This ebook, based on a book first published in 1925, was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders’ 25th Anniversary. _The_ +Conquest+ _of the_ +Philippines+ _by the_ +United States+ 1898-1925 _by_ +Moorfield Storey+ Former President American Bar Association _and_ +Marcial P. Lichauco+ Harvard Law School “_Personally I think it is a fine and high thing for a nation to have done such a deed (our work in the Philippines) with such a purpose. But we cannot taint it with bad faith. If we act so that the natives understand us to have made a definite promise, then we should live up to that promise. The Philippines, from a military standpoint, are a source of weakness to us. The present administration has promised explicitly to let them go, and by its action has rendered it difficult to hold them against any serious foreign foe. These being the circumstances, the islands should at an early moment be given their independence without any guaranty whatever by us and without our retaining any foothold in them._” _THEODORE ROOSEVELT._ G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1926 Copyright, 1926 by Moorfield Storey and Marcial P. Lichauco [Colophon] Made in the United States of America PREFACE This book has been prepared in order to lay before the people of the United States the facts relating to the conquest of the Philippines. The government of the United States rests upon the self-evident truths that “all men are created equal,” that is, with equal political rights, and that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” or, in the words of Abraham Lincoln,—“No man is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”