Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/486

466 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. have worked out here that separate, peculiar, high destiny which our ancestors seemed to foresee for us, and which with all its grave drawbacks and moral dangers, might have done more for mankind than anything we may hope to accomplish now by taking a leading part in the politics of the world. " Let not England," said John Milton to the Parliament in 1645, " forget her precedence of teach- ing nations how to live." So to the United States of America, before this Spanish war, — possessed as she was of this fortunate isolation, of free yet guarded institutions, of vast, unpeopled areas, of an opportunity to illustrate how nations may be governed with- out wars and without waste, and how the great mass of men's earnings may be applied, not to the machinery of government, or the rewarding of office-holders, or the wasteful activities and en- ginery of war, but to the comforts and charities of life and to all the nobler ends of human existence, — so, I say, to our country as she was before the war, that same solemn warning of Milton, " God-gifted organ-voice of England," might well have come : " Let not America forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live." But now we are no longer where we were. The war has broken down the old barriers. First it bought us Hawaii, a colony two thousand miles away, in the Pacific Ocean. In point of distance this was much as if we should sail out over the Atlantic and annex the Azores. And now the end of the war is bringing us Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippine Islands. All these strange tropical countries are likely to be on our hands. Hawaii is already actually a part of our territory. From the other islands we have driven out their sovereign, and we have loaded ourselves with great responsibilities and hazards in supplying them with government, maintaining order, and determining what shall be their fate in the future. What are we to do? That the situation is full of peril for us there is no doubt; that it is certain to involve us in great outlays and perplexities, and in constant hazard of war is clear enough. I have spoken of accomplished facts. Let us take account of these a little more accurately. First, technically speaking, the war is not yet over. But as practical men we may as well be assured that it will not be renewed. Let us accept that, with all its consequences, as an accomplished fact, and let us no longer cry over the war. Second, the negotiation of the treaty of peace is another accomplished fact. We might have preferred something