frontier of Alsace, a chance brawl in Hungary, a chance word in Poland, a chance imbecile in the seat of power, may throw all Europe into war. In a general war the nations of Europe, their dynasties, and their thrones, will burn like stubble in the prairie fire. Our foundation is less combustible. Our Constitution is something more than a New Year's resolution to be

broken at the first chance temptation. The Republic is, indeed, in the gravest peril if chance and passion are to be factors in her destiny. It was not fear of foreign powers, nor fear of destiny that led Senator Sewell to urge, last May "For God's sake, bring Dewey home." It was fear of the rising tide of our own folly.

One of the ablest of British public men, one known to all of us as a staunch friend of the United States through the Civil War, when our allies in the present British Ministry could not conceal their hatred and contempt, writes in a private letter to me these words:

"I could not say this in my public writings," he says, and so I do not give his name, "but it seems to me that expansionism has in it a large element of sheer vulgarity, in the shape of a parvenu desire for admission into the imperialist and military camp of the Old World."

This is the whole story. Our quasi-alliance with Aguinaldo obliges us to see that he and his followers do not rot in Spanish prisons. Here or about here our obligation ends, though our interest in freedom might go further. "Sheer vulgarity" does the rest. The desire to hold a new toy, to enjoy a new renown, to feel a new experience, or the baser desire to gain money by it, is at the bottom of our talk about the new destiny of the American republic and the new obligations which this destiny entails.

We have set our national heart on the acquisition of the Philippines to give Old Glory a chance in a distant. sea, to do something unheard of in our past history. We look on every side for justification of this act, and the varied excuses we can invent we call our obligations. We have saved Manila from being looted by the bar

barians. This may be true, though we have not the slightest evidence that it was ever in such danger. But we have made it a veritable hell on earth. Its saloons, gaming halls and dives of vice have to-day few parallels in all the iniquitous world.

But we have incurred, some say, the obligation to civilize and christianize the Filipinos, and to do this we must annex them, that our missionaries may be safe in their work. "The free can conquer but to save." This is the new maxim for the ensign of the Republic, replacing the "consent of the governed," and "government by the people," and the worn out phrases of our periwigged fathers.

But to christianize our neighbors is no part of the business of our government. Dr. Worcester says of the Filipinos that "as a rule the grade of their morality rises with the square of the distance from churches and other civilizing influences." This means that the churches are not keeping up with our saloons and gaming houses. If they are not we cannot help them. Missionary work of Americans as against Mohammedanism, Catholicism, or even heathenism, our government cannot aid. It is our boast, and a righteous one, that all religion is equally respected by our state. It has been the strength of our foreign missionaries that they never asked the support of armies. "The force of arms," said Martin Luther, "must be kept far from matters of the Gospel." The courage of devoted men and women and the power of the Word, such is the only force they demand. When the flag and the police are sent in advance of the Bible, missionaries fall to the level of ordinary politicians. It is the lesson of all