The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1900-08-03

York, are both themselves among the
most prominent stockholders in tho
worst trust to be found today in the
United States-the ice trust, which has
justly exposed itself to the criticism
which our opponents often unjustly ap-
ply to every form Of industrial effort.
"We now come to the Philippines and
to the general question of expansion,
Many of the positions taken Oy the
Populistic. Democracy at the moment
are so palpably dishonest and main
tanned in such palpable bad faith that
to state them is sufficient. 1t is hardly
necessary to discuss what they say
about ''the constitution following the
flag" The Democratic party never
championed The doctrine thus set forth
save in the dark days, when it had be-
come the
H~andnaiden of Slavery
and rebellion, and danced to any tune
which the apostles OF slavery chose to
pipe. When. under Jefferson, the great
West beyond the Mississippi was ac-
quired, when, largely through the in
strumentality of Jackson. Florida was
added to the Union, the new provinces,
with their Indian populations, were
governed precisely and exactly IN the
theory under which the Philippines are
governed. President Jefferson Sc
cured the Louisiana purchase just as
President Mckinley secured the Philip.
pines and Andrew Jackson warred
against the Seminoles when we had
acquired Florida from Spain, precisely
as General Macarthur is now warning
against the bandits among the Tagals
in Luzon. Unless we are willing to de
prive Jefferson and jackson of the
need of honor which has been held to
be peculiarly theirs, we cannot deny
the same high praise to President Nc
Kinley. At Kansas City, the men en-
gagged in preaching the gospel of dis
honor and Reputation solemnly assert
ed that imperialism abroad will lead
quickly and inevitably to %despotism at
home You men of Minnesota and the
Dakotas who are here this evening can
appreciate the fatuousness of that state
ment by the simple process of thinking
whether your liberties have been
abridged by the return of the Mime
sofa and Dakota troops who won such
honor for themselves in the Philippines.
There are geometrical propositions SO
essentially absurd that mathematicians
hold their mere statement to be equiv
alent to their ~refutatien. So it is with
this proposition. If it were worth
while I would point out its dishonesty
and insincerity. But fragrant though
these are. it's absurdity is so much more
fragrant that nothing need be said.
$50 it is with their cant about mill
tarism and intimidation and oppres-
sion at home as following what they
are pleased 70 call conquest abroad
We cannot argue with them on this
proposition, because no serious man
thinks for one moment that they be-
lieve what they assert. During the great
civil war there were many preachers of
the gospel of ~disloyalty among the So
called copperheads of the north, and
these men, like their representatives
among our opponents today, prophesied
the subdivision of the country when the
great armies of Grant and Sherman
should come back from the war; but the
great armies of Grant and Sherman re-
turned to civil life and were swallowed
up among their fellow citizens without
a ripple. A considerable army was
kept for a year or two OIL the Indian
frontier and i'll some of the southern
states, but it never entered the head of
a human being to attempt what
The Copperhead Prophets
of disaster had frantically foretold. In
'9S and '99 you yourselves saw regi-
ments and brigades and divisions re-
turn from Cuba, Porto Rico and the
Philippines, to be disbanded and swal-
lowed up in the mass of the people, if
volunteers, and if regulars to assume
their ordinary work i'll fort and canton
ment, and after greeting them on the
day they returned the bulk Of the peo-
pie would never have been able to tell,
except by the newspapers, whether they
had come back or not.
"Of all idle chatter the talk of the
danger of militarism is the idlest. The
army we have now is, relatively to the
population of the country, less in size
than it has been again and again dur
the last century and a quarter, in times
when we had only our OWL Indians to
guard against. In Washington'sadmjn-
istration Gen. Wayne spent some three
years in Ohio warning against the
Tagals of that day, with an army under
him larger i'll proportion to the then
population of the nation than all our
present national forces, regulars and
volunteers combined, and there is just
as little danger from the evils of mill
tarism now us there was then. 1t is as
utter folly to talk of our liberties as
menaced by the existence of a force
capable of keeping order in our outly-
ing possessions as it would have been to
talk of their being menaced i'll the
seventies by the soldiers who followed
Custer and his fellows against Co.
manche, Apache and Sioux.
Il would ask those who by their
words have encouraged the warfare of
the Filipinos against US to recall the
letter of General Lawton, written just
haforo bic death in ubicb bo DOi,to1