A Modern Provincial Government Building.
Would the United States care to assume responsibility for conditions in Mexico without any power to exercise control over the government of that country? Those who demand that we guarantee the independence of the Philippines are advocating a thing precisely similar to this, except that torture and burying alive do not seem to be in vogue in Mexico, and would be practised in the Philippines again, as they have been in the recent past.
Can any one fail to grasp the fact that the following statements of Bishop Brent embody solid common sense?
“Finally it must be recognized that the Philippine problem cannot be settled without reference to its international bearing. Neutralization has been proposed. But can American or any other diplomacy secure the neutrality of the Powers? Would it mean anything if promises of neutrality were made? Is it not so, that though no existing military power, East or West, would fight America in order to secure possession of the Philippines, there are at least two nations which would seize the first opportunity for interference if American sovereignty ceased? Can America afford to protect a government halfway round the world, which she does not actually and constructively control?
She has found it difficult enough with one near at hand. It appears to me that it would be a measure of quixotry beyond the most altruistic administration, to stand sponsor for the order of an experimental government of more than doubtful stability ten thousand miles from our coasts. When the Philippines achieve independence they must swallow the bitter with the sweet, and accept the perils as well as the joys of walking alone. There are national risks involved even in a limited protectorate to which I trust America will never expose herself.”
We stoutly asserted in 1899 that the Filipinos were not fit to govern their own country, and this was certainly then true. If in the short space of fifteen years, with leaders who have so recently committed almost incredible barbarities still in the saddle, we had rendered them fit, we should have performed the most wonderful political miracle that the world has ever seen. But the age of miracles has long since passed. While the Filipinos have advanced more in the last fifteen years than during any previous century of their history, what they have gained is by no means ingrained in their character, and they yet have far to go. It is our duty and our privilege to guide and help them on their way. We should hold steadily onward disregarding the hostility and the murmurings of selfish politicians, and looking hopefully to the future for substantial results from the broad and generous policy which we have thus far followed.
Many of the politicians want independence under a United States protectorate, by which they mean that their country shall be turned over to them to do with as they please, with a fleet of American warships lying conveniently near to see that they are not interfered with while thus engaged. It would be the height of folly for us to enter into any such arrangement.
We must help the Filipinos to attain for their country commercial prosperity, so that its revenues may be more adequate for the support of government. Before commercial prosperity can exist, the people must learn to employ modern agricultural methods and modern machinery in bringing considerable portions of the present enormous uncultivated areas of fertile land to a state of productivity.
We must set right standards and insist that they be lived up to. The way to stimulate healthful development of the Filipinos is to let the apples hang high and make them climb for them, not to tell them to hold their hats and shake the tree.
This policy of setting right standards has already been very successfully pursued in the education of Filipino doctors, Filipino nurses, Filipino surveyors, Filipino printers and Filipino teachers.