UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



715 



mend the part taken by our Government in the 

 Peace Conference at The Hague. We assert our 

 steadfast adherence to the policy announced in 

 the Monroe Doctrine. The provisions of The Hague 

 convention were wisely regarded when President 

 McKinley tendered his friendly offices in the inter- 

 est of peace between Great Britain and the South 

 African republics. While the American Govern- 

 ment must continue the policy prescribed by Wash- 

 ington, affirmed by every succeeding President, and 

 imposed upon us by The Hague Treaty, of nonin- 

 tervention in European controversies, the Ameri- 

 can people earnestly hope that a way may soon 

 be found, honorable alike to both contending par- 

 ties, to terminate the strife between them, in 

 accepting by the Treaty of Paris the just responsi- 

 bility of our victories in the Spanish War the 

 President and the Senate won the undoubted ap- 

 proval of the American people. No other course 

 was possible than to destroy Spain's sovereignty 

 throughout the West Indies and in the Philip- 

 pine Islands. That course created our responsi- 

 bility before the world, and with the unorganized 

 population whom our intervention had freed from 

 Spain, to provide for the maintenance of law and 

 order, and for the establishment of good govern- 

 ment and for the performance of international 

 obligations. Our authority could not be less than 

 our responsibility, arid wherever sovereign rights 

 were extended it became the high duty of the 

 Government to maintain its authority, to put 

 down armed insurrection, and to confer the bless- 

 ings of liberty and civilization upon all the 

 rescued peoples. The largest measures of self-gov- 

 ernment consistent with their welfare and our 

 duties shall be secured to them by law. To Cuba 

 independence and self-government were assured in 

 the same voice by which war w r as declared, and 

 to the letter this pledge will be performed. The 

 Republican party upon its history, and upon this 

 declaration of its principles and policies,' confi- 

 dently invokes the considerate and approving 

 judgment of the American people." 



The Prohibition party, in national convention 

 at Chicago, 111., on June 28, nominated John G. 

 Woolley, of Illinois, for President on the first 

 ballot, which gave 380 votes for him and 329 for 

 Silas C. Swallow, of Pennsylvania, Hale Johnson, 

 of Illinois, withdrawing his name. Henry B. Met- 

 ealf, of Rhode Island, received the nomination for 

 Vice-President over Thomas R. Carskadden, of 

 West Virginia, and E. L. Eaton, of Iowa. The 

 platform, adopted on June 27, contained the fol- 

 lowing declarations: 



" We propose as a first step in the financial 

 problems of the nation to save more than a bil- 

 lion dollars every year, now annually expended 

 to support the liquor traffic and to demoralize our 

 people. When that is accomplished, conditions 

 will have so improved that with a clearer atmos- 

 phere the country can address itself to the ques- 

 tions as to the kind and quantity of currency 

 leeded. 



" We reaffirm as true indisputably the declara- 

 tion of William Windom when Secretary of the 

 reasury in the Cabinet of President Arthur, that, 

 considered socially, financially, politically, or 

 lorally, the licensed liquor traffic is or ought to 

 s the overwhelming issue in American politics,' 

 id that ' the destruction of this iniquity stands 

 lext on the calendar of the wqrld's progress.' 

 tVe hold that the existence of our party presents 

 tins issue squarely to the American people, and 

 lays upon them the responsibility of choice be- 

 tween liquor parties, dominated by distillers and 

 brewers, with their policy of saloon perpetuation, 

 breeding waste, wickedness, woe, pauperism, taxa- 





tion. corruption, and crime, and our one party of 

 patriotic and moral principle, with a policy which 

 defends it from domination by corrupt bosses and 

 which insures it forever against the blighting con- 

 trol of saloon politics. We face with sorrow, 

 shame, and fear the awful fact that this liquor 

 traffic has a grip on our Government, municipal, 

 State, and national, through the revenue system 

 and saloon sovereignty, which no other party 

 dares to dispute; a grip which dominates the 

 party now in power, from caucus to Congress, 

 from policeman to President, from the rum shop to 

 the White House; a grip which compels the Chief 

 Executive to consent that law shall be nullified 

 in behalf of the brewer, that the canteen shall 

 curse our army and spread intemperance across 

 the seas, and that our flag shall wave as the 

 symbol of partnership at home and abroad be- 

 tween this Government and the men who defy 

 and defile it for their unholy gain. 



" We charge upon President McKinley, who 

 was elected to his high office by appeals to Chris- 

 tian sentiment and patriotism almost unprece- 

 dented and by a combination of moral influences 

 never before seen in this country, that, by his 

 conspicuous example as a wine drinker #t public 

 banquets and as a wine-serving host in the White 

 House, he has done more to encourage the liquor 

 business, to demoralize the temperance habits of 

 young men, and to bring Christian practices and 

 requirements into disrepute than any other 

 President this republic has ever had. We further 

 charge upon President McKinley responsibility 

 for the army canteen, with all its dire brood of 

 disease, immorality, sin, and death, in this coun- 

 try, in Cuba, in Porto Rico, and the Philippines; 

 and we insist that by his attitude concerning the 

 canteen and his apparent contempt for the vast 

 number of petitions and petitioners protesting 

 against it, he has outraged and insulted the moral 

 sentiment of this country in such a manner and 

 to such a degree as calls for its righteous uprising 

 and his indignant and effective rebuke. We chal- 

 lenge denial of the fact that our Chief Executive, 

 as commander in chief of the military forces of 

 the United States, at any time prior to or since 

 March 2, 1899, could have closed every army sa- 

 loon, called a canteen, by executive order, as 

 President Hayes in effect did before him, and 

 should have closed them, for the same reason that 

 actuated President Hayes. 



" We deplore the fact that an administration of 

 this republic, claiming the right and power to 

 carry our flag across the seas and to conquer and 

 annex new territory, should admit its lack of 

 power to prohibit the American saloon on subju- 

 gated soil, or should openly confess itself subject 

 to liquor sovereignty under that flag. We are hu- 

 miliated, exasperated, and grieved by the evidence, 

 painfully abundant, that this administration's 

 policy of expansion is bearing so rapidly its first 

 fruits of drunkenness, insanity, and crime under 

 the hothouse sun of the tropics ; and that when the 

 president of the first Philippine Commission said, 

 ' It was unfortunate that we introduced and es- 

 tablished the saloon there, to corrupt the natives 

 and to exhibit the vices of our race,' we charge 

 the inhumanity and unchristianity of this act 

 on the administration of William McKinley and 

 upon the party which elected and would perpetu- 

 ate the same. We declare that the only policy 

 which the Government of the United States can 

 of right uphold as to the liquor traffic under the 

 national Constitution upon any territory under 

 the military or civil control of that Government is 

 the policy of prohibition; that 'to establish jus- 

 tice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 



