"The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
"Far-called our navies melt away,
On dune and headline sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law—
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
"For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!
Amen."
Taken in connection with the foregoing paper, the following-letter, addressed to the Hon. Carl Schurz, is self-explanatory:
Boston, December 21, 1898.
My Dear Mr. Schurz:
In a recent letter you kindly suggest that I submit to you a sketch of what, I think, should be said in an address such as it is proposed should now be put forth by the Anti-Imperialist League to the people of the United States.
I last evening read a paper before the Lexington Historical Society, in which I discussed the question of extra-territorial expansion from the historical point of view. A copy of this paper I hope soon to forward you. Meanwhile, there is one aspect, and, to my mind, the all-important aspect of the question, which, in addressing an historical society, was not germane. I refer to the question of a practical policy to be pursued by us, as a nation, under existing conditions. That Spain has abandoned all claim of sovereignty over the Philippine islands admits of no question. Whether the United States has accepted the sovereignty thus abandoned is still an open question; but this I do not regard as material. Nevertheless, we are confronted by a fact; and, whenever we criticise the policy up to this time pursued; we are met with an inquiry as to what we have to propose in place of it. We are invited to stop finding fault with others, and to suggest some feasible alternative policy ourselves.
To this we must, therefore, in fairness, address ourselves. It is, in my judgment, useless to attempt to carry on the discussion merely in the negative form. As opponents of an inchoate policy we must, in place of what we object to, propose something positive, or we must abandon the field. Accepting the alternative, I now want to suggest a positive policy for the consideration of those who feel as we feel. I wish your judgment upon it.
There has, it seems to me, been a great deal of idle "Duty," "Mission," and "Call" talk on the subject of our recent acquisition of "Islands beyond the Sea," and the necessity of adopting some policy, commonly described as "Imperial," in dealing with them. This policy is, in the minds of most people who favor it, to be indirectly modelled on the policy heretofore so successfully pursued under somewhat similar conditions by Great Britain. It involves, as I tried to point out in the Lexington paper I have referred to, the abandonment or reversal of all the fundamental principles of our government since its origin, and of the foreign policy we have heretofore pursued. This, I submit, is absolutely unnecessary. Another and substitute policy, purely American, as contradistinguished from the European or British, known as "Imperial," policy, can readily be formulated.
This essentially American policy would be based both upon our cardinal political principles, and our recent foreign experiences. It is commonly argued that, having destroyed the existing government in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, we have assumed a political responsibility, and are under a moral obligation to provide another government in place of that which by our action has ceased to exist. What has been our course heretofore under similar circumstances? Precedents, I submit, at once suggest themselves. Precedents, too, directly in point, and within your and my easy recollection.
I refer to the course pursued by us towards Mexico in the year 1848, and again in 1866; towards Hayti for seventy years back; and towards Venezuela as recently as three years ago. It is said that the inhabitants of the islands of the Antilles, and much more those of the Philippine archipelago, are as yet unfitted to maintain a government; and that they should be kept in a condition of "tutelage" until they are fitted so to do. It is further argued that a stable government is necessary, and that it is out of the question for us to permit a condition of chronic disturbance and scandalous unrest to exist so near our own borders as Cuba and Porto Rico. Yet how long, I would ask, did that condition exist in Mexico? And with what results? How long has it existed in Hayti? Has the government of Venezuela ever been "stable"? Have we found it necessary or thought it best to establish a governmental protectorate in any of those immediately adjacent regions?
What has been, historically, our policy—the American, as distinguished from the European and British policy—towards those communities,—two of them Spanish, one African? So far as foreign powers are concerned, we have laid down the principle of "Hands-off." So far as their own government was concerned, we insisted that the only way to learn to walk was to try to walk, and that the history of mankind did not show that nations placed under systems of "tutelage,"—taught to lean for support on a superior power,—ever acquired the faculty of independent action.
Of this, with us, fundamental truth, the British race itself furnishes a very notable example. In the forty-fourth year of the Christian era the island of Great Britain was occupied by what the "Imperial" Romans adjudged to be an inferior race. To the Romans the Britons unquestionably were inferior. Every child's history contains an account of the course then pursued by the superior towards that inferior race, and its results. The Romans occupied Great Britain, and they occupied it hard upon four centuries, holding the people in "tutelage," and protecting them against themselves, as well as against their enemies. With what result? So emasculated and incapable of self-government did the people of England become during their "tutelage" that, when Rome at last withdrew, they found themselves totally unfitted for self-government, much more for facing a foreign enemy. As the last, and best, historian of the English people tells us, the purely despotic system of the imperial government "by crushing all local independence, crushed all local vigor. Men forgot how to fight for their country when they forgot how to govern it."3 The end was that, through six centuries more, England was overrun, first by those of one race, and then by those of another, until the Normans established themselves in it as conquerors; and then, and not until then, the deteriorating effect of a system of long continued "tutelage" ceased to be felt, and the islanders became by degrees the most energetic, virile, and self-sustaining of races. As nearly, therefore, as can be historically stated, it took eight centuries for the people of England to overcome the injurious influence of four centuries of just such a system as it is now proposed by us to inflict on the Philippines.4 Hindostan would furnish another highly suggestive example of the educational effects of "tutelage" on a race. After a century and a half of that British "tutelage," what progress has India made towards fitness for self-government? Is the end in sight?
From the historical point of view, it is instructive to note the exactly different results reached through the truly American policy we have pursued in the not dissimilar cases of Hayti and Mexico. While Hayti, it is true, has failed to make great progress in one century, it has made quite as much progress as England made during any equal period immediately after Rome withdrew from it. And that degree of slowness in growth, which with equanimity has been endured by us in Hayti, could certainly be endured by us in islands on the coast of Asia. It cannot be gainsaid that, through our insisting on the policy of non-interference ourselves, and of non-interference by European nations, Hayti has been brought into a position where it is on the high road to better things in future. That has been the result of the prescriptive American policy. With Mexico, the case is far stronger. We all know that in 1848, after our war of spoliation, we had to bolster up a semblance of a government for Mexico, with which to negotiate a treaty of peace. Mexico at that time was reduced by us to a condition of utter anarchy. Under the theory now gaining in vogue, it would then have been our plain duty to make of Mexico an extra-territorial dependency, and protect it against itself. We wisely took a different course. Like other Spanish communities in America, Mexico than passed through a succession of revolutions, from which it became apparent the people were not in a fit condition for self-government. Nevertheless, sternly insisting on non-interference by outside powers, we ourselves wisely left that country to work out its own salvation in its own way.
In 1862, when the United States was involved in the War of the Rebellion, the Europeans took advantage of the situation to invade Mexico, and to establish there a "stable government." They undertook to protect that people against themselves, and to erect for them a species of protectorate, such as we now propose for the Philippines. As soon as our war was over, we insisted upon the withdrawal of Europe from Mexico. What followed is matter of recent history. It is unnecessary to recall it. We did not reduce Mexico into a condition of "tutelage," or establish over it a "protectorate" of our own. We, on the contrary, insisted that it should stand on its own legs; and, by so doing, learn to stand firmly on them, just as a child learns to walk, by being compelled to try to walk, not by being kept everlastingly in "leading strings." This was the American, as contradistinguished from the European policy; and Mexico to-day walks firmly.
Finally take the case of Venezuela in 1895. I believe I am not mistaken when I say that, during the twenty-five preceding years, Venezuela had undergone almost as many revolutions. It certainly had not enjoyed a stable government. Through disputes over questions of boundary, Great Britain proposed to confer that indisputable blessing upon a considerable region. We interfered under a most questionable extension of the Monroe Doctrine, and asserted the principle of "Hands-off." Having done this,—having in so far perpetuated what we now call the scandal of anarchy,—we did not establish "tutelage," or a protectorate, ourselves. We wisely left Venezuela to work out its destiny in its own way, and in the fullness of time. That policy was far-seeing, beneficent, and strictly American in 1895. Why, then, make almost indecent haste to abandon it in 1898?
Instead, therefore, of finding our precedents in the experience of England, or that of any other European power, I would suggest that the true course for this country now to pursue is exactly the course we have heretofore pursued under similar conditions. Let us be true to our own traditions, and follow our own precedents. Having relieved the Spanish islands from the dominion of Spain, we should declare concerning them a policy of "Hands-off," both on our own part and on the part of other powers. We should say that the independence of those islands is morally guaranteed by us as a consequence of the treaty of Paris, and then leave them just as we have left Hayti, and just as we left Mexico and Venezuela, to adopt for themselves such form of government as the people thereof are ripe for. In the cases of Mexico and Venezuela, and in the case of Hayti, we have not found it necessary to interfere ever or at all. It is not yet apparent why we should find it necessary to interfere with islands so much more remote from us than Hayti, and than Mexico and Venezuela, as are the Philippines.
In this matter we can thus well afford to be consistent, as well as logical. Our fundamental principles, those of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Monroe Doctrine, have not yet been shown to be unsound—why should we be in such a hurry to abandon them? Our precedents are close at hand, and satisfactory—why look away from them to follow those of Great Britain? Why need we, all of a sudden, be so very English and so altogether French, even borrowing their nomenclature of "imperialism?" Why can not we, too, in the language of Burke, be content to set our feet "in the tracks of our forefathers, where we can neither wander nor stumble?" The only difficulty in the way of our so doing seems to be that we are in such a desperate hurry; while natural influences and methods, though in the great end indisputably the wisest and best, always require time in which to work themselves out to their results. Wiser than the Almighty in our own conceit, we think to get there at once; the "there" in this case being everlasting "tutelage," as in India, instead of ultimate self-government, as in Mexico.
The policy heretofore pursued by us in such cases,—the policy of "Hands-off," and "Walk alone," is distinctly American; it is not European, not even British. It recognizes the principles of our Declaration of Independence. It recognizes the truth that all just government exists by the consent of the governed. It recognizes the existence of the Monroe Doctrine. In a word, it recognizes every principle and precedent, whether natural or historical, which has from the beginning lain at the foundation of our American polity. It does not attempt the hypocritical contradiction in terms, of pretending to elevate a people into a self-sustaining condition through the leading-string process of "tutelage." It appeals to our historical experience, applying to present conditions the lessons of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela. In dealing with those cases, we did not find a great standing army or an enormous navy necessary; and, if not then, why now? Why such a difference between the Philippines and Hayti? Is Cuba larger or nearer to us than Mexico? When, therefore, in future they ask us what course and policy we Anti-Imperialists propose, our answer should be that we propose to pursue towards the islands of Antilles and the Philippines the same common-sense course and truly American policy which were by us heretofore pursued with such signal success in the cases of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela, all inhabited by people equally unfit for self-government, and geographically much closer to ourselves. We propose to guarantee them against outside meddling, and, above all, from "tutelage," and make them, by walking, learn to walk alone.