The End of the War, and After

IT is reason for universal congratulation that the war is ended (for it seems safe to assume that it is ended) so early and so happily, — for us, for the Spanish colonies, and, in spite of her present humiliation, for Spain herself ; for the result makes for civilization. There was never a doubt that it would end with an American victory ; but that the victory would be so easily and so cheaply won was not foreseen. Nor were the incidental benefits foreseen ; for there are incidental benefits as great as the main result itself. Unforeseen, also, were the new obligations that have been imposed on us.

The problem of governing countries not only separated from the United States, but populated by different races and accustomed to different institutions from ours, is a new problem ; but it is a problem that our English kinsmen have so successfully solved that we shall be dull indeed if we do not succeed, with their experience to instruct us. The present popular mood regarding this new task, as regarding most other large undertakings in which a national spirit must play an important part, seems to be a deepseated and safe mood. The people, there can hardly be doubt, prefer to retain the territory that has fallen to them by the fortune of war, and they do not share the foreboding of the intelligent minority, whose individualism estranges them from the national feeling, and who see grave danger to our institutions in such additions to our political tasks. National feeling is a safer guide to national development than the mere reasoning process of critical minds. At any rate, it at last becomes the only guide.

The danger to our successful management of Cuba and Porto Rico, or even of the Philippine Islands, consists, not in their distance from our shores, but in their difference of population and institutions from ours. They cannot be converted into American states by any statutes, and no laws can change their character. Nor is there any need that they should now or ever be converted into American states. We are committed to two duties : we have by conquest taken upon ourselves a solemn obligation to the people of the conquered islands to insure stable government, and the nature of our institutions forbids that we should set up any form of government except one that at the earliest possible moment shall become self-government. Even if we wished we could not shirk these responsibilities. We cannot leave the people of these islands either to their own fate, or to the mercy of the now defeated and disorganized Spanish rule, or yet to the mercy of any predatory nation that might seize them. We are become responsible for their development.

Precisely what form the government of these several islands ought to take can he determined only after careful study of their people and conservative experiment with them; but to predict that we shall make a failure in the effort to prepare them for self-government is a childish distrust of our capacity. We have never had a task just like this, but we have had tasks more difficult. Nor will our undertaking such a task involve us in entanglements with European nations— if we succeed. The European nations, it so happens, will look with somewhat greater respect upon American efforts at the government even of Manila than they would have looked six months ago. But without too great regard to European opinion it becomes our duty solemnly and patriotically now to take our new duties and responsibilities in hand, and, as a great nation committed to one great policy of government, to work out these problems for the advancement of civilization. The great Republic can have no tribute-bearing colonies ; but it can help weak people to self-government.

And it will be found that the government of each island will present itself, not as it now presents itself to the timid, as a task involving revolutionary dangers to ourselves and complications with all the other governments of the world, and a denial of the doctrines of the fathers, but rather as a practical task that practical and patriotic men can successfully accomplish.

The main result of the war, the freedom of Cuba from Spanish misrule, has been achieved, but the full fruits of it will ripen more slowly than most men at first supposed. Sympathy with the Cuban insurgents had led many persons to regard them as capable at once of selfgovernment ; but the conduct of a part of them during the war has confirmed the judgment of those men who knew them best, — that the removal of Spanish rule will not immediately nor easily lead to the self - government of Cuba. The complete conquest of the island by civilization will be accomplished through American industry and commerce, which will now follow American arms. Brigands are as certain where roads are lacking as rebellion where government is oppressive. But the future of Cuba presents no insuperable difficulties, though its subjection to civilization may require a considerable time. In his proclamation concerning the government of Santiago, the President indicated the proper course to pursue: local government to be permitted, to be required, in fact; the United States to maintain military control so long as military control is necessary for the security of life and property, but to relax it, and at last to give it up, when a competent local government has been created and tested. The process will not be very different in principle from the process of the reconstruction of the local governments of the Southern States thirty years ago. If the Cubans do not at first show capacity for self-government, the certain increase of American influence and even of American population in the island will greatly hasten its coming. The engineer will follow the soldier. The harbor of Havana will be opened to the Gulf Stream, — a necessary and easy piece of sanitary work that the Spaniards have been going to do for a century ; the cities will be properly drained, and yellow fever will be eliminated from the scourges of our own shores. Cuba will present no very serious difficulty till the time comes when it may wish to be admitted into the American Union as a state. But such a wish is not a sufficient reason for its admission.

And the same plan whereby local selfgovernment will be built up in Cuba will apply, with modifications, to Porto Rico. One island will become an independent territory under our guardianship; the other will be directly ceded to us. But the essential elements of their government under our tutelage must be the same, for the moral obligations that we have assumed are the same, and there is but one great principle of government that we can adhere to. How much territory it may be wise to retain in the Philippine Islands it is impossible to foresee ; but the principle that should govern our action is clear. We want no “ colonies,” can indeed have no “ colonies,” in the continental sense ; but we must fulfill every obligation to Spain’s conquered subjects that our conduct of the war in Asiatic waters has put upon us, without regard to the colonizing ambitions of the European nations ; and we shall hardly fail, moreover, to keep whatever strategic advantage our navy has won, in either ocean.

The war, then, brings within the sphere of English-speaking civilization two of the most valuable of the Antilles ; incidentally the Hawaiian Islands, and perhaps a part of the Philippine group : and these results can be only good. But in achieving them we have achieved other results quite as great, and no less great because they were unexpected.

We have recovered our own national feeling. Four months ago, we were a great mass of people rather than a compact nation conscious of national strength and unity. By forgetting even for this brief time our local differences, we have welded ourselves into a conscious unity such as the Republic has not felt since its early days. Not only have the North and the South forgotten that they were ever at war, — for time and industry had already wellnigh brought this result, — but the Pacific states are nearer to the rest of the Union than they ever were before, and the great middle West is no longer estranged from the seaboard. We can work out our own problems and build our own future with a steadier purpose.

This consciousness is the keener because of the increased respect that other nations have for us. The United States was never before understood in official Europe, perhaps not even in official England. When the war was begun, most of the Continental nations failed to conceal their contempt of us : they now respect us as they never dreamed they should. Nor is it only our naval victories that have given the world a somewhat new conception of the United States. Quite as impressive has been the absence of the old-time barbarities of war and of warlike vindictiveness. To send home across the ocean a captured army, to parole the officers of a captured squadron, to feed not only the victims of Spanish misrule, but the Spanish themselves, have laid emphasis on other reasons for war than the old reasons of the punishment of enemies and the conquest of tribute-bearing territory. In humanity to the enemy this war is without parallel. Both the power and the aims of the Republic are more clearly understood in Europe than a half century of peace could have revealed them, and (in no spirit of boastfulness) we might add the American character, also.

It is to be hoped, too, that we have had some effect on the mediæval diplomacy of Europe. We have often been called blunt and discourteous in our diplomacy, — no doubt with truth; for European diplomacy is a dilatory art, that has always been as courteous as it has usually been mendacious. Ministers have seldom said what they or their masters meant. Now, if the dealings of civilized governments with one another are ever to advance beyond evasion and cunning, the old diplomacy must change to republican directness and frankness. It need not take on discourtesy in manner, but it must speak the truth and keep faith. If we have even in slight measure discredited the old mendacious and dilatory methods, we have done something toward furthering political civilization.

Nor will the impulse that asserted itself in the war stop with the war. The spirit of the people once having looked outward, American enterprise will seek new fields of conquest, — not by arms, but by trade and legitimate adventure. Our navy has revealed to ourselves not less than to the rest of the world our rightful place among the nations. Modern transportation, which we have done most to develop, has changed all international political conditions. By reason of it we are already “ entangled ” with other peoples, in ways that the fathers could not foresee and that no policy can prevent. The great outward pressure that all nations feel is the pressure of commerce for new markets ; and statesmen, whether they know it or not, minister to trade, and through trade to civilization. With larger and further-reaching political duties, too, which appeal to the imagination rather than to the private greed of men, our public life will once more rise to the level of statesmanship.