Hardly any one can fail to read with interest the following accurate and vivid picture which they give of the physical strategic unity of the Philippine Islands:
There is hardly a single island in the group from which you cannot shoot across to one or more of the others—scarcely another archipelago in the world in which the islands are crowded so closely together and so interdependent.
This explains also why the Filipino people are a people. Whenever the American people understand that, they will give them their independence, unless they get an idea that government of their people by their people for their people would be distasteful to them.
In the memorandum of their views telegraphed to Washington on October 25th, Messrs. Davis, Frye, and Reid also say:
Public opinion in Europe, including that of Rome, expects us to retain whole of Philippine Islands.
Archbishop Chapelle was in Paris at the time of these negotiations. He afterwards told the writer in Manila that he got that $20,000,000 put in the Treaty of Paris. The Church preferred that our title should be a title by purchase rather than a title by conquest, and Mr. McKinley was vigorously urging the latter. Between the legal effects of the two, there is a world of difference. The Church outgeneralled the President—checkmated him with a bishop. Look at that part of the treaty which affects church property:
Article VIII. The * * * cession * * * cannot in any respect impair the property or rights * * * of * * * ecclesiastical * * * bodies.
The Church of Rome, or at least some of the ecclesiastical bodies pertaining to it in the Philippines, owned the cream of the agricultural estates. By the treaty they have not lost a dollar. It might have been otherwise, had not Mr. McKinley’s original claim of title by conquest been overcome at Paris.
Judge Day’s memorandum of his own views, telegraphed on October 25th along with those of his colleagues, stated that he was unable to agree that we should peremptorily demand the entire Philippine group; that
In the spirit of our instructions, and bearing in mind the often declared disinterestedness of purpose and freedom from designs of conquest with which the war was undertaken, we should be consistent in demands in making peace * * * with due regard to our responsibility because of the conduct of our military and naval authorities in dealing with the insurgents.