approve it. International practice will
certainly hesitate hereafter, in transfers of sovereignty over
territory after its successful revolt, at any recognition of loans
negotiated by the ceding Power in its unsuccessful effort to subdue the
revolt--no matter what pledges it had assumed to give about the future
territorial revenues. Loans for the prosecution of unjust wars will be
more sharply scrutinized in the money markets of the world, and will
find less ready takers, however extravagant the rates. It may even
happen that oppressing nations, in the increasing difficulty of
floating such loans, will find it easier to relax the rigors of their
rule and promote the orderly development of more liberal institutions
among their subjects.

Far from being an encouragement, therefore, to repudiation, the
American rejection of the so-called Cuban debt was a distinct
contribution to international morality, and will probably furnish an
important addition to International Law.

[Sidenote: Ready to Pay Legitimate Colonial Debts.]

At the same time the American Commissioners made clear in another case
their sense of the duty to recognize any debt legitimately attaching to
ceded territory. There was not the remotest thought of buying the
Philippines, when a money payment was proposed, in that branch of the
negotiations. When the Spanish fleet was sunk and the Spanish army
captured at Manila, Spanish control over the Philippines was gone, and
the Power that had destroyed it was compelled to assume its
responsibilities to the civilized world at that commercial center and
on that oceanic highway.[4] If that was not enough reason for the
retention of the Philippines, then, at any rate, the right of the
United States to them as indemnity for the war could not be contested
by the generation which had witnessed the exaction of Alsace and
Lorraine plus $1,000,000,000 indemnity for the Franco-Prussian War. The
war with Spain had already cost the United States far above
$300,000,000. When trying to buy Cuba from Spain, in the days of that
island's greatest prosperity, the highest valuation the United States
was ever willing to attach to it was $125,000,000. As an original
proposition, nobody dreams that the American people would have
consented to buy the remote Philippines at that figure or at the half
of it. Who could think the Government exacting if it accepted them in
lieu of a cash indemnity (which Spain was wholly incapable of payin