Note 21 — Chapter II · Dewey and Aguinaldo

President McKinley’s annual message to Congress of December, 1897,21 calling attention to conditions in Cuba as intolerable, had declared that if we should intervene to put a stop to them, we certainly would not make it the occasion of a land-grab. The other nations said: “We are from Missouri.” But Mr. McKinley said, “forcible annexation” was not to be thought of by us. “That by our code of morality would be criminal,” etc. So the world said, “We shall see what we shall see.” Then had come the war message of April 11, 1898,22 reiterating the declaration of the Cuban message of December previous, that “forcible annexation by our code of morality would be criminal aggression.” In other words we announced to the overcrowded monarchies of the old world, whose land-lust is ever tempted by the broad acres of South America, and ever cooled by the virile menace of the Monroe doctrine, that we not only were against the principle of land-grabbing, but would not indulge in the practice. Immediately upon the conclusion of the reading of the war message, Senator Stewart was recognized, and said, among other things: “Under the law of nations, intervention for conquest is condemned, and is opposed to the universal sentiment of mankind. It is unjust, it is robbery, to intervene for conquest.” Then Mr. Lodge stood up, “in the Senate House a Senator,” and said: