Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1899-10-27

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would have us withdraw our forces in
the face of the Filipino enemy and still
stand responsible, as we are by interna.
tional usage and law, to all the Euro
pean nations for the safety of European
residents in the islands. They would
have us retreat from Aguinaldo's rebel
lious hordes and yet prevent the inter-
ference of any foreign power whose law
full rights might be j%eopardized by tho
insurrectionists. We tried this plan for
six months after the Spaniards were
conquered. Knowing duty and our
full responsibility toward the European
property owners of Manila, we stood be-
tween their lives and interests on the
one hand and the Filipinos' fierce desire
for plumber on the other. For half a
year we held out the olive branch to
Aguinaldo, finally to have our soldiers
fired upon. We do not propose to try
the experiment again until the Tagalos
submit their case to peaceful settlement.
There never was a time, from the day
that Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet,
when we could have withdrawn our
forces from the Philippines and stood
erect before God and before the nations
OF the earth, as men, or as a power, en-
titled to a particle of respect" * X X
The Philippines came to us as the result
OF a righteous war; a wal which we did
did not seek, but which we could not
avoid. If they shall prove to be an as
sistance to us in Jour onward march to-
ward commercial greatness; if we shall
teach the Filipinos the rudiments of
progress and show them the way to per-
manent peace and reveal to them the
better elements of life through the in
huence of civilization, who will say that
the cost is too great, and that the name
of William Mckinley will not deserve to
be inscribed with the names of Jeffer-
son, Lincoln and Grant? Our demo-
cratic brethren have not always spoken
well of the two last named statesmen or
deemed it necessary to invoke their
records in the construction of their
party platforms. We make no objection
to it now. 1t is not the first time that
the democratic party has sought and
found it necessary to occupy the ground
over which the republican party has
marched in triumph"
but there is this difference between
the two parties. The democratic party
has ever labored to throw open the mar
kets of the United States to the pro-
ducts of foreign nations, to abandon our
rich heritage to the rapacity of foreign
commerce. The republican party has
always stood firmly for home industry
and home enterprise, with the result
that tiguratively we have built American
mills where democratic soup houses
stood before. We have established
American manhood and American wom-
anhood where democratic policy would
have endowed us with a population of
dependents, lacking the essential ele-
ments of prime citizenship. Republican
policy has protected and preserved us
in our natural rights and stood out
against the policy that would have sub
merged US with the products of cheap
labor. In this hour Of our commercial
triumph, with prosperity unparalleled
all about us, our farmers and mechanics
thriving as never before; while we are
selling u products to foreign consum-
ers as they vainly sought to sell their
products to us, the American people are
looking for new commercial worlds to-
conquer. We propose to feed the people
of the Orient. The millions of Asiatics,
endangered by centuries of oppression
and deprivation, are fast acquiring a
taste for our breadstuff. They are be-
ginning to buy the wheat of the west
and the cotton of the south. At last we
have found a market for our surplus
products; a market limited only by the
commercial policy that we ourselves
may pursue. These opportunities have
come to us as a natural result of politi-
cal policies which have strengthened us
at home; which made us first a self.
reliant people,"