CHAPTER VI. War For Sale. 1. A Windbag War-Factory. During the closing days of March, 1898, the president of the United States was conducting negotiations with Spain which would have ended in the freedom of Cuba and avoided war. Congress on its part had determined that there should be a war and that if the president could not be driven to declare it the game should be taken out of his hands and the two Houses would precipitate conflict in spite of him. Both houses of congress concurred in this sentiment, both political parties in Washington were intent upon forcing the executive to act or throwing him over. The Republican members vied with the Democratic members, and the Democrats prodded the Republicans for dalliance. These politicians saw an opportunity for political capital and they raised the war whoop like feathered Apaches. With later events before our eyes it is fascinating to recall what great men said on the subject of war at that time. Senator Cullom, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, gave out these words: I do not see how we can avoid a war with Spain. The feeling on the floor of the Senate is intense. It looks to me that if the President does not soon define some policy acceptable to Congress, it will proceed without him. This is a deplorable condition, and no one laments it more than I. There is almost a universal demand for action on the part of the Foreign Relations Committee. It will not unduly delay doing its duty. War will cost us thousands more lives and millions of money. We can replace the latter, but we cannot restore the dead. Nevertheless, I am impressed with a solemn duty. If our purpose was a sordid one, we could not justify ourselves. To relieve suffering and make a people free is a noble deed. Upon that plea shall we find justification for our acts. All kinds of resolutions of war were thickly rained in the House and Senate and these men who had the honor and care of the nation in keeping enjoyed the maddest military frolic. Men who ought to have foreseen that the military spirit if let loose would run the wildest courses, and ought to have stood immovable before the gale of congressional passion, fell in with the hurricane and added their encouraging breath. Senator Hoar said: On the other hand, I have no patience and I have no respect for those critics who find in the conduct and action of many of my associates and friends on this floor what they are pleased to term a spirit of jingoism.* Senator Tillman enounced the state of legislative feeling with the doggerel: 66 'Populists, Democrats and Republicans are we, "At least, I hope we are." Grover Cleveland exhorted a great demonstration of Princeton students-"Stand by the country when she is right, and I am not so sure that we should not stand by her when she is wrong," impudent political immorality which many a mortified patriot has tried to pardon himself with since. Bryan felt called upon to join the procession: "Yes," he answered to a representative of the press, "the time for intervention has arrived. Humanity demands that we shall act... War is the final arbiter between nations when reason and diplomaccy are of no avail. . . Spain might not resist intervention... But whether she resents intervention or not, the United States must perform a plain duty. Our own interests justify intervention.” The politicans of all breeds and shades were practically united, the president was forced, and the mine was fired which not only emancipated Cuba but exploded American traditions and filled our veins with Spanish blood and ferocity. For all that followed on as a result of that *Speech in the Senate, April 14, 1898. war these politicians are immediately responsible, who abandoned reason and sobriety and drove the nation into a shamefully false position at the outset. Starting from this false ground each subsequent step was false, until we found ourselves involved in the lowest extremity of international crime. When this period is impartially recorded the legislative class of this country will sink lower than the worst representations yet dare to place them. It will be found that they acted without compass, conscience or vertebra; that they were mainly the victims of a kind of frenzy, the nature of which explains why politicians are unfit for leaders and how dangerous the posture of the country is when they are trusted with their present degree of leadership. They forced an entirely needless war upon the nation; there is now the best proof that war was superfluous. John Sherman, who was Secretary of State while the Cuban question was pending, has since made public the following statement :* "I tried to prevent this foolish war with Spain. As a matter of fact, negotiations were already in progress to purchase Cuba from Spain when the war feeling rose and swept everything before it. And Spain would have accepted the terms. This is a matter of secret history. And now what have we got to show for all this expense? Some islands in the Philippines, for instance, which are worth about $200,000 per annum income; increased indebtedness of $200,000,000, and a lot of islands inhabited mainly by man-eaters. And the most distressing feature of the affair is that we are now about to be called upon to pay $20,000,000 for territory that we could have taken without expending a dollar." Who can give more reliable testimony on this subject than our Minister to Spain? General Woodford in a speech at Boston gave this verdict:† *Special in the Chicago Tribune from Washington, Dec. 20, 1898. +In October, 1898. Summarized by New York Evening Post. His [Gen. Woodford's] instructions when he was sent as Minister to Spain were three-fold-to secure justice to the suffering people of Cuba, to insist upon protection to the great American and commercial interests of the United States in Cuba, and to seek these ends so long as it was possible by ways of peace, and, if possible, to avoid and avert war. He said directly to the Spanish government that, in the judgment of the President, permanent, assured peace could only come in Cuba by the withdrawal of Spanish authority from that island. His first effort was to secure the withdrawal from Cuba of Gen. Weyler, then serving as Governor-General with the understanding that he should remain two years, or until the spring of 1898. Gen. Woodford reached Madrid September 1, 1897, was presented to the Queen Regent September 13, had his first official interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs September 18, addressed his first official communication to the government September 23, and before the 4th day of October, the Conservative Ministry, that had given its pledge to Gen. Weyler, resigned, left power, and before the end of October Gen. Weyler had been withdrawn. Next came the proclamation of a system of autonomy for the island, and negotiations were progressing so favorably that Gen. Woodford declared it to be his "deliberate belief that, had the Maine not been blown up in the harbor of Havana, and had not that singular and undiplomatic letter of Senor de Lome been discovered, before the close of the summer of 1898, the Spanish flag would have left the island of Cuba without the firing of a shot or the loss of a life." The fact that the explosion of the Maine and de Lome's letter were not a cause for war has already been shown so often that it is hardly necessary to restate it. This is what remains then: If the politicians had acted like honorable and rational beings, conscious and worthy of their responsibility, the war would have been averted. Why did the politicians compel the war? This is the point about which everything turns, and there is no doubt why-it was done for their individual self-interest, for that alone. They as individuals, burning for notoriety, burning for an oratorical war career and fame as patriots, burning for popularity, re-election and promotion, scheming for chances to exercise favoritism and make political friends by war appointments, looking out for judicious opportunities to influence the awarding of contracts and thereby make various things, their eyes strained to see how they could use a war for their own personal advantage all around, resolved that the American people should fight a war against Spain at all costs. To them would be all advantage, brilliant prizes and rewards for their heroic words, no cost, no risk, every hair of their heads protected and safe as well as glorified. Other people would bear the expense, other people would undergo the toil, the deprivation, the suffering, the illhealth, other people would leave their homes, many never to return, other people would face the tropical heat, the deadly malaria, the yellow fever, other people would fight and receive the bullets into their bodies and lie stretched out dead in the enemy's trenches, other people would carry wounds to their dying day, crippled, ghostly and useless, tortured by weakness and worse than dead through the long years of manhood that would have been robust and exuberant if these political bastards had not desired to use a war to boom their fortunes; but while other people pay the price and do the work and lay their lives on the politicians' altar these warriors in rhetoric, brave veterans in the rapid firing of inflammatory sounds, will cover their honored nests with downy credit and grow illustrious. The life of the soldier who is slain or maimed is as precious to him as the politician's office to him. But a senator from Mississippi (Mr. Money) gaily said that he thought it was a good plan to have a war once in a while, that it prevented the dry rot of prolonged peace.'* These are our guardians. Sitting in the charming upholstery of Congress, reveling in a picnic of exciting patriotism and self-advertising, whooping forth the old rancid spread-eagleism, they send out other citizens to welter in ruin and death. War is with them a speculation to which they look for solid returns in money and gratified ambition: the lives of the people whom they order out to die are the material speculated in, the cattle on the way to be dead flesh, the stocks, the pig iron. This damning indictment is proved by the subsequent disclosure that war was not necessary to free Cuba, which *Quoted by Mr. Hoar. |