Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [103]
The public was not happy about the Philippine adventure and confused as to its duty. Democrats and Populists especially had felt the war in Cuba to be in the cause of freedom. Now, through some sorcery of fate, the war had turned into a matter of imposing sovereignty over an unwilling people by right of conquest. America had become the new Spain. In this unhappy moment impressive advice was offered through the combined effort of two men with the same extraordinary sensitivity to history-in-the-making. On February 1, 1899, S. S. McClure published in a two-page spread in his magazine an exhortation in verse by Rudyard Kipling addressed to the Americans in their perplexity.
Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed,
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild,
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.…
Take up the White Man’s burden
The savage wars of peace,
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease.…
Ye dare not stoop to less—
The note of righteousness was reinstated; Kipling had struck the perfect combination of noble destiny and unselfish mission. Widely reprinted and quoted, the poem spread across the country within a week, doing much to reconcile the hesitant to the imperial task.
In Washington it appeared as if opponents of the treaty might be successful, for the Republicans lacked one vote to make up the two-thirds for ratification. Suddenly, William Jennings Bryan arrived in Washington and to the amazement of his followers urged them to vote for the treaty. As leader of the Democratic party, he fully intended to be the standard-bearer himself in 1900, but he recognized the need of a new standard. Calculating that he could not win on a repetition of the silver issue, he was perfectly prepared to give it up in favor of imperialism, a new crown of thorns. He was sure that retention of the Philippines would be productive of so much trouble as to make a flaming campaign issue—but it must be consummated first. Consequently, he told his party, it would not do to defeat the treaty. This extraordinary reasoning astounded and even shocked those legislators who had thought a principle was involved. Senator Pettigrew, the “silver” Senator of South Dakota, was “so incensed that I finally told him he had no business in Washington on such an errand.” In the delicate balance that prevailed, the most important issue since Secession depended on the votes of one or two vacillating Senators. Some were affected when Bryan argued that to ratify the treaty would end the war.
At this point, with the vote scheduled for February 6, with the outcome uncertain, with each side anxiously canvassing and counting every possible aye and nay, the Filipinos rose in their own war of independence. Their forces attacked the American lines outside Manila on the night of February 4. In Washington, although the news intensified the frenzied speculation, no one could be certain what effect it would have. A last-minute petition signed by ex-President Cleveland, President Eliot of Harvard and twenty-two other men of national prominence was addressed to the Senate, protesting against the treaty unless it included a provision against annexing the Philippines and Porto Rico. “In accordance with the principles upon which our Republic was founded we are in duty bound to recognize the rights of the inhabitants … to independence and self-government,” it said, and pointed out that if, as McKinley had once declared, the forcible annexation of Cuba would be “criminal aggression by our