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classes are magnificently indifferent to the well-being of any natives, and will resent and thwart the first move to hinder them from consuming the natives as 'labor' and reducing their strength and life to 'profits.' The position of the moral and religious would be mordantly humiliating if they were serious and honest about saving the natives.

Events relating to the Philippines have already transpired to establish these facts. The National Christian Citizenship Convention that was called to meet at Washington, D. C., last December, issued the following remarkable subjects for the convention's work:

"Should suffrage be limited by educational tests or otherwise in the new island territories?

Should civil service reform be extended to the new island offices?

Should the national laws forbidding prize-fights and bull-fights, restricting divorce, and forbidding bigamy and related evils, be extended to our new island territories?

Should the American civil Sabbath be also extended to these islands?

Should the canteen be abolished?

Should the policy of prohibition be maintained in Alaska and the Indian Territory and extended to our new island territories ?"

Could anything be more delicately ludicrous than this program for reaching the great industrial evil, which we shall legally foster and protect in every island that we grab! We shall set up a system for legally robbing the natives of all their valuable possessions; capitalists will secure every fertile spot and hire the work done by native gangs at just savage subsistence wages; they will plant factories and use the cheap labor to undersell white labor in our own country and other parts of the world. But this outlook does not affront our Christian Citizens, for they are accustomed to see white men in their own country dealt with on the same

principles, and to recognize it as a wise ordination of providence. What troubles them is whether these savages will keep the Sabbath, whether they can be cut off from the few brutal pleasures accessible to their kind— prize-fights, bull-fights, etc.,-whether to prohibit them from drinking (it would make them more serviceable workmen and ought to be done), and whether the pagans can be restrained by our purifying law from the sin of wives and free divorces. Excellent fun indeed! Heroic work to do while the American people through their army and navy are assisting the capitalists to change the natives into that broken-down, wrung-out, off-scouring of civilization, the wage-worker. But while we are enforcing our sexual hypocrisy upon them will not our Christian Citizens prepare a convention against the palaces of prostitution that will enter with the white man's civilization, and forestall them by forbidding prostitution in the Philippines by law?

How much weight, then, should the plea of annexing savages to bless them have? Simply none. The altruists who are praying for a new chance to do good are deferential supplicators of capitalists for funds to paint over the deep wounds which capitalism will inflict. In timorous hope of contributions they have to creep before these great men with anxious circumspection. They can champion no reform that is odious to the lords of the purse. They may amuse themselves debating questions of the canteen, prohibition, bull-fights, divorce, educational and property tests of citizenship that would disfranchise the natives and give the capitalists legislative control, and even civil service reform to which only the professional politician could demur, but they will religiously let the great abuses alone: they will never utter a sound against the capitalist methods of employment, the irresistible processes of capitalism that sponge up wealth into a central hoard and debauch the population to a servile dependence equal to slavery. The religious gentlemen who should speak of these outrages would lose their nice comfort. For com

fort's sake they hold their peace. But the division of spoils is suitable. The capitalists take the loaf and give the religionists the crumbs. There is a much meaning lesson here: even the forces of tyrannical selfishness are leagued against religious sycophants. Canting religion has grown too weak to longer exact payment.

But let others realize the fraud. Let them beware of making themselves the equally degraded instruments of capitalist usage and contempt. Let them close their ears to the cry for expansion which these pious persons are so starvingly paid to raise.

CHAPTER II.

Imperialism for the Sake of Mankind.

1. Anglo-Saxon Claims.

The plea of duty to the world involves a wider outlook. We are solicited to extend our proprietorship and rule in order to disseminate our free institutions over the earth. Wherever our liberal institutions go they are presumed to convey enlightenment and elevation. We are told that it is a critical moment for mankind, that England has for some generations been bucking against the entire world alone, that her strength is failing, and that destiny calls us to the rescue. She has nobly carried the Anglo-Saxon habits of freedom to darkened peoples, and now, her generous task incomplete, she falters under the strain, her envious rivals block the path and nibble ferociously at the fair slices of the world she has already benignly carved out. The great prize at stake for mankind is Anglo-Saxon lordship of the globe. Anglo-Saxonism is set forth to be a higher form of civilization than any other race can bring to the conquered continents, and it is plaintively alleged that England's struggle is ours and that the spread of Anglo-Saxonism, its lofty realities and loftier ideals, is the sacred affair of every English speaking man. They reproach us with standing idly apart from the great world's affairs too long, shirking our magnanimous responsibilities in the stupendous drama of international evolution, and Senator Lodge sadly discerns the "humiliation of the United States in the eyes of civilized mankind" if we do not pluck the ripe fruit of imperialism, and the stain upon us of being “in

capable of great affairs or of taking rank where we belong as one of the greatest of the great world powers." With all this pathos the trade-bedizened prize of China is mixed up. Let her not become Russianized, they implore, to annihilate Anglo-Saxon prestige. These are evidently high matters needing subtle study.

2. English Protests Against Imperialism.

In moments and destinies so critical, nothing must be taken for granted. What is this princely, gift that England is seeking to bestow upon humanity? Why is it so necessary for Anglo-Saxons to rule mankind? Much depends on the answer to this. The answer given by English statesmen is certainly dim, doubting and obscure. In fact, we shall be greatly surprised by the persistance with which the good and self-interest of the Anglo-Saxons enters into the disinterested creed of universal good to mankind. But in England there is far from that contented and assured agreement that we should expect in an unselfish nation devoted to the great policy of ameliorating mankind. The Liberal party is on the verge of wreck over this beautiful ideal of an Anglo-Saxon world.

On the 15th of December a great conference of Liberals was held at Birmingham to face the crisis occasioned by Harcourt's resignation. In the evening Mr. Asquith made what the Liberal press called a "great speech" in the course of which he said:

"Gentlemen, we are not Jingoes, we repudiate that pinchbeck imperialism which regards the whole world as its legitimate provinces, and which flaunts its flag and challenge in the face of every power in turn. We base the title of Great Britain in India, in Egypt, and wherever we are exercising our supremacy, over the populations of any country or race, not upon brute force, not upon the authority of disciplined strength over the scattered resources of the untrained intelligence of the undeveloped races. (Hear, hear.) We base it upon the work which we do, upon the benefits which we confer, and, above all,

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