The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-12-31
EXPANSION AND PEACE
Some Things That Are Much
Worse Than War

Peace is great good; and doubly
harmful, therefore, is the attitude of
those who advocate it in terms that
would make it synonymous with selfish
and cowardly shrinking from warning
against the existence of evil. The
wisest and most far-seeing champions
OF peace will ever remember that, in the
first place, to be good it must be right
eous-for unrighteous and cowardly
peace may be worse than any war
and, in the second place, that it can
OFTEN be obtained only at the cost of
war. Let me take two Illustrations:
Inc great blot upon European inter-
national morality in the closing de-
cades of this century has been not a
war, but the infamous peace kept by
the joint action of the great powers
while Turkey inflicted the last horrors
OF putchery, torture and outrage upon
the men, women and children of de-
spalrlng Armenia. War was avoided
peace was kept; but what a peacel In
hnltely greater human misery was in
flcted during this peace than in the
late wars of Germany with France of
Russia with Turkey, and this misery
fell not on armed men, but upon de-
fenseless women and children. upon the
graybeard and the STRIPPING no less
than upon the head of the family, and
1t came not in the mere form of death
or Imprisonment, but of tortures upon
men. and above all upon women. too
horrible to relate-tortures of which it
is too terrible even to think. Moreover.
no good resulted from the bloodshed
and misery. Often this is the case in
war, but often it is not the case.
OF course our whole nation0l history
has been one of expansion. Under
Washington and Adams we expanded
westward to the Mississippi; under
Jefferson we expanded across the con-
tinent to the mouth of the Columbia:
under Monroe we expanded into Flori-
da, and then into Texas and Califor-
MIA; and finally, largely through the
fundamentally of Seward, into Alas
ka, while under every administration
the process of expansion in the great
plains and the Rockies has continued
with growing rapidity. While we had
a frontier the chief feature of frontier
life was the endless war between the
settlers and the red men. Sometimes
the immediate occasion for the war was
to be found in the conduct of the
whites and sometimes in that of the
reds, but the ultimate cause was sim
ply that we were in contact with a
country held by savages or half
savageS. Where we abut on Canada
there is no danger of war, nor is there
any danger where we abut on the we'll
settled regions of Mexico. But else
where war had to continue until we. ex-
banded over the country. Then it was
succeeded at once by peace which has
remained unbroken to the present day
In North America, as elsewhere
throughout the entire world the ex-
pansion of civilized nation has in
variably meant the growth of the area
in which peace is normal throughout
the world.
The same will be true of the Philip
pines. If the men who have counseled
national degradation, national dishon-
or, by urging US to leave the Philip
pines and put the Aguinaldan oligarchy
in control of those islands could have
their. way, We should merely turn
them over to ,rapine and, hloodshed I'M
til some stronger, manlier power
stepped in to do the task we had
shown ourselves fearful of perform
ing. But as it is, this country will
keep the islands and will establish
therein a stable and orderly govern
worlds surface shall have been
snatched from the forces of darkness
Fundamentally the cause Of expansion
is the cause of peace.
1t is only the warlike power of a
civilized people that can give peace to
the world. The Arab wrecked the civil
zation OF the Mediterranean coasts;
the Turk wrecked the civilization of
southeastern Europe, and the Tartar
desolated, from China to Russia and
to Persia, setting back the progress of
the world for centuries; solely because
the civilized nations opposed to them
had lost the great fighting qualities,
and, in becoming overpeaceful, had lost
the power of keeping peace with
strong hand.--Gov: Roosevelt in the
Independent.