The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1902-06-04


the Confederate Congress in October
accused you at great length and
with much particularly of contempt
nous disregard of the usages of civil
lied war. " Verify, these men who
thus foully slandered you have their
heirs today in those who traduce your
armies in the Philippines, who fix
their eyes OH individual deeds of
wrong so keenly that at last they be-
come blind to the great work of peace
and freedom that has already been &C
complished.
Peace and freedom--are there better
objects for which a soldier can fight ?
Well, these are precisely the objects
for which our soldiers are fighting in
the Philippines. When there is talk
of the oruelties committed in the
Philippines, remember always that by
far the greater proportion of these
cruelties have been committed by the
insurgents against their own people
as well as against our soldiegs-and
that not only the surest but the only
etfectual way of stopping them is by
the progress of the American arms.
The victories of the American army
have been the really effective means
OF putting stop to cruelties in the
Philippines. Wherever these victories
have been complete--and such is now
the case throughout the greater part
of the islands-all cruelties have Ceas.
ed and the native is securing his life,
his liberty and his pursuit of happi-
ness. Where the Instruction still
shoulders there is always a chance for
cruelty to show itself.
But our armies do more than bring
peace, do more than bring order
They bring freedom. Remember al
ways that the independence of tribe
or community may, and often does,
have nothing whatever to do with
freedom of the individual in that
tribe or community But great is the
gain to humanity which follows the
steady though slow introduction of
the orderly liberty, the law abiding
| freedom of the individual, which is
the only sure foundation upon which
national independence can be built
! Wherever in the Philippines the in
! surrection has been definitely and final
! ~ put down, there the individual
Filipino already enjoys such freedom,
such personal liberty, under our rule,
as be could never even dream of under
the rule of an Independent" Aguin-
aldan oligarchy.
The slowly learned and difficult art
of self government, an art which our
| people have taught themselves by the
labor of e thousand years cannot be
grasped III day by people only just
merging from conditions of life which
our ancestors left behind them in the
dim years before history dawned
We believe that we can rapidly teach
the people of the Philippine Islands
! n ma IN
make good use of their freedom and
with their growing knowledge their
growth in self government can keep
steady pace,
When they have thus shown their
capacity for real freedom by their
! power of self government, then, and
not till then, will it be possible to
decide whether they are to exist indie
pendently of us or to be knit to US by
ties of common friendship and inter
est. When that day will come it is not
i'll human wisdom now to foretell.
All that we can say with certainty
is that it would be put back an i'm
measurable distance if we should
yield to the counsels of unmanly
weakness and turn loose the islands,
to see our victorious foes butcher with
revolving cruelty our betrayed friends
and shed the blood of the most hu-
name, the most enlightened, the most
peaceful, the wisest and the best of
their own number-for these are the
classes who have already learned to
welcome our rule.
Nor, while fully acknowledging ou1
duties to others, need we forget our
duty to our own country The Pacific
seaboard is as much to us as the At
lantic as we grow in power and pros.
perity so our interest will grow in
that further West, which is the i'm.
memorial East The shadow of our
destiny has already reached to the
shores of Asia. The might of our PEG.
pie already looms large against the
world horizon, and it will loom even
larger as the years go by. No states.
man has right to neglect the inter.
ests of our people in the Pacific; in.
terests which are important to all
our people, but which are of most i'm
portance to those of our people who
have built populous and thriving
States on the western slope of our
continent.
This should no more be a party
question than the war for the Union
should have been a party question.
At this moment the man in the high
est office in the Philippine Islands, is
the Vice Governor, Gen. Luke Wright
of Tennessee, who CALAMITY wore the
gray i'll the Civil war and who is
now working hand in hand with the
head of our army in the Philippines,
Adna Chaffee, who in the Civil war
CALAMITY wore the blue. Those two
and the men under them, from the
North and from the South, in civil
life and in military life, as teachers,
as administrators, as soldiers, are la
boring nightly for US who live at
home. Here and there black sheep
are to be found among them; but
taken as a whole they represent as
high standard for public service as
this country has ever seen. They are
doing great work for civilization, a
great work for the honor and the in.
terest of this nation, and above all for
| the welfare of the inhabitants of the
| Philippine Islands. All honor to them
and shame, thrice shame, to us if we