Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1899-02-18
Mckinley in Boston.

President Mckinley came to Boston
Thursday as the guest of the Home Market
club. He was met at Providence and es-
eorted into Boston where he was welcomed
with flags and bands and the cheers of
thousands of spectators. The banquet in
Mechanics building in the evening was a
magnificent affair; 1914 sat down to the
tables and there were hundreds of specta-
tors in the gallery. The feature of the
evening was the presidents speech outlin-
ing the adm nstration's Philippine policy.
Here are few of the good points he made
1.-The Philippines, like Cuba and Porto
Rico, were intrusted to our hands by the
war, and to that great trust, under the
providence of God and in the name of hui
man progress and civilization, we are COM
mitted. 1t is trust we have not sought 4;
it is trust from which we will not finch.
Gould we, after freeing the Filipinos
from the domination of Spain, have left
them without government and without
power to protect life or property or to per-
form the international obligations essen
tial to an independent state? Could We
have left them in state of anarchy and
justified ourselves in our own consciences
or before the tribunal of mankindp Could
we have done that in the sight Of God or
man?
odd we need their consent to perform a
great act tor humanity We had it in
every aspiration of their minds, in every
hope Of their hearts. Was it necessary to
ask their consent to capture Manila, the
capital of their islands, Did we ask their
consent to liberate them from Spanish SOW
erelgnty or to enter Manila bay and de-
stroy thu Spanish sea-power therep We
did not ask these; we were obeying a
higher moral obligation which rested on US,
and which did not require anybody's con-
sent. Viewer doing our duty by them
with the consent of our own consciences
and with the approval of civilization.
Until congress shall direct otherwise it
will be the duty of the executive to possess
and hold the Philippines making the
people thereof feel and know that we are
tn If friends, not their enemies but
that neither their aspirations nor ours can
be realized until our autho rity is acknowl-
edged and unquestioned.
No imperial designs Turk in the Amer
lean mind. They are alien to American
sentiment, thought and purpose. Our
priceless principles undergo no change I'M
der tropical sun. They 60 with the flag.
They are wrought in every one of its
sacred folds and are inextinguishable in
their shining stars.
Il have no light or knowledge not COM
m on to my countrymen. l do not proph-
esy. The present is all absorbing to me,
but | cannot bound my vision by the blood
strained trenches around Manila, where
every red drop, whether from the veins Of
an American soldier or misguided Fill
Pine, is anguish to my heart; but by the
broad range of future years, when that
group of islands, under the impulse of the
year just passed, shall have become the
gems and glories Of those tropical seas; a
land OF plenty, and Ct increasing possibili-
ties; people redeemed from savage indo-
lence and habits, devoted to the arts Of
peace, in touch with the commerce and
trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings
of freedom, of civil and religious liberty,
of education and of homes, and whose
children and children's chlldr n shall for
ages hence bles, the American republic be-
cause it emancipated and redeemed their
fatherland and set them in the pathway of
the worlds btst civ ization"