s, will soon command the other?

[1] At this time it was still a secret that among the many
intrigues afoot during the negotiations at Paris was one for the
transfer of the Philippines to Belgium. But for the perfectly
correct attitude of King Leopold, it might have had a chance to
succeed, or at least to make trouble.

Put yourselves for a moment in our place on the Quai d'Orsay. Would you
really have had your representatives in Paris, the guardians of your
honor in negotiating peace with your enemy, declare that while Spanish
rule in the West Indies was so barbarous that it was our duty to
destroy it, we were now so eager for peace that for its sake we were
willing in the East to reestablish that same barbarous rule? Or would
you have had your agents in Paris, the guardians also of your material
interests, throw away all chance for indemnity for a war that began
with the loss of 266 American sailors on the _Maine_, and had cost
your Treasury during the year over $240,000,000? Would you have had
them throw away a magnificent foothold for the trade of the farther
East, which the fortune of war had placed in your hand, throw away a
whole archipelago of boundless possibilities, economic and strategic,
throw away the opportunity of centuries for your country? Would you
have had them, on their own responsibility, then and there decide this
question for all time, and absolutely refuse to reserve it for the
decision of Congress and of the American people, to whom that decision
belongs, and who have the right to an opportunity first for its
deliberate consideration?

[Sidenote: Some Features in the Treaty.]

Your toast is to the "Achievements of American Diplomacy." Not such
were its achievements under your earlier statesmen; not such has been
its work under the instructions of your State Department, from John
Quincy Adams on down the honored line; and not such the work your
representatives brought back to you from Paris.

They were dealing with a nation with whom it has never been easy to
make peace, even when war was no longer possible; but they secured a
peace treaty without a word that compromises the honor or endangers the
interests of the country.

They scrupulously reserved for your own decision, through your Congress
or at the polls, the question of political status and civil rights for
the inhabitants of your new possessions.

They resisted adroit Spanish efforts for special privi