The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-03-20
WHAT OTHERS SAY.
WHICH WAY LIES NATIONAL
DUTY.
Springfield Republican.

Springfield Republican.
The only ground on which rational
men can tolerate the idea of war with
Spain is our national obligation, on the
score of humanity, to stop the wholesale
determination of the Cubans. The
minor incidents which have in1aIif~d
the quarrel ought not in themselves to
raise any question of war. The gravest
of these incidents, the blowing up Of the
Maine, if, as is almost certain, its causes
remain obscure, ought to be peaceably
settled by diplomacy or if need be by
arbitration. All the lesser causes OF
dispute have been handled by the re-
Sponlsible governments of the two coun-
tries with Il self restraint which prom
Uses well for peace. 1t looks as il the
president and people of America and the
rulers and people of Spain sincerely de-
sired peace between the two nations.
Each country has it's jingos and its vel
low Journals. But we here know that
the better mind of Aemrica as averse
to war. 1t is no great stretch of charity
to believe, judging from the course of
Sagasta and his cabinet, that the better
mind of Spain is averse to war.
The one deep sentiment which makes
toward war, on the part of our people,
is the sympathy with the struggle of the
Cubans for independence, and above all
an adherence of the merciless destruc-
ton of a harmless peasantry by the
Spanish methods of warfare. Before
the spectacle Of the country people
swept from their homes and farms into
the towns, shut off from the possibility
OF self support, and starving by tens Of
thnnGun6c hn with in
us, and the prompting is strong to stop
this horror at our doors, even at the
cost of war And against this cry of
human sympathy and righteous wrath,
the objection that we have no right to
interfere in the affairs of another nation
falls but cOldly. Are not nations in the
last resort members of one family?
Have we no obligations to humanity out
side our geographical boundaries? is
not the case of Cuba parallel to the case
OF Armenia, and if we stand idly by do
we not merit the condemnation we
visited on England and the continental
powers?
The force of these considerations is so
great that ! own the scale has of late in
clined in my own mind toward fOrcible
intervention. But other considerations
rise, and with growing weight as the
possibility of war looms nearer.
The principle that each nation shall
strictly mind its own affairs is not an
arbitrary or unimpOrtant one. 1t is the
fruit of long experience, and has ats
roots IN the deepest principles or ma
tional development. National salvation
must come from within. When after the
French revolution that people, tired
with sublime passion of universal no
erty, rushed forth to set all other peo-
pies free, they spread confederation
which involved all ChristendOm IN DIS
aster. In our civil war, it was the
principle Of non-intervention that heid
Europe passive, and allowed us 10 STt'.e
our own quarrel in our own way: II -
an application of the same principie ~
modified form which under our leu
eral system binds each State by an
iron clad rule of abstinence from anoen n@
er States affairs When lateiy nes ,N
postmasters family were muraeIeu pS
South Carolina mob, the righteous io