Fort Wrangel news., 1898-10-05
TOPICS OF IHE DAY.
An Eegllsh Papers Argument for
 fioldlng the Philippines.
LONDON SPECTATOR.

We prefer, like most civilized persons, peace to war, but some Of the argn- ments just now employed to induce America to make a quick peace with Spain strike us as not only unfounded but profoundly immoral. What did America go to war for First of all, to terminate Spain's authority over her colonies, which America believed Co Do tyrannicai, destructive of human hap piness, and in all ways bad. Whether their evidence in support of that belief was good, ss VIC believe it to have been, or as bad as average Spaniards assert, or as accidental and temporary as many Spalnards maintain, has little to do with our present subject. The Ameri- cans believed the charge heartily, and so believing went into war which, to all human appearance, will end in giv- ing them the power to terminate the misrule which 30 aifronted their con sciences. A moralist would say, one AhAte oC great a work, they were bound to carry it through; that they bad contracted weighty, even terrible, obligations to- ward the colonists of Spain. and were bound to discharge those obligations without thinking too much of the con sequences to them solves. They can, if they like, being Angio-Saxons, give the colonists firm and lenient government, and, as the historian will say, ia the merest justice, and out o: decent care for their own selirespect, they ought to do it.
 That, EoweEer, Is not the opinion of most of OUT contemporaries either in Great Britain or in Europe. They are crying aloud to Washington to be "gen- erous in the hour of yictcry,'to restore to Spain, if not Porte Eico-tEe value of which as naval station they under stand-at all events the Philippines. We will tell them what generosity" un- der such circumstances means. 1t means that Spain should recover full authority over sO00,C00 dark persons whom she has for 300 years so governed that, as Mir Foreman testifies, the chil- dren fly with shrieks if they see Gas tillian," and should recover it at the very moment when every virtue as we'll as every vice in Spaniard will incline him towards severity in punishment. He will be full of loyalty to his country and full of vengeance against rebels who have insulted her, and in the strength of both feelings he will strike as Spaniards struck in Peru. It means that Americans, having encouraged them to revolt, are to hand over the two millions of Tagals to a nation which regards their revolt not only as a crime-that is usual-but as an un- paralleled insolence calling aloud for chastisement. It means that the Unit ed States, which of all powers should keep engagements because of her rela- tion to the two continents in which she claims homogeny, are to betray Aguin aldo and the whole tribe of Tegals, 100000 dark people who have accepted Christianity and display many con siderable qualities-though mercy, we fear, attracts them as little as it at tracts some Spaniards-into those Spaniards hands.
 America may be compelled by con tinental coalition to do this thing and yet be blameless, for there can be no sin where there is no will; but to do it voluntarily under the false plea of generosity" would be nothing less than baseness. She had better even partition the islands among the great powers, though, as we maintain, she is bound, having upset bad civilization, to provide good one, and not to shirk responsibilities which, from the mo- ment Admiral Dewey broke into the harbor of Manila, she took upon her self.-London Spectator.
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