The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1900-07-27


our opponents will seem not score OF
years hence. Picture to yourselves the
dreadful calamity that it would have been
had our nation in 1911 listened to the
counsels of the shortsighted and weak
hearted; if California, Texas and Florida
had been left as Spanish-speaking COM
munities, and if all the magnificent re-
gion from the Mississippi to the Pacific
had been turned over to be quarreled for,
either by local Indian tribes or by Euro
pean nations. Hardly less would be the
calamity if we now turn our backs upon
our duty and, with craven and abject
shrinking from responsibility, abandon
Our Part i'm the Worlds Work
and incur the deserved contempt of hui
mainly by deliberately refusing to take
our place among the great nations OF
mankind.
"Reme mber that expansion does
not bring war; it ultimately brings
peace. 1T is of advantage to all,
and especially to the people lifted
out Of savagery. We should hail the
advance of every civilized nation
over barbarOus peoples. SO long as
that advance is not made in some
form prejudicial to the rest of civil
lized mankind.
II wonder how many of this audience
are aware that up to 1880 the United
States paid tribute to Algiers to secure
immunity for our sailors and our COM
merce from the Algerian corsairs? The
reason we did not pay tribute after that
date was because in that year France
began to expand over Algiers. War fol-
lowed and lasted a number of years, and
| thee were foolish people who then wrote
in praise of Algerian independence, just
exactly as there are foolish people now
who talk about Aguinaldian independence.
But lasting peace, the first for many CEN
turtles, came to Algiers through the
French conquest, as it will come to the
Philippines through our refusal to aban-
don the islands. So Russia has advanced
/ over Turkestan and brought peace in her
train So it is good thing for Germany
| to begin to play her part abroad; and the
patriotic way in which the German peo-
| pie have upheld the German policy Of
building navy and seeing that Ger
| many's citizens are protected and Ger
many's trade rights throughout the world
/ guaranteed is an excellent lesson to US
here.
"The expansion of civilized peO-
/ pie means not war but peace.
Until we had expanded over this coun-
| try the border warfare between the white
man and the red and between the differ
ent tribes of red men was unceasing, but
now that we have expanded, peace has
come; exactly as peace has been brought
to Algiers, to Turkestan and the Soudan.
! by the great peoples of Europe. Every
such instance of expansion has been OF
unreasonable benefit to mankind, and
more and more the civilized peoples are
! beginning to realize that they can work
hand in hand with one another See what
no IN
notes issued by Won Buelow, speaking for
Germany. and John Hay, speaking for
ourselves, and see how absolutely alike
| are the policies therein outlined. We are
taking the only course consistent with our
material self-interest, our national self
respect and above all with the weli-being
of mankind at large. The best of all
things is where new nation can be
brought into tho circle of civilization, as
Japan has been brought, and where such
is the case America will ever be foremost
to greet the new civilized power and to
work with her as we now work with
Japan. But to refrain from doing QUIZ
duty in the world would be merely ulti-
mately to invite
The Fate Of China.
"The Chinese policy has always
consistently been against expansion,
ample of the fruits of such "a policy
when logically carried out.
"NominaEy her policy has been one Of
peace, and in reality it has simply been
one which invited aggression from with
out and melted her own people to fero-
cious and hideous barbarism. The So
called anti-expansionist. when logical
insists upon our abandoning the Ameri-
cans, missionaries and laymen alike, who
are in China to their dreadful fate with
out an effort to rescue them, and insists
that America shall take no legitimate
step to secure for our merchants, farmers
and wageworkers the benefit of the open
market.
Expansion means in the end not
war, but peace. But like every other
g-eat good it con normally be
achieved only by effort ut the out
set. Woe to us If we shrink from
such effort! Woe if we fail to do OuH
duty because the first step seems
hard to the veaIxIins and the men
of little heart! If we are to retain
the respect of mnnkind we must do
no wrong and must not suffer wrong
from others.
1--WE must strive with earnest good
faith to secure the steady betterment OF
the populations over which we assume
control We must show ourselves anx-
ious to work in spirit of frank and
open friendship with other civilized ma
tions. But we must no more shrink from
introducing orderly liberty and a just
and stable government in the islands to
which our new duty has called us than
we shrunk in the past from the various
kinds of expansion which carried us from
Florida and New Mexico to Alaska.
This election is more important than
any that this country has seen. save only
the election of "a, and we have the right
to appeal to every man worthy to cali
himself good citizen that he shall stand
by us in this contest for upright and
4 honest legislation and administration at
home, and abroad for the upholding OF
the flag and the great privilege of doing
the worlds work as beseems a great
world power.
study the Kansas City Platform
and you cannot help realizing that their
policy is the policy of infamy, that their
triumph would mean misery so wide
spread that it is almost unthinkable and
| a dicOrace CO lactipv that ronre than a