What Then?
It has been urged by one class of our citizens that we abandon the islands because they are a source of military weakness, and that we guarantee their independence, which in plain English means that we hold ourselves ready to fight for them! They insist that with our Caucasian origin and our years of hard-earned experience, we are not fit to govern them, but that their Filipino inhabitants, who are the Malayan savages of the sixteenth century, plus what Spain has taught them, plus what they have so recently learned from us, are fit to govern themselves and must be allowed to do so under our protection.
In other words, having brought up a child who is at present rather badly spoiled, we are to say to the family of nations: “Here is a boy who must be allowed to join you. We have found that we are unfit to control him, but we hope that he will be good. You must not spank him unless you want to fight us.”
It has been suggested that we get other nations to agree to the neutralization of the islands. Why should they? Are we prepared to offer them any tangible inducements, or do we believe that the millennium has arrived and that they are actuated by purely altruistic motives in such matters?
Blount quotes with approval the following statement of Secretary William Jennings Bryan:—
“There is a wide difference, it is true, between the general intelligence of the educated Filipino and the labourer on the street and in the field, but this is not a barrier to self-government. Intelligence controls in every government, except where it is suppressed by military force. Nine-tenths of the Japanese have no part in the law-making. In Mexico, the gap between the educated classes and the peons is fully as great as, if not greater than, the gap between the extremes of Filipino society. Those who question the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government forget that patriotism raises up persons fitted for the work that needs to be done.”[1]
This sounds well, but will it bear analysis? We are now being furnished a practical demonstration of the results achieved by people like the Mexicans when they attempt to conduct a so-called republic. Whether the gap between the extremes of Mexican society is as great as that between the extremes of Filipino society depends on what one includes under the latter term. If one limits it to the Christianized natives, the statement quoted is true. If one includes the non-Christians which constitute an eighth of the population, it is not true.
A Typical Old-style Provincial Government Building.
