The fundamental requirement in these resolutions is that the Government of the United States will not undertake to exercise permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands. The resolutions are intentionally made broad, so that those who agree on that fundamental proposition may stand upon them even though they may differ materially as to a great many other things relative to the future course of the government in connection with the Philippine Islands.
Senator Bacon then quoted the following from some remarks Senator Foraker had previously made in the course of the great debate on the treaty:
I do not understand anybody to be proposing to take the Philippine Islands with the idea and view of permanently holding them. * * * The President of the United States does not, I know, and no Senator in this chamber has made any such statement;
If the views expressed by the learned Senator from Ohio in his speech * * * are those upon which we are to act, there is very little difference between us; and there will be no future contention between us * * * if we can have an authoritative expression from The Law-Making Power of the United States in a joint resolution that such is the purpose of the future. [184]
Says the Holy Scripture: "A word spoken in season, how good is it!" Had the Bacon resolutions passed the United States Senate in January, 1899, we never would have had any war with the Filipinos. [185] They would have presented at the psychologic moment the very thing the best and bravest of the Filipino leaders were then pleading with General Otis for, something "tangible," something "which they could present to their people and which would allay excitement," by allaying the universal fear that we were going to do with them exactly as all other white men they had ever heard of had done with all other brown men they had ever heard of under like circumstances, viz., keep them under permanent dominion with a view of profit.
In his letter accepting the nomination for the Presidency in 1900, Mr. McKinley sought to show the Filipinos to have been the aggressors in the war by a reference to the fact that the outbreak occurred while the Bacon resolution was under discussion in the Senate. This hardly came with good grace from an Administration whose friends in the Senate had all along opposed not only the Bacon resolution but also all other resolutions frankly declaratory of the purpose of our government. The supreme need of the hour then was, and the supreme need of every hour of every day we have been in the Philippines since has been, "an authoritative expression from the law-making power of the United States"--not mere surmises of a President, confessedly devoid of binding force, but an authoritative expression from the law-making power, declaratory of the purpose of our government with regard to the Philippine Islands. Secretary of War Taft visited Manila in 1907 to be present at the opening of the Philippine Assembly. In view of the universal longing which he knew existed for some definite authoritative declaration as to whether our government intends to keep the Islands permanently or not, he said: