Gentlemen talk about sentimentalities, about idealism. They like practical statesmanship better. But, Mr. President, this whole debate for the last four years has been a debate between two kinds of sentimentality. There has been practical statesmanship in plenty on both sides. Your side have carried their sentimentalities and ideals out in your practical statesmanship. The other side have tried and begged to be allowed to carry theirs out in practical statesmanship also. On one side have been sentimentalities. They were the ideals of the fathers of the revolutionary time, and from their day down till the day of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner was over. The sentimentalities were that all men in political right were created equal; that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are instituted to secure that equality; that every people－not every scattering neighborhood or settlement without organic life, not every portion of a people who may be temporarily discontented, but the political being that we call a people－has the right to institute a government for itself and to lay its foundation on such principles and organize its powders in such form as to it and not to any other people shall seem most likely to effect its safety and happiness. Now, a good deal of practical statesmanship has followed from these ideals and sentimentalities. They have built forty-five states on firm foundations. They have covered South America with republics. They have kept despotism out of the Western Hemisphere. They have made the United States the freest, strongest, richest of the nations of the world. They have made the word "republic" a name to conjure by the round world over. By their virtue the American flag－beautiful as a flower to those who love it; terrible as a meteor to those who hate it－floats everywhere over peaceful seas, and is welcomed everywhere in friendly ports as the emblem of peaceful supremacy and sovereignty in the commerce of the world. . . .

You also, my imperialistic friends, have had your ideals and your sentimentalities. One is that the flag shall never be hauled down where it has once floated. Another is that you will not talk or reason with a people with arms in their hands. Another is that sovereignty over an unwilling people may be bought with gold. And another is that sovereignty may be got by force of arms, as the booty of battle or the spoils of victory.

What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and your sentimentalities? You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives－the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest, bringing their sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out their miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture ....

Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men when they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate. ...

I have sometimes fancied that we might erect here in the capital of the country a column to American Liberty which alone might rival in height the beautiful and simple shaft which we have erected to the fame of the Father of the Country. I can fancy each generation bringing its inscription, which should recite its own contribution to the great structure of which the column should be but the symbol.

The generation of the Puritan and the Pilgrim and the Huguenot claims the place of honor at the base. "I brought the torch of Freedom across the sea. I cleared the forest. I subdued the savage and the wild beast. I laid in Christian liberty and law the foundations of empire."

The next generation says: "What my fathers founded I builded. I left the seashore to penetrate the wilderness. I planted schools and colleges and courts and churches."

Then comes the generation of the great colonial day: "I stood by the side of England on  many a hard-fought field. I helped humble the  power of France. I saw the lilies go down before  the lion at Louisburg and Quebec. I carried the  cross of St. George in triumph in Martinique and  the Havana. I knew the stormy pathways of the  ocean. I followed the whale from the Arctic to  the Antarctic seas, among tumbling mountains  of ice and under equinoctial heat, as the great  English orator said, 'No sea not vexed by my  fisheries; no climate not witness to my toils.' "

Then comes the generation of the revolutionary time: "I encountered the power of England. I declared and won the independence of  my country. I placed that declaration on the  eternal principles of justice and righteousness  which all mankind have read, and on which all  mankind will one day stand. I affirmed the dignity of human nature and the right of the people  to govern themselves. I devised the securities  against popular haste and delusion which made  that right secure. I created the supreme court  md the Senate. For the first time in history I  made the right of the people to govern themselves safe, and established institutions for that  end which will endure forever."

The next generation says: "I encountered England again. I vindicated the right of an American ship to sail the seas the wide world over without molestation. I made the American sailor as safe at the ends of the earth as my fathers had made the American farmer safe in his home. I proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine in the face of the Holy Alliance, under which sixteen republics have joined the family of nations. I filled the Western Hemisphere -with republics from the Lakes to Cape Horn, each controlling its own destiny in safety and in honor."

Then comes the next generation: "I did the mighty deeds which in your younger years you saw and which your fathers told. I saved the Union. I put down the rebellion. I freed the slave. I made of every slave a freeman, and of  every freeman a citizen, and of every citizen a  voter."

Then comes another who did the great work  in peace, in which so many of you had an honorable share: "I kept the faith. I paid the debt. I  brought in conciliation and peace instead of  war. I secured in the practice of nations the great doctrine of expatriation. I devised the  homestead system. I covered the prairie and the plain with happy homes and with mighty states.  I crossed the continent and joined together the seas with my great railroads. I declared the manufacturing independence of America, as my fathers affirmed its political independence. I built up our vast domestic commerce. I made my country the richest, freest, strongest, happiest  people on the face of the earth."

And now what have we to say? What have we to say? Are we to have a place in that honorable company? Must we engrave on that column: "We repealed the Declaration of  Independence. We changed the Monroe Doctrine from a doctrine of eternal righteousness  and justice, resting on the consent of the governed, to a doctrine of brutal selfishness, looking  only to our own advantage. We crushed the only  republic in Asia. We made war on the only  Christian people in the East. We converted a  war of glory to a war of shame. We vulgarized the American flag. We introduced perfidy into the practice of war. We inflicted torture on unarmed men to extort confession. We put children to death. We established reconcentrado camps. We devastated provinces. We baffled the aspirations of a people for liberty."

No, Mr. President. Never! Never! Other and better counsels will yet prevail. The hours are long in the life of a great people. The irrevocable step is not yet taken.

Let us at least have this to say: "We, too, have kept the faith of the fathers. We took Cuba by the hand. We delivered her from her age-long bondage. We welcomed her to the family of nations. We set mankind an example never beheld before of moderation in victory. We led hesitating and halting Europe to the deliverance of their beleaguered ambassadors in China. We marched through a hostile country－a country cruel and barbarous－without anger or revenge. We returned benefit for injury, and pity for cruelty. We made the name of America beloved in the East as in the West. We kept faith with the Philippine people. We kept faith with our own history. We kept our national honor unsullied. The flag which we received without a rent we handed down without a stain." [Applause on the floor and in the galleries.]