Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1902 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

“The editor or the citizen who underestimates the Philippine question, who fails to appreciate that it is of paramount importance, who imagines that senators, in ventilating and opposing the Philippine policy of the administration, are losing sight of the interests of our own people, is short sighted. He does not grasp the true import of the situation,” said Senator Clay, in reply to a question I put to him Saturday. “Is an undertaking which means to the people of the United States an annual expenditure of $80,000,000, which means that expenditure not for one year but continuously, a question of minor importance? And that is not the most serious phase of the situation. Reflect for a moment upon the effect of the war upon our American soldiers, officers and men. It is brutalizing them as is plainly shown by the evidence which has been given before the Philippines Committee. And why this cruelty? it in accordance with the past histories of our army? No! And for good reason. In the Civil War men fought for principles in which they believed, the rights of the sovereign states on the one side, the preservation of the Union on the other. All were sincere. All were fighting for their convictions. Ministers, doctors, merchants, farmers, the best men in the country on both sides, made up the rank and file of the armies. To a certain extent the same was true in the Spanish war when the best of our young men enlisted to uphold the flag and free Cuba. But whom have we in the Philippines? Men who have enlisted for sl3 per month. Men who enlisted generally only because other means of gaining a livelihood were barred to them. Stop and think of the men you know who have enlisted—not as volunteers in the first fever of the war —but as regulars, for the paltry pay of a private. What manner of ffien are they? Is it any wonder that their officers cannot restrain them and that they practice cruelties and avail themselves of methods of torture? The Filipinoes are human beings with hopes and aspirations like our own. They have seen the light as the American colonists saw it in 1775 and now is it to be wrested from them and are they to yield up their hope of liberty? Pacified? Yes! Temporarily, perhaps, at the muzzle of American rifles, but let those rifles be turned away and their hopes and ambition will return and they will renew the struggle. We have killed their men and sometimes their children and even, perhaps, though accidentally, their women. Will they forgive us and accept our rule? Never, except in the presence of large armed forces. To preserve peace in the Philippines we must maintain an army of from forty to fifty thousand men in the islands for years to come, perhaps, forever; and this to conquer a people to whom liberty is as dear as it is to us. Can the Philippine question be said to be one of minor importance?” Apropos of the Philippine question there has been adopted by the Senate a resolution calling on tne Secretary of War for a statement of the expense to which this country has been put in the administration of the military as-

fairs of the islands Secretary Root has shown a decided tendency to avoid making this report during this session and would doubtless like to postpone the statement until after the fall campaigh. He has magnified the difficulties and in the meantime has refused to furnish even an approximation, which is all the democratic Senators who fathered the resolutioh desire. To the $20,000,000 paid as a purchase price for the islands may be added the $55,478,695 expended for the military purposes for the first six months, from May to November, 1898, but from that time on no figures are to be had and the most persistent inquiry by senators and correspondents has failed to secure any competent information. It is estimated that the total cost up to November, 1899, was SIOO,000,000 but there all estimates fail and if the Secretary of War has his way the country will not know until nexj, December.