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In Defeated Spain.

HISTORY AS IT IS MADE.*

Over in Spain the Cortes, convoked on February 20, remained in session less than two weeks, but long enough to bring about the resignation of Premier Sagasta, which was followed by the organization of a new cabinet with Señor Francisco Silvela (Conservative) at its head. And Premier Silvela's first move was a dissolution of the Cortes, a new election being fixed for this month of April. Meantime the treaty of peace lacks confirmation by either the queen regent or the Cortes, and courts martial for Admiral Montojo of the Philippine Squadron, and General Linares, commander of the Spanish forces at Santiago, are the order of the day. Signs

are not wanting, however, that the

Silvela cabinet represents the dominant sentiment in Spain to-day, ex

pressed by the commercial bodies in

victories, being repeatedly repulsed with heavy losses in engagements around Manila. But they kept up a guerilla warfare, by day or by night as they chose, along our line of defense, which was established and maintained within five or six miles of the city of Manila on land. Admiral Dewey controlled the bay and his ships' guns aided the land forces in destroying the villages and clearing the jungle to make the circle of defense

was

for the city impreg nable. The most startling tactics of the Filipinos consisted of setting fire to suburbs of the city and then to buildings within the city itself. Three such fires in one evening destroyed some seven hundred buildings, according to reports, before the conflagration controlled and order firmly established by our troops on guard in the city of Manila. Both naval and army reinforcements are bound for sufficient force to inaugurate a sharp campaign against the Filipinos, as planned by General Otis, is expected to be on hand before the rainy season cuts off the possibility of aggressive movement on our part. A month after the outbreak of hostilities General Otis' reports showed that our total losses at Manila amounted to 87 killed, 23 dead from wounds, 230 dead from disease, 374 additional soldiers being wounded in the conflicts with Filipinos.

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REAR-ADMIRAL LORD CHARLES BERESFORD.

favor of building up the country upon the the Philippines, and basis of its own rich resources now that the burdens of a colonial policy have been taken away. A policy of internal reform is considered the chief feature of the Silvela program.

The first conflict between Fighting Filipinos. Filipinos and United States forces at Manila on February 4 was followed by intermittent fighting of which the end is not yet in sight. The Filipinos won no

This department, together with the book "Europe in the Nineteenth Century," constitutes the special C. L. S. C. course Current History, for the reading of which a seal is given. H-Apr.

Outside of Manila progress in establishing the authority of the United States con

sisted of the occupation of Iloilo, on the and it appears that several conferences island of Panay, the second city of impor- between representatives of General Otis tance in the Philippine group. The Filipi- and Aguinaldo's organization proved fruitnos who had occupied it finally yielded to less to secure an agreement to the peaceful our demands with scarcely a struggle when establishment of United States authority. confronted by a formidable force under Press dispatches from Manila are subject General Miller. Thereafter, representatives to military censorship during the hostilities from the smaller islands of Negros and and the nature of these conferences has Cebu, of the Visayas group, voluntarily been revealed only in belated correspondence. One reliable correspondent is authority for the statement that Aguinaldo demanded United States support for the independent government of which he is the head, instead of offering further cooperation as an ally to give us the possession contemplated by the treaty of peace and provided for by President McKinley's instructions to General Otis; while admitting at the same time that without the presence of the United States troops the Philippines would become the prey of other powers,

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M. FÉLIX FAURE. The Late President of France.

accepted our authority, and by so much repudiated the authority of the Filipino government headed by Aguinaldo and his coadjutors.

Was Conflict Unavoidable?

own people being uncontrollable. The first bloody defeat of the Filipinos led so strong an administration paper as the Chicago Times-Herald to advocate announcement by the president that the Philippines would be treated like Cuba, with independence as the ultimate objective point. the treaty (unratified as yet by Spain) ceded the Philippines to us, we assumed international responsibility there in the iterim of ratification, and the administration stood by the judgment exercised by General Otis and Admiral Dewey, who were on the spot.

Nature of the Philippine
Bargain.

Anti-expansionists claimed that acceptance of the Philippines In and out of Con- and the payment of $20,000,000 to Spain gress there was much would prove a bad bargain. They condebate concerning the avoidability of this sidered the resistance of Filipinos to being conflict with Filipinos. It appears that sold with the land as excusable, and dethree of our consuls-Wildman at Hong- clared that by failure to treat the Philipkong, Pratt at Singapore (recently recalled), pines like Cuba the moral justification for and Williams at Manila-were on friendly going to war with Spain at all was negatived. terms with Aguinaldo, that his dreams of The cession of Puerto Rico and Guam was independence for the Philippines were en- passed over on the ground that the inhabcouraged, and that his forces rendered itants of the former were anxious for anvaluable assistance in making our capture nexation, while the latter is by nature only of Manila comparatively easy. But the a coaling station. To establish our rule treaty of peace ceded the Philippines to us, and maintain it in the Philippines, they

M. ÉMILE LOUBET.

The New President of France.

new

said, will require increased military and naval establishments, with inevitable expense of life and money. If these possessions should not cost financially more than they would be worth, the cost to our ideals and peculiar constitutional institutions would be disastrous in the long run. On the other hand, two lines of justification for taking the Philippines appear. President McKinley voiced one of them in a speech at the banquet of the Home Market Club in Boston. The conditions were such, he declared, that there was but one thing to do, and that was to take the Philippines, in the spirit which prompted us to intervene in Cuba, as a trust for civilization:

or to enter Manila Bay and destroy the Spanish sea power there? We did not ask these; and were obeying a higher moral obligation which rested on us, and which did not require anybody's consent. We were doing our duty by them as God gave us the light to see our duty, with the consent of our own consciences and with the approval of civilization.

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There was but one alternative, and that was either Spain or the United States in the Philippines. The other suggestions-first, that they should be tossed into the arena of contention for the strife of nations, or, second, be left to the anarchy and chaos of no protectorate at all-were too shameful to be considered. . . . Our concern was not for territory or trade or empire, but for the people whose interests and destiny, without our willing it, had been put in our hands. . . . Did we ask their consent to liberate them from Spanish sovereignty

Every present obligation has been met and fulfilled in the expulsion of Spanish sovereignty from their islands, and while the war that destroyed it was in progress we could not ask their views. Nor can we now ask their consent. . . . A reign of terror is not the kind of rule under which right action and deliberate judgment are possible. It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated, while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers. . . .

No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag. . . . If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object? If in the years of the future they are established in government under law and liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices? Who will not rejoice in our heroism and humanity? Always perils, and always after them safety. Always darkness and clouds, but always shining through them the light and the sunshine; always cost and sacrifice, but always after them the fruition of liberty, education, and civilization.

The other view is that the negotiations for the treaty of peace gave us the commercial opportunity of the century, that we were entitled to the Philippines as indemnity for a costly war and would be foolish to throw away such a chance as any other great nation would have jumped at without hesitation. Whitelaw Reid, one of the Paris commissioners, has emphasized this view (Senator Davis, another of the commissioners, has spoken in similar vein), saying:

Would you have had your agents in Paris, the guardians also of your material interests, throw away all chance for indemnity for a war that began with the treacherous murder of 266 American sailors on the Maine, and had cost your treasury during the year over $240,000,000? Would you have had them throw away a magnificent foothold for the trade of the farther East, which the fortune of war had placed in your hand; throw away a whole archipelago of boundless possibilities, economic and strategic; throw away this opportunity of centuries for your country? Would you have had them, on their own responsibility, then and there decide this ques

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tion for all time, and absolutely refuse to reserve it for the decision of Congress, and of the American people, to whom that decision belongs, and who have the right to an opportunity first for its deliberate consideration? . . .

The ocean carriage for the Atlantic is in the hands of our rivals. The Pacific Ocean, on the contrary, is in our hands now. Practically we own more than half the coast on this side, dominate the rest, and have midway stations in the Sandwich and Aleutian Islands. To extend now the authority of the United States over the great Philippine archipelago is to fence in the China Sea and secure an almost equally commanding position on the other side of the Pacific-doubling our control of it and of the fab

ulous trade the twentieth century will see it bear. Rightly used it enables the United States to convert the Pacific Ocean almost into an American lake.

Are we to lose all this through a mushy sentimentality alike un-American and un-Christian, since it would humiliate us by showing lack of nerve to hold what we are entitled to, and incriminate us by entailing endless bloodshed and anarchy on a people whom we have already stripped

of the only government they have known for three hundred years, and whom we should thus abandon to civil war and foreign spoliation?

The war having turned our attention toward the "far East" it was not surprising that our commercial interests listened

China and the "Open Door."

eagerly to what Rear-Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, a delegate of Great Britain's Associated Chambers of Commerce, had to say during his homeward tour of this country after a personal investigation in China. Lord Beresford concludes that China's internal condition is such that its administration is bound to break down; that this condition has invited demands by the strong nations for "spheres of influence," and ultimate partition of the empire will follow this course. He conceives that a better plan would be to guarantee an "open door" to the trade of nations through an alliance between Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States, which should undertake administrative powers for helpless China, paying her a percentage for the privileges of exploitation and development. projected plan brought out criticism from the Russian ambassador to the United States, to the effect that Russian influence was in behalf of trade development rather than an imputed "closed door" in China. It has been followed, too, by a demand on the part of Italy for a coaling station and naval base at San Mun Bay, in the province of Che-Fiang. The Tsung li Yamun declined

This

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events caused announcement to be made in dispatches from Washington that the United States maintains a policy

of "hands off," while it was denied in Great Britain that she was backing Italy's demands. But it was assumed that Italy must have some stronger nation behind her in this latest move toward partition. It does not yet appear that Lord Beresford's alternative scheme appeals to the present government of Great Britain, but it afforded a substantial subject of discussion in this country.

not favor our going to war with Spain, but German interference in any respect has been stoutly denied and denounced in these same papers as "jingo invention" pure and simple. Perhaps no single person has been more outspoken against "misrepresentation" of the Germans than the Hon. Carl Schurz, whose seventieth birthday was celebrated in both Germany and several cities of the United States on March 2. That Germany has some friendly claims for us to consider as well as Great Britain is suggested by the statements of Baron von Bülow, minister of foreign affairs. He has expressed the hope that friendly relations may be augmented commercially, and declared that Samoan affairs need readjustment, Germany being prepared to consent to a clean separation if the other parties to the tri-protectorate should consent.

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SENATOR ADDISON G. FOSTER, OF WASHINGTON.

Stories of friction with German Diplomacy. Germany in the Philippines stopped short when the German government announced that all German vessels were to be withdrawn from those waters for service on the coast of China, and that the United States had been asked to protect the interests of Germans resident in the Philippines. This trust was accepted, and Germany further diplomatically indicated her friendly attitude by placing Prince Henry in command of the German fleet in Asiatic waters, outranking Admiral von Diedrichs. It is generally admitted that matters of naval etiquette formed the basis of the first misunderstandings, but this bold stroke by Germany was well timed to give the lie to sensational dispatches and to counteract prevalent suspicions of Germany's hostility to the United States in more ways than one. That Germany's official attitude throughout the war has been unimpeachable, Ambassador White is authority on that point. The press in Germany and the German-American press did

A New President in France.

It has become the habit of observers of French affairs to fear that each new phase may wreck the republic. Hence the unexpected death of President Félix Faure, February 16, caused many forebodings. He became president in 1895, having risen from the trade of a tanner to the presidency of the Chamber of Commerce in Havre, becoming a member of the Chamber of Deputies and cabinet minister first in 1881. During the progress of the Dreyfus affair he appeared as more of an opportunist than a strong man, but his administration weathered the storms of that affair, and in other respects proved safe and commendable from the historical standpoint. The election of a successor by the two houses of government in joint session did not develop extraordinarily exciting demonstrations. M.

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