Cbc Conservative ,
all sides the scone was one of terrible
desolation. ' "
Bufe the Filipino has a right to be
heard I Even in the days of Nero that
most despised of all beings , a Christian ,
had the right of appeal to Cmsar.
The Filipino agents say that the
Americans placed vessels along the
shores of the bay and commenced hos
tilities unexpectedly at midnight on
Saturday , simultaneously bombarding
the defenseless towns of Fondo , Malak
and Malabon.The slaughter of
women and children was frightful , the
Americans burning and devastating all
before them , conducting a war of exter
mination and shooting every Filipino. "
Suppose a similar conflict with the ? o-
called "Insurgents" of Cuba and such a
wholesale slaughter had been reported
from Havana in 1897 , as the work of
Captain-General Weyler what would
Americans have said ? Would they not
in holy horror have at once denounced
him as a "butcher ? "
"The expansionist clergymen , who
have been most enthusiastic about
Christianizing and civilizing the natives
must concede that it is a pity we are
compelled to begin this benign work by
shooting the Filipinos full of rifle bul
lets or blowing them to pieces with
shells. "
Prospective events and the status
existing to February 18th arc summar
ized by one of our morning papers thus :
"The arrival of reinforcements , which
is uow a matter of daily expectation ,
would give General Otis the use of fly
ing columns and probably enable him to
pacify Luzon and after that the rest of
the group in short order. "
To which I would remark that "Free
dom shrieked when Kosciusko fell , "
and order reigned in Warsaw when
Poland was pacified !
I will add Rudyard Kipling's words :
By all yo will or whisper ,
By all yo leave or do ,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
To return ogaiu to Java : The spirit
of the age is beginning to reach there ,
in fact , suggestions for its actual auto
nomy have been uttered. There are
ominous signs everywhere , and the rul
ing power finds its petty remnant of
coffee culture and grocery business a
more vexing and difficult venture each
year.
year.Whether
Whether , as pessimists foretell , a Mo
hammedan rebellion shall desolate the
island ; whether it will remain in Dutch
leading strings ; arrive at oven the lim
ited independence of a British colony , or
succumb to Germany's colonial ambi
tions ( as the French so freely prophesy ) ,
Java seems destined soon to put forth
larger claims to the world's attention
and occupy for a time at least , a prom
inent place on its stage of action.
If Americans think or imagine that
they would do bettor than or oven as
well as the Dutch , English or French ,
they are mistaken. Let us consider the
treatment of the North American In
dians. The justice of the United States
government has , as a rule , given way to
the clamor of greedy men for possession
of their lands , until the Indians are now ,
with but few exceptions , driven back on
to poor , barren reservations , where it
would bo difficult for skilled white men
to make a living. Indeed , the press re
ports ten thousand of them moving from
the United States into Mexico. Gen.
Nelson A. Miles , referring to the Indian
problem , is reported to have snid , "The
wrecks of broken promises on the part
of the government are strewn all the
way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. "
By consulting the pamphlets and
leaflets issued by the Gospel Union of
the United States on the subject of the
"Indians of America , " it will be seen
that wo have not provided for our own.
To the case of the Indians may be added
the situation or plight of oiir negro pop
ulation. But above and beyond our
failure to properly care for these two
races within our own confines , polioe
reports and criminal statistics indisput
ably show that we are not looking after
the moral welfare of our own race.
The possibilities of progress in an
Oriental people are strikingly illus
trated by the achievements of the
Japanese within the thirty years that
have elapsed since the revolution which
resulted in the overthrow of the Shogun
or Tycoon power and the adoption of a
constitution and the establishment of
parliamentary government. After suf
fering for forty years the grossest injus
tice in the wny of a tariff statiis prac
tically imposed by Great Britain and the
United States , and participated in by
other nations , an injustice which was
denounced by eminent and rightly in
clined Americans , the Japanese , by a
long course of insistence , have come at
last to the partial attainment of some of
the common international rights of na
tions , and this fact is really the ground
for the present general disparagement
of that people by the resident and
hitherto specially favored and deferrod-
to foreigners , whether American , Brit
ish , French , Dutch , or of any other
nationality.
There are no European colonies in
Oriental tropical lands , in the true
and just sense of the word. There are
only military settlements and despotic
dominion. The exploitations of Eur
opean colonizing nations have always
been and will continue to bo for the
benefit of the few the high civil and
military officials sent out by the home
government and the plantation owners
and rich traders at the expense of the
toiling many , the subjugated people ,
and the common soldiers also , who , in
the fulfillment of their mission to ter
rorize the natives into a state of abject
subjugation , fall victims to climatic ills
during their enforced stay in a region
never intended for the abiding place of
the white man ; likewise to disease and
pernicious practices peculiar to the in
dolence of Oriental life. But the day ,
let us hope , is not far distant when
other of these Eastern peoples will fol
low in the footsteps of the erstwhile
docile and submissive Japanese , and like
thorn assert their right to take their re
spective places among the nations of the
earth , and to live and rule in the lands
of their ancestors , unmolested by the
domineering selfish intervention of the
interloping Caucasian.
The press dispatches report President
McKinley as saying the Filipinos m ust
submit to the authority of the United
States government. I do not know that
Captain-General Woyler over demanded
more of Cuba for Spain , and this raises
not only an ethical question , but a polit
ical principle of the most vital import
the inextinguishable love of liberty in
herent in the human breast. It not only
raises such questions , but it brings to
light some of the skeletons of the past ,
gaunt spectres with gory locks , looking
out at us through the mists of memory ;
long buried ghosts that will not down.
An orthodox clergyman had been in
the habit of visiting Old John Brown ,
of Harper's Ferry , Va. , fame , in his
cell and endeavoring to minister to him
the comforts of religion. On one of
these occasions ho volunteered his ser
vices as au attendant on the scaffold.
The rugged old hero interposed the
question , "Do you believe slavery is
sanctioned by religion ? " On being an
swered in the affirmative , Brown de
clined to have anything further to do
with him as a spiritual adviser , saying
that henceforth he could regard him only
as a heathen gentleman not as a Chris
tian.
tian.Whittier
Whittier has immortalized the inci
dent in verse :
John Brown of Osawatomio spake on his dy
ing day :
"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in
slavery's pay
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have
striven to free
"With her children , from the gallows-stair put
up a prayer for me. "
Of events subsequent to the execution ,
Thoreau said :
"All is quiet at Harper's Ferry , say
the journals. What is the character of
that calm which follows when the law
and the slaveholder prevail ? I regard
thin event an a touchstone deniijned to
briny out with glaring distinctness Hie
character of this government. We needed
to be thus assisted to see it by the light
of history. It needed to see itself. When
a government puts forth its strength on
the side of injustice it reveals itself sim
ply as brute force. It is more manifest
than ever that tyranny rules. When
you have caught and hung all its human
rebels you have accomplished nothing
but your own guilt. You have not
struck at the fountain head. The same