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(3) THE FIGHT FOR A CAUSE

AMERICAN IDEALS NOT IMPERIALISTIC 1 WILLIAM MCKINLEY (1843-1901)

That the inhabitants of the Philippines will be benefited by this Republic is my unshaken belief. That they will have a kindlier government under our guidance and that they will be aided in every possible way to be a selfrespecting and self-governing people is as true as that the American people love liberty and have an abiding faith in their own government and in their own institutions. No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag. They are wrought in every one of its sacred folds and are inextinguishable in its shining stars.

Why read ye not the changeless truth,
The free can conquer but to save?

If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object? If in the years of the future they are established in government under law and liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices? Who will not rejoice in our heroism and humanity? Always perils, and always after them safety; always darkness and clouds, but always shining through them the light and the sunshine; always cost and sacrifice,

1 A speech made in Boston, February 16, 1899, at a time when our national policy with reference to the Philippine Islands, acquired through war with Spain, was still unsettled.

From "Souvenir of the Visit of President McKinley and Members of the Cabinet to Boston, February, 1899." Copyright, 1899, by The Home Market Club, Boston.

but always after them the fruition of liberty, education, and civilization.

I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do not prophesy. The present is allabsorbing to me, but I cannot bound my vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just passed, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; a land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes, and whose children and children's children shall for ages hence bless the American Republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland and set them in the pathway of the world's best civilization.

THE AMERICAN FLAG NOT THE DOLLAR SIGN 1

HENRY CABOT LODGE (1850- >

No one has a greater admiration than I for the marvelous achievements of the American people in the last century, for the conquest of this mighty continent, for all

1 From a speech before the Republican State Convention of Massachusetts, March 27, 1896. In "Speeches and Addresses of Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1909." Copyright, 1892, 1909, by Henry Cabot Lodge. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Used by permission of the publishers.

the material welfare which has sprung up as if by magic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Our business enterprise, our business intelligence, our business activity, are among the glories of the republic. I have labored ever since I have been in public life to advance by every means in my power every measure that makes for the business interests of the country. No one values their importance more highly than I.

But, gentlemen, I have seen it constantly stated, and this is the point I wish to make that we must not deal with anything but business questions.

Now, there is a great deal more than that in the life of every great nation. There is patriotism, love of country, pride of race, courage, manliness, the things which money cannot make and which money cannot buy.

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You may call it sentiment or passion or what you will, but love of country is one of the great moving causes of national life. When we look at that flag, what is it that makes our hearts throb? If you see it in a foreign land, after months of separation, what is it that makes your throat choke and your eyes get damp? Is it because a great many men have made money under it? I believe that that flag is a great deal more than the sign of a successful national shop, never to be unfurled for fear that the trader on the opposite side of the way may have his feelings ruffled; I think it is a great deal more than that. And when I look at it, I do not see and you do not see there the graven image of the dollar; you do not read there the motto of the epicure, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." No; you read on that flag the old Latin motto, Per aspera ad astra - Through toil and conflict to the stars.

You do not see the dollar on it. But when you look,

and your heart swells within you as you look, the memories that come are very different. If you see any faces there, they are the faces of Washington and his Continentals behind him, marching from defeat at Long Island to victory at Trenton, to misery at Valley Forge, to final triumph at Yorktown. Look again and we all see the face of Lincoln. The mighty host are there of the men who have lived for their country and given their lives for their country and labored for it, each in his separate way, and believed in it and loved it. They are all there, from the great chiefs to the boys who fell in Baltimore. That is what I see, that is what you see. That is why we love it, because it means this great country and all the people. It means all the struggles and sufferings we have gone through, all our hopes, all our aspirations. It means that we are a great nation and intend to take a nation's part in the family of nations. It means that we are the guardians of this Western Hemisphere and will not have it rashly invaded. It means the one successful experiment of representative democracy. It means victorious democracy. That is what it means, and that is what I see there and that is what you see there. And much as I care for business and economic questions, I never will admit that they are all or that the duty of a public man ceases with them. There are other questions that must be dealt with also. I never will admit that that beloved flag is to me merely the symbol of a land where I can live in rich content and make money. No: I see it as the American poet saw it:

And fixed as yonder orb divine

That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine

The guard and glory of the world.

OUR PAN-AMERICAN POLICY 1

ELIHU ROOT (1845– )

No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to live. Each nation's growth is a part of the development of the race. There may be leaders and there may be laggards, but no nation can long continue very far in advance of the general progress of mankind, and no nation that is not doomed to extinction can remain very far behind. It is with nations as it is with individual men; intercourse, association, correction of egotism by the influence of others' judgment, broadening of views by the experience and thought of equals, acceptance of the moral standards of a community, the desire for whose good opinion lends a sanction to the rules of right conduct, these are the conditions of growth in civilization. A people whose minds are not open to the lessons of the world's progress, whose spirits are not stirred by the aspirations and the achievements of humanity struggling the world over for liberty and justice, must be left behind by civilization, in 4 its steady and beneficent advance. . . .

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These beneficent results the Government and the people of the United States of America greatly desire. We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no

1 No one is better fitted to speak of our policy toward other American republics than Senator Root, who was Secretary of War under President McKinley, 1899-1904; Secretary of State under President Roosevelt, 1905-1909; Senator from New York, 1905– 1915; and in 1915 president of the New York Constitutional Convention.

From "Latin America and the United States," addresses by Elihu Root, collected and edited by Robert Bacon and John Brown Scott. Copyright, 1917, by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Used by permission of the publishers.

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