The imperialists answer that it is no disgrace to have been patriotic to our Fatherland; the national honour requires us, indeed, to remain for the present in the Philippines, and not to take down the flag which we have hoisted so triumphantly. We should not flee before a few disaffected races living in those islands. Then the other side replies, you have not protected the honour of your nation, but you have worked its disgrace. The honour of America has been the moral status of its army; it was America’s boast that its army had never lost the respect of an enemy, and that it had held strictly aloof from every unnecessary cruelty. But America has learned a different lesson in the Philippines, and such a one as all thoughtful persons have foreseen; for when a nation accustomed to a temperate climate goes to the tropics to war with wild races which have grown up in cruelty and the love of revenge, it necessarily forgets its moral standards, and gives free rein to the lowest and worst that is in it. The American forces have learned there, to their disgrace, to conquer by deception and trickery; to be cruel and revengeful, and so return torture for torture. Then the imperialists say that this is not a question of the army which was landed in the tropical islands, but of the whole American people, which undertook new duties and responsibilities for the islands, and wished to try, not only its military, but also its political, economic, and social powers along new lines. A people also must grow and have its higher aspirations. The youthful period of the American nation is over; manhood has arrived, when new and dangerous responsibilities have to be assumed. To this the anti-imperialists reply, that a nation is surely not growing morally when it gives up the principles which have always been its sole moral strength. If it gives up believing in the freedom of every nation and carries on a war of subjugation, it has renounced all moral development, and instead of growing it begins internally to decay. But this, the imperialists say, is absurd—since, outwardly, at least, we are steadily growing; our reputation before other nations is increasing with our military development; we have become a powerful factor in the powers of the world, and our Philippine policy shows that our navy can conquer even in remote parts of the earth, and that in the future America will be a power to reckon with everywhere. But, on the contrary, say the others, our nation held a strong position so long as, in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, it was able to keep any European power from getting a foothold on the American continents, and so long as we made the right of self-government a fundamental principle of our international politics. But the instant we adopted a policy of conquest and assumed the right to subjugate inferior peoples because our armies were the stronger, the Monroe Doctrine became at once and for the first time an empty phrase, if not a piece of arrogance.