them if they were to do otherwise.  So much at least they owe of respect to the dead and buried history—­the dead and buried history so far as they can slay and bury it—­of their country.”  In the way of practical suggestions, the Senator offered as a solution of the problem:  the recognition of independence, assistance in establishing self-government, and an invitation to all powers to join in a guarantee of freedom to the islands.

=The Republican Answer.=—­To McKinley and his supporters, engaged in a sanguinary struggle to maintain American supremacy, such talk was more than quixotic; it was scarcely short of treasonable.  They pointed out the practical obstacles in the way of uniform self-government for a collection of seven million people ranging in civilization from the most ignorant hill men to the highly cultivated inhabitants of Manila.  The incidents of the revolt and its repression, they admitted, were painful enough; but still nothing as compared with the chaos that would follow the attempt of a people who had never had experience in such matters to set up and sustain democratic institutions.  They preferred rather the gradual process of fitting the inhabitants of the islands for self-government.  This course, in their eyes, though less poetic, was more in harmony with the ideals of humanity.  Having set out upon it, they pursued it steadfastly to the end.  First, they applied force without stint to the suppression of the revolt.  Then they devoted such genius for colonial administration as they could command to the development of civil government, commerce, and industry.

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.

A PHILIPPINE HOME]

=The Boxer Rebellion in China.=—­For a nation with a world-wide trade, steadily growing, as the progress of home industries redoubled the zeal for new markets, isolation was obviously impossible.  Never was this clearer than in 1900 when a native revolt against foreigners in China, known as the Boxer uprising, compelled the United States to join with the powers of Europe in a military expedition and a diplomatic settlement.  The Boxers, a Chinese association, had for some time carried on a campaign of hatred against all aliens in the Celestial empire, calling upon the natives to rise in patriotic wrath and drive out the foreigners who, they said, “were lacerating China like tigers.”  In the summer of 1900 the revolt flamed up in deeds of cruelty.  Missionaries and traders were murdered in the provinces; foreign legations were stoned; the German ambassador, one of the most cordially despised foreigners, was killed in the streets of Peking; and to all appearances a frightful war of extermination had begun.  In the month of June nearly five hundred men, women, and children, representing all nations, were besieged in the British quarters in Peking under constant fire of Chinese guns and in peril of a terrible death.