Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1899 — PRESIDENT M'KINLEY: "OUR FLAG STANDS FOR LIBERTY WHEREVER IT FLOATS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PRESIDENT M'KINLEY: "OUR FLAG STANDS FOR LIBERTY WHEREVER IT FLOATS.

We will not take down that flag (in the Philippines), representing liberty to the people, representing civilization to those islands; we will not withdraw it, because the territory over which it floats is ours by every tenet of international law and by the sacred sanction of the Constitution of the United States. We are not there to oppress, we are there to liberate. < We are not there to establish an imperial < government. We are there to establish < a government of liberty under law and < protection to life, property and opportu- J nity to all who dwell therein. < That treaty of peace, ratified by the< Senate of the United States, approved of < by a vote of Congress, gave to the United $ States the sovereignty and the authority < of the Philippine Islands. If I am not mistaken, the American s people do not propose, whatever may be < the cost, to see our flag dishonored any- < where. 5 Our flag in the Philippines still waves < there, and it waves not as the banner of imperialism, it waves not as the symbol of oppression, but it waves as it waves here and everywhere, the flag of freedom, of hope, of home and of civilization. All hostilities will cease in the Philip-

pines when those who commenced them will stop; and they will not cease until our flag, representing liberty, humanity and civilization, shall float triumphantly in every island of the archipelago under the undisputed and acknowledged sovereignty of the republic of the United States. That territory, my fellow-citizens, the President has no power to alienate if he were disposed to do so, which he is not. The sovereignty of the United States in the Philippines cannot be given away by a President. That sovereignty is there by right, not by right of conquest only, but by right of solemn treaty. The President of the United States haa but one duty to perform, and that is to maintain and establish the authority of the United States in those islands. Wherever we have raised our flag we have raised it not for territorial aggrandizement, not for national gain, but we have raised It for civilization and humanity. And let those lower it who will. I never travel through this mighty West, a part of the Louisiana purchase. lowa, part of Minnesota and the Dakotas, that I do not feel like offering my gratitude to Thomas Jefferson for his wisdom and foresight in acquiring this vast territory.

RESIDENT M’KINLEY made American sovereignty in the PhlUppines a part of nearly every speech across lowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. For the Swedes and Norwegians and especially the Germans, who who are alleged to fear “imperialism” as a corollary of national expansion, he had plain, cogent, lawyer-like argument Each audience received at least one gem of succinct expressions, like these:

—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.