The Irish standard., 1902-07-12

During the debate OH the Philippine
government bill in the National House
of Representatives on June 21, Con-
gresham Joseph a. Ccnry, of Boston,
made an eloquent and stirring address,
treating Of the atrocities committed by
our army on the Filipinos. He said
in part:
For almost four years the government
has been ut war with the people of the
Philippine Islands. ! am aware the
administration prefers not to dignity
the situation as a state of war, but re-
But call it war or insurrection, we
know that way out there in the Philip
pine Islands men are being killed, brave
American soldiers on one side, unfor
tunate natives on the other.
1t was but natural to expect during
these four years many cruelties o. d
revolving nature would be committed
as unavoidable incidents of a tropical
conflict.
We were prepared to learn our boys
had suffered at the hands Of the natives
torture and death.
This was the essential price we
agreed to pay for our imperialism. The
jewel money we gladly expended to
bedeck our flag with the pendants Of
empire.
At first we hesitated: the finest intel
lect and moral courage of the country
bade us pause and consider well the
full significance of the course on which
we entered Then the hoarse partisan
cry was uttered: commercialism at
home and abroad. selfish interests,
colonial ambitions, jingoism, all Joined
in discordant, passionate chorus:
The flag has been uplifted-now, who
will haul it down?
So the war went on. Apparently
the people approved of the action of
the government in sending an army Of
$4,000 men 5000 miles away to carry
the blessings of liberty and civilization,
first in gun barrels, then in whisky
barrels.
1t mattered not how many of these
men would come back as victims of
hideous disease: it mattered not how
many of them would be brought
back as howling maniacs: it mattered
not how many of them would never
come back. but whose bones would be
laid away forever in the jungle. say
the people apparently approve the war.
But it was not genuine healthy
American feeling-not the kind OF
spirit which pervaded the country and
moved the men who became our ever
lasting heroes on land and sea and in
the council chamber in Revolutionary
times: not the spirit which bulded the
foundations upon which rests today the
soundest structural framework of con-
stitutional liberty the world has ever
witnessed. There was something lack
ing. something absent, something that
could not quite arouse the enthusiasm
of the American people. Aye. more.
there was a strong suspicion strug-
Cling for expression that rather than
carry liberty and civilization and free
dom and hope and happiness to an un-
fortunate people who were actually en-
gagged in conflict to hold as unwilling
subjects people who of right ought to
be free and independent.
Oh. what an everlasting shame!
We who had been carrying on these
three centuries the struggle for the up
lifting of mankind. We who had reared
to the memory of our great teachers
marble and granite columns en- founda-
tions so firm and deep they seemed to
penetrate to the center Of the earth.
forming an axis around which revolved
in hope and confidence the freedom and
humanity Of. the world We who had
planted our standard so high, waving
in the pure free winds of liberty, pierc-
ing the fleecy clouds Of heaven, the flut-
tering folds of our colors mingling and
blending in consummate harmony with