s passed the mill. Nothing in
human power can ever restore the United States to the position it
occupied the day before Congress plunged us into the war with Spain, or
enable us to escape what that war entailed. No matter what we wish, the
old continental isolation is gone forever. Whithersoever we turn now,
we must do it with the burden of our late acts to carry, the
responsibility of our new position to assume.

When the sovereignty which Spain had exercised with the assent of all
nations over vast and distant regions for three hundred years was
solemnly transferred under the eye of the civilized world to the United
States, our first responsibility became the restoration of order. Till
that is secured, any hindrance to the effort is bad citizenship--as bad
as resistance to the police; as much worse, in fact, as its
consequences may be more bloody and disastrous. "You have a wolf by the
ears," said an accomplished ex-Minister of the United States to a
departing Peace Commissioner last autumn. "You cannot let go of him
with either dignity or safety, and he will not be easy to tame."

[Sidenote: Policy for the New Possessions.]

But when the task is accomplished,--when the Stars and Stripes at last
bring the order and peaceful security they typify, instead of wanton
disorder, with all the concomitants of savage warfare over which they
now wave,--we shall then be confronted with the necessity of a policy
for the future of these distant regions. It is a problem that calls for
our soberest, most dispassionate, and most patriotic thought. The
colleges, and the educated classes generally, should make it a matter
of conscience--painstakingly considered on all its sides, with
reference to International Law, the burdens of sovereignty, the rights
and the interests of native tribes, and the legitimate demands of
civilization--to find first our national duty and then our national
interest, which it is also a duty for our statesmen to protect. On such
a subject we have a right to look to our colleges for the help they
should be so well equipped to give. From these still regions of
cloistered thought may well come the white light of pure reason, not
the wild, whirling words of the special pleader or of the partizan,
giving loose rein to his hasty first impressions. It would be an ill
day for some colleges if crude and hot-tempered incursions into current
public affairs, like a few unhappily witnessed of late, should lead
even the