The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-03-17
THE DEMANDS or THE HOUR.

our country and countrymen by foreigners
are very often q source of amusement and
ridicule, and yet there are phases of Ameri-
can character, manifestations of what is
called popular opinion, that are so apparently
at variance with our political education,
national character, and what would be con-
sidered the natural results of our institutions,
that an American, one to the manor born,
can find no key that will solve the mystery.
We should therefore be modest at least in
our criticism of foreign writers on American
opinion and character who must Of necessity
write at disadvantage, when we are
unable at times, with all the lights about
us, to analyze causes and lay bare the
mainsprings that govern and direct popular
sympathies, or at least explain the surface in
dications of what claims to be the 'CoD
p0puk."
1t is reasonable to expect that the impress
of language, laws, literature, and political
polity will SO far shape the heart and mind Of
people that safe prediction could be made
as to popular opinion upon any important
question, foreign or domestic, that would to
any large extent appeal for approval or de-
mand condemnation. And yet this simple
and natural proposition seems widely at vari-
ance with facts, if we are to judge popular
opinion from the voice of the American
newspaper press. The physical difficult
ties overcome in telling our forests,
dedicating a virgin soil to agriculture
building houses, and peopling q new land
developed and ripened the already planted
seeds of political and religious liberty The
fruits of declared national independence
naturally followed and from that hour to the
present, through varied changes of gloom and
sunshine, the education of the people in heart
and mind has been to an appreciation of free
dom-to hatred and detestation of op-
preston. That this education has not been
without its higher and nobler victories as the
| years rolled on is manifest in the recent
emancipation of down-trodden race, and the
broader and truer Specification given to our
national emblem as the ''fag of the free"
And yet, in the face of our education and
entire history from its first written page at
jamestown and at Plymouth to the present
hour, the American people stand to-day
watching an unequal contest at their very
| doors; if not applauding despotism, having
no kind, generous word for gallant, long
enduring people, fighting in the name of free
| dom and good government against corrupt
| tyrannical, and cold-blooded despotism. If
it was a righteous thing for the American
colonies to throw off the yoke of George of
England, and demand the sympathies of the
| world in the after contest, surely it was right
for the oppressed people of Cuba to rebel
against foreign invader, whose corruption
and vices at home had called down the scorn
of the nations, and whose exactions and
| tyrannies in the island can only be fairly un-
derstood by those who have given patient
study to the unrelenting extortions and
wholesale robbery of a people to enrich
| protigate court and continually renewed
swarm of hungry adventurers sent out to prey
upon the land.
To draw up a bill of indictment that would
| in any fair way present the multifarious
crimes of which Spain is guilty towards Cuba
L Al,o.. L..
| There is not wrong of which nation can be
| guilty against nation, or despotic govern
ment against oppressed people, of which
Spain is not to-day guilty
Until the recent revolution, her Govern
ment at home was type of nothing that is
desirable in the present, and was indeed but
| half-dead representative of the corruption.
| weakness, and wickedness of the past. And
| now, at this hour, in spite of the few intelli-
gent public men that would direct her to a
nobler destiny, she totters and staggers in
her sham republicanism, half inclined to again
embrace the stupendous follies and corrup-
tions of the past.
From the corroding and deadly curse of
oppression under such power, q brave peo-
pie at our very doors struggle to be free, and
yet from republican America, from this land
redeemed and regenerated from oppression,
no voice goes up of succor and support. On
the contrary, all that the nation can give in
encouragement, gunboats, arms, and NUM-
tions of war, are reserved for the oppressor.
| All this seems strange, and passing strange,
that we, with all our antecedents, can be indif-
ferent to such contest. When Hungary
was in her death struggle with Austria, the
whole people were alive with sympathetic
ardor.
When Poland, the land of patriotism and
heroic valor, after sufferings that can never
be told, of famine, torch, and sword, lay
prostrate at the feet of her gigantic and un-
relenting foe, the heart of the American
people went out towards her in universal
coincidence and sorrow
When Greece contended against oppres-
sion although "wide seas and distant lands
intervened between her and u.s." yet our
hearts went out to that classic land of i'm.
mortal art and sweetest song, and American
statesmen were not afraid to hand down to
future times few burning words of elo-
quence for the land of Homer and Demos
themes.
All this is in the past. A change seems to
have come over 'the spirit of our dreams.
, Instead of people that could at least tender
! | their poor sympathies, if nothing else, tc
the oppressed and down-trodden, we have
become a prudeAt nation, which, fearing tc
lose a few dollars involved in the Alabama
question, would allow freedom to perish al
l our very doors. All this may be very good
statecraft. To our limited comprehension
it seems rather fShy. There can be no doubt
of one thing, however: it is not old-fashione6
American craftsmanship, nor is it of that
character that will ultimately command the
respect, sympathy, or support of the Ameri
can people. There are many people who be-