It was said that having delivered the Filipinos from Spain "we were bound in all honor to protect their newly acquired liberty against the ambition and greed of any other nation on earth, and we were equally bound to protect them against our own. We were bound to stand by them, a defender and protector, until their new government was established in freedom and in honor; until they had made treaties with the powers of the earth and were as secure in their national independence as Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Santo Domingo, or Venezuela." But we ought to bind ourselves and promise the world that so soon as these ends could be realized or assured we would leave the Filipinos to themselves, Such was the view of eminent and respected Americans like George F. Hoar, George S. Boutwell, Carl Schurz, and William J. Bryan. These and others urged that the Filipinos had inalienable right to life and to liberty; that our policy in the Philippines was in derogation of those rights; that Japan, left to herself, had stridden farther in a generation than England's crown colony of India in a century; that the Filipinos could be trusted to do likewise; that our increments of territory hitherto had been adapted to complete incorporation in the American empire while the new were not; and that growth of any other character would mean weakness, not strength. The mistakes, expense, and difficulties incident to expansion, and the misbehavior and crimes of some of our soldiers were exhibited in their worst light. Rejoinder usually proceeded by denying the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government without long training. Even waiving this consideration, men found in international law no such mid-status between sovereignty and non-sovereignty as anti-imperialists wished to have the United States assume while the Filipinos were getting upon their feet. Many made great point of minimizing the abuses of our military government and of dilating upon native atrocities. The material wealth of the archipelago was described in glowing terms. Only American capital and enterprise were needed to develop it into a mine of national riches. The military and commercial advantages of our position at the doorway of the East, our duty to protect lives and property imperilled by the insurgents, and our manifest destiny to lift up the Filipino races, were dwelt upon. The argument having chief weight with most was that there seemed no clear avenue by which we could escape the policy of American occupation save the dishonorable and humiliating one of leaving the islands to their fate--anarchy and intestine feuds at once, conquest by Japan, Germany, or Spain herself a little later.