The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives that ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear friends across the seas?
The above reflections are not placed before the reader to show him what a pity it is that the writer was not a member of the Philippine Commission at the time of their certificate of 1907, or to show what a fine thing for our common country it would be if he were made a member of that Commission now. He is, personally, as disinterested as if Manila were in the moon, for he cannot live in the tropics any more. The effect of a year or so of residence there upon white men invalided home for tropical dysentery and then returning to the Islands is like the effect of water upon a starched shirt. However, it is believed that the facts of official record collected in this chapter up to this point are a demonstration of this proposition, to wit: What the Philippine Government needs more than anything else is that the minority party in the United States should be represented on the Commission. By this I do not mean representation by what are called, under Republican Administrations, “White House” Democrats, nor what under a Democratic Administration, if one should ever occur, would probably be called “Copperhead Republicans.” I mean the genuine article. A Democrat who has cast his fortunes with the Philippines is no longer a Democrat relatively to the Philippines, because the Democratic party wants to get rid of the Philippines and the Democrat in the Philippines of course does not. How absurd it is to talk about former Governors Wright and Smith, as “life-long Democrats,” by way of preliminary to using their opinions as “admissions.” In the law of evidence, an “admission” is a statement made against the interest of the party making it.
The first election for representatives in the Philippine Assembly was held on July 30, 1907, and on October 16th thereafter the Assembly was formally opened by Secretary of War, William H. Taft. The various “whereases” hereinabove reviewed, importing complete acquiescence in American rule since President Roosevelt’s Proclamation of July 4, 1902, were first duly read, and then the Assembly was opened. Of course, no man could have been elected to the Assembly without at least pretending to be in favor of independence, and all but a corporal’s guard of them were outspoken in favor of the proposition. As the present Governor-General Mr. Forbes, said, while Vice-Governor, in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1909:
To deny the capacity of one’s country for * * * self-government is essentially unpopular.
When he visited the Philippines to open their Assembly in 1907, Mr. Taft had said nothing definite and final on the question of promising independence since his departure from the Islands in 1903. His then benevolent unwillingness to tell them frankly he did not think they had sense enough to run a government of their own, and that they were unfit for self-government, has already been reviewed. For two years after 1903 Governor Wright had made them pine for the return of Mr. Taft. They longed to hear again some of the siren notes of the celebrated speech “the Philippines for the Filipinos.” They had gotten very excited and very happy over that speech. Of course they would not have gotten very excited over independence supposed to be coming long after they should be dead and buried. During the two dark frank years of Governor Wright’s régime, they had frequently been told that they were not fit for independence. So that when Secretary of War Taft had visited the Islands in 1905 they all had been on the qui vive for more statements vaguely implying an independence they might hope to live to see. During the visit of 1905 the time of the visiting Congressional party was consumed principally with tariff hearings, and comparatively little was said on the subject uppermost in the minds of all Filipinos. It is true that Mr. Taft said then he was of the opinion that it would take a generation or longer to get the country ready for self-government, but he said it in a tactful, kindly way, and did not forever crush their hopes. So when he went out to the Islands to open the assembly in 1907, the attitude of the whole people in expectation of some definite utterances on the question of a definite promise of independence at some future time, was just the attitude of an audience in a theatre as to which one affirms “you could hear a pin fall.” In this regard Mr. Taft’s utterances were as follows[21]: