Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-03-29

has not free hand to deal with these is
lands as their different conditions and
changing needs demand 1t is not only in
expedient but 1t may be impossible, to hold
them. To treat Porto Rico as we treat Ha-
wall. and to deal with the latter as we deal
with the Philippines and to apply to all
without delay the same fixed formula of
laws which custom and the intention of
statehood has prescribed for our territories
from which our states are formed, is a
proposition as mad as it is novel.
The Greatest Opportunity.
ave have the greatest opportunity, the
greatest duty, with which fortune ever
blessed its most favored nation. Events
have placed us in positions of command
over the Pacific. The key to the commerce
warden of the gates of the gulf. With The
canal a completed work, we control the
chosen and the natural highways of the
commerce of mankind more than any power.
even England More than any people of
history. Events are placing where We
may command and compel the peace of the
world. Porto Rico, Cuba the canal Ha-
wall, the Philippines, make us literally the
sovereign power among the nations. l say
make us the master people of the world, for
/ never will believe that We will surrender
our possessions to others, because We can
not invent sane and appropriate methods for
their government and control. ! will never
believe that our Constitution manacles our
hands and narrowS our vision and numbS
our Drdl1 i Will never ADMIT tnat our Con-
stitution is such charter of death. l will
never admit that our fathers, those master
minds of hlstorys most expanding and ad-
ministering race, so anchored US within a
narrow and Stagnant harbor when the
high seas call us, their islands are ours, and
the inhabitants thereof need our guiding, re-
straiHing and uplifting hand to regenerate.
to ciyiliZe and to redeem them No, My
faith is in a constitution which is a chart
by which we sail all seas and make all
purts-a constitution which is free COM
mission for the exercise of our strength as
1t Develops
Mr.. Beveridge pointed out that the needs
of all the newly acquired possessions are
different and are utterly unlike our Ameri-
can states when they We're territories.
THE opposition says that We shall be-
stow seifgovernment now" said Senator
Beveridge. THE government says that we
must not at the present time consolidate
them with the Safeguarding people of the
republic, the opposition says that they are
this already, by Constitution that travels
faster than our intentions and applies, by
its own force and in it's entirety, to situa-
lions for the control of which the fathers
wrote an apt and specific clause in that
very Constitution itself. The government
says that our power is as ample as the ne
cessities of any possible situation; that to
unprecedented conditions we may apply un-
precedented devices, just as our fathers ap-
piled new methods to the novel conditions
that surrounded them; the opposition says
that our power is limited to a fixed and
gency confronting US, not applicable to the
conditions before us. The opposition says
that in working out the welfare of our is
land wards, we have no liberty of inven-
ton, no scope for the exercise Of common
sense no power to apply to one situation
that method which is best for it, and to a
different situation another method which is
best for 1t.
The Future for the Future.
1.-THE government says that we reserve
the future for the future, but that for the
present we will hold these islands as a
sacred trust for them, for us, for mankind
and for the world. dealing with them as
shall dictate. developing them into gardens
their inhabitants into happy and prosper
Gus peoples and when the time shall come,
If ever. that American ideas. American
methods and the American spirit change
the quality Of their blood the method of
their minds, the tendency of their charac-
| ter and their ideas. ideals and understand
ing of government, then our successors In
| the American Congress may admit or inject
them into the blood of our national life, as
| the wisdom and justice of posterity may
determine.
I'm a word, the question is whether the
| over our possessions, or whether II We re-
tain them, the Constitution gives them q
| free hand over US"
He considered that the destiny Of Amer
| Jeans as a master people was involved in
the issue before Congress.
Senators" he said, 1.-The profoundest
( faith Of the American people is that our
day as the master people of this world has
| dawned, and their profoundest resolution
| SO deep and elemental that it is an instinct
| Is that we will, in our great day of world
| dominion. do our great work of world re-
generation better even than England did
| her vast ana yet. compared with ours her
lesser work in her day. which now perhaps
| Is waning: better even than Rome did hers
| land at her Titanic achievements let no
man sneer); better still than the Greeks did
| their work. into which the very roots OF
our civilization and liberty sink and draw,
| through the soil of three thousand years
| some Of the most precious elements of our
moral and Intellectual life.'
An Unprecedented Situation.
! The situation facing the American people
was unprecedented. and our action must be
without example. The decisions of the su.
preme Court are not to the point, and where
| analogy applies those decisions to the pres
ent situation they are conflicting and con.
| fused. Continuing, he declared:
Il admit and assert the authority of pre-
cedent: I understand the philosophy, deem
As civilization itself, upon which the ar.