I had occasion to say before a college audience last June what I now repeat with the additional emphasis subsequent events have warranted--that the difficulties which at present discourage us are largely of our own making; and I repeat…
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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What we do know is that the course of hesitation and inaction which the Nation pursued in face of an openly maturing attack was precisely the policy sure to give us the greatest trouble, and that we are now paying the penalty.
What we have a right to insist on is that our general policy in the Philippines shall not be shaped now merely by the just discontent with the bad start.
They must not obscure the duty of restoring order in the regions where our troops have been assailed, or prejudice our subsequent course.
I venture to say of that course that neither our duty nor our interest will permit us to stop short of a pacification which can only end in the establishment of such local self-government as the people are found capable of conducting, and…
If any complaint here is to lie, it must relate to the critical period when we were accepting responsibility for order at Manila, and must be for the exercise of too little power, not too much.
It is not Imperialism to take up honestly the responsibility for order we incurred before the world, and continue under it, even if that should lead us to extend the civil rights of the American Constitution over new regions and strange…
It is not Imperialism when duty keeps us among these chaotic, warring, distracted tribes, civilized, semi-civilized, and barbarous, to help them, as far as their several capacities will permit, toward self-government, on the basis of those…
What planted us in the Philippines was the use of our power in the most efficient naval and military defense then available for our own institutions where they already exist, against the attack of Spain.
If the responsibility entailed by the result of these acts in our own defense does involve some extension of our institutions, shall we therefore run away from it?
If a guaranty to chaotic tribes of the civil rights secured by the American Constitution does prove to be an incident springing from the discharge of the duty that has rested upon us from the moment we drove Spain out, is that a result so…
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.