Harper's Weekly/The Historic View of Two Colonial Wars

by Harper's Weekly

The Historic View
of Two Colonial Wars

NO war was ever justified when regarded from any point of view but the historic one. The larger forces that have play are the only forces that can properly be considered. In the case of the fighting in Luzon, the single great fact to be kept in mind is that it has fallen to our lot to bring that island and the whole Philippine archipelago at last to such a stage of civilization as the people and the country are capable of. The only method of bringing about such a result with such a population is first to restore peace and order under American control. In the whole history of the building up of the backward or tropical parts of the world, this is the only method that has succeeded.

Any other view of the subject is theoretical. It may be humane, but it is impracticable. Let us take, for instance, the eloquent and academic review of the subject made by Mr. Schurz in his elaborate speech on October 17 at the Anti-Imperialist meeting at Chicago. He made the following comparison, which he called an exact parallel:

Imagine that in our Revolutionary times, France, being at war with England, had brought to this country a fleet and an army, and had, without any definite compact to that effect, co-operated as an ally with our Revolutionary forces, permitting all the while the Americans to believe that she did this without any mercenary motive, and that, in case of victory, the American colonies would be free and independent. Imagine then that, after the British surrender at Yorktown, the King of France had extorted from the British King a treaty ceding, for a consideration of $20,000,000, the sovereignty over the American colonies to France, and that thereupon the King of France had coolly notified the Continental Congress and General Washington that they had to give up their idea of national independence, and to surrender unconditionally to the sovereignty of France, wherefor the French King promised them ‘benevolent assimilation.’ Imagine, further, that upon the protest of the Americans that Great Britain, having lost everything in the colonies except New York city and a few other little posts, had no sovereignty to cede, the French King answered that he had bought the Americans at five dollars a head, and that if they refused to submit he would give them benevolent assimilation in the shape of bullets. Can there be any doubt that the Continental Congress and General Washington would have retorted that, no matter what the French King might have bought, Great Britain had no sovereignty left to sell; that least of all would the Americans permit themselves to be sold; that the French, in so treating their American allies after such high-sounding professions of friendship and generosity, were a lot of mean, treacherous, contemptible hypocrites, and that the Americans would rather die than submit to such wolves in sheep's clothing? And will any patriotic American now deny that, whatever quibbles of international law about possible cessions of a lost sovereignty might be invented, such conduct of the French would have been simply a shame and that the Americans of that time would have eternally disgraced themselves if they had failed to resist unto death? How, then, can the same patriotic American demand that the Filipinos should surrender and accept American sovereignty under circumstances exactly parallel?

Now there could be no fairer nor stronger presentation of the case if the Tagalogs were such a people as the American colonists were. Indeed, the whole controversy turns on the present stage of development and capacity of the people of Luzon. The American colonists had English institutions, English traditions, English character, and they won their own independence even from their mother-country. The Tagalogs have no such institutions, nor traditions, nor character, nor capacity; and such lessons in government as they have learned were learned from the worst colonial government and the most corrupt administration of modern times. The evidence of every competent and trustworthy man who has made a study of the social and political conditions in these islands confirms the conclusion that good government would not come as a result of leaving the natives to themselves or to Aguinaldo and his associates; and this is the determining factor in the case. The strongest argument of the Anti-Imperialists is most forcibly expressed in Mr. Schurz's parallel; but in the larger and only proper view of the war the parallel is academic and not exact, for it takes no account of the difference in character and capacity between the American colonists and the Filipinos.

So, too, with the unfortunate war between the British and the Boers. The personal or temporary view of it reveals only the misfortunes, which are great in any war, and the good qualities of the weaker people obscure the real matter at issue. Regarded from the historical point of view, the Boers are standing stubbornly in the way of the natural development of political freedom in South Africa. The situation is such that a conflict at some time was inevitable. The folly of President Kruger in sending his ultimatum to the British government, however, has precipitated hostilities that possibly might otherwise have been postponed for a long time. But the total and ultimate result to civilization in South Africa will be the greater.

The historical rather than personal and temporary view of these wars does not mitigate their horror, nor does it make these wars or any others desirable; but it puts these unfortunate occurrences in their proper perspective. The humane gentlemen who make up the Anti-Imperialist League, as well as the Opposition in England, forget the future in their emotional contemplation of temporary misfortune. Nations must measure and order their lives and their development by consideration of longer periods, and the great forces that move them work by cycles, not by generations. Our English race is only fulfilling its destiny, in different ways, but to the same great end, in South Africa and in the Philippine Islands. If it costs treasure and blood, such a cost is unfortunate, but the sum total of civilization in our yet imperfect development can in no other way be advanced.