Salem Press

	"The President can direct the movements of soldiers in the field and fleets upon the sea, but he cannot foresee the close of such movements or prescribe their limits."
	"It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers."
	"No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag."
	"If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object?"

Milestone Documents of American Leaders
Speech at Dinner
of the Home Market Club, Boston

My fellow-citizens, the years go quickly. It seems not so long, but it is, in fact, six years, since it was my honor to be a guest of the Home Market Club. Much has happened in the intervening time.&thin;… We had four long years of adversity, which taught us some lessons that will never be unlearned, and which will be valuable in guiding our future action. We have not only been successful in our financial and business affairs, but in a war with a foreign power which has added great glory to American arms and a new chapter to American history.&thin;…

Many who were impatient for the conflict a year ago, apparently heedless of its larger results, are the first to cry out against the far-reaching consequences of their own act. Those of us who dreaded war most, and whose every effort was directed to prevent it, had fears of new and grave problems which might follow its inauguration.

The evolution of events, which no man could control, has brought these problems upon us. Certain it is that they have not come through any fault on our own part, but as a high obligation; and we meet them with clear conscience and unselfish purpose, and with good heart resolve to undertake their solution.&thin;…

The Philippines, like Cuba and Porto Rico, were intrusted to our hands by the war, and to that great trust, under the providence of God and in the name of human progress and civilization, we are committed. It is a trust we have not sought; it is a trust from which we will not flinch. The American people will hold up the hands of their servants at home to whom they commit its execution, while Dewey and Otis and the brave men whom they command will have the support of the country in upholding our flag where it now floats, the symbol and assurance of liberty and justice.

What nation was ever able to write an accurate program of the war upon which it was entering, much less decree in advance the scope of its results? Congress can declare war, but a higher Power decrees its bounds and fixes its relations and responsibilities. The President can direct the movements of soldiers in the field and fleets upon the sea, but he cannot foresee the close of such movements or prescribe their limits. He cannot anticipate or avoid the consequences, but he must meet them.&thin;…

We hear no complaint of the relations created by the war between this government and the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. There are some, however, who regard the Philippines as in a different relation; but whatever variety of views there may be on this phase of the question, there is universal agreement that the Philippines shall not be turned back to Spain. No true American consents to that. Even if unwilling to accept them ourselves, it would have been a weak evasion of duty to require Spain to transfer them to some other power or powers, and thus shirk our own responsibility.&thin;… We could not discharge the responsibilities upon us until these islands became ours either by conquest or treaty. There was but one alternative, and that was either Spain or the United States in the Philippines. The other suggestions-first, that they should be tossed into the arena of contention for the strife of nations; or, second, be left to the anarchy and chaos of no protectorate at all-were too shameful to be considered. The treaty gave them to the United States.&thin;…

Our concern was not for territory or trade or empire, but for the people whose interests and destiny, without our willing it, had been put in our hands. It was with this feeling that, from the first day to the last, not one word or line went from the Executive in Washington to our military and naval commanders at Manila, or to our peace commissioners at Paris, that did not put as the sole purpose to be kept in mind, first after the success of our arms and the maintenance of our own honor, the welfare and happiness and the rights of the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands. Did we need their consent to perform a great act for humanity? We had it in every aspiration of their minds, in every hope of their hearts.&thin;… Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sovereignty from their islands; and while the war that destroyed it was in progress we could not ask their views. Nor can we now ask their consent. Indeed, can any one tell me in what form it could be marshaled and ascertained until peace and order, so necessary to the reign of reason, shall be secured and established? A reign of terror is not the kind of rule under which right action and deliberate judgment are possible. It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers.&thin;…

The future of the Philippine Islands is now in the hands of the American people. Until the treaty was ratified or rejected, the Executive Department of this government could only preserve the peace and protect life and property. That treaty now commits the free and enfranchised Filipinos to the guiding hand and the liberalizing influences, the generous sympathies, the uplifting education, not of their American masters, but of their American emancipators.&thin;…

That the inhabitants of the Philippines will be benefited by this republic is my unshaken belief. That they will have a kindlier government under our guidance, and that they will be aided in every possible way to be a self-respecting and self-governing people, is as true as that the American people love liberty and have an abiding faith in their own government and in their own institutions. No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag.&thin;…

If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object! If, in the years of the future, they are established in government under law and liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices? Who will not rejoice in our heroism and humanity?&thin;…

I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do not prophesy. The present is all-absorbing to me. But I cannot bound my vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila,-where every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart,-but by the broad range of future years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just past, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas-a land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education, and of homes, and whose children and children's children shall for ages hence bless the American republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland, and set them in the pathway of the world's best civilization.