New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-12-26
OPPOSITION TO ISLAND STATEHOOD.
Not Opposition to Expansion or to Panama.

To the Editor OF TIE Tribune
Sir: Our important morning paper here, ''The
Washington Post" in commenting this morning,
not without appreciation. on the protest against
island States in the American Union. made in Mr.
Whiteaw Red's recent address before your New
England Society. says;
Mr.. Reid cannot be suspected Of a frivolous pre-
teEce that would be lnsoent II insncere yet II his
speech means anything respectful Of his audience
the headlong policy Of foreign interference and
5ppadon upon which our government mas a,i ems
protest against It's present evils, as wen as us
inevitable consequences.
Is not that an extraordinary non-seQuitur7 What
can The Post" mean by headlong foreign inter-
ference and spoliation7 If it means the retention
OF the Philippines, surely no now living is any
more responsible for that than Mr.. Reid is. II It
means the retention Of Porto Rico, he Is known TO
have been equally in favor Of that; and II It means
that his opposition TO making States out Of them or
out OF Cuba shows that he has changed his mind.
1t must have failed to notice or must have Tor
gotten that from the very start Mr.. Reid opposed
the notion of making States out OF these islands
as strenuously as he opposed giving them back to
Spain or throwing them away.
1t Is too much. I suppose, for anybody down
here to be expected to remember the record or any
man. not printed in the Congressional Record
And yet the little book published TWO or three
years ago by the Century Company under the title
Problems Of Expansion probably had as wide a
reading the Record In one OF Mr.. Reid's earlier
addresses preserved in that volume (made at Miami
University on June 10. 1897. he saws:
It was continental union OF independent SOW
ereign States fathers planned. Whoever pro-
poses to debase 1t with admixtures of States made
east or west is a bad friend to the republic We
may guide, protect elevate them, and even teach
them, some day. to stand alone but If we ever In
vite them into Senate and House. to help rule
US, the most imbectle OF all the offspring OF
time
Nothing Mr.. Reid said TO the New-England So
ciety the other evening more explicit than that
utterance, made in the first moments Of public de-
bate the Philippine policy, to which he was de-
voted. The next year he made another speech. to
be found in the volume. before the Massa-
chusetts Club in Boston. where he took exactly
the same ground. In fact the speech was largely
devoted to pointing the perils involved in these
schemes for making States out Of our new islands
The Posts" notion that the renewal Of these
old protests before the late meeting OF the New
England Society indicates any change Of views
about policy Of expansion seems as unwar-
bearing the present Panama policy. That is not
a 'headIong policy OF foreign interference and
spOLauOni ana il has no Te4auOn TO statehood
Nobody could be lunatic enough TO want TO make
State out OF Panama. and nobody. not even Senator
German, will want, a year hence TO be counted
against the course the President has SO wisely
AN OBSERVER AT THE CAPITAL.
Washington Dec 81 1903.