""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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
20th-century military historyForeign relations of the United StatesRevolutionsPhilippines19th-century military history
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Philippine-American War
79 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Philippine-American War →
Related Quotes
"And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of t…"
"for American energy to build up such a commercial marine on the Pacific Coast as should ultimately convert the Pacifi…"
""The fighting … was precipitated by … two native soldiers who refused to obey the order of a sentry who challenged th…"
"" About eight o’clock, Miller and I were cautiously pacing our district. We came to a fence and were trying to see wh…"
"The U.S. troops were "expecting trouble and were glad to have an opportunity to square accounts with the natives, who…"
"The slaughter at Manila was necessary, but not glorious. The entire American population justifies the conduct of its …"
""fighting, having begun, must go on to the grim end." --General Elwell S. Otis response when Emilio Aguinaldo tried t…"
"I personally strung up thirty-five Filipinos without trial, so what was all the fuss over Waller's "dispatching" a fe…"
"Major Edwin Glenn did not deny that he made forty-seven prisoners kneel and "repent of their sins" before ordering th…"
"President McKinley told Congress that his inspiration for invading the Philippines came in a dream from God. "Hold a …"