"Yes, the United States; it is our own! You are our brothers!" said a Filipino boy who had been educated in a Mission school.
"We are no longer our own. We belong to America. You have bought us with a price! It cost the blood of American soldiers to buy us!" said an old Filipino, gray with years, but high in the councils of the Government.
* * * * * *
One night on the Lunetta the Filipino Band was playing. It was a beautiful evening with a sunset that lifted one into the very skies with its bewildering glory and ecstasy. I had been sitting there, drinking in the beautiful music made by the world-famous Constabulary Band, and watching the quicksilver-like changing colors of the sunset. Then the band started to play "The Star Spangled Banner." I was so lost in the sunset and the music that I did not notice.
I heard a sudden stirring. Brown bodies, half-naked Filipinos all about me, had leapt to their feet at the playing of our national hymn. Beautiful Filipino women in their dainty and delicately winged gowns, bare brown shoulders heaving with pride and friendship, stood reverently. Filipino soldiers all over the Lunetta stood at attention facing the flag, the Stars and Stripes waving in the winds from the old walled city. Side by side with American soldiers who had just returned from Siberia stood Filipino Constabulary soldiers. Side by side with well-dressed American children stood half-naked Filipino children at reverent attention, paying a wholesome respect to the Stars and Stripes as the old hymn swept across the Lunetta.
"That is a thrilling thing to see!" I said to a friend.
"It could not have happened ten years ago! M he replied.
"Why?"
"They did not trust us, and they did not love us. They had seen too much of the selfish colonization policies of Spain. They expected the same things from America. It did not come. They have been won to us!"
This warm-hearted friendship is not true either of England's colonies anywhere in the Orient or of Japan's in Formosa or Korea. It is true alone in the Philippines.