Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1902-06-12
AT LAST CLOSED.
End of the Longest and Most Ran
corous Debate in Many Years in
The Senate.

corous Debate in Many Years in
The Senate.
ssThe Lord be thankit," as Bobby
Burns would have said, the seven
weeks debate on the Philippines
government bill in the senate is at
last closed. So far as the Senate can
act the bill, with all its faults, is now
q law, but whether it will pass the
house in it's present form remains to
be seen. This debate proved to be
one of the longest, and certainly the
most rancorous, that has taken place
in the Senate in many years.
Millions on millions ofWords have
been spoken-words, words, words.
Unhappily, millions Of these ought
not to have found utterance in de
bate upon so great a subject. It
seems to be a measure for legalized
robbery of the Filipinos of their
lands and minerals. But in the clos
ing hours of the debate Senator
Quarles, a Republican Of Wisconsin,
denounced as ''damnable'' the sug-
gestion that the object of the bill
was to turn over the Philippines to
the exploitation cf carpet-baggers,
scoundrels and scalawags. Every
decent American, says he, would
hide his face in shame if that were
11r1f hot IL mot fF1In
Perhaps some one should have re-
minded Mr.. Quarles that what he
denounced in respect to the pending
bill was precisely what the federal
government did with the states Of
the South after the civil war. If the
Republican party so dealt with ma
tive Americans, why should it not
likewise deal with a semi-civilized
people on the other side ofthe globe?
Mr.. Quarles' speech was one of
several short speeches delivered in
the closing hours of the debate. For
example, Mr.. McLaurin of Missis-
sippi denied that the Democrats had
attacked the army and placed the re-
sponsibility for the outrage5 commit
ted in the Philippines upon the pol
icy advocated by the Republicans.
Mr.. Beveridge, of Indiana, he of
much talkee-talkee, chimed in to
say that the next worlds drama
would be enacted on the Pacific, and
it was essential that the mastery of
that great ocean should be ours and it
would be ours. Nainer Doasting one
never heard from an idle school boy.
But the clearest note struck in
either Of those short speeches was
that of the veteran Senator Berry of
Arkansas, a man who gave one leg
to the Confederacy. Effectively and
in strong words throughout Senator
Berry deplored the fact that the
President on Decoration Day saw
proper to make "a bitter partisan
Speech The president, he said,
had gone back forty years to rekin-
die the fires of sectionalism and had
referred to the acts of an infuriated
mob in the Sonth to justify, he sup
posed, the awful order of General
Smith in the Philippines, to shoot
all Fllpinos over ten years ofage.
Yet, now that the prolonged de-
bate is ended, it is to be regretted
that some Of the younger Senators
OF the Democratic side occasionally
made the grave error of holding the
United States army in the Philip
pines blamable for the acts of mon
strous cruelty and murder, done in
some instances by small bands of
American soldiers at the instance of
their officers, who acted under in
structions from those commanding
the army. Mr.. McLaurin of Missis-
sippi was wise in claiming that the
Democrats in the Senate as a whole
had not INDUCED in or encouraged
the TRADE against the army, butthat
they were fighting the policy of the
Republican administration.
Still, the indescreet remarks of
some of the younger Democratic
Senators, such as Mr.. Carmack, Mr..
Patterson and Mr.. RaWlins, have
conveyed to the popular mind that
the Democrats in the Senate were ac-
tually fighting the army. This inn
preston, though not true, is wide
spread. Nearly everybody in the
Union believes that to have been the
case, and to some extent, as is fear