when it began. Where was the indemnity that, under
such circumstances, it is the duty of the victorious nation to exact,
not only in its own interest, but in the interest of a Christian
civilization and the tendencies of modern International Law, which
require that a nation provoking unjust war shall smart for it, not
merely while it lasts, but by paying the cost when it is ended? Spain
had no money even to pay her own soldiers. No indemnity was possible,
save in territory. Well, we once wanted to buy Cuba, before it had
been desolated by twelve years of war and decimated by Weyler; yet
our uttermost offer for it, our highest valuation even then, was
$125,000,000--less than half the cost of our war. But now we were
precluded from taking Cuba. Porto Rico, immeasurably less important to
us, and eight hundred miles farther away from our coast, is only one
twelfth the size of Cuba. Were the representatives of the United
States, charged with the duty of protecting not only its honor, but its
interests, in arranging terms of peace, to content themselves with
little Porto Rico, away off a third of the way to Spain, plus the petty
reef of Guam, in the middle of the Pacific, as indemnity for an
unprovoked war that had cost and was to cost their country
$300,000,000?

[Sidenote: The Trouble they Give--are they Worth it?]

But, some one exclaims, the Philippines are already giving us more
trouble than they are worth! It is natural to say so just now, and it
is partly true. What they are worth and likely to be worth to this
country in the race for commercial supremacy on the Pacific--that is to
say, for supremacy in the great development of trade in the Twentieth
Century--is a question too large to be so summarily decided, or to be
entered on at the close of a dinner, and under the irritation of a
Malay half-breed's folly. But nobody ever doubted that they would give
us trouble. That is the price nations must pay for going to war, even
in a just cause. I was not one of those who were eager to begin this
war with Spain; but I protest against any attempt to evade our just
responsibility in the position in which it has left us. We shall have
trouble in the Philippines. So we shall have trouble in Cuba and in
Porto Rico. If we dawdle, and hesitate, and lead them to think we fear
them and fear trouble, our trouble will be great. If, on the other
hand, we grasp this nettle danger, if we act promptly, with inexorable
vigor and with jus