Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1902 — APOLOGY DUE SPAIN. [ARTICLE]

APOLOGY DUE SPAIN.

New York World: Secretary Root’s answer to the Senate, assuming for the Administration full responsiblity for the policy of retaliation and reconcentration pursued by our Generals in the Philippines, suggests the justice and propriety of an apology by our Government to Spain. In the preamble to our declaration of war against Spain it was recited that “the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States and have been a disgrace to Christian civilization.” What were those “abhorrent conditions?” They were those of an unsuccessful war of subjugation which had degenerated into guerrillaism on the part “of the Cubans and into a policy of reconcentration,” the shooting of hostile natives indiscriminately and other features of a war of “surrender or die” on the part of the Spaniards. The press and pulpit of this country were justifiably clamorous in denunciation of Spanish cruelty and oppression. The halls of Congress rang with the echoes of popular indignation, which—seizing upon the Maine incident as a sufficient reason—drove a reluctant Administration into acquiesenee in the demand that Spain “at once relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba.” Wherein have “the conditions which have existed for more than three years” in the the Philippine Islands been less “abhorrent” than those which the United States rightly and unselfishly ended in Cuba? We are seeking to subdue the Filipinos as Spain sought to subdue the Cubilns. Our war has been quite as relentless and much more destructive than that waged by Spain. Our reconcentrado camps have been better supplied with food because we have more money and greater supplies than Spain had. But Secretary Root’s justification of the necessity of those camps as a military measure does not differ from Weyler’s or Blanco’s. Weyler shot some prisoners, but he did not kill them by slow tortures, as the evidence proved that Major Waller killed some of the Filipinos. The infliction of the water-cure torture was never charged against the Spaniards in Cuba, and no Spanish General ever issued (or in recent years executed) an order so shockingly inhuman as that of General Smith in Samar, to “kill and burn,” to “shoot all over ten,” and to make the province a “ho.vling wilderness.” Secretary Rcot disavows all knowledge of this infamous order, but he does say: “It has not been deemed wise or piacticable to ii tirfere foil Washington with the conduct of military operations on the other side of the world under conditions and exigencies which the competent and faithful officers commanding the Division of the Philippines necessarily understand far better than is possible for the War Department.” In other words, under a general 1 cense to retaliate men like “HellRoaring Jake” have been permitted to wage a war of retaliation, cruelty and extermination in order to “bring the rebels to terms.” If, as Secretary Root argues, our style of campaigning in the East is legitimate and necessary, an apology is certainly due from the United States to the Govern- 1 meut of Spain.