th the utmost simplicity and sincerity by a
conspicuous statesman at Chicago. We might at once solicit peace from
Aguinaldo. We might then encourage him to extend his rule over the
whole country,--Catholic, pagan, and Mohammedan, willing and unwilling
alike,--and promise him whatever aid might be necessary for that task.
Meantime, we should undertake to protect him against outside
interference from any European or Asiatic nation whose interests on
that oceanic highway and in those commercial capitals might be
imperiled![14] I do not desire to discuss that proposition. And I submit
to candid men that there are just those three courses, and no more, now
open to us--to run away, to protect Aguinaldo, or to back up our own
army and firmly hold on!

[14] The exact proposition made by General Carl Schurz in
addressing the Chicago Anti-Expansion Convention, October 17,
1899.

[Sidenote: Objections to Duty.]

If this fact be clearly perceived, if the choice between these three
courses be once recognized as the only choice the present situation
permits, our minds will be less disturbed by the confused cries of
perplexity and discontent that still fill the air. Thus men often say,
"If you believe in liberty for yourself, why refuse it to the Tagals?"
That is right; they should have, in the degree of their capacity, the
only kind of liberty worth having in the world, the only kind that is
not a curse to its possessors and to all in contact with them--ordered
liberty, under law, for which the wisdom of man has not yet found a
better safeguard than the guaranties of civil rights in the
Constitution of the United States. Who supposes that to be the liberty
for which Aguinaldo is fighting? What his people want, and what the
statesman at Chicago wishes us to use the Army and Navy of the United
States to help him get, is the liberty to rule others--the liberty
first to turn our own troops out of the city and harbor we had in our
own self-defense captured from their enemies; the liberty next to rule
that great commercial city, and the tribes of the interior, instead of
leaving us to exercise the rule over them that events have forced upon
us, till it is fairly shown that they can rule themselves.

Again it is said, "You are depriving them of freedom." But they never
had freedom, and could not have it now. Even if they could subdue the
other tribes in Luzon, they could not establish such order on the other
islands a