Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1899-05-03
PRESENT-DAY THOUGHTS.
BY G. GRosvENoR DAVE.

| There are already indications that an
attempt will be made between nov and
! next summer to eXalt the subject of eX
pansion into the ranks of national
| political issue. 1t may we'll be regarded
in such light; for even granting the
diplomatic necessities that brought to
! pass our territorial expansion within the
past year, it nevertheless remains a fact
/ that tho creation of dependencies is re-
markahic departure from past standards.
Before, however, the presidential stew
| pot commences to simmer, there are
number of questions that ought to be so
clearly recognized by the general public as
having no bearing upon the main question
of expansion that it may be well to refer
at least to one Of them. 1t is being said
in print and in speech that the Filipinos
are fighting for exactly the same thing as
our forofathers, and that therefore there is
nothing to be done except to act on prece-
dents of the past and back out of the
! Philippines just as the British backed out
of America.
For what did our forefathers contend?
For that which they were well able to
carry government. What else did
they regard their inalenable rights?
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And in order to secure their point, what
declaration did they make regarding
themselves? That all men are born free
and equal-a sophisticai statement, for
whose unreality the nation they made was
almost disrupted from 81 to 60.
Y Il toll
these noble contenders for the rights of
men, ought themselves, earlier than their
own contention against the English, te
have backed out from America; because
the poor Indian himself fought a battle
for elfgovernment-afte his own idea i
and for life, liberty and the pursuit of
! happiness-aS he understood it. Vet
vow that there be few of us who would
have contemplated with satisfaction the
triumph of the savage Indian even though
he was contending for the land that the
great Father gave him, and the miles over
which his ancestors had roamed, hunted
fought and died.
Let US come down to even more modern
matter. Less than year ago there was a
fierce outbreak of racial feeling in the
South. White men We're organized in
certain amateur uniform and armed with
shot guns; not because the colored Ameri-
cans had any particular designs upon the
hearths or homes of their white fellow
men, or because they were trying to drive
the whites off any particular spot of
ground. In brief the trouble was this
that one hundred and twenty years and
more after the Declaration of Indepen-
dencc the descendants of those who fought
for Independence We're willing to take up
arms, to prove even by the death of their
coiofcd brethren that there IS neither
political equality nor freedom for all, in
this great country of ours.
This brief look at ourselves and our past
is designed to make one point clear in
order that it may be recognized as having
little bearing upon the present dispute.
The point IS that there is such Thing as a
dominent race, and while in theory men
are born free and equal, and While in fact
the pursuit OF happiness is the object of all
of Us, yet in practice the pursuit of that
happiness will ever have to be along lines
decided as to their direction by the domi-
nant race, or the struggle for that sup
posed happiness will have to be repressed
by the dominant race.
BY this do not for a moment mean that
! injustice should be done, but simply that
the assertiveness and the physical eX-
ubcrance of a barbaric or semi savage
race have always been considered tit sub
ject for repression in order to produce
governmental stability.
Bearing these points in mind and carry
ing there also the memory of what the
"men of 10 contended for, we shall see
that the Filipinos in the action they are
taking are certainly not parallels of our
own heroic past.
First, as to self government. Even the
widest armchair theorizer cannot for a
moment dream that these savage Malays,
Chinese. japanese, Mestizo. heaped to-
gether in eight million indvidualities,
have sufficient trust of one another or
knowledge of themselves to prepare a
declaration Of independence as broad as
that of Thomas jefferson, or to devise and
live under a constitution as elastic and as
enduring as that of the United states.
Besides all this, with their own natural
antagonisms and ignorant antipathies
arising from their imperfect idea of so
cial relations, the greatest hope for them
of either life or a shadow of liberty or a
CLINT of happiness, is to be found in their
remaining under the scholarship OF a
strong and steady hand during the years
OF their political minqnity.
Even those of US who are most opposed
to Americas assuming this tremendous
burden of dependencies thousands of miles
away from our coast line, must concede
this. that when it comes to question OF
the form OF government under which the
Filipinos can obtain the most satisfactory
results, NC dare not say Spanish nor Ger
man nor Iananr.t tho lattnr heinp too