The above makes it unnecessary to quote at length from the speech referred to, which may be found at pp. 2456 et seq of the Congressional Record for February 27, 1899. However, there is one passage in the speech to which I especially say Amen, and invite all whose creed of patriotism is not too sublimated for such a common feeling to join me in so doing. Senator Bacon will now state the creed:
The oft-repeated expression “our country, right or wrong” has a vital principle in it, and upon that principle I stand.
The Senator immediately follows his creed with these commentaries:
In this annexation of the Philippine Islands through the ratification of the treaty, and in waging war to subjugate the Filipinos, I think the country, acting through constitutional authorities, is wrong. But it is not for me to say because the country has been committed to a policy that I do not favor and have opposed, in consequence of which there is war, that I will not support the government.
Under the civilizing influence of Krag-Jorgensen rifles and the moral uplift of high explosive projectiles, what our soldiers used to call, with questionable piety, “the fear of God,” was finally put into the hearts of the Filipinos, after much carnage by wholesale in battle formation and later by retail in a species of guerrilla warfare as irritating as it was obstinate. But they have never yet learned to respect our intentions, because under the guidance of three successive Presidents we have studiously refrained from any authoritative declaration as to what those intentions are. We are loth to hark back to the only right course, a course similar to our action in Cuba, because of the expense we have been to in the Philippines. But we also know that the islands are and are likely to continue, a costly burden, a nuisance, and a distinct strategic disadvantage in the event of war; and that Mr. Cleveland was right when he said:
The government of remote and alien people should have no permanent place in the purposes of our national life.
The mistaken policy which involved us in a war to subjugate the Filipinos, following our war to free the Cubans, will never stand atoned for before the bar of history, nor can the Filipinos ever in reason be expected to respect our intentions, until the law-making power of the government shall have authoritatively declared what those intentions are—i. e., what we intend ultimately to do with the islands. Senator Bacon’s resolutions of 1899 were, are, and always will be the last word on the first act needed to rectify the original Philippine blunder, “announcing” as they would, to use the language attributed to their distinguished author by the Washington Post of February 6, 1899, above-quoted, “our honest intentions with regard to the Philippines.” So eager is the exploiter to exploit the islands, and so apprehensive is the Filipino that the exploiter will have more influence at Washington than himself and therefore be able ultimately to bring about a practical industrial slavery, that common honesty demands such a declaration. To doctor present Filipino discontent with Benevolent Uncertainty is a mere makeshift. The remedy the situation needs is simple, but as yet untried—Frankness. The chief of the causes of the present discontent among the Filipinos with American rule is precisely the same old serpent that precipitated the war thirteen years ago, to wit, lack of a frank and honest declaration of our purpose. The trouble then lay, and still lies, and, in the absence of some such declaration as that proposed by the Bacon resolution, will always lie in what seemed then, and still seems, to the Filipinos “an evident purpose to keep the islands and an accompanying unwillingness to acknowledge that purpose.” Some may object that one Congress cannot bind another. The same argument would have killed the Teller amendment to the declaration of war with Spain avowing our purpose as to Cuba. Such an argument assumes that this nation has no sense of honor, and that it should cling for a while longer to the stale Micawberism that the Islands may yet pay, before it decides whether it will do right or not, and signalizes such decision by formal announcement through Congress. To men capable of such an assumption as the one just indicated, this book is not addressed. Three successive Presidents, Messrs. McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, have with earnest asseveration of benevolent intention tried without success all these years to win the affections of the Filipino people, and to make them feel that “our flag had not lost its gift of benediction in its world-wide journey to their shores,” as Mr. McKinley used to say. But the corner-stone of the policy was laid before we knew anything about how the land lay, and on the assumption, made practically without any knowledge whatever on the subject, that the Filipino people were incapable of self-government. The corner-stone of our Philippine policy has been from the beginning precisely that urged by Spain for not freeing Cuba, viz., “to spare the people from the dangers of premature independence.” The three Presidents named above have always been willing to imply independence, but never to promise it. And the unwillingness to declare a purpose ultimately to give the Filipinos their independence has always been due to the desire to catch the vote of those who are determined they shall never have it. In this inexorable and unchangeable political necessity lies the essential contemptibleness of republican imperialism, and the secret of why the Filipinos, notwithstanding our good intentions, do not like us, and never will under the present policy. How can you blame them?
Yet the more you know of the Filipinos, the better you like them. Self-sacrificing, brave, and faithful unto death in war, they are gentle, generous, and tractable in peace. Moreover, respect for constituted authority, as such, is innate in practically every Filipino, which I am not sure can be predicated concerning each and every citizen of my beloved native land. And we can win the grateful and lasting affection of the whole seven or eight millions of them any day we wish to. How? Have done with vague, vote-catching Presidential obiter, and through your Congress declare your purpose!
[1] War Department Report, 1899, vol. i., pt. 4, p. 66.