en't seized an opportunity to run away
from some distant results of the war into which Congress plunged the
country before dreaming how far it might spread. You haven't dodged for
us the responsibilities we incurred."

That is true. When Admiral Dewey sank the Spanish fleet, and General
Merritt captured the Spanish army that alone maintained the Spanish
hold on the Philippines, the Spanish power there was gone; and the
civilization and the common sense and the Christianity of the world
looked to the power that succeeded it to accept its responsibilities.
So we took the Philippines. How could men representing this country,
jealous of its honor, or with an adequate comprehension either of its
duty or its rights, do otherwise?

A nation at war over a disputed boundary or some other material
interest might properly stop when that interest was secured, and give
back to the enemy all else that had been taken from him. But this was
not a war for any material interest. It was a war to put down a rule
over an alien people, which we declared so barbarous that we could no
longer tolerate it. How could we consent to secure peace, after we had
broken down this barbarous rule in two archipelagos, by agreeing that
one of them should be forced back under it?

There was certainly another alternative. After destroying the only
organized government in the archipelago, the only security for life and
property, native and foreign, in great commercial centers like Manila,
Iloilo, and Cebu, against hordes of uncivilized pagans and Mohammedan
Malays, should we then scuttle out and leave them to their fate? A band
of old-time Norse pirates, used to swooping down on a capital,
capturing its rulers, seizing its treasure, burning the town,
abandoning the people to domestic disorder and foreign spoliation, and
promptly sailing off for another piratical foray--such a band of
pirates might, no doubt, have left Manila to be sacked by the
insurgents, while it fled from the Philippines. We did not think a
self-respecting, civilized, responsible Christian Power could.

[Sidenote: Indemnity.]

There was another side to it. In a conflict to which fifty years of
steadily increasing provocation had driven us we had lost 266 sailors
on the _Maine_; had lost at Santiago and elsewhere uncounted victims of
Spanish guns and tropical climates; and had spent in this war over
$240,000,000, without counting the pensions that must still accrue
under laws existing