The imperialists say that the events in the Pacific Ocean have followed exactly the traditions of the land; that expansion has always been a fundamental instinct of the nation; that its whole development shows that from the day when the Union was founded it commenced to increase its territory. The tremendous expansion gained by the purchase of Louisiana was followed by the annexation of Florida, and still later by that of the great tract called Texas. In the war with Mexico the region between Texas and California was acquired. Alaska was next gathered in. The narrow strip originally occupied by the Thirteen States became a huge country within a century, and thus the nation simply remains true to its traditions in stretching out over the ocean and carrying the Stars and Stripes toward Asia.
To this the anti-imperialists reply, on the contrary, that the United States is repudiating an honourable history and trampling down that which has been sacred for centuries. For if there has been any underlying principle at all to guide the United States in moments of perplexity, it has been a firm faith in the rights of people to govern themselves. The United States has never exchanged or acquired a foot of land without the consent of those who dwelt thereon. Where such lands have held nothing but the scattered dwellings of isolated colonists there existed no national consent to be consulted, and where there were no people no national self-government could come in question; neither Louisiana, California, nor Alaska was settled by a real nation, and Texas had of itself decided to become independent of Mexico. But the Philippines are inhabited by ten million people, with striking national traits and an organized will; and the United States, for the first time in history, now misuses its strength by oppressing another nation and forcing its own will on a prostrate people.
Now the imperialists reply they do not mean at all to dispute the right of self-government, a principle on which the greatness of our nation is founded. But it is a narrow and absurd conception of self-government which regards every people, however backward and unruly, capable thereof, and divinely privileged to misrule itself. The right of self-government must be deserved; it is the highest possession of civilized nations, and they have earned it by labour and self-discipline. The Americans derive their right to govern themselves from the toil of thirty generations. The Filipinos have still to be educated up to such a plane. To this the anti-imperialists enquire, Is that to be called education which subdues, like rebels, a people desirous of freedom? Are you helping those people by sending soldiers to assert your sovereignty?
