y condemns needless delay or half-hearted action, and
demands overwhelming forces and irresistible onset.

[Sidenote: Eliminate Temporary Discouragements.]

But in considering this duty, just as in estimating the Treaty of
Paris, we have the right to eliminate all account of the trifling
success, so far, in the Philippines, or of the great trouble and cost.
What it was right to do there, and what we are bound to do now, must
not be obscured by faults of hesitation or insufficient preparation,
for which neither the Peace Commissioners nor the people are
responsible. I had occasion to say before a college audience last June
what I now repeat with the additional emphasis subsequent events have
warranted--that the difficulties which at present discourage us are
largely of our own making; and I repeat that it is still not for us,
here and now, to apportion the blame. We have not the knowledge to say
just who, or whether any man or body, is wholly at fault. What we do
know is that the course of hesitation and inaction which the Nation
pursued in face of an openly maturing attack was precisely the policy
sure to give us the greatest trouble, and that we are now paying the
penalty. If the opposite course had been taken at the outset--unless
all the testimony from foreign observers and from our own officers is
at fault--there would have been either no outbreak at all, or only one
easily controlled and settled to the general satisfaction of most of
the civilized and semi-civilized inhabitants of the island.

On the personal and partizan disputes already lamentably begun, as to
senatorial responsibility, congressional responsibility, or the
responsibility of this or that executive officer, we have no occasion
here to enter. What we have a right to insist on is that our general
policy in the Philippines shall not be shaped now merely by the just
discontent with the bad start. The reports of continual victories, that
roll back on us every week, like the stone of Sisyphus, and need to be
won over again next week, the mistakes of a censorship that was
absolutely right as a military measure, but may have been
unintelligently, not to say childishly, conducted--all these are beside
the real question. They must not obscure the duty of restoring order in
the regions where our troops have been assailed, or prejudice our
subsequent course.

I venture to say of that course that neither our duty nor our interest
will permit us to stop sh