The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-04-28

drowned in the depth of the sea History
VIII acquit the President of such an act
OF hostility to the public welfare. Instead
of throwing away the prospect of peaceful
settlement he has allied himself with every
honorable influence in favor of such solu-
ton of the perilouS questions involved. He
has been maligned by his enemies and mis-
understood by his friends, because he has
had the wisdom TO inquire the prudence to
prepare and the craftsmanship to look be-
fore and after If it should turn out that
the people of the United States have blum
dered, If the time should ever come when
the burden. the blOodshed and expense of
our Cuban protectorate stirs up the oppose
ton of the country there is at least one
man In the public life of these times who
VIII be able to look his countrymen square
~ IN the face and say to them: i did the
best could TO save my fellow citiZens from
these disasters and these burdens When
l near men complain that the President has
given his party In this crisis timd and
hesitating leadership, / cannot forbear ex-
pressing my. own satisfaction that he was
great enough in heart and brain and con-
science. in the presence of a public danger.
TO think of his country as well as of his
party, and, instead of struttng before the
world, was willing to become in a real sense
inc servant of the American people. In that
view OF our present surroundings there is
satisfaction also in the fact that our case
as finally stated by Congress, is good both
In law and in equity. d"
TIME HAS COME FOR ACTION.
After more than fifty years of patient
tolerations the time has come at last to
make an end to the state of anarchy in
Cuba As the moment for action approached
every emotion was subordinated in the ma
tional purpose to the high and patriotic
motives which mankind everywhere must
approve We have not acted sudden
provocation, great or small Again and
again the Nation has ignored its interests
conquered it's sympathies and restrained
Its IL, wrath; that no just imputation might be
maze against us in the Supreme Court of
the worlds opinion There is not a conn
try of Europe which, if situated as we have
been, would have endured what we have
suffered in the succession of civil wars
which for the last generation have desc
lated that helpless island of the seas His
tory will he our judge that in all these
years, for the sake of the worlds peace We
have chosen to wrong ourselves rather than
TO give warrant to suspicion of injustice
against the government of Spain. We have
not coveted her territory. We have not
obstructed her administration We have not
withheld from her dynasty or from her peo-
pie the offices of international courtesy and
we have citizens there whose property
mas been totally destroyed, their business
broken up and they themselves cast with
out trial into the military prisons of Havana
or left to beg among the miserable refugees
ABOUT Matanzas. Yet though We speak the
English tongue we have consented to nego-
tate for their relief and have feebly tried
to do with diplomatic correspondence what
other countries are accustomed to do with
A forbearance like that, such an anxiety to
Keep peace, born of neither weakness nor
Tear. presents record of national self-re-
straint that has not escaped the attention
of the world at large Even in the troubled
time when rumor and hearsay successfully
competed with the truth for a place in the
headlines of the daily press the President
of the United States kept his course, re-
fuslpg TO be coerced or driven. or turned
conscience grateful for confidence of men
of sense, Indifferent to the noise of cheap
and transient tongues.
If any have grown restless and uneasy
in the Slow movement of events. if this
chamber has been degraded by brutal and
lncoherent SANDERS against his name, if the
honest seal of some has tried to outrun
him to the goal. and the crafty zeal of
others to run over him, the time for con-
troVersy with all such is passed. But as
one who has never for a moment doubted
his wisdom or his patriotism l venture the
prediction that when these days of feverish
ard bahbling criticism are forgotten the
world will hold in increasing honor that
brave and kindly man who, in the midst
of an unexampled clamor. his lips sealed
by the very nature of his duty, has had the
moral heroism, while the smallest chance
remained to stand the magistrate of
Christian people, exercising the influence of
his office for an honorable peace.
SPAIN HARD HEARTED.
''The fact that all these humane aspira-
tons of our government, known and read
of all men, have called out no adequate re-
Spouse either from Havana or Madrid, fully
verifies the picture of Spain drawn by the
historian, Buckle-'She sleeps on unmoved,
unheeding, impressive, receiving no impress
sion from the outside world and asking no
impression upon it. Even the events of the
last two months in which our people have
waited in pitiful silence while a board Of
officers, famous and honored in the service,
have taken testimony that tells the awful
tragedy of our Inflated man-of-War have not
awakened her. That testimony, including
the unanswerable witness of the wreck
itself, is now before the world, and if the
national Indignation has not long since
avenged the CHASTITY crime it is because all
hearts have been stirred by the revelation
of a crime, still more ghastly-the atrocity
which deliberately planned the eXtermina-
ton of an innocent community, and within
sight of our own shores has turned the
fairest landscape of the earth into a hideous
spectacle of cruelty and torture. The de-
spair of men and women. the bitter cry of
starving children, the agonies of the living,
the skeletons of the dead. these incredible
realities in Spanish warfare have driven
from the minds of the American people all
thought of themselves, of their commerce
scattered to the winds. of their property de-
spoiled, of their countrymen cast into dun
geons, of their seamen entrapped and assas-
Sinated; all thought even of the ragged lit
tie army of freedom yonder in the inVincible
mountains of Santiago, and have filed the
heart of the great Republic with sense of
its divine mission to help and mercy to the
periShing multtudeS of that wasted and
stricken population.
I'VE cannot stop now to put forward
claim to be reckoned in the coinage of a
bankrupt treasury for the noble ship which
lies to-day, broken and dismantled, in the
most infamous harbor of all the seas, We
do not know how to find by paltry calcua-
tion the equivalent of human lives We will
not betray our dead. The Nation of Ameri-
ca, in the fear of God, counting all the
costs, exacts from Spain indemnity in full
for the abuses of the past. Not the soil of
subjuga:ed provinces. but the emancipation
of an oppressed race; not the ransom of be-
Sieged cities, but the nobler satisfaction of
raising the flag of a free commonwealth to
keep watch with tender gratitude forever
above the dust of the unforgotten heroes
of the Maine"
TEARS IN MANY EYES.
While Mr.. Doliver was speaking many of
the ladies in the galleries wept and when he
concluded his brilliant peroration there was
scarcely dry eye in the vast hall The dem
onstration which followed continued for sew
eral minutes
Mr.. Bell Pop., Col.), in stating the posi-
ton of the Populists, announced his unal-
terable opposition to the bond provision of
the bill.
Mr.. Sayers Dem. Tex), in ten minute
speech, said that the bill proposed to place
at the disposal of the COVER nent $500 O0O, 600
an addition to the ordinary revenues. The
expenses of the civil war in 1864 were ST.
1t1,CC3, GEO. But the government was then
supporting an army of 100000 men and
fleets containing four times as many war
ships now have. While no one would
go farther than he in the support of the gov
eminent, with these facts before him he
felt convinced that $3.50 100000 was vastly
gerous The corridors Of the Capitol already
swarmed with men seeking fat contracts.