19th-century military history

"President McKinley told Congress that his inspiration for invading the Philippines came in a dream from God. "Hold a moment longer! Not quite yet, gentlemen! Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. I have been criticized a good deal about the Philippines, but don’t deserve it. The truth is I didn’t want the Philippines, and when they came to us, as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. When the Spanish War broke out Dewey was at Hongkong, and I ordered him to go to Manila and to capture or destroy the Spanish fleet, and he had to; because, if defeated, he had no place to refit on that side of the globe, and if the Dons were victorious they would likely cross the Pacific and ravage our Oregon and California coasts. And so he had to destroy the Spanish fleet, and did it! But that was as far as I thought then."

"And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker), and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States (pointing to a large map on the wall of his office), and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!--President William McKinley."

"for American energy to build up such a commercial marine on the Pacific Coast as should ultimately convert the Pacific Ocean into an American lake, making it far more our own than the Atlantic Ocean is now Great Britain's"

""The fighting … was precipitated by … two native soldiers who refused to obey the order of a sentry who challenged their passage to his post.... They insolently refused to [halt] and continued to advance," so the sentry shot them."

"" About eight o’clock, Miller and I were cautiously pacing our district. We came to a fence and were trying to see what the Filipinos were up to. Suddenly, near at hand, on our left, there was a low but unmistakable Filipino outpost signal whistle. It was immediately answered by a similar whistle about twenty-five yards to the right. Then a red lantern flashed a signal from blockhouse number 7. We had never seen such a sign used before. In a moment, something rose up slowly in front of us. It was a Filipino. I yelled “Halt!” and made it pretty loud, for I was accustomed to challenging the officer of the guard in approved military style. I challenged him with another loud “halt!” Then he shouted “halto!” to me. Well, I thought the best thing to do was to shoot him. He dropped. If I didn’t kill him, I guess he died of fright. Two Filipinos sprang out of the gateway about 15 feet from us. I called “halt!” and Miller fired and dropped one. I saw that another was left. Well, I think I got my second Filipino that time..."--Private William W. Grayson, with another soldier, encountered three armed Filipinos on a bridge in San Juan del Monte near Manila."

"The U.S. troops were "expecting trouble and were glad to have an opportunity to square accounts with the natives, whose insolence of late was becoming intolerable.""

"The slaughter at Manila was necessary, but not glorious. The entire American population justifies the conduct of its army at Manila because only by a crushing repulse of the Filipinos could our position be made secure....We are... the trustees of civilization and peace throughout the islands"...the "white man's burden" had been thrust on the United States by "the impotent oppression of Spain and the semi-barbarous conduct of the Philippines."

""fighting, having begun, must go on to the grim end." --General Elwell S. Otis response when Emilio Aguinaldo tried to stop the war by sending an emissary to General Otis to appeal for an end to the fighting."

"I personally strung up thirty-five Filipinos without trial, so what was all the fuss over Waller's "dispatching" a few "treacherous savages"? If there had been more Smiths and Wallers, the war would have been over long ago. Impromptu domestic hanging might also hasten the end of the war. For starters, all Americans who had recently petitioned Congress to sue for peace in the Philippines should be dragged out of their homes and lynched.--Colonel Frederick Funston at a banquet in Chicago."

"Major Edwin Glenn did not deny that he made forty-seven prisoners kneel and "repent of their sins" before ordering them bayoneted and clubbed to death."

""Obtain information from natives no matter what measures have to be adopted."--General Adna Chaffee"

""It may be necessary to kill half the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords."--General William Shafter"

""One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures."--General James Bell, May 3, 1901, New York Times explaining why one-sixth of the population of Luzon had died in the previous two years of the Philippine insurrection."

""We take no prisoners. At least the Twentieth Kansas do not."--Arthur Minkler, of the Kansas Regiment"

""They were the first goo-goos I ever saw turn white."--Claude F. Line, a young private, described not only his love of home and family, but also his delight at terrifying two Filipino civilians."

""It makes me sick to see what has been said about him (General Jacob H. Smith). If people knew what a thieving, treacherous, worthless bunch of scoundrels those Filipinos are, they would think differently than they do now. You can't treat them the way you do civilized folks. I do not believe that there are half a dozen men in the U.S. army that don't think Smith is all right."--Smith's medical officer"

""The severity with which the inhabitants have been dealt would not look well if a complete history of it were written out" --Governor-General of the Philippines, William Howard Taft, concerning the U.S. Army campaign on the island of Marinduque during the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902"

""You have sacrificed nearly seventeen thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture. Your practical statesmanship which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models, has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I believe—nay, I know—that in general our officers and soldiers are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty. Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your gay men when they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate." --Senator George Hoar. From a speech in the United States Senate in May, 1902 chastising the Philippine-American War and the three Army officers, including General Jacob H. Smith who were court-martialed."

""You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon; and the secret of its pacification is, in my opinion, the secret of the pacification of the archipelago. They never rebel in Northern Luzon because there isn't anybody there to rebel. The country was marched over and cleaned out in a most resolute manner. The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country, and, wherever or whenever they could get hold of a Filipino, they killed him. The women and children were spared, and may now be noticed in disproportionate numbers in that part of the island."--From a Republican Congressman, who visited the Philippines during the summer of 1901 Boston Transcript, March 4, 1902"

""Until recently, I had thought that these things (torture) were sporadic and isolated, but I have been forced to the belief that they are but a part of the general plan of campaign." --Senator Joseph Lafayette Rawlins of Utah Philippine Question Up In The Senate, New York Times May 7, 1902 p. 3"

"The present war is no bloodless, fake, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog, a noisome reptile in some instances, whose best disposition was to the rubbish heap. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectors, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses. It is not civilized warfare, but we are not dealing with civilized people. The only thing they know and fear is force, violence, and brutality, and we give it to them."

"In some sections our people have adopted the policy of giving no quarter, and we are getting reports of insurgent bands of from ten to fifty being surrounded and every man killed. Young had one killing of 318 lately, and J. M. Bell a killing of 156, while there have been several ranging from 50 to 100."

""The time has come, in the opinion of those in charge of the War Department, to pursue a policy of absolute and relentless subjugation in the Philippine Islands. If the natives refuse to submit to the process of government as mapped out by the Taft Commission, they will be hunted down and will be killed until there is no longer any show of forcible resistance to the American government. The process will not be pleasant, but it is considered necessary."--Boston Advertiser"

""In many letters there is an eerie contrast between the writers' disregard for the slaughter of Filipino goo-goos and their concern for the health of their parents and friends. William Eggenberger described with boyish glee an incident in which he and a fellow private had terrorized the inhabitants of a nipa hut by sticking their bayonets through the side of the house. He then concluded his letter with the request: "Don't you and the old man work so hard all the time… hoping these lines will find you all in the best of health, a kiss for you all."--Richard E. Welch, Jr., a professor of history at Lafayette College"

""The water cure is an old Filipino method of mild torture. Nobody was seriously damaged whereas the Filipinos had inflicted incredible tortures on our people." --President Theodore Roosevelt"

""A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit or stand on his arms and legs and hold him down; and either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin, -- that is, with an inch circumference, -- is simply thrust into his jaws and his jaws are thrust back, and, if possible, a wooden log or stone is put under his head or neck, so he can be held more firmly. In the case of very old men I have seen their teeth fall out, -- I mean when it was done a little roughly. He is simply held down and then water is poured onto his face down his throat and nose from a jar; and that is kept up until the man gives some sign or becomes unconscious. And, when he becomes unconscious, he is simply rolled aside and he is allowed to come to. In almost every case the men have been a little roughly handled. They were rolled aside rudely, so that water was expelled. A man suffers tremendously, there is no doubt about it. His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown. … I did not stop it, because I had no right to.... Major Geary was about sixty yards away. --Lieutenant Grover Flint; S. Doc. 331, 57 Congressional 1 Session (1903), page 1767-1768"

""A company of Macabebes enter a town or barrio, catch some man, -- it matters not whom, -- ask him if he knows where there are any guns, and, upon receiving a negative answer, five or six of them throw him down, one holds his head, while others have hold of an arm or a leg. They then proceed to give him the "water torture," which is the distension of the internal organs with water. After they are distended, a cord is sometimes placed around the body and the water expelled. From what I have heard, it appears to be generally applied; and its use is not confined to our section. Although it results in the finding of a number of guns, it does us an infinite amount of harm. Nor are the Macabebes the only ones who use this method of obtaining information. Personally, I have never seen this torture inflicted, nor have I ever knowingly allowed it; but I have seen a victim a few minutes afterward, with his mouth bleeding where it had been cut by a bayonet used to hold the mouth open, and his face bruised where he had been struck by the Macabebes. Add to this the expression of his face and his evident weakness from the torture, and you have a picture which once seen will not be forgotten. I am not chickenhearted, but this policy hurts us. Summary executions are, and will be, necessary in a troubled country, and I have no objection to seeing that they are carried out; but I am not used to torture. The Spaniards used the torture of water, throughout the islands, as a means of obtaining information; but they used it sparingly, and only when it appeared evident that the victim was culpable. Americans seldom do things by halves. We come here and announce our intention of freeing the people from three or four hundred years of oppression, and say, "We are strong, and powerful, and grand." Then to resort to inquisitorial methods, and use them without discrimination, is unworthy of us, and will recoil on us as a nation."--George Kennan"

""We have a company of Macabebe scouts who go out with white troops, and, if they cannot get any guns voluntarily, they proceed to give the fellows the water cure; that is, they throw them on their backs, stick a gag in their months to keep it open, then proceed to fill them with water till they cannot hold more. Then they get on them, and a sudden pressure on the stomach and chest forces the water out again. I guess it must cause excruciating agony."--Unnamed officer"

"When Andrew Carnegie protested that shooting Filipinos would destroy the Republic , Secretary of State John Hay observed, 'He does not seem to reflect that the government is in a somewhat robust condition even after shooting down several American workers in his interest at Homestead.'"

""I would gladly pay twenty million today to restore our republic to its first principles."--Andrew Carnegie, explaining why he would buy the Philippines from the United States in order to give the islands their independence."

""To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular, is noble... I repudiate with scorn the immoral doctrine, 'Our country, right or wrong.'"--Andrew Carnegie"

""The Kingdom of Heaven is to come as a grain of mustard seed, not as a thirteen-inch shell."--The Rev. H.P. Faunce, Baptist minister."

"Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked--but not enough, in my judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit in Darkness are getting to be too scarce--too scarce and too shy. And such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality, and not dark enough for the game. The most of those People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have been injudicious... Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?"--Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"

""God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct... We can destroy their [Filipino] ideals but we can't give them ours."--William James, on American annexation of the Philippines and the guerrilla war it engendered."

""If we turn this war, which was heralded to the world as a war of humanity, in any sense into a war of conquest, we shall forever forfeit the confidence of mankind."--Carl Schurz, reform journalist and senator"

""The United States has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day."--Charles Eliot Norton"

""They rely mostly on large sales, and for large sales on sensational news. Now nothing does so much to keep sensational news coming in over the considerable period of time as war... Next to war they welcome the Promise of war."--E.L. Godkin, editor of The Nation"

""The Cost of a National Crime," "The Hell of War and Its Penalties," "Criminal Aggression"--titles of three pamphlets sent by Edward Atkinson, a founder of the Anti-Imperialist League, to American troops in the field in the Philippines, as a test of free speech. Postmaster Charles Smith declared the pamphlets "seditious" and had them removed from the mail."

""If all these imaginings are in vain, and our success is a rapid and bloodless one as the most sanguine can hope, such a victory is more dangerous than defeat. In the intoxication of such a success, we would reach out for fresh territory, and to our present difficulties would be added an agitation for the annexation of new regions which, unfit to govern themselves, would govern us. We would be fairly launched upon a policy of military aggression, of territorial expansion, of standing armies and growing navies, which is inconsistent with the continuance of our institutions. God grant that such calamities are not in store for us."--Moorfield Storey, president of the Anti-Imperialist League"

""It's time to let the Philippines go. They're our -- they are our Achilles heel." --Theodore Roosevelt, 1914."

""Finally, it should be the earnest wish and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of Benevolent Assimilation substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule." --William McKinley, December 21, 1898"

"Whether we like it or not, we most go on slaughtering the natives... and taking what muddy glory lies in wholesale killing til they have learned to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions will follow. The struggle must continue until the misguided creatures there shall have eyes bathed in enough blood to cause their vision to be cleared, but that those whom they are now holding as enemies have no purpose toward them expect to consecrate to liberty and to open for them a way to happiness."

"Whether we like it or not, we must go on slaughtering the natives... and taking what muddy glory lies in wholesale killing til they have learned to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions will follow."

"It is against the interests of the United States to have the fruits of Dewey's victory gathered by insurgents.... No native dictatorship or so-called republic is wanted until the United States fixes on its Philippine policy When a flag replaces the blood-and-fear ensign of Spain, it should be our flag. Afterward there will be enough time to discuss native problems."

"The patriots of a year ago have become savages to be treated after the manner of savages . . . more power to the Krag-Jorgensen rifle that does the treating."

"Where the Filipinos have destroyed millions of dollars worth of property, our soldiers have saved many millions of dollars worth, besides many lives, by fighting the fires set by the direction of the Filipino army"

"“The Philippines are ours forever.... And just beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world. The Pacific is our ocean... . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer...The Philippines give us a base at the door of all die East...No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco...The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on die island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal...I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek...My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there arc over 5,000,000 people to be governed. It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse...Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.”--Senator Albert J. Beveridge January 9, 1900 See wikisource.org for Beveridge's full speech."

"We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we regard the welfare of these people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion."

"“The guns of Dewey in Manilla Bay were heard across Asia and Africa, they echoed through the palace at Peking and brought to the Oriental mind a new and potent force among western nations. We, in common with the countries of Europe, are striving to enter the limitless markets of the east...These people respect nothing but power. I believe the Philippines will be enormous markets and sources of wealth.”--Columbus and Western Civilization by Howard Zinn"

"There was nothing wrong with the profit motive and gain should be the only reason for American expansion into the Pacific."

"Andrew Carnegie argued that formal empires were obsolete because economic penetration could achieve control over foreign lands without the cost and conquest of administration."

""The peaceful conquest of Mexico was a perfectly legitimate form of expansion. We could fill all of the tropical countries with consular agents, men trained to stand for good order and to work for American interests, for less than it costs to subdue a single tropical island"

"That we have inspired a considerable part of the Philippine population with a feeling of intense hostility toward us, and given them reason for deep-seated and implacable resentment, there can be no doubt. We have offered them many verbal assurances of benevolent intention; but, at the same time, we have killed their unresisting wounded, we hold fifteen hundred or two thousand of them in prison, we have established at Guam a penal colony for their leaders, and we are now resorting directly or indirectly to the old Spanish inquisitorial methods such as the "water torture" in order to compel silent prisoners to speak or reluctant witnesses to testify...that they present generations of Filipinos will forget these things is hardly to be expected.--Journalist George Kennan (a staunch imperialist)"

"The United States at the present moment is not, technically, engaged in any war. But it is engaged in the warlike enterprise of putting down what is technically an insurrection—a large baffling one. It seems strange to Americans that Filipinos--or so many of them--are bitterly opposed to our sovereignty. They must know it is likely to be a great improvement over former conditions...Nevertheless they fight on."

""Questions of conscience need not trouble us...Here are rich lands, held by those who do not or cannot get the best out of them, and awaiting the fructifying application of capital and organization in commerce. Under this beneficent view the natives, an inferior race, must get out or become laborers. "The Filipino is an incumbrance to be got rid of, unless he accepts the mandates of a purchasing and a conquering power."--Worthington C. Ford"

""There is no question that our men do 'shoot niggers' somewhat in the sporting spirit, but that is because war and their environments have rubbed off the thin veneer of civilization...Undoubtedly, they do not regard the shooting of Filipinos just as they would the shooting of white troops. This is partly because they are "only niggers," and partly because they despise them for their treacherous servility...The soldiers feel they are fighting with savages, not with soldiers."--H.L. Wells New York Evening Post."

""Our troops in the Philippines...look upon all Filipinos as of one race and condition, and being dark men, they are therefore 'niggers,' and entitled to all the contempt and harsh treatment administered by white overlords to the most inferior races."--Boston Herald correspondent in the Philippines."

"The unfortunate misunderstanding between American and Filipino," was explained with an allegory about a man, a boy, and an apple. When the man sees the fruit just out of the boy's reach, he first gives the youth a boost, but then decides to grab the fruit for himself. When the boy fights for the apple, he gets only a spanking for his trouble. "From the Filipino point of view that is about the situation of Aguinaldo and his followers with reference to the Americans. They actually thought … that they would be able to maintain their own independence."

"Malays [of the Philippines] are by no means savages, though their place on the scale of civilization is far from high."

"According to one of their priests, "they are big children, who must be treated as little ones."

"Today the torrid zone is a belt of semibarbarism. Its inhabitants resist the civilization of the temperate zones instinctively, because they know they have not the mental and moral fiber to uphold it.... Climate and costless sustenance have made these people what they are, and no great intellectual and industrial advance can be expected until the conditions are changed."

"How "strange" it was that "such an easy, slumbering, happy-go-lucky race … should have such turbulent politics." No one in the Philippines except the Japanese had "the least idea of how to make machinery do the work of man." --Unnamed American Merchant"

"However lacking in intelligence the natives of the Philippines generally may be, they could not in truth be characterized as savages.... The islands' leading tribe, the Tagals are as industrious as the Chinese and Japanese, and more easily controlled and less annually disposed than the latter."

"Orderly children, respected parents, women subject but not oppressed, men ruling but not despotic, reverence with kindness, obedience in affection...these simple, orderly people … ought to be very happy under the enlightened rule of a European power."

"our continental optimism is vigorous enough to cross oceans and ignore racial boundaries . . . . The press of the Country has not refrained from pointing out that as a people we are equal to any demands that may be put on us."

"Filipinos are "treacherous, arrogant, stupid and vindictive, impervious to gratitude, incapable of recognizing obligations. Centuries of barbarism have made them cunning and dishonest. We cannot safely treat them as equals, for the simple and sufficient reason that they could not understand it. They do not know the meaning of justice and good faith. They do not know the difference between liberty and license.... These Filipinos must be taught obedience and be forced to observe, even if they cannot comprehend, the practices of civilization.""

""The trouble is not what [U.S. negotiators] propose, but to whom they propose it. They have treated, as a government capable of negotiation, a bedizened ragtag and bobtail.... The deference with which these people have been received, the long conferences in which their "views" have been seriously entertained and discussed, the grandeur in which they have been allowed to parade before their compatriots--all these have inflated their simian vanity." (The definition of "simian" is relating to, characteristic of, or resembling an ape or a monkey.)"

""the American soldier viewed his Filipino enemies with contempt because of their short stature and color. Contempt was also occasioned by the refusal of the Filipino 'to fight fair'- to stand his ground and be shot down like a man. When the Filipino adopted guerrilla tactics, it was because he was by his very nature half-savage and half-bandit. His practice of fighting with a bolo on one day and assuming the guise of a peaceful villager on the next proved his depravity."--Richard E. Welch, Jr., a professor of history at Lafayette College"

""In my opinion, these people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races."--George Dewey"

"A better index of war-weariness than poor protest turnouts might have been the low enlistment rate for a third wave of volunteers as the second one approached its eighteenth month of service. The rate was low enough to foster rumors of pending conscription (a draft). The Reverend…Berle, a pacifist and anti-imperialist, actively spread the alarm of peacetime draft."

"[1900 Democratic presidential candidate] Colonel William Jennings Bryan anti-imperialism was never very convincing, and as the campaign unfolded, the issue [of imperialism] was increasingly ignored."

"Why should Chicago tolerate a conference of anti-imperialist traitors any more than it should tolerate a convention of acknowledged incendiaries or anarchists?"

"Anti-imperialists League should send rifles, Maxim guns and ammunition to the Filipinos so that it would, at least be more openly and frankly treasonable."

"What would have happened during the Civil War if a public meeting had been held...to cheer Jeff Davis and denounce Lincoln as a murderer?"

""I will not say that the men who are encouraging the Filipino soldiers here are traitors to their country, but I will say, and I think with justice, that the men who are shooting from ambush there are allies in the same cause, and both are enemies to the interest and credit of our country."--Secretary of War Elihu Root"

""What said Lawton-Lawton, Indiana's pride? "If I am shot down by a Filipino bullet it might as well come from one of my own men because the continuance of the fighting is chiefly due to reports that are sent out from America." Who will wear this on his forehead, the everlasting brand which Lawton's words burn? I am merely stating the truth...I state the facts. The defeat of the opposition to the government here is the defeat of the opposition to the government there." --Senator Albert Beveridge"

"Bryan deserted his regiment to run for office whereas Roosevelt left his office to rush into battle."

"The country needs selfless leaders like Teddy, who left office to be in the thick of the fight and not the other way around.""

"Since guerrilla warfare was contrary to "the customs and usages of war," those engaged in it "divest themselves of the character of soldiers, and if captured are not entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war."--General Arthur MacArthur, December 20, 1900"

"Having lived in Texas as a youth I had been accused of murder several times and been forced to study Texas history, I thought I knew the story of its admission to the Union pretty well. But I never knew the profound importance of race to that history. In particular, I did not know that Mexico had abolished slavery and that this was a key reason for the war for Texas independence. The Texans were determined to keep their slaves and were willing to fight to the death for that right. And of course, the admission of Texas as a state was critical to the maintenance of slavery in the United States, which was threatened both economically and politically in the 1840s."

"Has the Mexican War terminated yet, and how? Are we beaten? Do you know of any nation about to besiege South Hadley? If so, do inform me of it, for I would be glad of a chance to escape, if we are to be stormed. I suppose [our teacher] Miss Lyon would furnish us all with daggers and order us to fight for our lives."

"Charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it were down then! You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also... The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the 'manifest destiny' of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government."

"The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us."

"After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It's been going on for centuries, and it will still go on."

"The Mexicans were badly commanded, and there was very little hard fighting during that war, at least nothing to be compared with what was seen afterward in our own. Our soldiers had only to show the bayonet at the Mexicans and they would run. As to the bowie-knife, I do not think one was used during the war. It was a pity to see good troops used as the Mexican soldiers were in those campaigns. I do not think a more incompetent set of officers ever existed than those who commanded the Mexicans. With an able general the Mexicans would make a good fight, for they are a courageous people. But I do not suppose any war was ever fought with reference to which so many romances were invented as the war in Mexico."

"With a soldier the flag is paramount. I know the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign. I had taken an oath to serve eight years, unless sooner discharged, and I considered my supreme duty was to my flag. I had a horror of the Mexican War, and I have always believed that it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was not in the way our soldiers conducted it, but in the conduct of our government in declaring war. The troops behaved well in Mexico, and the government acted handsomely about the peace. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion. Once in Mexico, however, and the people, those who had property, were our friends. We could have held Mexico, and made it a permanent section of the Union with the consent of all classes whose consent was worth having. Overtures were made to Scott and Worth to remain in the country with their armies."

"When I was in London, talking with Lord Beaconsfield, he spoke of Mexico. He said he wished to heaven we had taken the country, that England would not like anything better than to see the United States annex it. I suppose that will be the future of the country. Now that slavery is out of the way there could be no better future for Mexico than absorption in the United States. But it would have to come, as San Domingo tried to come, by the free will of the people. I would not fire a gun to annex territory. I consider it too great a privilege to belong to the United States for us to go around gunning for new territories. Then the question of annexation means the question of suffrage, and that becomes more and more serious every day with us. That is one of the grave problems of our future."

"Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day, regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."

"The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

"It’s been well said—and by many people in many circumstances—that whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. These people in the Deep South were mad because they could have elected Douglas, and Douglas would have given them everything they wanted—everything that they wanted that was consistent with his election in the free states... Douglas was a radical expansionist. Both parts of the Democratic Party in 1860 called for the annexation of Cuba. And there were 100,000 slaves in Cuba, and Cuba was the place that slaves were still being brought from Africa and then resold in the United States. So under a Douglas presidency, we would have taken over the rest of Mexico and Central America whenever we had the resources and the appetite to take to do so. You can be sure that most of the Mexicans would have either been reduced to peonage or to slavery. In the Mexican War itself, in case you don't know it, we appropriated 60 percent of the land area of Mexico as it was then defined through the Spanish Conquest. So we increased the size of the United States by 40 percent and reduced Mexico by 60 percent."

"Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit... Military glory,—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood."

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you, "Be silent; I see it, if you don't."The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."

"[W]here we were obliged to part company with our friends was here—that we held and still hold that war was neither intended nor desired by the Government and the people of Great Britain, but that it was forced upon us without adequate reason, entirely against our will."

"Although small by European standards, the British Army was a professional army. The men signed on for a shilling a day for a minimum of six years. Life in the Army was exceptionally hard and commissions for enlisted men were virtually unheard of. The ranks were consequently not a place for men of ambition, means, or education and much of the British Army was composed of regiments raised in Ireland or the highland areas of Scotland of men for whom the Army, whatever its shortcomings, promised a temporary refuge from the vicious cycle of rural destitution and urban poverty."

"[Bryce] had said from the first that the war had been a hideous blunder, and he had supported that opinion in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) ... Stop the farm-burning; it had been a great mistake and was against British ideas. (Cheers.) Recognize that they were dealing with men whose bravery and tenacity they could admire, and offer terms to the representatives of the two Republics and to the burghers who were now in arms."

"Having condemned the policy of severity which had been adopted with the object of bringing the [Boer] war to a conclusion, [Bryce] said that it might be doubted whether anything short of the restoration of the independence of the two Republics — subject of course to a measure of British control — would have the effect of inducing the Boers to lay down their arms. The passion for independence was strong; it had been the cherished ideal of those people ever since they quitted Cape Colony and won the country for themselves. Our demand for unconditional surrender was a fatal blunder. ... What was a reasonable offer? In the first place, there ought to be an amnesty. ... The second point in the terms should be a grant of money to rebuild the burned homesteads and restock the devastated farms. ... Nothing would do more to accelerate the return of peace and order than to give the people occupation and a chance of living. Then, it should be part of any reasonable offer to the Boers that there should be a speedy restoration of self-governing institutions."

"The danger which threatened the natives in the future, at any rate in the mining districts, would arise from the desire to obtain a constant and cheap supply of native labour for the mines. It would be the duty of those in authority to guard the native against the oppressive laws which were in force in the Dutch Republics. In conclusion, [Bryce] protested against a policy of harshness and violence in South Africa. We should try to inculcate forbearance, wisdom, and the generosity into the minds of those who had the government of the country."

"What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture... It is that we should sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba; and how we denounced the Spaniards! – the women and children into camps...in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 430 in the thousand. I do not say for a moment, because I do not think for a moment, that this is the deliberate and intentional policy of His Majesty's Government...at all events, it is the thing which is being done at this moment in the name and by the authority of this most humane and Christian nation. Yesterday I asked the leader of the House of Commons when the information would be afforded, of which we are so sadly in want. My request was refused. Mr. Balfour treated us with a short disquisition on the nature of war. A phrase often used is that "war is war", but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa."

"What of Dundee? ... No real attempt was made to stop General Yule but, instead, the burghers engaged in a drunken orgy of theft, to be followed as thieves, if not as drunks, by their wives. ... The Sabbath, throughout the siege [of Ladysmith], was a rest day, but the Boers interpreted their own rule as a rest from killing. There was no rest from a preparation for killing, and ... they could be seen building a gun platform on Pepworth Hill, heralding the arrival of the Creusot."

"But she [i.e. England] can be sure that this tricolour flag, grabbed from Fachoda and ripped to shreds in London, was brought to Pretoria by French Volunteers, and has taken its place next to those of the Southern Boer Republics to support their independence against the oppressors. She gave us a Hundred Years' War, and for a hundred years she has robbed the farmers from the Cape. Since then she has violated every peace treaty. Her hatred being even fiercer against the Boer, for there is French blood flowing through their veins."

"What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights."

"I came back from the land of dreams to reality and the hideous fact that Natal is invaded and assailed by the Boer."

"In the face of the insolent Ultimatum which had been addressed to Great Britain by the South African Republic, the nation closed it ranks and relegated party controversy to a more appropriate season. The British people were temporarily in accord. A wave of indignation surged over the country, and united men of different shades of politics and of varying religious creeds, making them forget their private feuds, and remember only the paramount fact that they were sons of the Empire. There were a few exceptions ... to prove the rule of unanimity, ... But these were ... fractitious Irishmen and political obstructionists who posed for notoriety at any price; and ... eccentrics and originals whose sense of opposition forbade them from floating at any time with the tide of public opinion."

"Before hostilities had actually begun, refugees from Johannesburg began to pour down to Natal and the Cape, and there were daily reports of insults received by the Uitlanders at the hands of the Boers. Ladies were spat upon, and passengers suffered indignities sufficient to make an Englishman's blood boil. ... The European exodus from all quarters continued, defenceless men and women alike being subjected to insult and ill-treatment by the Boers."

"The Boers have shown far more humanity to their wounded enemies than the English. They also treated their prisoners, English officers, with much greater consideration and kindness. They never boasted or bragged in their Press or speeches about the victories they have won or of the deeds they have performed, as the English have blatantly done. They have exhibited far more racial decency and self-respect, both in triumph and in disaster. The Boers have fought without pay or reward. Their homes and country were at stake, and these they have risked, not for pay, or praise, or pension, but for Liberty and National Independence. For the time being they are beaten. Great Britain and the recreant section of Ireland, together with the Australias and Canada, representing a population of near 50,000,000, have sent over 200,000 troops and hundreds of cannon to fight and conquer two little nations with a total population less than that of the city of Manchester, and therefore the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State are, for the present, beaten. But they are not conquered!"

"The military qualities of the Boers […] were useful but not showy. They came by instinct and not by acquisition, and they cannot be sufficiently accounted for as the outcome of experience in the pursuit of game on the veld. They were neutralized partially by characteristics the reverse of military. The Boers were not remarkable for personal courage. If there had been in the Boer Army a decoration corresponding to the Victoria Cross it would have been rarely won or at least rarely earned. There is scarcely an instance of an individual feat of arms or act of devotion performed by a Burgher. On the few occasions when the Boers were charged by cavalry they became paralysed with terror. They were incapable of submitting themselves to discipline, and difficult to command in large numbers. They could not be made to understand that prompt action, which possibly might not be the best under the circumstances, was preferable to wasting time in discussing a better with the field cornets. They were subject to panics and, for the time, easily disheartened: and their sense of duty was not conspicuous. The principles of strategy were unknown to them, their tactics were crude, and with the exception of a very few who had fought in 1881, they were without experience of the realities of war."

"The Boers rarely failed [in combat] when commanded by a resolute leader who knew his own mind and was able to impose his own will upon them. In isolated enterprises daringly conducted, they were usually efficient, and sometimes irresistible, but like most primitive communities in which the military instinct is individual rather than collective, they were incapable of forming themselves into a coherent and unified Army for action in mass."

"Learn your lessons, if you wish to, from the Boer War. Those who have been enemies of that [British] empire a few years ago, have now become friends."

"In the Boer war both governments began with bluff, but they couldn't stay there; the military tension was too much for them."

"[I have done my utmost for peace, despite England pushing the Boers out of their inheritance bit by bit, and taking advantage of us in every conference and native war. My hope till the present war had been for a South African Confederacy under English protection – the Cape, Natal, Free State and Transvaal all having equal rights and local self-government. ...] But now we can only leave it to God. If it is His will that the Transvaal perish, we can only do our best."

"All you read about the Boers in England is absolutely untrue. They are most kind to the wounded and prisoners, looking after them as well as their own wounded, and anything they've got they'll give you if you ask them, even if they deprive themselves. We came up to Pretoria in first-class sleeping carriages, and the way they treated us was most considerate, feeding us and giving us coffee every time we stopped. The day we arrived we took up quarters on the race-course, but we have been moved into a fine brick building with baths, electric light, etc. [...] In fact we can have everything we like except our liberty; for some reason or other, they won't at present give us parole, and we are surrounded by sentries. [...] They say they won't exchange the officers at any price."

"Through the World I thank the people of the United States most sincerely for their sympathy. Last Monday the Republic gave Great Britain forty-eight hours' notice within which to give the Republic an assurance that the present dispute would be settled by arbitration or other peaceful means, and that the troops would be removed from the borders. This expires at five to-day. The British Agent has been recalled. War is certain. The Republics are determined, if they must belong to Great Britain, that a price will have to be paid which will stagger humanity. They have, however, full faith. The sun of liberty will arise in South Africa as it arose in North America."

"There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come ... The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with."

"During the Philippine-American War, the United States built a concentration camp on the island of Marinduque. Concentration camps were invented, however, by the British — specifically by Lord Kitchener, who established the first during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The conflict had evolved into an insurgency pitting Boer ‘commandos’ against regular British troops. Kitchener responded by ordering that all non-combatant Boers should be ‘concentrated’ within specially created camps — partly to guarantee their safety as he initiated a ‘scorched-earth’ policy in the Transvaal and Cape Colony, but also to deny Boer guerrillas the ‘water’ in which they ‘swam’. Although Kitchener was a notably tough general, he was no monster. But the concentration camps were run incompetently: 28,000 of the Boer inmates died in epidemics, leading to scandal, enquiries and the discontinuation of a bad policy."

"You may carry fire and sword into the midst of peace and industry—such a war of the strongest Government in the world against this weak little Republic, and the strongest Government in the world, with untold wealth and inexhaustible resources, will bring you no glory. (Renewed and prolonged cheering.) It will bring you no profit but mischief, and it will be wrong. (Hear, hear.) You may make thousands of women widows and thousands of children fatherless. It will be wrong. (Cheers.) You may add a new province to your Empire. It will still be wrong. (Renewed cheers.) You may give greater buoyancy to the South African stock and share market. (Hear, hear.) You may create South African booms. You may send the price of Mr. Rhodes's Chartereds up to the point beyond the dream of avarice. Yes, even then it will be wrong. (Loud and continued cheering.)"

"And only then I realize, how much my freedom meant When the searchlight from the gunboat Casts it's rays upon my tent"

"... the Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war. And that is so in spite of the four years of truce that followed... [the] aggressors consolidated their alliance... the defenders on the other hand silently and grimly prepared for the inevitable."

"The groans of the dying and the blanched set faces of the dead ... were enough to drive away all unwholesome feelings of exultation, and to remind one of the grim reality that war is. And even though these were the faces and the sufferings of our enemy, one had ... a deeper sense of the common humanity which knows no racial distinctions."

"A second important consequence of this policy of spoliation has been the elimination from the Boer ranks of all those elements which are useless from a military point of view. The ordeal has been too terrible for the weak and the faint. First of all went the irresponsible braggarts who had clamoured for war and had called the peacemakers cowards and traitors. The man who expected to gain something from continuing in the field; the man who preferred to protect his property; the man who had lost all hope of a successful issue followed. There remain the stout-hearted and able-bodied – the men of physical courage, the men of moral endurance, whom self-respect and honour keep true to their country’s cause; the men of invincible hope in the future and child-like faith in God – truly a select band, the like of whom, I fondly think, is not to be found in the wide world today."

"One day eight years later, I found myself talking over these events with General Botha, who was visiting this country as first Prime Minister of the South African Union. Just as I was leaving he stopped me for a moment and said: ‘After all, three words made peace and union in South Africa: “methods of barbarism.”’ Softening the epigram a little, he went on to speak of the tremendous impression which had been made upon men fighting a losing battle with an apparently hopeless future by the fact that the leader of one of the great English parties had had the courage to say this thing, and to brave the obloquy which it brought upon him. So far from encouraging them to a hopeless resistance, it touched their hearts and made them think seriously of the possibility of reconciliation."

"I know of only one statesman in modern times who firmly took his stand on the ancient ideal of citizenship, and that one was President Paul Kruger; it has always been my conviction that the real meaning of the Boer War is to be found in the necessary conflict between the two ideals, the English doctrine that all the white inhabitants of the country should be on equal footing, and the Boer doctrine that the Englishman was an inferior creature, just because he was not a citizen, and that he ought not to be allowed the honour of becoming a Boer until he had earned it by years or even generations of acquiescence in a subject position... he forgot that Englishmen could not accept the degraded status of subjects among citizens, and that the British Government could not submit to leave them sitting as suppliants on the lowest step of the altar. (Lord Cromer, interposing: "He forgot Lord Roberts.") The circumstance that the Boers seem now heartily to have accepted the modern doctrine of equality in the sight of the law seems the best augury for the future of the country."

"The Victorian age ended in the crash and conflict of the Great Boer War."

"[The natives] regarded themselves, not without reason, as essential to the contending forces in the field, both of whom required native experts for, amongst other things the important work of transport, herding and scouting. For these services, which they well and loyally fulfilled to whichever side they were attached they received high wages and, though losing a good deal of their live stock, enjoyed the benefits which always fall to neutrals. The war thus left South Africa with a heavy legacy in the shape of high wages which every common unskilled native labourer had learned to regard as normal, and further there was engendered a spirit of independence and apparent aggressiveness which was a new and regrettable feature in relations between black and white."

"The natives emerged from the War in a state of restlessness and unnatural excitement, with the idea that the object of the War had been to return to them their old lands, and that the white owners had been expelled for ever from their farms and habitations. They had become imbued with the idea that the country was now theirs to do as they willed with, and in fact that we had engaged in the war in order to win it for them. Wherever they got these ideas from they received a rude awakening. They found the country was not theirs; that we had not fought to give it to them, and most of all that the owners went back and still owned the farms the Natives now imagined to be theirs."

"I never doubted that the victory over France must precede the restoration of the German kingdom, and if we did not succeed in bringing it this time to a perfect conclusion, further wars without the preliminary security of our perfect unification were full in view."

"Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war."

"The collapse at Sedan, like that of the Prussians at Jena sixty-four years earlier, was the result not simply of faulty command but of a faulty military system; and the military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of it in its totality. The French had good reason to look on their disasters as a judgment. The social and economic developments of the past fifty years had brought about a military as well an industrial revolution. The Prussians had kept abreast of it and France had not. Therein lay the basic cause of her defeat."

"[T]he Franco-Prussian war was an expensive one; but it was worth to France all it cost her people. It was the completion of the downfall of Napoleon III. The beginning was when he landed troops on this continent. Failing here, the prestige of his name—all the prestige he ever had—was gone. He must achieve a success or fall. He tried to strike down his neighbor, Prussia—and fell."

"For an entire century after 1815, by contrast, there was a remarkable absence of lengthy coalition wars. A strategic equilibrium existed, supported by all of the leading Powers in the Concert of Europe, so that no single nation was either able or willing to make a bid for dominance. The prime concerns of government in these post-1815 decades were with domestic instability and (in the case of Russia and the United States) with further expansion across their continental landmasses. This relatively stable international scene allowed the British Empire to rise to its zenith as a global power, in naval and colonial and commercial terms, and also interacted favorably with its virtual monopoly of steam-driven industrial production. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, industrialization was spreading to certain other regions, and was beginning to tilt the international power balances away from the older leading nations and toward those countries with both the resources and organization to exploit the newer means of production and technology. Already, the few major conflicts of this era—the Crimean War to some degree but more especially the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War—were bringing defeat upon those societies which failed to modernize their military systems, and which lacked the broad-based industrial infrastructure to support the vast armies and much more expensive and complicated weaponry now transforming the nature of war."