This bitter disappointment of the public expectation and hope of something definite, certainly did not lessen the belief of the Filipinos that we have no notion of ever giving them their independence. Had the Senate known what the Filipino commissioners were so earnestly asking of the Otis commissioners in January, 1899, the Bacon resolution would probably have passed. In fact it is demonstrable almost mathematically that, had the Administration’s friends in the Senate allowed that resolution to come to a vote before the outbreak of February 4th, instead of filibustering against it until after that event, it would have passed. As stated in the foot-note, the roll-call on the final vote on it, which was not taken until February 14th, showed a tie—29 to 29, the Vice-President of the United States casting the deciding vote which defeated it. Much dealing with real life and real death has blunted my artistic sensibilities to thrills from the mere pantomime of the stage. But as here was a vote where, had a single Senator who voted No voted Aye, some 300,000,000 of dollars, over a thousand lives of American soldiers killed in battle, some 16,000 lives of Filipino soldiers killed in battle, and possibly 100,000 Filipino lives snuffed out through famine, pestilence, and other ills consequent on the war, would have been saved, I can not refrain from reproducing the vote—perhaps the most uniquely momentous single roll-call in the parliamentary history of Christendom[13]:

Ayes

Bacon Bate Berry Caffery Chilton Clay Cockrell Faulkner Gorman Gray Hale Harris Heitfield Hoar Jones of Arkansas Jones of Nevada Lindsay McLaurin Martin Money Murphy Perkins Pettigrew Pettus Quay Rawlins Smith Tillman Turner

Nays

Allison Burrows Carter Chandler Deboe Fairbanks Frye Gear Hanna Hawley Kyle Lodge McBride McEnery McMillan Mantle Morgan Nelson Penrose Platt of Connecticut Platt of New York Pritchard Ross Shoup Simon Stewart Teller Warren Wolcott

In January, 1899, the out-and-out land-grabbers had not yet made bold to show their hand, the friends of the treaty confining themselves to the alleged shame of doing as we had done with Cuba, on account of the supposed semi-barbarous condition of “the various tribes out there,” leaving the possibility of profit to quietly suggest itself amid the noisy exhortations of altruism. It was not until after the milk of human kindness had been spilled in war that Senator Lodge said at the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900: