That is about where our Filipino war puts us. The theory of International Force is that when a nation has begun a disgraceful row without color of cause, it must keep on and whip its unoffending adversary or lose caste and respect. This is the creed of the district bully. What does he know or care about justice? Let us take another case. A school master begins to thrash a pupil, and in the midst of it discovers that the boy is not guilty. If he is a brute and a fool he goes on with the whipping, saying that if we should stop before the job was done the boy wouldn't respect or love him. We are performing exactly that tomfoolery in the Philippines. Our rulers think that they need a thrashing on general principles to make them understand that we're boss. It is all false and ridiculous.

Being in the midst of a bad war which our chiefs undertook for conquest and personal ambition, the right and honorable way is to bring the business to a sudden end by acknowledging that we are wrong, indemnifying the Filipinos for the evil we have done them, and giving them self-government and freedom. And there is no other honorable course. We can afford to do it because we are strong. To say that it would be cowardly is preposterous. What we are doing is the cowardly thing: to think of such foulness as we are transacting to those poor harmless savages makes a true American bitterly ashamed of his country! It is meanness incarnate. We can never hold up our heads as we have done. The vile spot will not wash out, it is there indelibly, a red cruel stain of damnable infamy. Every day that the war goes on deepens our crime and shame. Talk of cowardice! A man who caught an innocent boy and skinned him would be no worse than we are in this sublimely wanton ruffianism. The people ought to rise in retributive indignation and compel the puppets at Washington to stop this thing. There is no hope unless they do, the craven congress has adjourned, and unless the people thunder their rage and shame, and surge over the Administration poltroonery

with an inflexible will that this brutality shall cease, it will drag on to lower and lower depths of moral damnation.

Better America ought to be heard now. The politicians have had their fling, selfishness has steered the nation, they have guided us into the crater of a volcano. Now let the voice of American citizens speak. Now let those who believe that we have a higher destiny than to rob and steal and kill in the name of God and Love, come forward and take the helm out of the hands of these wreckers of American traditions, American honor, American justice, and American liberty. Down with the leaders that have betrayed! It is the great soul of the American people alone that can save us.

CHAPTER IV.

Ourselves as England's Tool.

1. A Kind Cat's-Paw.

Are the masses

Nothing damns and blackens the expansion movement so much as the question, Who want it. of plain Americans demanding murder, conquest and an armament for universal war, or is it certain cliques and classes with private ends to promote? The command that we shall renounce our past and fight for sovereignty of the world comes from British Imperialists, from our commercial classes, from our professional politicians, our clergy (already considered), our editors, and our 'great' naval and military commanders. A contemplation of this motley group of irreconcilable advocates of international lynching ought to be enough in itself to enlighten and sicken us of their dazzling military scheme.

Why do those incomparable men who are tottering under the load of British empire, the shaggy-minded Salisbury, the acrobat Chamberlain, stroke our backs lovingly since we cudgelled poor Spain and assassinated Philippine liberty? England is far gone in a most precarious pickle, and every word of advice that her lordly statesmen waft us is a disguised moan for help. Joe Chamberlain, the man who screened the infamous Cecil Rhodes and his dupe Jameson in their South African freebooting raid, has let no chance slip of telling us how great and good we may become by putting on a coat of mail and trotting with England around the globe beating weak races into submission to Anglo-Saxon virtue. But when the key to his love of our glory is England's

extremity, who believes a word that this cunning modern Joseph with a brain of many colors says? Between his speeches this blazing genius sometimes forgets himself and other people forget him, and there is no way to grasp the elusive rudder of his mind unless we read his scattered words together.

He said in a speech at Manchester felicitating AngloAmerican rapprochement: “I shall not attempt to predict what may follow this better feeling, but I may at least hope that in the future the understanding of which I have spoken may be perfected, and that in the face of that understanding we two may be able to guarantee peace and civilization to the world."

In Scribners Magazine he 'welcomed the advent of America as a colonizing power' in sugared words:

"It can hardly be necessary to say that the British nation will cordially welcome the entrance of the United States into the field of colonial enterprise, so long and so successfully occupied by themselves. There would be no jealousy of the expansion of American enterprise and influence; on the contrary, every Englishman would heartily rejoice in the co-operation of the United States in the great work of tropical civilization. From the nations of the continent of Europe he has nothing to learn except what to avoid. Their system, their objects, and their ideals are entirely different from his; and, as he thinks, inferior."*

He said that while the other Powers "imputed to the United States motives of selfish aggression, only transparently cloaked by a hypocritical pretence of humanity and disinterestedness, Great Britain alone, basing her judgment on her own feelings and experience,.. sought for the springs of action, not in the excesses of jingoes or the greed of interested individuals, but in the great moral forces which move a free people in the presence of injustice and wrong, perpetrated against helpless men and innocent women and children."

*December, 1898.

And the British nation "would not shrink even from an alliance contra mundum, if the need should ever arise, in defence of the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon race-of humanity, justice, freedom, and equality of opportunity.”

Going back a year to last May, when we were just beginning to chastise Spain for doing to Cuba as we have since done to the Philippines and would not have others. do unto us, this Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, who as Secretary of State for the Colonies may be supposed to know England's inner needs, announced at Birmingham:

"The time has arrived when Great Britain may be confronted by a combination of powers, and our first duty, therefore, is to draw all parts of the empire into close unity, and our next to maintain the bonds of permanent unity with our kinsmen across the Atlantic.' (Loud cheers.) "There is a powerful and generous nation," said Mr. Chamberlain, "using our language, bred of our race and having interests identical with ours. I would go so far as to say that, terrible as war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased if in a great and noble cause the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon alliance. (Prolonged cheers.)"

England's method of civilizing the world by stealing it has brought her to the pass where the world hates her. Through an earlier development of industry she acquired foremost wealth and a sea power which qualified her to outstrip and defeat other nations in appropriating the world's territory; but now the other powers have caught up and expansion meets expansion and is blocked. There is a feeling among the powers that England already has too much, that the division of the world is not fair, and this may shape continental policy into a combination of powers to confront and strip Great Britain. Speaking for the Government Lord Stanley recently said: "With regard to the future, this country must come to an understanding with certain Powers abroad, or have a greatly increased army."