Spaniards on the Philippine Islands between the time of Dewey's victory on May 1, 1898, and the time of the surrender of Manila on August 12th, and that fighting redounded to the benefit of our forces; for the Filipino army cleared the interior of the country of Spanish troops and cooped up the Spanish garrison of Manila, effectually blockading that city on the land side, while our ships and the American troops that had meanwhile assembled, blockaded it on the sea side, so that the Spaniards in Manila could neither get reinforcements nor withdraw into the interior.
While these services were being rendered by the Filipinos, and their effective coöperation sought and accepted by us, the Filipinos acted as our allies against a common foe. And then when we had taken Manila and assembled a large land force there—did we remember that we had gone to war against Spain with the solemn proclamation that this should be a war of liberation, and not of conquest, and that our Filipino allies were fairly entitled to the full benefit of that pledge? No, not that. President McKinley entered into peace negotiations with the common enemy, Spain—negotiations from which our allies, the Filipinos, who urgently asked to be heard, were carefully shut out, and through his Peace Commissioners President McKinley concluded, behind the backs of our allies, a treaty with Spain, the common enemy, by which he recognized, not that the Philippine Islanders were, and of right ought to be, free and independent, like the Cubans, but that Spain, even after having been actually ousted from that country, was still the rightful sovereign of the Philippine Islanders, so that she could sell them; and he bought them and their country for the sum of $20,000,000. It was in this singular way that, as President McKinley wishes to have us believe, “the providence of God in trusted to our hands the Philippines—a trust we have not sought.”
