Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [104]
When the Senate voted on February 6, the treaty won by 57–27, with a one-vote margin. It was “the closest, hardest fight I have ever known,” said Lodge. In the aftermath one thing on which all agreed was that Bryan had swung the deciding votes. By the time the vote was counted 59 Americans were dead and 278 wounded and some 500 Filipinos were casualties in the Philippines. The cost of picking Malays was just beginning to be paid.
“The way the country puked up its ancient principles at the first touch of temptation was sickening,” wrote William James in a private letter. Publicly, to the Boston Evening Transcript, he wrote, “We are now openly engaged in crushing out the sacredest thing in this great human world—the attempt of a people long enslaved” to attain freedom and work out its own destiny. The saddest thing for men such as James was the parting with the American dream. America, Norton wrote, “has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization, and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day.”
To many others the knowledge of American guns firing on Filipinos was painful. The anger of the Anti-Imperialists deepened and their membership increased to half a million, with branches of the League in Boston and Springfield, in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon. “We are false to all we have believed in,” wrote Moorfield Storey. “This great free land which for more than a century has offered a refuge to the oppressed of every land, has now turned to oppression.” Still unwilling to give up, he hoped for leadership from Reed, whom Roosevelt had called “the most influential man in Congress.” Writing to Senator Hoar, Storey begged him to “persuade Mr. Reed to come out as he should. He is very sluggish and lacks aggression in great matters. If he would come out I think he might really be the next President.”
It was too late. Reed’s sluggishness was that of a man for whom the fight has turned sour. Others whose main interest lay in non-political fields could feel as deeply without being shattered. Reed’s whole life was in Congress, in politics, in the exercise of representative government, with the qualification that for him it had to be exercised toward an end that he believed in. His party and his country were now bent on a course for which he felt deep distrust and disgust. To mention expansion to him, said a journalist, was like “touching a match” and brought forth “sulphurous language.” The tide had turned against him; he could not turn it back and would not go with it.
Like his country, he had come to a time of choice. He could go on to another term as Speaker, but already he could see signs of growing feeling in the House that he was too hostile to the Administration to continue as its principal lieutenant. Joe Cannon and others of his old associates were antagonized by his attitude and his remarks about the President but none dared attempt a contest to unseat him. The President lacked the nerve to come out openly in support of anyone else. Reed knew he could hold his command but it would be a term at bay against a pack snarling at his feet. He became “moody and ugly” in these days and curt to old colleagues whom he saw deserting him.
To retain office as Speaker would be to carry through a policy in the Philippines abominable to him. It would be to continue as spokesman of the party of Lincoln, which had been his home for so long and which had now chosen, in another way than Lincoln meant, to “meanly lose the last best hope of earth.” To his longtime friend and secretary, Asher Hinds, he said, “I have tried, perhaps not always successfully, to make the acts of my public life accord with my conscience and I cannot now do this thing.” For him the purpose and savor of life