1907

"COLONY,"--OR "FREE STATE"?

"DEPENDENCE,"--OR "JUST CONNECTION"?

"EMPIRE,"--OR "UNION"?

From the time of the acquisition of Porto Rico and the Philippines, in
1898, under a Treaty with Spain which left indefinite the relations
between the American Union and those regions, the question of the
nature of this relationship has been discussed.

The Republican party, which has been in power ever since the war, has
justified its acts on the ground of political necessity. Its policy
has been that of giving the people of the Islands good administration,
just treatment, and all practicable self-government. The Democratic
party has declared such a policy to be only imperialism and
colonialism under another name. It has asserted that "no nation can
endure half Republic and half Empire" and has "warned the American
people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to
despotism at home." It has characterized the Republican government in
the Insular regions as an "indefinite, irresponsible, discretionary
and vague absolutism," and Republican policy as a policy of "colonial
exploitation." That the American people have believed the Republican
administration to have been good and beneficent, is shown by their
retaining that party in power. But it is perhaps not too much to say
that nearly all thoughtful persons realize that some part of the
Democratic complaint is just, and that there is at the present time a
lack of policy toward the Insular regions, due to the inability of
either of the political parties, or the Government, or the students
and doctors of political science, to propound a theory of a just
political relationship between us and our Insular brethren which will
meet with general approbation.

We are, however, not peculiar in this respect. Great Britain, France
and Germany are in the same position. In none of these countries is
there any fixed theory of the relationship between the State and its
annexed insular, transmarine and transterranean regions. The British
Empire, so called, containing as it does several strong and civilized
States in permanent relationship with Great Britain, gives many signs,
to the student, of the direction in which political thought is
traveling in its progress toward a correct and final theory; but at
the present time there seems to be no prospect of the emergence of a
final theory in that country. Here in America, political think