Imperial Democracy Author:David Starr Jordan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. And unregretful, threw us all away To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday." Lowell. A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. I wish to m... more »aintain a single proposition. We should withdraw from the Philippine Islands as soon as in dignity we can. It is bad statesmanship to make these alien people our partners; it is a crime to make them our slaves. If we hold their lands there is no middle course. Only a moral question brings a crisis to man or nation. In the presence of a crisis, only righteousness is right and only justice is safe. I ask you to consider with me three questions of the hour. Why do we want the Philippines? What can we do with them? What will they do to us? These questions demand serious consideration, not one at a time but all together. We should know clearly our final intentions as a nation, for it is never easy to retrace false steps. We have made too many of these already. It is time for us to grow serious. Even the most headlong of our people admit that we stand in the presence of a real crisis, while, so far as we can see, there is no hand at the helm. But the problem is vir- Read before the Graduate Club of Leland Stanford Junior University, Feb. 14, 1899: and afterwards (April 3) published for the Club by the courtesy of Mr. John J. Valentine. tually solved when we know what our true interests are. Half the energy we have spent in getting into trouble will take us honorably out of it. Once convinced that we do not want the Philippines it will be easy to abandon them with honor. If we are to take them we cannot get at it too soon. The difficulty is that we do not yet know what we want, and we are afraid that if we once let these people go we shall never catch them again. With our longings after Imperialism we have not had th...« less