This is a tale of three cities, Paris, Washington, and Manila.
Article III. of the Peace Protocol signed at Washington, August 12, 1898, provided:
The United States will occupy and hold the city, bay, and harbor of Manila, pending the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace which shall determine the control, disposition, and government of the Philippines.[1]
The “Papers relating to the Treaty with Spain” including the telegraphic correspondence between President McKinley and our Peace Commissioners pending the negotiations, were sent to the Senate, January 30, 1899, just one week before the final vote on the treaty, but the injunction of secrecy was not removed until January 31, 1901—after the presidential election of 1900. They then were published as Senate Document 148, 56th Congress, 2d Session. It was not until then that the veil was lifted. The instructions to the Peace Commissioners were dated September 16, 1898. The Commissioners were: William R. Day, of Ohio, Republican, just previously Secretary of State, now (1912) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Whitelaw Reid, Republican, then editor of the New York Tribune, now Ambassador to Great Britain, and three members of the United States Senate, Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota, William P. Frye, of Maine, Republicans, and George Gray, of Delaware, Democrat. Senator Davis died in 1900, and Senator Frye in 1911. Senator Gray has been, since 1899, and is now, United States Circuit Judge for the 3d Judicial District. Among other things, the President’s instructions to the Commissioners said:
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. * * * The lustre and the moral strength attaching to a cause which can be confidently rested upon the considerate judgment of the world should not under any illusion of the hour be dimmed by ulterior designs which might tempt us * * * into an adventurous departure on untried paths.
By elaborate rhetorical gradations, the instructions finally get down to this:
Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity. * * * The United States cannot accept less than the cession in full right and sovereignty of the island of Luzon.
Though already noticed, we venture, in this connection, again to recall that in the month previous (August, 1898) a gentleman high in the councils of the Administration[2] declared in one of the great reviews of the period: “We see with sudden clearness that some of the most revered of our political maxims have outlived their force.” Among these “revered maxims” thus suddenly fossilized by his ipse dixit, Mr. Vanderlip exuberantly includes the teachings of “Washington’s Farewell Address and the later crystallization of its main thought by President Monroe”—the Monroe Doctrine, adding that in lieu of these “A new mainspring * * * has become the directing force * * * the mainspring of commercialism.”
As permanent chairman of the Philadelphia convention which renominated Mr. McKinley for the Presidency thereafter, in 1900, Senator Lodge, speaking of the issues raised by the Treaty of Paris, said: “We make no hypocritical pretence of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. We believe in Trade Expansion.”
“Philanthropy and five per cent. go hand in hand,” said Mr. Vanderlip’s Chief, Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, about the same time. Such was the temper of the times when the treaty was made.