Let Americans beware of judging the Filipino peoples by the men with from one-half to thirty-one thirty-seconds of white blood, who so often have posed as their representatives.
More important than the interrelations of the several Christian peoples inter se are those between the several Christian peoples on the one hand and the non-Christian tribes on the other. This subject has already been discussed at length, so I will limit myself to a brief summary statement.
The Filipinos dislike and despise the non-Christians. They take advantage of their ignorance and helplessness to rob or cheat them of the fruits of their labour, and often hold them as slaves or peons. The non-Christians in turn hate them, and the more warlike wild tribes do not hesitate to take vengeance on them when opportunity offers. The Filipinos as a whole are afraid of the Moros, and with good reason. The Moros frankly assert that if a Filipino government were established, they would resume their long-abandoned conquest of the archipelago, and this they would certainly do. Although the non-Christians are numerically few, as compared with the Christians, they are potentially important because they have the power to make an amount of trouble wholly disproportionate to their numbers. The Filipinos could not rule them successfully, and the probable outcome of any attempt on their part to control them would be the inauguration of a policy of extermination similar to that which Japan is following with certain of the hill men of Formosa. Because of the inaccessible nature of the country inhabited by many of the Philippine wild tribes, they would be able to hold their own for many years, and there would result a condition similar to that which has prevailed for so long in Achin, while the Moros with their ability to take to the sea and suddenly strike unprotected places would cause endless suffering and loss of life.
Under the Spanish régime the penalty which followed a too liberal use of “free speech” was very likely to be a sudden and involuntary trip to the other world. There was no such thing as a free press. A very strict censorship was constantly exercised over all the newspapers. The things that are now said and written daily without attracting much attention would at that time have cost the liberty or the lives of those who voiced them.
It is hardly to be wondered at that an Oriental people which had never had a free press or liberty of speech should have mistaken liberty, when it finally came, for license, and have gone to extremes which conclusively demonstrated their initial unfitness properly to utilize their new privileges.
Governor-General Smith once told a delegation of leading Filipinos that it was all very well to have freedom of speech and of the press in a country ruled by the United States government, which was strong enough to maintain order in the face of manifold difficulties, but that if the islands ever secured their independence the first official act of those in power should be to do away with the one and the other, for the reason that such a government as they would establish could not exist if either continued.
While the curtailing of freedom of speech or of the press under American civil rule is almost unthinkable, it is nevertheless true that the attitude of many of the politicians who do the talking, and who control the native press, has been poisonous.
A very intelligent student of Philippine affairs has truly said that nothing more is necessary to demonstrate the present unreadiness of the country for self-government than a careful study of the attitude of the native press toward important public questions. From the beginning until now there has been one long and almost uninterrupted series of lies, innuendoes, sneers and diabolically ingenious misrepresentations. Practically every important policy of the government has been viciously attacked, and the worst of it is that the people primarily responsible for this are not honest, or misled. They know perfectly well what they are doing and why they are doing it. They embitter that portion of the common people who are reached by newspapers at all, and doubtless many of their dupes really believe that the established government is a rotten farce, and that its highest officials are steeped in iniquity.
Certainly no people are more skilful than are the Filipino politicians in pretending to write one thing with the certainty that another and very different one will be read between the lines. In the matter of libel, they are adepts at skating on thin ice. Rare indeed is the occurrence of a decent attitude on the part of any native newspaper toward any important public question.[13]
The history of the municipal and provincial governments is worthy of very careful consideration.