The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-08-03
The Retention of all the Philippines
the Simplest and Safest Course.

1t is said that, when the disposition
to be made of the Philippines is under
discussion, some of the presidents adj
visers recommend that we should keep
only coaling station; others favor the
occupation of Luzon; others, again, are
Of the opinion that the annexation of
all the islands is the course least likely
to give us trouble in the end or to dis
turb the general peace in the far east.
Let us look closely at each of these
proposed solutions of the problem.
We did not need Admiral Dewey's
splendid victory at Cavite in order to
secure coaling station in the Philip
pine archipelago. Spain could have east
ly been brought to make this slight con-
cession at any time when the accom-
plished or prospective loss of Cuba and
Porto Rico should have constrained
her to sue for peace. If we intended
to exact only coaling station, it would
have been wiser and kinder to have
avoided any decisive naval demonstra-
ton in the harbor of Manila, for then
Aguinaldo's followers would not have
been emboldened to revolt, and thus to
expose themselves to future measures
of vindictive repression on the part of
restored Spanish authority. We should
not then have become accomplices in
the eventual butchery of men whose
crime is that they, like theCubans, can
not brook Spanish misrule, and that
they, again like the Cubans have looked
for deliverance at our hands. We shall
become accomplices, however, in the
massacre of the rebels in Luzon if we
restore the Philippines to Spain and
enable her to use for their subjugation
the 100000 disciplined soldiers now
stationed in Cuba and Porto Rico. If
that is to be the outcome of Admiral
Dewey's victory, his great achievement
at Cavite will prove to have been a
curse and not blessing to the temper
arily encouraged victims of Spanish
oppression. Our moral obligation to
give peace, order and civil liberty to
the transmarine dependencies of Spain
is, in truth, far stronger in the case of
the Philippines than in that of Porto
Rico. The Porto Ricans have not re-
of discomfort with Spain's administra-
ton. The Philippines, on the other
hand, have revolted many times, and,
for the last insurrection, we are our
selves directly responsible. But it
may be said by those who advocate the
retention merely Of coaling station,
that they do not intend to leave the in
surgents under Aguinaldo at the mercy
of the Spaniards; that, on the contrary,
they mean to require guarantees of
amnesty and good government. What
guarantees can be given by Spain that,
in the light of experience, we can,
without hypocrisy, accept? Is that per-
fdious power more likely to be con-
trolled by paper guarantees at the fur
Their end of the globe than she was by
those given to Cuba by Martinez
Campos in 1878? Let us not try to de-
ceive ourselves or others in this mat
ter. If we are determined to replace
the natives of the Philippines under
the yoke of their old taskmaster, let us
do it with bold and cynical indiffer-
ence to the opinions of the world. Let
US not sneak behind a pretended be-
lief in Spanish good faith and human
ity.
Those who favor the acquisition by
us of Luzon only, and the continuance
Of Spanish authority in the rest of the
archipelago, avoid the reproach OF
abandoning the insurgents in that is
land, whom we ourselves, by our tri-
umphant demonstration at Cavite and
other proceedings melted to revolt.
They also deprive the maritime powers
interested in the far east of any immedi-
ate pretext for interfering with the
settlement of the Philippine question,
for none of those powers can reasona-
bly, object to SPANS keeping as many
of her insular possessions as she can.
There are, nevertheless, grave objec-
tions to this course. Having lost Luz
zon, the Madrid government would
concentrate all its energies on the crea-
ton of new insular empire out of
the fertile and populous islands lying
south OF Luzon and upon the thorough
subjugation of the great island of Min
danao, to which purpose she could de-
vote the forces that will be set free in
the Antilles. We should have in Spain
vindictive neighbor hungrily waiting
for the hour when she could take us at
disadvantage or place her ports at
the disposal of power hostile to the
United States, and necessarily busted
in fomenting disaffection among the
natives of Luzon, whose language, cue
toms and institutions, 30 far as they
are Europeanized at all, are Spanish,
and whose Catholicism is of the big
oted Spanish type. The essential con-
dition of assuring tranquility, obedience
to law, and content with our admins
tration on the part of the natives of
Luzon is the quick elimination of
Spanish influence and the immediate