Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

CHAPTER XXXIII THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

It has been my singular ill fortune that I have been compelled to differ from the Republican Party, and from a good many of my political associates, upon many important matters.

It has been my singular good fortune that, so far, they have all come to my way of thinking, as have the majority of the American people, in regard to every one, with perhaps one exception. That is the dealing of the American people with the people of the Philippine Islands, by the Treaty with Spain. The war that followed it crushed the Republic that the Philippine people had set up for themselves, deprived them of their independence, and established there, by American power, a Government in which the people have no part, against their will. No man, I think, will seriously question that that action was contrary to the Declaration of Independence, the fundamental principles declared in many State constitutions, the principles avowed by the founders of the Republic and by our statesmen of all parties down to a time long after the death of Lincoln.

If the question were, whether I am myself right, or whether my friends and companions in the Republican Party be right, I should submit to their better judgment. But I feel quite confident, though of that no man can be certain, that if the judgment of the American people, even in this generation, could be taken on that question alone, I should find myself in the majority. If it be not so, the issue is between the opinion of the American people for more than a century, and the opinion that the American people has expressed for one or two Presidential terms.

Surely I do not need to argue the question; at any rate, I will not here undertake to argue the question, that our dealing with the Philippine people is a violation of the principles to which our people adhered from 1776 to 1893. If the maintenance of slavery were inconsistent with them, it was admitted that in that particular we were violating them, or were unable from circumstances to carry them into effect. Mr. Jefferson thought so himself.

But the accomplishment by this Republic of its purpose to subjugate the Philippine people to its will, under the claim that it, and not they, had the right to judge of their fitness for self-government, is a rejection of the old American doctrine as applicable to any race we may judge to be our inferior.

This doctrine will be applied hereafter, unless it be abandoned, to the Negro at home. Senator Tillman of South Carolina well said, and no gentleman in the Senate contradicted him: "Republican leaders do not longer dare to call into question the justice or the necessity of limiting Negro suffrage in the South." The same gentleman said at another time: "I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans. Your slogans of the past—brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God—have gone glimmering down through the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer." These statements of Mr. Tillman have never been challenged, and never can be.

I do not mean here to renew the almost interminable debate.
I will only make a very brief statement of my position:

The discussion began with the acquisition of Hawaii. Ever since I came to the Senate I had carefully studied the matter of the acquisition of Hawaii. I had become thoroughly satisfied that it would be a great advantage to the people of the United States, as well as for the people of Hawaii.

Hawaii is 2,100 miles from our Pacific coast. Yet if a line be drawn from the point of our territory nearest Asia to the Southern boundary of California, that line being the chord of which our Pacific coast is the bow, Hawaii will fall this side of it. Held by a great Nation with whom we were at war, it would be a most formidable and valuable base of supplies. We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. American missionaries had redeemed the people from barbarism and Paganism. Many of them, and their descendants, had remained in the Islands. The native Hawaiians were a perishing race. They had gone down from 300,000 to 30,000 within one hundred years.

The Japanese wanted it. The Portugese wanted it. Other nations wanted it. But the Hawaiians seemed neither to know nor care whether they wanted it or no. They were a perishing people. Their only hope and desire and expectation was that in the Providence of God they might lead a quiet, undisturbed life, fishing, bathing, supplied with tropical fruits, and be let alone.

We had always insisted that our relation to them was peculiar; that they could not be permitted to fall under the dominion of another power, even by their own consent. That had been declared by our Department of State under Administrations of all parties, including Mr. Webster, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Bayard. They were utterly helpless. As their Queen has lately declared: "The best thing for them that could have happened was to belong to the United States."

By the Constitution of Hawaii, the Government had been authorized to make a treaty of annexation with this country. It was said that that Constitution was the result of usurpation which would not have come to pass but for American aid, and the presence of one of our men-of-war. But that Government had been maintained for six or seven years. Four of them were while Mr. Cleveland was President, who it was well known would be in full sympathy with an attempt to restore the old Government. So if the people had been against it, the Government under that Constitution could not have lasted an hour.

President Harrison had negotiated a treaty of annexation, against which no considerable remonstrance or opposition was uttered. My approval of it was then, I suppose, well known. Certainly no friend of mine, and nobody in Massachusetts, so far as I know, in the least objected or remonstrated against it. The treaty was withdrawn from the consideration of the Senate by President Cleveland.

Another was negotiated soon after President McKinley came in. Meantime, however, the controversy with Spain had assumed formidable proportions, and the craze for an extension of our Empire had begun its course. Many Republican leaders were advocating the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, not for the reasons I have just stated, but on the avowed ground that it was necessary we should own them as a point of vantage for acquiring dominion in the East. It was said that China was about to be divided among the great Western powers, and that we must have our share. I saw when the time approached for action of the McKinley Treaty that the question could not be separated, at least in debate, from the question of entering upon a career of conquest of Empire in the Far East.

Under these circumstances the question of duty came to me: Will you adhere to the purpose long formed, and vote for the acquisition of Hawaii solely on its own merit? Or, will you vote against it, for fear that the bad and mischievous reasons that are given for it is so many quarters, will have a pernicious tendency only to be counteracted by the defeat of the treaty itself?

I hesitated long. President McKinley sent for me to come to the White House, as was his not infrequent habit. He said he wanted to consult me upon the question whether it would be wise for him to have a personal interview with Senator Morrill of Vermont. He had been told that Mr. Morrill was opposed to the Treaty. The President said: "I do not quite like to try to influence the action of an old gentleman like Mr. Morrill, so excellent, and of such great experience. It seems to me that it might be thought presumptuous, if I were to do so. But it is very important to us to have his vote, if we can." The President added something implying that he understood that I was in favor of the Treaty.

I said, "I ought to say, Mr. President, in all candor, that I feel very doubtful whether I can support it myself." President McKinley said: "Well, I don't know what I shall do. We cannot let those Islands go to Japan. Japan has her eye on them. Her people are crowding in there. I am satisfied they do not go there voluntarily, as ordinary immigrants, but that Japan is pressing them in there, in order to get possession before anybody can interfere. If something be not done, there will be before long another Revolution, and Japan will get control. Some little time ago the Hawaiian Government observed that when the immigrants from a large steamer went ashore they marched with a military step, indicating that they were a body of trained soldiers. Thereupon Hawaii prohibited the further coming in of Japanese. Japan claimed that was in violation of their treaty, and sent a ship of war to Hawaii. I was obliged to notify Japan that no compulsory measures upon Hawaii, in behalf of the Japan Government, would be tolerated by this country. So she desisted. But the matters are still in a very dangerous position, and Japan is doubtless awaiting her opportunity."

I told President McKinley that I favored then, as I always had, the acquisition of Hawaii. But I did not like the spirit with which it was being advocated both in the Senate and out of it. I instanced several very distinguished gentlemen indeed, one a man of very high authority in the Senate in matters relating to foreign affairs, who were urging publicly and privately the Hawaiian Treaty on the ground that we must have Hawaii in order to help us get our share of China. President McKinley disclaimed any such purpose. He expressed his earnest and emphatic dissent from the opinions imputed to several leading Republicans, whom he named.

I never, at any time during the discussion of the Philippine question, expressed a more emphatic disapproval of the acquisition of dependencies or Oriental Empire by military strength, than he expressed on that occasion. I am justified in putting this on record, not only because I am confirmed by several gentlemen in public life, who had interviews with him, but because he made in substance the same declaration in public.

He declared, speaking of this very matter of acquiring sovereignty over Spanish territory by conquest:

"Forcible annexation, according to our American code of morals, would be criminal aggression."

He said at another time:

"Human rights and constitutional privileges must not be forgotten in the race for wealth and commercial supremacy. The Government of the people must be by the people and not by a few of the people. It must rest upon the free consent of the governed and all of the governed. Power, it must be remembered, which is secured by oppression or usurpation or by any form of injustice is soon dethroned. We have no right in law or morals to usurp that which belongs to another, whether it is property or power."

I suppose he was then speaking of our duty as to any people whom we might liberate from Spain, as the results of the Spanish War. He unquestionably meant that we had no right, in law or morals, to usurp the right of self-government which belonged to the Cubans, or to the Philippine people.

Yet I have no doubt whatever that in the attitude that he took later he was actuated by a serious and lofty purpose to do right. I think he was led on from one step to another by what he deemed the necessity of the present occasion. I dare say that he was influenced, as any other man who was not more than human would have been influenced, by the apparently earnest desire of the American people, as he understood it, as it was conveyed to him on his Western journey. But I believe every step he took he thought necessary at the time. I further believe, although I may not be able to convince other men, and no man will know until the secret history of that time shall be made known, that if he had lived, before his Administration was over, he would have placed the Republic again on the principles from which it seems to me we departed—the great doctrine of Jefferson, the great doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that there can be no just Government by one people over another without its consent, and that the International law declared by the Republic is that all Governments must depend for their just powers upon the consent of the governed. This was insisted on by our Fathers as the doctrine of International law, to be acted upon by the infant Republic for itself. In this I am confirmed by the testimony of Mr. Secretary Long, who was in President McKinley's most intimate counsels.

The Treaty negotiated by President McKinley with Hawaii was not acted upon. It was concluded to substitute a joint resolution, for which there was a precedent in the case of the acquisition of Texas. I voted for the joint resolution, as did Senator Hale of Maine, and several Democratic Senators, who were earnestly opposed to what is known as the policy of Imperialism.

I left the President, after the conversation above related, without giving him any assurance as to my action. But I determined on full reflection, to support the acquisition of Hawaii, in accordance with my long-settled purpose, and at the same time to make a clear and emphatic statement of my unalterable opposition to acquiring dependencies in the East, if we did not expect, when the proper time came, to admit them to the Union as States. This I did to the best of my power. I was invited to give an address before a college in Pennsylvania, where I took occasion to make an emphatic declaration of the doctrine on which I meant to act.

Afterward, July 5, 1898, I made a speech in the Senate, on the joint resolution for the acquisition of Hawaii, in which I said that I had entertained grave doubts in regard to that measure; that I had approached the subject with greater hesitation and anxiety than I had ever felt in regard to any other matter during the whole of my public life.

I went on to say:

"The trouble I have found with the Hawaiian business is this: Not in the character of the population of the Sandwich Island, not in their distance from our shores, not in the doubt that we have an honest right to deal with the existing government there in such a matter. I have found my trouble in the nature and character of the argument by which, in the beginning and ever since, a great many friends of annexation have sought to support it . . . .

"If this be the first step in the acquisition of dominion over barbarous archipelagoes in distant seas; if we are to enter into competition with the great powers of Europe in the plundering of China, in the division of Africa; if we are to quit our own to stand on foreign lands; if our commerce is hereafter to be forced upon unwilling peoples at the cannon's mouth; if we are ourselves to be governed in part by peoples to whom the Declaration of Independence is a stranger; or, worse still, if we are to govern subjects and vassal States, trampling as we do it on our own great Charter which recognizes alike the liberty and the dignity of individual manhood, then let us resist this thing in the beginning, and let us resist it to the death.

"I do not agree with those gentlemen who think we would wrest the Philippine Islands from Spain and take charge of them ourselves. I do not think we should acquire Cuba, as the result of the existing war, to be annexed to the United States."

I reinforced this protest as well I could. But I went on to state the reasons which had actuated me in favoring the measure, and that my unconquerable repugnance to the acquisition of territory to be held in dependency did not apply to that case.

I cited the Teller resolution, and declared that it bound the American people in honor, and that its principle applied to all Spanish territory. I maintained that there was nothing in the acquisition of Hawaii inconsistent with this doctrine. I think so still.

I was bitterly reproached by some worthy persons, who I suppose will always find matter for bitter reproach in everything said or done on public matters. They charged me with speaking one way and voting another. But I am content to leave the case on its merits, and on the record.

The war went on. The feeling of the country was deeply excited. President McKinley made his famous Western journey. He was greeted by enthusiastic throngs. The feeling in that part of the country in favor of a permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands was uttered by excited crowds, whom he addressed from the platform and the railroad cars as he passed thorough the country. But the sober, conservative feeling, which seldom finds utterance in such assemblies, did not make itself heard.

The President returned to Washington, undoubtedly in the honest belief that the country demanded that he acquire the Philippine Islands, and that Congress should govern them.

I have never attributed publicly, or in my own heart, to President McKinley any but the most conscientious desire to do his duty in what, as the case seems to me, was an entire change of purpose. Many military and naval officers, from whose reports he had to get his facts almost wholly, insisted that the Philippine people were unfit for self-government. After the unhappy conflict of arms the solution of the problem seemed to be to compel the Philippine people to unconditional submission. It would not be just or fair that I should undertake to state the reasons which controlled the President in adopting the conclusions to which I did not myself agree. I am merely telling my own part in the transaction.

When I got back to Washington, at the beginning of the session in December, 1898, I had occasion to see the President almost immediately. His purpose was to make a Treaty by which, without the assent of their inhabitants, we should acquire the Philippine Islands. We were to hold and govern in subjection the people of the Philippine Islands. That was pretty well understood.

The national power of Spain was destroyed. It was clear that she must submit to whatever terms we should impose. The President had chosen, as Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty, five gentlemen, three of whom, Senators Cushman K. Davis, and William P. Frye and Whitelaw Reid, the accomplished editor of the New York Tribune, former Minister to France, were well known to be zealous for acquiring territory in the East. Mr. Frye was said to have declared in a speech not long before he went abroad that he was in favor of keeping everything we could lay our hands on. I suppose that was, however, intended as a bit of jocose extravagance, which that most excellent gentleman did not mean to have taken too seriously.

Mr. Day, the Secretary of State, and Senator Gray of Delaware, were understood to be utterly opposed to the policy of expansion or Imperialism.

I do not know about Mr. Day. But it appeared, when three years afterward the correspondence between the Commissioners and the Department of State became public, that Mr. Day expressed no objection to the acquisition of Luzon, but objected to a peremptory demand for the whole Philippine Island group, thereby—to use his language—"leaving us open to the imputation of following agreement to negotiate with demand for whole subject matter of discussion ourselves."

The public impression as to Senator Gray is confirmed by the following remonstrance, which appears in the same correspondence:

PEACE COMMISSIONERS TO MR. HAY
[Telegram]

PARIS, October 25, 1898.

The undersigned cannot agree that it is wise to take Philippine Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted upon throughout our history. Propinquity governs the case of Cuba and Porto Rico. Policy proposed introduces us into European politics and the entangling alliances against which Washington and all American statemen have protested. It will make necessary a navy equal to largest of powers; a greatly increased military establishment; immense sums for fortifications and harbors; multiply occasions for dangerous complications with foreign nations, and increase burdens of taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing questions introduced into our politics; church question menacing. On whole, instead of indemnity—injury.

The undersigned cannot agree that any obligation incurred to insurgents is paramount to our own manifest interests. Attacked Manila as part of legitimate war against Spain. If we had captured Cadiz and Carlists had helped us, would not owe duty to stay by them at the conclusion of war. On the contrary, interests and duty would require us to abandon both Manila and Cadiz. No place for colonial administration or government of subject people in American system. So much from standpoint of interest; but even conceding all benefits claimed for annexation, we thereby abandon the infinitely greater benefit to accrue from acting the part of a great, powerful, and Christian nation; we exchange the moral grandeur and strength to be gained by keeping our word to nations of the world and by exhibiting a magnanimity and moderation in the hour of victory that becomes the advanced civilization we claim, for doubtful material advantages and shameful stepping down from high moral position boastfully assumed. We should set example in these respects, not follow in the selfish and vulgar greed for territory which Europe has inherited from mediaeval times. Our declaration of war upon Spain was accompanied by a solemn and deliberate definition of our purpose. Now that we have achieved all and more than our object, let us simply keep our word. Third article of the protocol leaves everything concerning the control of the Philippine Islands to negotiation between the parties.

It is absurd now to say that we will not negotiate but will appropriate the whole subject-matter of negotiation. At the very least let us adhere to the President' instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other islands. Above all let us not make a mockery of the injunction contained in those instructions, where, after stating that we took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity and in the fulfillment of high public and moral obligations, and that we had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of conquest, the President among other things eloquently says:

"It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war. It should be as scrupulous and magnanimous in the concluding settlement as it was just and humane in its original action."

This and more, of which I earnestly ask a reperusal, binds my conscience and governs my action.

GEORGE GRAY.
WEDNESDAY, 12.30, night.

Senator Gray afterward signed the Treaty, defended it in debate, and voted for its ratification. He vigorously defended his vote on the floor of the Senate, chiefly by the argument that when he learned that it was the purpose of the United States to expel Spain from the Philippine Islands, he concluded it was our duty to remain there for the protection of the people against foreign rapacity and against domestic anarchy. He claimed that he had been influenced in coming to this conclusion very considerably by the fact that I was reported to have said that under no circumstances would we give back the Philippine people to Spain. That was true. I believed then, and believe now, that it was our duty to deliver them from Spain, to protect them against her, or against the cupidity of any other nation until her people could have tried fully the experiment of self- government, in which I have little doubt they would have succeeded.

When I saw President McKinley early in December, 1898, he was, I suppose, committed to the policy to which he adhered. He greeted me with the delightful and affectionate cordiality which I always found in him. He took me by the hand, and said: "How are you feeling this winter, Mr. Senator?" I was determined there should be no misunderstanding. I replied at once: "Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President." The tears came into his eyes, and he said, grasping my hand again: "I shall always love you, whatever you do."

I found we differed widely on this great subject. I denounced with all the vigor of which I was capable the Treaty, and the conduct of the war in the Philippine Islands, in the Senate, on the platform, in many public letters, and in articles in magazines and newspapers. But President McKinley never abated one jot of his cordiality toward me. I did not, of course, undertake to press upon him my advice in matters affecting the Philippine Islands, about which we differed so much. But he continued to seek it, and to take it in all other matters as constantly as ever before.

In order that it may not be supposed that I deceived myself in regard to President McKinley's kindly regard, I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that his close friend, Senator Hanna, has more than once assured me that McKinley's love for me was never abated, and for citing a sentence from an article by Charles Emory Smith, his trusted counsellor and able and accomplished Postmaster-General, in this Cabinet. Mr. Smith says:

"Senator Hoar was the earnest foe and critic of President McKinley's policy. But President McKinley had the warmest regard and consideration for him. Nothing, indeed, in public life was sweeter than the sentiment of these different and differing men toward each other. President McKinley was anxious to commission Senator Hoar as Minister to England, and proffered him the place. It was without any desire to remove him from the arena of contention—apprehension of such a reflection restrained the proffer for a time—though the contention had not then been fully developed."

After President McKinley's death I expressed the public sorrow and my own in an address to a vast audience of the people of my own city of Worcester, in Mechanics' Hall; and again, at the request of the Republican State Committee, at the Republican State Convention shortly afterward.

I have reason to know that both the addresses gave pleasure to many of the lamented President's closest and warmest friends throughout the country. I was afterward invited by the City Government of Worcester to deliver a historical eulogy on President McKinley before them. That office, it seemed to me, I ought to decline. It was not because I was behind any other man in admiration or personal affection for that lofty and beautiful character. But I thought that address, which was not only to utter the voice of public sorrow, but to give a careful and discriminating sketch of the public life of its subject, ought to be delivered by some person who agreed with him in regard to the most important action of his life. I could not well pass over the Philippine question. I could not well speak of it without stating my own opinion. I could not undertake to state President McKinley's opinion, conduct or policy, without expressing my disapproval of it, and if I did not do that, I could not state it without being thought by those who heartily approved it, not to have stated it justly and fairly.

I had repeatedly declared, during the preceding two years, both before and since his death, my highest admiration for the intellectual and moral qualities of my beloved friend, and my belief that he would have a very high place in history among the best and ablest men of the country.

But I thought the story of the important part of his life should be told from his point of view, and not from mine; that the reasons which governed him should be stated by a person sure to appreciate them fully. If a great Catholic Prelate were to die, his eulogy should not be pronounced by a Protestant. When Dr. Channing died, we did not select a Calvinist minister to pronounce his funeral sermon. When Charles Sumner died Mr. Schurz and Mr. Curtis, not some old Whig, and not some earnest supporter of General Grant, pronounced the eulogy. I suppose nobody would have dreamed of asking a Free Trader to pronounce the eulogy on President McKinley if he had died soon after the beginning of his first term. So I declined the office. The City did not ask anybody else to fill my place, or perform the task.

I will not now renew the debate about our treatment of the people of the Philippine Islands. My opinion has not at all changed. I think that under the lead of Mabini and Aguinaldo and their associates, but for our interference, a Republic would have been established in Luzon, which would have compared well with the best of the Republican Governments between the United States and Cape Horn. For years and for generations, and perhaps for centuries, there would have been turbulence, disorder and revolution. But in her own way Destiny would have evolved for them a force of civic rule best adapted to their need. If we had treated them as we did Cuba, we should have been saved the public shame of violating not only our own pledges, but the rule of conduct which we had declared to be self-evident truth in the beginning of our history. We should have been saved the humiliation of witnessing the subjection by Great Britain of the Boers in South Africa, without a murmur of disapproval, and without an expression of one word of sympathy for the heroic victims.

My term as Senator expired on the fourth of March, 1901. The election of Senator for the following term came in January of that year. I differed sharply from my colleague, Mr. Lodge, in this whole matter. But the people of Massachusetts, with the generous and liberal temper which ever distinguished that noble Commonwealth, desired that their Senators should act upon their own judgment, without any constraint.

A resolution was introduced at the session of the Legislature of 1899 by Mr. Mellen, Democratic member from Worcester, thanking me for my speech in opposition to the Spanish Treaty, endorsing the doctrine of that speech, and condemning the subjugation of the Philippine people by force of arms.

Charles G. Washburn, Republican member from Worcester, introduced a resolution commending my speech, and declaring it to be "A speech of the loftiest patriotism and eloquent interpretation of the high conception of human freedom which the fathers sought to preserve for all time in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States."

These resolution, if adopted, would, by implication, condemn the well-known opinion and action of my colleague. They were encountered by several others, none of which referred to either Senator, but expressed approval of the Spanish Treaty. One of them, however, presented in the House by Mr. Mills of Newburyport, declared that the Treaty ought to be ratified, and then the United States should fulfil to Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands the pledge of self-government and independence made to Cuba. Very wisely all these resolutions were referred to the Committee on Federal Relations, who reported this as a compromise:

RESOLUTION REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL RELATIONS, OF THE LEGISLATURE, MARCH 29, 1899

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court assembled, that Massachusetts, ever loyal in sympathy and support of the General Government, continues her unabated confidence in her Senators, and with a just pride in the eloquent and memorable words they have uttered, leaves them untrammeled in the exercise of an independent and patriotic judgment upon the momentous questions presented for their consideration.

The whole matter was then dropped. But the Legislature, and the generous people of Massachusetts whom they represented, acted upon the spirit of the Committee's Resolution. I was reelected without opposition. I had every Republican vote, and many Democratic votes, of the Legislature. My affectionate and cordial relations with my brilliant and accomplished colleague have never suffered an instant's interruption.

I think I am entitled to record, however, that this result was not accomplished by any abatement of my opposition to the policy of the Administration as to the Philippine Islands. I made a great many speeches within a few weeks of the Presidential election in 1900. The members of the Senate and House, of the Massachusetts Legislature, who were to choose a Senator, were to be chosen at the same time. I expressed my unchanged and earnest opposition of disapproval to the whole business at length.

In speaking of the habit of appealing to the love of the flag in behalf of this policy of conquest, I said that there was but one symbol more sacred than the American flag. That was the bread and wine which represented the body and blood of the Saviour of mankind; adding, that a man who would use an appeal to the flag in aid of the subjugation of an unwilling people, would be capable of using the sacramental wine for a debauch.

The week before the election of Senator came on a bill for the reorganization of the Army was before the Senate. That contained a provision for increasing the Army to a hundred thousand men, allowing the President, however, to reduce it to seventy thousand, and to raise it again if necessary, so it would in his discretion be elastic, within those limitations.

Mr. Bacon, of Georgia, who seemed to be the leader of the Democrats on that measure, inquired of the Republicans who were managing the bill, how many men they needed and what time would be required to put down the insurrection in the Philippine Islands. Senator Bacon said that they would give them the hundred thousand men, or any force they might demand for one or two or three or five years, or for any required time. But they were unwilling to give the President the power of expanding and contracting the army in time of peace. This was in full Senate.

I followed with a statement that I had no objection to giving the President this discretion, and did not disapprove the bill on that account. I thought the size of the Army in time of peace should be left largely to the opinion of the experts, especially General Miles, the famous soldier at the head of our Army, who thought the regular Army should consist of one hundred for every thousand of our population. That would be about eighty thousand then, and before long would require a hundred thousand men. But I said I was opposed to raising soldiers to carry on the war in the Philippine Islands. The only way to stop it that I knew was to refuse to vote for the Army Bill. I voted against it solely on that account.

I meant that if the Legislature of Massachusetts were to reelect me, no man should ever have it to say that I had bought my reelection by silence on this question, or concealed my opinion, however extreme it might be, until after election.

After my election I delivered an address before the two Houses of the Legislature, at their request, and was received with a most cordial enthusiasm.

Yet I think that if any leading Republican who had differed from me on this question, especially Governor Long, of whose brilliant administration of the Navy the people of the Commonwealth were so proud, had pressed his candidacy for the office in opposition to me, as has been the custom in like cases in other States, it is not unlikely that he would have been elected.

I have no doubt I should have found Governor Roger Wolcott a formidable competitor, if he had lived and been willing. Governor Wolcott had made a statement in public, quietly and briefly, as was his wont, expressing his sympathy with me when the question of the Treaty was under debate. Somewhat later he made a statement in the same way, expressing his opinion that the Administration should be supported. Both these declarations were in general terms. They were not inconsistent with each other. But death arrested the honorable and useful career of Roger Wolcott when he was still in the prime of life, in the strength of his noble manhood, a strength which seemed rapidly enlarging and growing as if in early youth.

I have not doubt that the subjugation of the Philippine Islands, the acquisition of a dependency to be held in subjection by the United States, the overthrow of the great doctrine that Governments rest on the consent of the governed; that all the painful consequences which have attended the war for the subjugation of that distant people, would have been avoided if the Democratic opposition had been hearty and sincere. The same spirit that defeated the Election bill in spite of the majority in its favor, would have easily accomplished that result. The Democratic Party, as a party, never meant business in this matter. I do not deny that many Democrats— I dare say a majority of the Democrats—were as earnestly and seriously opposed to the acquisition of the Philippine Islands as I was myself. But they never wielded their party strength in opposition to it. I said to one eminent Democratic leader early in the year 1900: "There is one way in which you can put an end to this whole business. If you can elect a Democratic House it will have power under the Constitution to determine the use to which the Army shall be put. In that way you compelled President Hayes to refrain from further support by military force of the Republican State Governments in the South." He answered: "Mr. Hoar, we shall never do anything as radical as that."

When Senator Bacon made the offer to the majority of the Senate to agree to give them all the military power they desired for the suppression of the resistance in the Philippines for as long a time as they should think it necessary, the entire Democratic Party in the Senate was in their seats, and there was no expression of dissent.

I think the Democratic Party feared the fate of the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, and of the Democrats who opposed the War for the Union in 1861. This of course in the nature of things is but conjecture.

Seventeen of the followers of Mr. Bryan voted for the Treaty. The Treaty would have been defeated, not only lacking the needful two thirds, but by a majority of the Senate but for the votes of Democrats and Populists.

Senators Morgan and Pettus of Alabama, Senator McLaurin of South Carolina, Senator McEnery of Louisiana, were avowed supporters of the Treaty from the beginning.

Mr. Bryan in the height of the contest came to Washington for the express purpose of urging upon his followers that it was best to support the Treaty, end the War, and let the question of what should be done with our conquest be settled in the coming campaign. He urged upon them, as I was told by several Democrats at the time who did not take his advice, that the Democratic Party could not hope to win a victory on the financial questions at stake after they had been beaten on them in a time of adversity; and that they must have this issue for the coming campaign. He was besought by his wiser political associates to go away and leave the Senate to settle the matter. But he remained.

After that it became impossible, not only to defeat the Treaty, but to defeat the policy which had inspired it. The Treaty pledged that the Philippine Islands should be governed by Congress. It undertook obligations which require for their fulfillment, at least ten years' control of the Islands. It put the people of the Philippine Islands in the attitude of abandoning the Republic they had formed, and of acknowledging not only our supremacy but that they were neither entitled or fit to govern themselves or to carry on the war which had unfortunately broken out. I do not mean to imply that, as I have said, a large number of the Democratic Party both in public life and out of it, were not sincere and zealous in their opposition to this wretched business. But next to a very few men who controlled the policy of the Republican Party in this matter, Mr. Bryan and his followers who voted in the Senate for the Treaty are responsible for the results.

I have been blamed, as I have said already, because, with my opinions, I did not join the Democratic Party and help to elect Mr. Bryan. I disagreed with him and his party as to every other issue then pending before the American people. So differing from him, I found nothing in his attitude or that of his party, to induce me to support him, or even to inspire my confidence in their settlement of the question of Imperialism or expansion.

In my opinion, if he had been elected, he would have accepted the result, have put the blame for it on his predecessor in office, and matters would have gone on very much as they have under Republican control.

I have been told by many Senators who voted for the Treaty, that they regretted that vote more than any other act of their lives. Enough Senators have said this to me in person, not only to have defeated the Treaty, but if they had so voted, to have defeated it by a majority. A very eminent Republican Senator told me that more than twenty Senators, who voted for the Treaty, had given the same assurance to him. But they are very unwilling to make the declaration public. Several gentlemen, however, have publicly expressed their regret for their vote, as is well known, enough to have changed the result.

When I think of my party, whose glory and whose service to Liberty are the pride of my life, crushing out this people in their effort to establish a Republic, and hear people talk about giving them good Government, and that they are better off than they ever were under Spain, I feel very much as if I had learned that my father, or some other honored ancestor, had been a slave-trader in his time, and had boasted that he had introduced a new and easier kind of hand-cuffs or fetters to be worn by the slaves during the horrors of the middle passage.

I do not believe that there is a respectable or intelligent Filipino to-day, unless possibly some Macabebe scout, who would not get rid of the Government of the United States at once, if he could. Buencamino is said to be one of the ablest of their public men. He has been quoted as friendly to us, and is so. There is no doubt that he has so expressed himself. He has been appointed a member of the Taft Government, and has had committed to him the responsible and important duty of deciding the appointments to the offices which are to be filled by the native Filipinos, under the existing establishment. It is said by both sides that he is crafty and selfish and ambitious, and that he likes to be on the side that is the strongest. How that may be, I do not know. But he will not even pretend to accept the rule of the United States willingly. He appeared as a witness before a Committee of the House of Representatives, when in this country in 1902. He was asked whether his people approved the policy of the Democratic Party. He answered emphatically: "No. They do not wish to have the United States abandon them to the ambition or cupidity of foreign Governments." But he added: "Every Filipino is in favor of the policy advocated by Senator Hoar." "What!" said his inquirer, with great surprise, "Do you mean to say that every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar in his views?" "Yes," replied the man, with great emphasis; "every Filipino agrees with Senator Hoar."

I mentioned this one day in conversation with President Roosevelt. He told me that Buencamino had said exactly the same thing to him.

General Miles told me on his return from his journey round the world that he saw many leaders of the Philippine people; that they spoke of me with great regard and attachment.

June 17, 1902, an eminent Hindoo scholar, published a long article in the Japan Times, in which he said:

"The speech of Mr. Hoar, though an address to his own countrymen, is a message of hope to the whole world which sank with despondency at the sight of Republican America behaving like a cruel, tyrannical and rapacious Empire in the Philippines and particularly to the broken-hearted people of Asia who are beginning to lose all confidence in the humanity of the white races. Or is it that they have lost it already? Hence all papers in Asia should reprint his speech, translate it, and distribute it broadcast. Let it be brought home to the Asiatic people so that they may work and worship their champion and his forefathers. Thanks to the awakening in America, thanks to the forces that are at work to chase out the degenerating, demoralizing passion for territorial aggrandizement from the noble American mind and save it for itself and the world at large from the cancer of Imperialism."

I am afraid I am committing an offence against good taste in repeating such laudations. But it must be remembered that a public man who has to encounter so much bitter reviling and objurgation, is fairly entitled to have a little extravagance on the other side that the balance may be even. I would rather have the gratitude of the poor people of the Philippine Islands, amid their sorrow, and have it true that what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the gloomy caverns in which the oppressed peoples of Asia dwell, than to receive a Ducal Coronet from every Monarch in Europe, or command the applause of listening Senators and read my history in a Nation's eyes.

At first there can seem nothing more absurd than the suggestion of my Asiatic friend that the people of Asia should worship their champion and his ancestors. But on second thought, it is fair to say that while no human being can be entitled to be worshipped by any other, yet that we got our love of Liberty from our ancestors, or at any rate that is where I got mine, and that they are entitled to all the credit.