tice, it may be slight. At any rate, the more serious
the crisis the plainer our path. God give us the courage to purify our
politics and strengthen our Government to meet these new and grave
duties!

III

PURPORT OF THE TREATY

This speech was made, two days after the preceding one, on the
invitation of the Marquette Club of Chicago, at the dinner of six
hundred which it gave in the Auditorium Hotel, February 13, 1899, in
honor of Lincoln's birthday.

PURPORT OF THE TREATY

Beyond the Alleghanies the American voice rings clear and true. It does
not sound, here in Chicago, as if you favored the pursuit of partizan
aims in great questions of foreign policy, or division among our own
people in the face of insurgent guns turned upon our soldiers on the
distant fields to which we sent them. We are all here, it would seem,
to stand by the peace that has been secured, even if we have to fight
for it.

Neither has any reproach come from Chicago to the Peace Commissioners
because, when intrusted with your interests in a great negotiation in a
foreign capital, they made a settlement on terms too favorable to their
own country--because in bringing home peace with honor they also
brought home more property than some of our people wanted! When that
reproach has been urged elsewhere, it has recalled the familiar defense
against a similar complaint in an old political contest. There might,
it was said, be some serious disadvantages about a surplus in the
national Treasury; but, at any rate, it was easier to deal with a
surplus than with a deficit! If we have brought back too much, that is
only a question for Congress and our voters. If we had brought back too
little, it might have been again a question for the Army and the Navy.

No one of you has ever been heard to find fault with an agent because
in making a difficult settlement he got all you wanted, and a free
option on something further that everybody else wanted! Do you know of
any other civilized nation of the first or even of the second class
that wouldn't jump at that option on the Philippines? Ask Russia. Ask
Germany. Ask Japan. Ask England or France. Ask little Belgium![1] And
yet, what one of them, unless it be Japan, has any conceivable interest
in the Philippines to be compared with that of the mighty Republic
which now commands the one side of the Pacific, and, unless this
American generation is blinder to opportunity than any of its
predecessor