independent of us. Aguinaldo was a patriot when he was fighting Spain; he is a rebel when he is fighting us. Militarism is the neglect of rational motives and interests and the surrender of one's mind and will to whimsical points of vanity and anger.
We have advanced far on this road when we propose to sit in judgment on the fitness of other people for self-government. What are the criteria of this fitness? Who knows whether we possess it ourselves? Any nation possesses it only more or less. The legislature of New York apparently does not think that the city of New York possesses it. In the period of 1783 to 1789 many contemporary observers saw good reason to doubt whether the United States of North America possessed it, and even distinguished fathers of the republic have left on record their own misgivings about it. Thirty years ago we gave the suffrage to newly emancipated negro slaves, and gave them not only self-government, but the political control of the States in which they lived. It was the gravest political heresy of that period to doubt if they were "fit for self-government," and no question of that sort was ever formulated in public discussion. There is something ludicrous in the attitude of one community standing over another to see whether the latter is "fit for self-govemment." Is lynching, or race-rioting, or negro-burning, or a row in the legislature, or a strike with paralyzed industry, or a disputed election, or a legislative deadlock, or the murder of a claimant-official, or counting in unelected officers, or factiousness, or financial corruption and jobbery, proof of unfitness for self-government? If so, any State which was stronger than we might take away our self-government on the ground that we were unfit for it. It is, therefore, simply a question of power, like all the other alleged grounds of interference of one
