The New York Times/1898/8/20/Mr. Schurz on Our Foreign Policy

MR. SCHURZ ON OUR FOREIGN POLICY.

No one is entitled to a more respectful hearing on public questions than Mr. Carl Schurz. His long experience, his proved ability, and especially his singular disinterestedness and devotion to a high ideal of public life have won for him the confidence and sympathy of thoughtful Americans. In civil life he has been a distinguished leader in three great struggles, that with slavery, that with unsound finance, and that with political corruption. He has been, moreover, all his life a student of politics in the broadest sense.

In his address at Saratoga yesterday Mr. Schurz made an elaborate argument against the annexation of any territory formerly Spanish as the results of the war now practically closed. As to nearly all the objections to the incorporation of any part of this territory as an integral part of the United States with the rights and powers of Statehood, Americans in general would agree, were the proposition entirely an open one. They would certainly concede that it is not best to violate a specific pledge, as in Mr. Schurz's opinion we should if we annexed any of this territory; but many of them will not agree that such violation is involved. Whatever may be the opinion on that subject, it is plain that as to Puerto Rico the decision has been made. Spain has agreed to cede it to the United States. As to the Philippines the question is still open. As to Cuba, no one will deny that we are bound to give the people of that island an independent government, but it must be a real government. We are not bound to turn the island over to anarchy and chronic civil war, if the people of Cuba can not and will not agree on a government of their own. As to all this territory the question seems to us largely one of responsibility quite as much as of selfish interest. In saying this we shall be accused of hypocrisy, but not, we are sure, by Mr. Schurz. If the proper meeting of responsibility shall prove advantageous to us and to the civilized world it will only be another proof that “honesty is the best policy.”

Mr. Schurz himself does not fall far short of a statement of our own position in this matter. Referring to the Philippines he uses the following language: “As to the main point that concerns the United States, I shall say that the same principle should be adhered to as in the case of Cuba and Puerto Rico — that is, we should obtain, by means of agreement, the greatest attainable facilities for commerce and civilizing influences with the least political responsibilities and entanglements; in other words, we should not annex, but secure the opening to our activities of the territories concerned.”

Where we differ, so far as we do differ, from this statement is in this, that we are not yet convinced that “the greatest attainable facilities for commerce and civilizing influences” can be attained, or that the “least political responsibilities” that we are bound to assume, can be arranged by any practicable “agreement.” If that were really feasible we should be extremely gratified. But see how the case stands.

We have driven Spain from this hemisphere, and in the Philippines we have made the task of decent government, to which she had already shown herself utterly unequal, far more difficult than before. If the Caribbean Islands and the Philippines are, by the character of their people and their tropical situation doomed to such disorder and corruption as Mr. Schurz predicts for them, by what possible agreement and by agreement with whom are we to secure either their “opening to our activities” or any “facilities for civilizing influences”? We do not ask this question in any contentious spirit, nor with any desire to apply the “reductio ad absurdum” to Mr. Schurz's proposition. We ask it because it is to us and to very many Americans a question involving the very essence of our obligations in the settlement we are about to make. We can see that the task which falls to the American Government from this war is, at best, a very trying one, and especially that the incorporation of the Spanish islands in the Union at any near period would be accompanied by grave risks. But are we to abandon them to the chaos which is almost certain to follow if we leave them entirely free at once? And if not, what are we to do? It is true that there is no specific provision in our Constitution for administering their affairs, but neither was there any for the process of reconstruction by which the insurgent Southern States were brought into their full relations with the United States. We think it is more a question of what we ought to do than of the way in which it shall be done. If we can see our duty we shall find means to perform it.

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