, and, on the other,
formally cast the shield of our responsibility over Cuba when left
without a government or a sovereignty. Besides, there was a people
there, advanced enough, sufficiently compact and homogeneous in
religion, race, and language, sufficiently used already to the methods
of government, to warrant our republican claim that the sovereignty was
not being left in the air--that it was only left where, in the last
analysis, in a civilized community, it must always reside, in the
people themselves.

And yet, under all these conditions, the most difficult task your Peace
Commissioners had at Paris was to maintain and defend the demand for a
renunciation of sovereignty without anybody's acceptance of the
sovereignty thus renounced. International Law has not been so
understood abroad; and it may be frankly confessed that the Spanish
arguments were learned, acute, sustained by the general judgment of
Europe, and not easy to refute.

A similar demand concerning the Philippines neither could nor ought to
have been acquiesced in by the civilized world. Here were ten millions
of people on a great highway of commerce, of numerous different races,
different languages, different religions, some semi-civilized, some
barbarous, others mere pagan savages, but without a majority or even a
respectable minority of them accustomed to self-government or believed
to be capable of it. Sovereignty over such a conglomeration and in such
a place could not be left in the air. The civilized world would not
recognize its transfer, unless transferred to somebody. Renunciation
under such circumstances would have been equivalent in International
Law to abandonment, and that would have been equivalent to anarchy and
a race for seizure among the nations that could get there quickest.

We could, of course, have refused to accept the obligations of a
civilized, responsible nation. After breaking down government in those
commercial centers, we could have refused to set up anything in its
stead, and simply washed our hands of the whole business; but to do
that would have been to show ourselves more insensible to moral
obligations than if we had restored them outright to Spain.

[Sidenote: How to Deal with the Philippines.]

Well, if the elephant must be on our hands, what are we going to do
with it? I venture to answer that first we must put down the riot. The
lives and property of German and British merchants must be at least as
safe in