ll.

Come, Peace, not like a mourner bowed
For honor lost and dear ones wasted,
But proud, to meet a people proud,
With eyes that tell of triumph tasted.

I shall make no apology--now that the Senate has unsealed our lips--for
speaking briefly of this work just happily completed.

The only complaint one hears about it is that we did our duty too
well--that, in fact, we made peace on terms too favorable to our own
country. In all the pending discussion there seems to be no other fault
found. On no other point is the treaty said by any one to be seriously
defective.

It loyally carried out the attitude of Congress as to Cuba. It enforced
the renunciation of Spanish sovereignty there, but, in spite of the
most earnest Spanish efforts, it refused to accept American
sovereignty. It loaded neither ourselves nor the Cubans with the
so-called Cuban debts, incurred by Spain in the efforts to subdue them.
It involved us in no complications, either in the West Indies or in the
East, as to contracts or claims or religious establishments. It dealt
liberally with a fallen foe--giving him a generous lump sum that more
than covered any legitimate debts or expenditures for pacific
improvements; assuming the burden of just claims against him by our own
people; carrying back the armies surrendered on the other side of the
world at our own cost; returning their arms; even restoring them their
artillery, including heavy ordnance in field fortifications, munitions
of war, and the very cattle that dragged their caissons. It secured
alike for Cubans and Filipinos the release of political prisoners. It
scrupulously reserved for Congress the power of determining the
political status of the inhabitants of our new possessions. It declared
on behalf of the most Protectionist country in the world for the policy
of the Open Door within its Asiatic sphere of influence.

With all this the Senate and the country seemed content. But the treaty
refused to return to Spanish rule one foot of territory over which that
rule had been broken by the triumphs of our arms.

Were we to be reproached for that? Should the Senate have told us: "You
overdid this business; you looked after the interests of your own
country too thoroughly. You ought to have abandoned the great
archipelago which the fortunes of war had placed at your country's
disposal. You are not exactly unfaithful servants; you are too blindly,
unswervingly faithful. You hav