Barre evening telegram. (Barre, Vt.) 1898-19??, 1899-10-23
Expansion.


The one great question uppermost
in the minds of the American people
is ''Imperialism," or territorial expan'
sion. One party favors the holding
of all territory acquired in the late
war with Spain and is opposed to tax,
ing down the stars and stripes that
now so proudly float over the new pos
sessions and especially the Philippines.
The other party says the United
States should haul down it's flag and
retire from those islands just as soon
as possible, and end the war with the
Filipinos on the best terms possible.
Thomas B. Reed, the brainiest
American living today, has been
counted as belonging to the latter
class.
His great speech Saturday at Prince
ton college emphatically puts this
idea to rest. He said:
Everybody now realizes that, once
war was begun, absolutely the most
efficient means of making it speedily
and overwhelmingly victorious, as
well as defending the most exposed
half of our own coast, was to 60 to
Manila. Find the Spanish fleet and
destroy it,, was as wise an order as
the President ever issued, and he was
equally wise in choosing the man to
carry it out. There is no need to
debate whether Dewey was right in
staying there. The administration
that would have ordered him to aban-
don the eastern foothOld he had con-
quered for his country would have
deserved to be hooted out of the capt.
tai. There is no need to debate
whether the peace commissioners
should have thrown away in Paris
what Dewey had won in Manila. 1t
was their obvious duty to hold what
Dewey had won at least until the
American people had time to consider
and decide otherwise.
II venture to say that neither our
duty nor our interest will permit us to
stop short of pacitication, which can
only end in the establishment of such
local self-government as the Filipino
people are found capable of conduct
ing, and it's extension just as far and
as fast as the people prove fit for it,.
The natural development thus to be
expected would probably proceed safely
along the lines of least resistance,
about in this order: First, and until
entirely clear that it is no longer need
ed, military government.
Next, the rule of either military or
civil governors for a considerable
time, probably the former, relying
gradually more and more on native
Thirdly. the development
of dependencies with an American
civil governor with their foreign re-
lations and their highest courts con-
trolled by us, and their financial sys-
TEN largely managed by members of
a rigidly organized and jealousy pro-
tected American civil service; but in
most other respects steadily becoming
more self-governing. And finally au-
tonmous colonies, looking to us for
little save the control of their foreign
relations, protiting by the stability
and order the backing of a powerful
nation guarantees, cultivating more
and more intimate trade and personal
relations with that nation, and COM
ing to feel themselves participants Of
it's fortune and renown.
"What, then, is the conclusion of
the whole matter?"
"IIold fast.
"Stand firm in the place where
providence has put you, and do the
duty of just responsibility for your own
past acts imposed. Support the army |
you sent there. Stop wasting valu-
able strength by showing how things
might be different, if something diff
ferent had been done year and a half |
ago. Use the educated thought of |
the country for shaping best its
course now, instead of chiefly finding
fault with it's history.
"Bring the best hope of the future,
5he colleges and the generation they
Ire training, to exert the greatest in
iuence and accomplish the most good
by working intelligently in line with
jhe patriotic inspirations and the in
,vitable tendencies of the American
people, rather than against them.
Unite the efforts of all men of good
will to make the appointment of any
person to these new and strange du-
les beyond seas impossible save for
cause.
Orally the colleges and the churches
md all the influence, the brain and
he conscience of the country, in
and irresistible demand for
genuine, trained and pure civil SER
ice in our new possessions, that shall
,ut to shame our detractors, and show
o the world the Americans of this
equal still to the work of
Utilization and colonization, and lead
ng the development of the coming
entury as bravely as their fathers led
in the last"