their own uneasiness at what we are doing. It is not to be expected that any appeal to reason can guide the course of events. Experience of trouble, war, expense, corruption, quarrels, scandals, etc., may produce weariness and anger and determine action. The issue will, therefore, press upon us for years to come.
The expansionists ask what we think ought to be done. It is they who are in power and have our fate in their hands, and it belongs to them to say what shall be done. This they have not done. They are contented with optimistic platitudes which carry no responsibility and can be dropped to-morrow as easily as "criminal aggression" and our "plain duty." It is unquestionably true that there is no fighting against the accomplished fact, although it is rare audacity to taunt the victims of misgovernment with their own powerlessness against it, as if that was an excuse for it. We were told that we needed Hawaii in order to secure California. What shall we now take in order to secure the Philippines? No wonder that some expansionists do not want to "scuttle out of China." We shall need to take China, Japan, and the East Indies, according to the doctrine, in order to "secure" what we have. Of course this means that, on the doctrine, we must take the whole earth in order to be safe on any part of it, and the fallacy stands exposed. If, then, safety and prosperity do not lie in this direction, the place to look for them is in the other direction: in domestic development, peace, industry, free trade with everybody, low taxes, industrial power. We ought not only to grant independence to these communities, which are both geographically and socially outside of us, but we ought to force it upon them as soon as a reasonable time has been granted to them to organize such a political system as suits them. After that they should go on
