Excerpt from Autumnal Speeches in 1898 We did not want to possess Cuba, but to give liberty, law and justice to her inhabitants. We did not covet Porto Rico, and we shrunk from the grave responsibili ties of the government of the Philippines and their population of ten millions of varied races, only semi civilized. The fortunes of war have not only placed them in our hands, but destroyed the power of Spain to either hold or govern them. All the conditions upon which public opinion was forming have changed in six weeks, and we are facing a situation wholly different from the one on which multitudes of us formed a judg ment. It seems as if to let go threatens the peace of the world and consigns large populations to anarchy, and that our capacity for dealing with the greatest problem of our history is on trial. The English speaking world believes we can bring order out of chaos and so satisfy all races and religions thus thrown under our protection of their safety, and so convince them of the inestimable benefit of equal laws and impartial justice, that out of the Spanish war will come a new birth of liberty, a new era of civilization, a new development of the hidden treasures of the earth and a new and broader destiny for the United States. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.