We are all here, it would seem, to stand by the peace that has been secured, even if we have to fight for it.
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
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No one of you has ever been heard to find fault with an agent because in making a difficult settlement he got all you wanted, and a free option on something further that everybody else wanted!
Do you know of any other civilized nation of the first or even of the second class that wouldn't jump at that option on the Philippines?
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…
Would you have had them, on their own responsibility, then and there decide this question 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…
They were dealing with a nation with whom it has never been easy to make peace, even when war was no longer possible; but they secured a peace treaty without a word that compromises the honor or endangers the interests of the country.
They scrupulously reserved for your own decision, through your Congress or at the polls, the question of political status and civil rights for the inhabitants of your new possessions.
They resisted adroit Spanish efforts for special privileges and guaranties for their established church, and pledged the United States to absolute freedom in the exercise of their religion for all these recent Spanish subjects--pagan…
That principle is that, contrary to the prevailing rule and practice in large transfers of sovereignty, debts do not necessarily follow the territory if incurred by the mother country distinctly in efforts to enslave it.
It is a doctrine that raised an outcry in every Continental bourse, and struck terror to every gambling European investor in national loans, floated at usurious profits, to raise funds for unjust wars.
But it is right, and one may be proud that the United States stood like a rock, barring any road to peace which led to loading either on the liberated territory or on the people that had freed it the debts incurred in the wars against it.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.