Editor’s Table: Notes on the President’s Message

or any special number of kingdoms; and affirm that the kingdoms that succeed the great empire of Rome are represented by the pieces of iron and pieces of clay that will not adhere together. With this interpretation one is under no obligation to prove that the old empire of Rome was divided into exactly ten, or any other number of kingdoms. The kingdoms may be ten or fifty or a hundred, we do not know; for we do not know now many pieces of ironn or pieces of clay were in the feet and toes of the image; and it does not matter. We do know that the great characteristic of those kingdoms shall be a broken, disunited condition: for ''as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they (i. e. these kingdoms or fragments of the old Roman empire) — they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."* This mingling themselves with the seed of men in a vain attempt at uniting the kingdoms, can have allusion to no other thing than to the custom of the modern kingdoms of Europe marrying and inter-marrying in their royal families, in the vain effort to so unite the interests of their kingdoms that they may not be at enmity one towards the other. But for all their mingling "with the seed of men," they do not "cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay." But we have the word of God for it that there shall arise in the days of these kings a kingdom that shall be united — one that shall never be destroyed — "and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume" all the kingdoms that preceded it, "and it shall stand forever; * * * and the>dream is certain, and the intrepre-

tation thereof sure."

NOTES ON THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

As was to be expected the three main items in President McKinley's message to congress, under date of December the 6th, were the Currency Question, Our Relations with Spain *Dan.lI. 42, 43.

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over the Cubau Difficulties, and the Annexation of Hawaii. Of course the views in regard to the message will be as various as the principles or prejudices of those who express them. There will be rank partisans who will disagree with the views of the president, for no other reason that they are set forth by one of opposite political faith to their own; and others, with no more reason, will approve them because they are the utterances of the president elected by the party of which they are members. But leaving on one side these extremists, we take it that the president's message will in several particulars be a good deal of a disappointment to very many people; and in nothing more especially than in respect of these very prominent questions we have named.

On the currency question the president may be said to re-affirm the intention of the government to keep all kinds of our very many kinds of currency at par with gold, by making it redeemable in gold on demand. But he calls attention to the disadvantage at which the government is placed by reason of this supposed duty which devolves upon it; and makes several recommendations by which he hopes it ma)^ escape from the difficulties involved in this policy. In the event of the policy of the recent past being continued — the policy of keeping up the gold reserve of the treasury by selling interestbearing bonds when it becomes depleted — the president recommends that the secretary of the treasury be given the power to sell bonds at long or short periods bearing a less rate of interest than is now authorized by law. He further recommends that as soon as the receipts of the government are quite sufficient to pay all the expenses of the government, that United States notes when presented for redemption in gold, and are redeemed in gold, such notes shall be kept and set apart and only paid out in exchange for gold. In other words the president recommends in this gradual manner the retirement of the paper currency of the country. He so far endorses the plan of Secretary Gage for the reform of the currency as to recommend it to the consideration of congress; and especially concurs in so much of the secretary's plan as recommends that national banks be allowed to issue notes to the face value of the bonds which they have deposited for

circulation; that the tax on circulating notes secured by the deposit of the above mentioned bonds be reduced to one-half of one per cent per annum; that authority be given for the establishment of national banks with a minimum capital of $25,000, and that the issue of national bank notes be restricted to the denomination of ten dollars. This, with a vaguely expressed hope that something may yet come of efforts to secure the assistance of other nations in bringing about a recognition of J30th gold and silver as money, upon such terms as will secure the use of both metals upon a basis which shall work no injuries to any class of our citizens, may be said to be the sum of the president's recommendations on the currency question.

The free silver advocates of the country will, of course, be in disagreement with the recommendations, and it will be questionable if the pronounced gold advocates will be entirely satisfied with the absence of a direct declaration in favor of the single gold standard, while the faintly expressed hope that something may yet be done in recognition of silver as a money metal, through the means of international agreement, will come to be looked upon as a half-regretful glance towards the advocates of bimetallism with whom at one time the president was suspected of being inclined to

flirt.

• • «

The views of the president in relation to Cuba are, perhaps, the only ones that could now be expressed on that subject by the president of the United States, namely: Let us wait. Spain has announced a new Cuban policy, and has placed its administration under new officers, of more humane disposition than those who lately managed Spain's affairs in Cuba. Under these circumstances, in substance says President McKinley, we should wait patiently to see what effect this new policy of reconciliation, together with the offer of a liberal measure of home rule for the island, will have upon the insurgent Cubans; for, after all, the main thing to be achieved in any intervention the United States might finally make, is securing the contentment of the inhabitants of that now unhappy island. That the policy heretofore pursued by the

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United States in regard to Cuba has been altogether unworthy of our nation can scarcely admit of question. That the United States long ago, in the name of humanity, should have intervened in Cuban affairs seems to us to have been the plain duty of our government. We say nothing of our own wellnigh ruined commerce with this "Gem of the Antilles;" nor anything of the destruction of the property belonging to American citizens in Cuba; nor of outrages perpetrated upon American citizens, for which no indemnity that Spain can pay, will wholly compensate. All this may be set on one side, and there still remains sufficient grounds for the just interference of our nation on the score of humanitarian considerations. It has long been a political maxim that where a nation can rule only as she destroys, she ought not to be permitted to rule; and that this is the case with Spain in Cuba has been abundantly proven in the past two years of war — to say nothing of the experience of the last thirty years, half of which time has been spent in open war in that island. The barbarous cruelties practiced by late Captain-General Weyler, so repugnant to the usages of civilized warfare, would have justified American intervention any time within the past eighteen months. But those cruelties did not awaken our government to intervention; the administration in Spain, under which they were perpetrated, was succeeded by one pledged to a new policy, a policy of reconciliation through the concession of autonomy to Cuba, but maintaining Spanish sovereignty in the island. Under these circumstances and at this particular juncture there is nothing to do but wait, as the president counsels, until the effect of this new policy shall be known. But this new condition that has arisen in the affairs of Cuba — of which we make bold to predict failure — will never excuse the tardiness of our government's movements in this matter, neither under the present nor the late administration.

President McKinley quotes extensively from the message of the late president U. S. Grant, on Cuban affairs, sent to congress in December, 1875, when what has come to be known in Cuban history as the Ten Year's War was raging. President Grant then in effect counseled a conservative course, and a policy of non-intervention; and President McKinley

216 JMPROVEMENT ERA.

quotes the language oi this idolized American, evidently for the purpose of excusing his own administration for its vigorless course. President McKinley, however, ought to remember that the world ''do move," and has moved during the last twenty-two years; and that this present revolt in Cuba, following so closely upon the heels of the one scarcely subdued by ten years of war, gives another, and we think final, proof of Spain's inability to govern Cuba; and hence the conservatism of President Grant, in 1875, is not in place in 1897. In this attempt to cover himself with the policy cloak of a popular president who preceded him, as in the faintly expressed hope that something may yet come of negotiations with other nations concerning the establishment of bimetalism, the president exhibits the traits of the politician, rather than the characteristics of the statesman.

The president plainly urges the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands; and in spite of all that may be urged against it, this appears to be the only policy that can be pursued in respect of those islands. Fate seems to have seized the helm of the destiny of the Hawaiian Islands, and directs their incorporation as an integral part of the United States. We say this because we believe the existence of those islands either as an independent monarchy or an independent republic is now out of the question, the possibility of it has passed away; and concerning them it has became a plain and inevitable question of annexation to some one of several great powers — Germany, England, Japan or the United States. And in the presence of such an issue as this there is but one conclusion — annexation to the United States. The preponderance of American interests in the islands demands it. The ever increasing importance of our Pacific commerce demands it. The future power which our nation by the very force of events will be compelled to exercise in the Pacific demands it; and in response to all these demands the only course for our government is to annex the Hawaiian Islands; and this as much in the interest of the native inhabitants of those islands as in the interests of American citizens, and the influence of the United States in the Pacific. For if not annexed to the United States and guaranteed the rights of American citizenship, by which they will obtain some measure of control of their local government, the native people will become the prey of adventurers who will rule over and oppress them in the event of a continuation of a precarious independence; and they would become but colonial vassals in the event of annexation to any other nation.