The Newtown bee., 1906-04-27

reached which ultimately brought Hawaii under the sovereignity of the Unite d States as an organized terri tory.
 Leaving the minister at his home, I took the Senator to his hotel, and ash stepped from the carriage, he said, "I guess the time has come when we must think about entering upon some form of a colonial system" From that day, the one absorbing thought ot his life was the relation which the United western hemisphere, should hold to the weaker continental powers and the islands in the two oceans which wash our shores, and when little later the war with Spain had thrown upon us the responsibility of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines, and statesmen doubted as to the right of a representa- tive republic to hold control and SOve- reignty ofeunrepresented peoples, he demonstrated beyond cavil or dispute, in a speech of wonderful simplicity but marvellous strength, that the United States possessed, inherently as we'll as under it's constitution, all of the rights and powers pertaining to any absolute ly independent sovereign nation.
 The Platt amendment to the Cuban constitution was only practical appli- cation of the principles enunciated in the earlier speech, and it is entirely safe to say that as Abraham Lincoln demonstrated to the world the right of the republic to preserve it's own life against attacks from within, so 1t is due to Orville H. Platt, as much as to any other one man, that the United States stands forth among the powers of the world today, the equal of any, in every right, in every privilege, in every degree and kind of sovereignty, and lacking in no respect in any pre- rogative enjoyed or claimed by any but this in his 20 years of service in the Senate, he would have left his im- print on the history of his time.
 He entered the Senate in 1879, an ordinary New England country lawyer, but great enough to stick when flung up against the chance of greater OppOr- tunities. For quarter of century he studied and toiled for the welfare of
 a grateful constituency, no want of theirs too small to escape his notice, no demand too large or too frequent to
 exhaust his patience, and yet through it all, 1t is manifest as we lOOk back
 over his life work, that he saw, as all must see, who in the thick of things at the nations capitol see at all, that the real welfare and enduring pros perity of his own little state was inex- trjcably bound up and absolutely inter. woven with the larger national life. l do not believe that it ever entered into l the mind of Orville Fl. Piatt that his efficiency as representative or h1s greatness as senator would, or could be measured by the number or size o1
 the appropriations which he might se cure from the national treasury for ex
 penditure within the boundaries of his
 states as "memberS of one body
 whose general welfare was his highest concern. Whether as chairman O1 the committee on territories Ol
 patents, creating sovereign states ir
 the then boundless West or securing for the individual the reward of in
 ventive genius, he worked just as pa
 tiently and devOtedly in the one case
 as the other, but his thought. hi'
 counsel and his vote were governed
 and controlled by the way in which ht believed the interests of the whOl'
 people were to be affected by his action He loved to stand upon the very hill
 top of national affairs and sweep int
 retiring into solitude and seclusion
 work out to wise solution tn
 problems of our national life, ove
 which other men, with selfish thought and narrower vision, Oftentfme
 stumbled and fell.
 He entered the Senate in 1879, liter ally g state-man, unknown to th country at large, and probably un acquainted with anyone there excep
 possibly his own colleague iron Connecticut. Twenty.six years late he died in his country's service,
 statesman in the true meaning of tha
 word, a leader among leaders, and dur ing all that time, no man can truth :. fully say but that he bore characte above reproach, serving with idellt and zeal, his state, his country and hi God.