The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 22, 1898, Page 18

18 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, MAY 22, 1898. joJoJoJoXoJoJoXoXoXCYoRoRoXoXo! F we should keep the Philippine Islands we would reverse the tra- ditions of this Government from its foundation. We would open up a new line of policy. Let us see what that would mean In the first place it would mean the establishment of a military government over possibly ten millions of peoplé 6000 miles away from us; it would mean the increase of our navy to the navy of France or Germany. It would mean the increase of our ny to 150,000—more likely to 200,000 men. It would mean the increase of our annual expenditures todoublewhat they are now. It would mean that the United States Government would be brought in closer contact with the peo- ple than ever before in the history of this country. We have known that there is a Fed- eral Government only as representing our flag, our nationality and glorious we have not felt the traditios but burden of its support or been con- fronted with the possibility of the payment of an enormous annual mili- tary tax except during the Civil War. In Europe, where great armies and navies are maintained, the people are taxed directly for their maintenance. Our revenues have been obtained here- tofore by indirect taxation, with the exception of a slight tax on whisky. But with the increase of our expen- ditures by 100 per cent the taxes to support the Government would be felt in our homes and in our offices. We should feel them in both the neces- saries and the luxuries of life—in our , in our tools, in our food, in our , in our carriages and in our in our checks and notes and bonds and transfers of property—in svery transaction of every-day busi- For if we are to maintain at armies and navies like the pow- 0 rope we must raise the reve- them by the means mentioned vy a stamp tax that will face us at every turn. These conditions are contrary to our present form of government. To-day we know that the customs collector He sits in his office at the cus- and few of us ever think or felt the taxes collected through him new regime tax collectors ssarily be excise men, with evervwhere, They would b wn not only in New York and the other great centers of commerce, but i town, village and hamlet in i States. Our people respond patriotic alacrity to every bur- fice or tax for the successful m of war. Whether they with equal cheerfulness do the for the new policy of the colonial furnishes food for considera- What else does a world-wide pélicy n to us? It means a centralization , would change materially the re- of the United States to the ral Government. The control of these populous colonies would be cen- @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@8 { am opposed to the annexation of the Philippines because it would mean a reversal of the traditions of our Government, an increase of our army, centralization of Government and higher taxation.---Chauncey Depew. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@? *us our immortal declz tered at Washing- ton, and we should ptretch centraliza- tion of power far beyond what the 9ld Federalistsever dreamed of. You eannot have empire without all its at- tributes, and that means a practical revolution of our formof government and |mn abandon- ment of the beliefs which the fathers held when they established this Gov- ernment in 1776. Some one may ask “Isn’t it possible to derive from these proposed colonies a revenue greater than the additional expenditure which their possession would involve. How? By taxation? Every time you attempt to collect a tax from these people they would rise and you would have to call on your military force to suppress them. And suppress them for what? For doing what John Han- cock did. Phey might quote against 3 ration, “that tax- ation without representation is tyr- anny.” That is, assuming that the people had not voted the tax. It is [QEOXCICRORONOYOJOXOXO] ®© form of republican government. There are those who claim that the people of the Philippines have suffered as much as the people of Cuba, and that we are as much bound in morality to help them to be free as we are to* aid the Cubans. I do not-think so. nine-tenths of them are semi-barbarous or savage. And then we can't go0 around hunting for wrongs to right and xbarrass.ourselves with the ownership ofs nations. reorganizing all the cruel despotismsikthe Philippine Islands, distant so far trading nation like England. we, too, of the earth. If we followed that pol- icy to its logical conclusion, we should have to drive the Turk out of Armenia; we should have to send an army to*have always opposed the accession of begin to build railroads into the in- # terfor and thus open up to our goods Teheran to dispose sia, who thinks no more of cutting off a head than Wall street does of cut- ting off a coupon. Cuba is within a few hours of our own coast. We have cordial socfal and commercial relations with her. For three years we have sat by and seen her people struggling for freedom. We have s;n them driven in from the country and shut up helpless within Spanish fortified towns and starved to death, and we have intervened to rescue them because we could stand this outrage on hu- manity no longer. What shall we do with the Philip- pines? In the first place,: of the Shah of Per-* SHALL WE KEEP THE PHILIPPINES? jofoloojoofofofoJoJoXoooloofokciofoYoJoJololo) ® o I have always opposed the acces-\2 :* LA S E R R EREREE S E R RS *:t!txlsihwe rnuxst adotpt the Eastern policy tlon and place a @ : f / a & }:_) o! e nations of Europe and utilize | * JOHN SHERMAN AGREES #O0ur conquest by further expansions. ffl‘;fii, vovte gfl,‘:";’fl g sion o a”-y 0”’/ I”g ferl'llal'/ ’ '/78 » *The Ex-Secret: f State Approves* Already with England they have be- that we could want . . DJ : Spretay Qe ADDTOVEY g o ivide. wp Schina - Bhsianda i ihat past of the © defense of which might be embar- ¢ Philippines. ,.tgol:clyq is ltheroucy otd t&le open c:loor. :l?r‘;l:klrnmhom un-t g flssifl 4 3 u ussia, France and Germany have g any o —— WASHINGTON, D. C., May, 188— taken slices of China and said that the responsibilityof g g to our country. Ex-Secretary g I ,D.C, > - ese t d thet 1 governing ten mil- #In my judgment we otight not to em-x pe c]@,;ig '?,r te:engommee:cepox;fs ";‘:{,‘L‘i lion uncivilized,tur- © of State John Sha"ma”' @ If we are to become a great bulent people, as © @ alieninrace,religion ® *from the United States. I concur in the* *opinion expressed by Mr. Depew and* any outlying territory, the defense of *which might be embarrassing to oury Lcountry. JOHN SHERMAN. , KA K KKK KK KK KKK R R KR EE ‘Why, trade them for something that we want. Or, if Spain should recognize the inevitable before long and come to us saying: “We will release Cuba; European nations have agreed to help us out on the pledge of these islands, with the war indemnity you demand; we will repay you now.” Then we could give up the Philippines and with- draw from the East. If we don’t do * and traditions to us as the Sioux or the Comanches. I believe there are more than a hundred tribes and as many different languages in the Phil- ippines. must pick out our port in China and seize, fortify and hold it. Then, from that naval and military port, we must markets among the Aslatics. We cer- tainly cannot be dependent for our Asiatie port on the friendship 6f Eng- land, and we must be ready to say to Continental Europe that we want our fair share of the East or we will fight for it. I certainly think it would be possi- ble to reserve a coaling station for our. selves in the Philippines and thus avoia this international complication. There are something like a thousana islands there, I believe. All we need to do before we hand the islands over to some other nation is to pick out the island that we want for a coaling sta- | think the wiser plan would be to follow the principles of our forefathers. The permanent oc- cupation of the Philjpoines or other foreign conquests would bring about conditions with which we could not cope.—L. R. Ellert. I am opposed to the permanent oc- beyond imagining that they ci g th W“‘“”‘"‘"‘“@oocoocoooooooooooooooocoooooooooooo°°0°0°°°°°°°°°°°°°°®cupauonotthethnplneIslands. or a representative government on our lines of universal suffrage, for they areO not like the people of Cuba, capable ofo self-government. They are semi-bar-q ays and savage tribes, whose n knowledge of government is that of an autocratic chief. o Spain has not made the Philippines® productive. Perhaps that is due toO Spain’s form of colonial government.o So far, 1 believe, they have enriched only the officlals and a Governor-Gen- eral. But the taxes have been raised® by enforced taxation, upheld by mili-O tary rule. And still Spain herself, Io learn, has found her dependencies forg several years an actual source of loss; but then there has been great corrup- tion in Spanish officials. It is possible that we could hardly® civilize the people of the Philippines in® 2 hundred years and make them self-o governing. = Meantime we would haveg to keep an army of 50,000 men on the islands to hold them in check. Some one has suggested that theo Philippines could be made a districtg like Alaska. 5 The conditions are wholly different. Alaska is governed as a district be-© cause it has no population, or at leastO the population is inconsiderable. Youo have there a territory adjunct to usq nearly as great as the whole United States and a population of about 5000. In the Philippines you have a popula-O tion of ten millions in a country oldero in settlement than ours, and still the people are not fit to be admitted as citizens of a territory of the United® States or to d Representatives to theo Senate as a State. o I do not think we will ever acquireo a. If we took Cuba into the Unitedg States would repudiate the em- phatic declarations we ve made to the world of the cause for which weO are now carrying on a war with Spain.o In a great measure this is a sentimental war. It certainly is not a war of con- quest. We have no desire to acquire® Cuba. If you saw a woman beingo beaten on the streets of New York byg a big man you would rescue her from his brutality, but not because you® wanted to make the woman your wife.0 That is precisely the situation in Cuba.o We are rescuing her from a brutal anag despotic form of government, and alt we want is to give her freedom ana® help her people to establish a stableo Oand well informed. SPAIN AND THE MEN WE ARE FIGHTING. By General Sickles, Ex-Minister to Madrid. NE fact that needs to be appre- ciated in order to understand the situation in the present war between the United States and Spain is the difference in the extent and accuracy of the information which each country possesses in regard to the other. Americans are, as a rule, well read They don’t know all about Spain, but they know in a more or less general way of its extent and its resources. They know, too, something of the habits and character of the people. A good many of them have actually visited Spain and have seen the country for themselves; near- Iy all the others have read about it. To be sure, I think the ideas which our people have formed regarding Spain are not altogether accurate. We are apt . to regard the upper classes of Spain as ignorant, lazy and worthless and to believe that the rest of the nation is made up of bull-fight- ers and muleteers who are good for lit- tle else. As a matter of fact, the re- sources of Spain are apt to prove sur- prisingly great, considering the desper- ate condition in which she is now placed, and the average Spaniard, though he may be averse to ordinary labor, looks upon fighting as an honor- able and worthy employment, and gen- erally has enjoyed some training for it. Mind, I am not castinz doubt on the result of the present war; it can have but one ending. What I may say is that we must not expect Spain to crumble to pieces at the first touch of a hostile nation. The fully informead people of this country do not expect that, but they realize that Spain is immeasurably weaker that the United States. In general, the ideas in regard to our opponent which prevail in this country are pretty accurate. When one turns to Spain, however, the situation is very different. The people of Spain, taken en masse, are not well educated or widely traveled, and they are particularly ignorant as to what this particular part of the world is like. Even those whom one would expect to find well posted in this particular cherish singular delusions. That these incorrect ideas persist is due, I believe, to the fact that they are constantly put forward by the edi- tors of newspapers and the civil lead- ers who know them to be false. One cannot avoid the conclusion that there is systematic and willful misrep- resentation of the United States on the part of the Spanish leaders. Why this is s0 is hard te say, but it accounts for the general misinformation that ob- tains throughout Spain on this partic- ular subject. Well-educated Spaniards believe that there is a small cultured class in the United States, but that as a nation we are made up chiefly of shop-keepers and ditch-diggers. They have been told over and over again that we have no courage, that we are afraid to fight, that our navy is useless, or nearly so, and that our lead- ers are all blowhard politicians. Nat- urally they have come to believe this, and so confidently expect to whip us. As for the lower classes, they actual- ly believe that the principal industry of America is the raising of hogs, and at the word Americancs they conjure up visions of swine herders and their droves. One or two instances will give a bet- ter idea of these popular misconcep- tions. A comic paper has just been started in Madrid. It is called “The Porker” and is devoted to the ridicule of Americans. The title does not seem at all crude or exaggerated to the av- erage Spaniard, I'll warrant. The other day the Spanish press printed a report that the savages of Ohio and Illinois had risen and that all the regular troops would hav: to be called from the seaboard to quell the outbreak. From what I know of the state of | public information in Madrid I dare say this story didn't raise a smile of incredulity in all the capital unless it was in the case of scme American born Oany other conquests that may accrue Oto us through war. O We could not govern the millions or Opeople on the Philippine Islands by the Olaws of our country. They are entire- b Oly dissimilar in every respect. And it real:dent. It seems to be the settledowould be out of the question for us to Policy of the Spanish officials andgcolonize the islands with white labor Aiavspapers to Increase rather than to ‘trom this country, because they could Sispel fhis {emoramice. - Therefore ‘heonot stand the clm;ate Spanish people are likely to experienceo rom 8 commercial point of view a rude awakening before this war J50tnere would be advantages In the per- over, an awakening that ma e fraught with danger to these sania of-Omanent possession of the islands, but ficials, oto my mind these advantages are far At the same time I believe that those gmore than counterbalanced by the dis- who expect Spain to yield the present .advantages. contest without a struggle are badly© I think the wiser plan would be to mistaken. The Spaniard is really aOfollow the principles of our forefathers. desperate fighter when he is pushedoThe permanent occupation of the Phii- to_it. ippines or other foreign conquests ‘What Spain has done toward quell- _would bring about conditions with ing the insurrection in Cuba is not to®which we could not cope. be taken as a fair test of what she cano Y do in an extremity. There may haveg been sufficient reasons why the Span-o /| am opposed to the perma- ish generals did not wish to bring the Cuban war to o speedy end, and anyofnent occupation of the Philippines way in that contest the Spanish na- = tion has not been straining every nerveOr any other tropical conquests, as they will against the United States. p The Spaniard's boast about shedaingoas well as the annexation of the the last drop of blood in defense of his A8 . country's homor may be partly _bun: CHawaitan Islands.—dJohn P. Irish. combe, but it is not altogether with- e e out foundation. O The policy of holding any conquests Some of the wars between the Southowe may make in this war Is destined American countries, whose people are of Spanish blood, give instances of this©to 8ather very great force and may desperate species of bravery. In theOcarry the country off its feet, reverse war between Chile and Peru, after thegour historic policy and eventually Chilean vessel had been sunk and whileg change our entire system of govern- her crew were struggling in the water, ment. they still fought with their knives® The evils that le in it in the future against the Peruvians who came toOmay be wisely avoided by abstaining rescue them and died rather than ac-ofrom making this a war of conquest. cept aid at the hands of their enemies. The destruction of the Spanish fleet at I have been asked if I think that the® Manila was necessary for the protec- present plan of F“‘fi‘{‘g (i _samy bYO tion of our Pacific Coast. The tem- calling out the national militla Will pro-oporary occupation of Philippine points YACE A IOl e Cing oL o o othat can serve Spain as her naval base North had at its command at the be-O % COR S07 r Civ 7. cessary to protect the Pa- ginning of the Civil War. e The conditions are widely different,o®yC “085t but they are alike in this: At the be-. he permanent occupation of the ginning of the Civil War it was neces-©Philippines with the duty of civilizing Sary to make an army and now it igotheir ten millions of half savages in a necessary to make’ an army. TheregClimate in which the Anglo-Saxon race was militia to be called on then as.cannot flourish is a policy that should now. Perhaps it is a little more num- > not be thought of. erous and a trifie more efficient and® Our laboring population will be the better equipped now. o first, most constant, and pitiful suf- @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@g ferers from o lontal policy. As colonial poss: pines are i Possessions, Ur entry on an imperial co« Pl the Philip- mate to which o x‘;’x?;%icxta}:grxsa‘?{“;)t migrate and whe‘:; AR st be sustame?flll)zgr some Tabpr 2 Will show ‘me any form of hlsmryntth:tt}:?sfl? at any time in their a een paid on the tem- perate zone scale of wa, ges, I will - 315t 4s a private to-morrow or goert‘u s Philippines as a missionary. troV?Fn We assume colonfes the b g&s !Y'lcy can be made profitabla ot S nn'I:v by cheap and servile labor, nd a system of laws not applicable to ouTrhcnmmenlal domain. e products of cheap labor i n such colonies will destroy the value of the ptr(ilducts of our well-paid white labor at home. Our laboring population can~ not transfer itself to the tropics for climatic reasons. For these reasons 1 am opposed t ithe_ Permanent occupation of Sxe Phi: ar;pl\?‘:?l or a;]g other tropical conquests, as the annex. < waiian Islands. St I want to see the orously to victory, our country ing the war in war proseeuted vig- but I don’t wane stained in history by mak« manity and rights of man. — { cannot see sufficient justi- fication at the present time for the withdrawal of our country’s at- tention from the welfare of our own peaple in favor of a foreign people who are, in my judgment, not so deserving of nor so likely to profit by that attention.—J, B. Reinstein. In the matter of the permanent oc- cupation of the Philippine Islands by the United States it seems to me that it would be wise to adhere to the tra- ditions and policy of the United States as laid down by the great founders ang statesmen of our country. The United States find much trouble in applying the principles of our re public in our own country, and that after over one hundred vears of ex= perience. It would be extremely difficult for us to successfully govern many million inhabitants of a far off land, whosa manners, customs, thoughts and feel« ings are so widely different from our own. Permanent occupation of country carries with it the responsibility for tha betterment-of the condition of its peoe ple, and I cannot see sufficient justre fication at the present time for tha withdrawal of our country's attention from the welfare of our own people in favor of a foreign people who are, in my judgment, not so deserving of noe so likely to profit by that attention. WAR! AS THE AMERICAN CARTOORIST SAW IT DURING THE PAST WEEK. LAST OF T ° DON HEAR FRO T SMILE - TtLL YOU M SAMPSON (NY MeRALD) HE LINE = WYUK MORLO. ~ e \\\\\XL‘;‘\ S 7 ) 7 I a2 <~