CHAPTER III.

Our Crime in the Philippine Islands.

1. The New Policy of Corruption.

We now propose to show that the new American Imperialism is a strict reproduction of the British Imperialism that has been described. If that is lovely and desirable, so is its American imitation. But let us per

mit American Imperialists to speak for themselves and to disclose their own character as we have allowed the English to do. This will show whether the Anglo-Saxonism that would be carried to the Philippines and elsewhere is worth carrying, or should be watchfully kept at home and extinguished.

Charles Denby, our one time minister to China and now a member of McKinley's commission to study the Philippines, has published a brief paper in answer to the question "Shall We Keep the Philippines?"* Being a man of prominence and authority among the expansionists we give his words their due weight. They express the change in American morality toward the world which expansionists are inculcating and practising. This man is the type of those who surround and influence the president. He defines a hard and selfish national policy towards the weak. Every important thing that has happened, everything that is happening, goes to establish this proposition:

That hard and selfish men, and hard and selfish policies, will control our imperialist relations; that the kind and well-meaning will be overruled. There is no intention of mildness, humanity and justice, in the forces that are now gaining ascendency in American life.

*The Forum, November, 1898.

Here is Mr. Denby, the type of the hard and selfish imperialist politician of the new school, openly impressing upon the country this crass and vulgar European doctrine. Thus Mr. Denby:

"... We have become a great people. We have a great commerce to take care of. We have to compete with the commercial nations of the world in far-distant markets. Commerce, not politics is king. The manufacturer and the merchant dictate to diplomacy, and control elections. The art of arts is the extension of commercial relations,-in plain language, the selling of native products and manufactured goods.

"I learned what I know of diplomacy in a severe school. I found among my colleagues not the least hesitation in proposing to their respective Governments to do anything which was supposed to be conducive to their interests. There can be no other rule for the government of all persons who are charged with the conduct of affairs than the promotion of the welfare of their respective countries."

This then is what expansion and that noble 'world diplomacy' with which our ears are being daily tickled, bring us to! Here is Mr. Denby, corrupt and confessedly corrupted by this high diplomacy which is to make us a sainted and respected nation before mankind, glorying in the corruption and trying to corrupt his countrymen. If there was ever needed proof that we should keep ourselves unspotted from the filth and foulness of those European and Asiatic complications that territory stealing will assuredly bring, here is that proof. For contact with European codes inflicts those codes upon us. Denby continues his exposure of Imperialism, and applies its Christlike morality to the Philippines :

"We have the right as conquerors to hold the Philippines. We have the right to hold them as part payment of a war indemnity. This policy may be characterized as unjust to Spain; but is the result of the fortunes of war. All nations recognize that the conqueror may dictate the terms of peace."

"I am in favor of holding the Philippines because I cannot conceive of any alternative to our doing so, except the seizure of territory in China; and I prefer to hold them rather than to oppress further the helpless Government and people of China. I want China to preserve her autonomy, to become great and prosperous; and I want these results not for the interests of China, but for our interests. I am not the agent or attorney of China; and, as an American, I do not look to the promotion of China's interests, or Spain's, or any other country's-but simply of our own.

"The whole world sees in China a splendid market for . our native products,—our timber, our locomotives, our rails, our coal oil, our sheetings, our mining-plants and numberless other articles."

"Dewey's victory is an epoch in the affairs of the Far East. We hold our heads higher. We are coming to our own. We are stretching out our hands for what nature meant should be ours. We are taking our proper rank among the nations of the world. We are after markets, the greatest markets now existing in the world. Along with these markets will go our beneficent institutions; and humanity will bless us."

This is an exquisite example of the British cant and bathos which is exhibiting itself serenely in the new Imperial America. Wherever the basest of international principles of pilfering and freebooting are applied to gain markets, "along with these markets will go our beneficent institutions." The halo of our blessed institutions will pervade and rectify rapacity and wrong! But it will not. We shall not build beneficent institutions on ruffianism and rapacity. 'We are after markets, the greatest markets in the world,' we do not care what we do to get them; we will cheerfully rob and kill, we will wrench their fatherland from the weak and call it ours, we admit it in cold blood, but like the praying professional murderer, we piously declare that God and humanity will bless us in it. How did our war of humanity to rescue

Cuba establish the irrelevant and unheard-of conclusion that unless we take the Philippines there is 'no alternative except the seizure of territory in China?' There is no bridge between these two irreconcilable opposites excepting the beneficent institutions of American rapacity. The Philippines have done us no wrong, China has done us no wrong, but because Spain wronged Cuba and we had compassion, we do no wrong in wronging either the Philippines or China. This is the Imperialists' creed.

Now we do not expect to reach such men as Mr. Denby or Mr. Denby's type-the president, the advisers of the president, the whole tribe of commercial, political and newspaper Imperialists, who are hounding the nation to crime. "Commerce, not politics, is king. The manufacturer and the merchant dictate to diplomacy, and control elections." We realize this. But we turn away from these classes to the people. We think that when they realize the brazen fraud being practised on them, they will decide to control elections, not only to put an end to the dishonest and ruffianly policy of Imperialism, but to put an end to the supremacy of commerce over

man.

But Mr. Denby has not even yet conveyed to us all the light he has in him. In a more recent article* he presents Imperialistic principles in their engaging nakedness without the usual shreds of moral clothing.

"If," he says, "the argument made herein has any force, the legal and constitutional difficulties which were quoted against expansion have disappeared, and the cold, hard, practical question alone remains. Will the posses

sion of these islands benefit us as a nation? If it will not, set them free tomorrow, and let their people, if they please, cut each other's throats, or play what pranks they please. To this complexion we must come at last, that, unless it is beneficial for us to hold these islands, we should turn them loose."

We ask this question: Why, this being the mind and

*The Forum, February, 1899.

purpose of our imperialist politicians and commercialists, are they allowed to grimace and pose before the nation as philanthropists and moralists? Why do we not enforce upon them silence about the good they intend to do the conquered savages, when it is an acknowledged lie? Let the Filipinos cut each other's throats unless the appropriation of their country will help our trade. Damn the good we might do them. We are not in this

It is true we are

expansion business for their good.' not, but we command you to stop telling us that we are. We propose to hold this argument on your basis, that of hard, brutal selfishness, and to decide whether it is best for us to put ourselves and the peoples absorbed into your selfish hands by adopting your Imperialist policy. And is it too solemn a question to press upon the moral expansionists, whether they think in their own unselfish minds that they will be able to overcome and rule these selfish commercial Imperialists and keep them in the paths of righteousness after the deed is done? If they are so moonstruck let them study the forces that now rule this country, and compare them with the paths of righteous

ness.

Mr. Denby, who is willing the Filipinos shall cut each other's throats if preventing them will not fill our pockets, has one more word which makes an easy transition from Imperialist theory to Imperialist practice. He writes as an inspired commercial prophet and a poet:

"In other lands and other wars the condition of the conquered people has been hard and deplorable. In our case we march bearing gifts, the choicest gifts-liberty and hope and happiness. We carry with us all that gives to the flower of life its perfume. The dusky East rises at our coming; and the Filipino springs to his feet and becomes a free man. This is not poetry, but reality wrought out by a people to whom freedom is the breath of life, and who would scorn to enslave a country or a race."