Problems of Expansion

The article entitled "The Territory with which We are Threatened" was prepared before the appointment of its author as a member of the Commission to negotiate terms of peace with Spain, and published only a few days afterward. This circumstance attracted unusual attention to its views about retaining the territory the country had taken.

As to the attitude of every one else connected officially with the determination of that question there has been, naturally, more or less diplomatic reserve; but the position of Mr. Reid before he was appointed was thus clearly revealed. When the storm of opposition was apparently reaching its height, in June, 1899, he took occasion to avow explicitly the course it was obvious he must have recommended. In his address at the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Miami University, referring to some apparently authorized despatches on the subject from Washington, he said: "I readily take the time which hostile critics consider unfavorable, for accepting my own share of responsibility, and for avowing for myself that I declared my belief in the duty and policy of holding the whole Philippine Archipelago in the very first conference of the Commissioners in the President's room at the White House, in advance of any instructions of any sort. If vindication for it be needed, I confidently await the future."

This measure of responsibility for the expansion policy upon which the country is launched has necessarily given special interest to Mr. Reid's subsequent discussions of the various problems it has raised. They have been called for on important occasions both abroad and in all parts of our own country. They have covered many phases of the subject, but have preserved a singular uniformity of purpose and consistency of ideas throughout. They appeared at times when public men often seemed to be groping in the dark on an unknown road, but it is now evident that the road which has been taken is substantially the road they marked out. As a foreign critic said in comment on one of the addresses: "The author is one man who knows what he thinks about the new policy required by the new situation in which his country is placed, and has the courage and candor to say it."

It has seemed desirable with each paper and address to prefix a brief record of the circumstances under which it was made. A few memoranda which Mr. Reid had prepared to elucidate the text are added, in foot-notes and in the Appendices which include the Resolutions of Congress as to Cuba, the Protocol of Washington, and the text of the Peace of Paris.

C. C. BUEL.

NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK, May 25, 1900.

CONTENTS

Page

I. THE TERRITORY WITH WHICH WE ARE THREATENED 1 In "The Century," September, 1898.

II. WAS IT TOO GOOD A TREATY? 25 At the Lotos Club, New York, February 11, 1899.

III. PURPORT OF THE TREATY 35 At the Marquette Club, Chicago, February 13, 1899.

IV. THE DUTIES OF PEACE 53 At the Ohio Society dinner, New York, February 25, 1899.

V. THE OPEN DOOR 65 At the dinner of the American-Asiatic Association, New York, February 23, 1899.

VI. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY OF PARIS 71 From "The Anglo-Saxon Review," June, 1899.

VII. OUR NEW DUTIES 109 Address at the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Miami University, June 15, 1899.

VIII. LATER ASPECTS OF OUR NEW DUTIES 161 At Princeton University, on Commemoration Day, October 21, 1899.

IX. A CONTINENTAL UNION 199 At the Massachusetts Club, Boston, March 3, 1900.

X. OUR NEW INTERESTS 221 At the University of California, on Charter Day, March 23, 1900.

XI. "UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS" 259 At the Farewell Banquet to the Philippine Commission, San Francisco, April 12, 1900.

APPENDICES

1. POWER TO ACQUIRE AND GOVERN TERRITORY 271

2. THE TARIFF IN UNITED STATES TERRITORY 277