The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 41

Our second great national sin was a yielding to the temptation of the environment which arose, unforeseen, after a splendid war waged for the Rights of Man against Spain in Cuba. The Philippine war was waged to subjugate the Filipino people, because Mr. McKinley believed it would be financially profitable to us to own the islands, and in the face of the fact that the only thing he knew officially about the Filipino people was that Admiral Dewey thought them superior to the Cubans and more capable of self-government. The war in the Philippines was, therefore, a war against the Rights of Man. Nowhere in any state paper has any American statesman, soldier, or sailor, had the temerity to invoke the name of G.o.d in connection with the retention of the Philippine Islands. Nowhere in any American state paper connected with the Philippines is there any reference to "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The sin of our Philippine policy is that it is a denial of the right of a people to pursue happiness in their own way instead of in somebody else's way. It is a denial of the very principles in maintenance of which we went to war against Spain to free Cuba, as we had previously gone to war against England to free ourselves.

Now the reason the nation blundered into taking the Philippines was that it believed the Filipinos to be, not a people, but a jumble of savage tribes. But the reason the men who controlled the action of the government at the time took the Philippines was because they believed they would pay. Nevertheless, there was a sufficient number of our fellow-citizens--controlled, some by altruistic motives and some by sordid motives--to cause the nation to follow the lead of those then in control. If the men then in control had taken the people into their confidence, the blunder would never have been made. If the correspondence between Mr. McKinley and the Paris Peace Commission in the fall of 1898, from which the injunction of secrecy was not removed until 1901, had been given out at the time, the treaty would never have been ratified except after some such declaration as to the Philippines as was made concerning Cuba, some reaffirmance of allegiance to faith in our cardinal tenet--the right of every people to pursue happiness in their own way, free from alien domination. The Bacon resolution of 1899, which was along this line, was defeated only by the deciding vote of the presiding officer, the Vice-President of the United States. The pa.s.sage of that resolution would have prevented the Philippine Insurrection. Had it pa.s.sed, the Filipinos would no more have had occasion to think of insurrection than the Cubans did. It was Mr. McKinley alone who decided to take the Philippines. Congress was not called together in extra session. The people were not consulted, except from the rear-end of an observation car.

Most people, whether they be lawyers or not, are more or less acquainted with the doctrine of what is called in law a "bona fide purchaser without notice." No man can claim to be a bona fide purchaser without notice, when he knows enough about the subject matter of his purchase to put him on reasonable notice of the existence of facts which, had he taken the trouble to verify them, would have caused him to halt and not purchase. The correspondence in 1898, made public in 1901, withheld by Mr. McKinley until after his second election in 1900, is sufficient to have made any honest man ask himself some such question as this: "After all, is it not quite possible that those people can run a decent government of their own? Admiral Dewey says they are superior to the Cubans." But Mr. McKinley did not pursue this inquiry, as it was his duty to do. He took the islands because he believed they would pay, knowing nothing in particular about the Filipinos, except what he had learned from Admiral Dewey's brief comment, yet hoping in spite of it that they would turn out sufficiently unfit for self-government for the event to vindicate the purchase. To demonstrate that the Filipinos were wholly unfit for the treatment accorded the Cubans was the only possible justification of the initial departure from the traditions of the Republic and from the principles which were its corner-stone. And he made the departure because the business "interests" of the country then believed--erroneously they all now admit--that it would pay. He decided to treat eternal principles as "worn-out formulae." Senator h.o.a.r once declined an invitation extended by his own city of Worcester, to deliver a eulogy on Mr. McKinley, because of his Philippine policy. True, he tempers the asperity of this action thus: "It was not because I was behind any other man in admiration or personal affection for that lofty and beautiful character. But * * * if a great Catholic prelate were to die, his eulogy should not be p.r.o.nounced by a Protestant." [530] But all Senator h.o.a.r's speeches against the McKinley Philippine policy were as emphatic as Luther's ninety-five theses. He was in possession at the time, along with the rest of the Senate, of the correspondence with the Paris Peace Commission made public after the presidential election of 1900.

Ever since Mr. McKinley took the Philippines, it has been the awkward but inexorable duty of the defenders of that good man's fame to deprecate Filipino capacity for self-government. President Taft's chief life-work since this century began has been to take care of his martyred predecessor's fame, by proving that Mr. McKinley guessed right in 1898 when he bought the Philippines and trusted to luck to be able to make out, in spite of what Admiral Dewey had said, a case sufficiently derogatory to Filipino intelligence to justify the purchase and subjugation of the islands at the very time we were freeing Cuba. Obviously, then, the more utterly unfit for self-government in the present or the near future Mr. Taft can make the Filipinos out, the nearer he gets to vindicating the memory of Mr. McKinley, that is, with men of his own, (Mr. Taft's) high character. He insists on treating as children a people who got up a well-armed army of thirty-odd thousand men in three or four months and held at bay, for two years and a half, some 125,000 husky American soldiers, over five times as many as it took to drive Spain from the Western hemisphere. Physical force is the basis of all government among men. If President Taft had anything of the soldier instinct of his immediate predecessor, he would not sniff demagoguery in the proposition that military efficiency is a better guaranty of capacity for self-government than all the school-books in the world, and that proven pa.s.sionate willingness to die for freedom from alien domination is the best guaranty conceivable against internecine strife. It was a tremendous struggle with his own conscience that Mr. McKinley went through with before he decided to repudiate the principles on which we took Cuba in order, for a money consideration euphemistically called "trade expansion," to take the Philippines. He had advices before him at the time making it reasonably certain that this meant trouble with the Filipinos, i.e., bloodshed in the Philippines, the extent of which none could foresee, and about which he was of course apprehensive. In the matter of instructing our Paris Peace Commissioners to insist on Spain's ceding us the Philippines, Mr. McKinley took no moral ground tenable like a rock, such as truly great men take in great crises of their country's history. He did not attempt to lead the people. He simply decided that it would be a popular thing to do to take the islands. Fresh from a war entered upon to emanc.i.p.ate the Cubans from alien domination, he took a step which both Admiral Dewey and General Merritt warned him beforehand would probably mean war--to subjugate, against their will, a people superior to the Cubans. And in taking this step, he took into his confidence, neither the people who paid for the war, nor the soldiers who fought it. To deny that his motives were benevolent would be simply stupid. But he followed the mob which shouted from the rear-end of his observation car and repeated by cable to the Paris Peace Commission, what the mob yelled. Ever since the supposed Philippine Klond.y.k.e whispered in President McKinley's ear "Eat of the imperial fruits of a colonial policy," the archives of this government--the reports of the State, War, and Navy Departments, and the Congressional Doc.u.ments--have reeked with the inevitable consequences of our fall from our high estate. No man can serve two masters. Philanthropy for pecuniary profit is a paradox. Duplicity ever follows deviation from principle. In our dealings in 1898 with Aguinaldo you find vacillation on the part of military commanders who personally did not know what fear was, and embarra.s.sed hypocrisy in dealing with him on the part of men wearing the shoulder-straps of the American army, athwart the frankness of whose gaze no such shadow had ever fallen before. You find systematic concealment of our intentions in dealing with the insurgents, for fear they would insurge before the Treaty was signed, and thus cause such a revulsion of feeling in our country against the purchase of theirs as to defeat the ratification of the treaty. After that, you find a systematic minimizing of the opposition to our rule, reinforced by subtle depreciation of Filipino intelligence, and backed up by a "peace-at-any-price" policy, periodically punctuated by the horrors of war without its dignity. The denial of Filipino opposition to our rule, which opposition means merely a natural longing for freedom from alien rule, has gradually been abandoned. n.o.body now clings to that stale fiction. Also, a long course of chastening, through reconcentration and kindred severities subsequent to the official announcement of a state of general peace, has at last gotten the situation as to public order well in hand. The only question for those who affect that "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" which the men of 1776 had in mind is, "Are the Filipinos a people?" President Taft was originally with Senator h.o.a.r on the Philippine question. At least he was an "anti-expansionist." In all the heat of subsequent controversy he has never made bold to deny the general proposition of the unalienable right of every people to liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their own way. His position is that the Filipino people must be made an exception to the rule because they are not a people. This is the strongest I can state his proposition for him. It is very difficult to state even with apparent plausibility, anything which denies the right of every community of people to immunity from alien domination. The case must be an extreme one. The issue which the writer raises with the President's policy is that the Filipinos are a people.

I know of no graver responsibility that an American statesman can take upon himself before the bar of history than to deny the right of any given people to self-government. Certainly any man who denies that right at least a.s.sumes the burden of proof that they are unfit to attend to their own affairs. Mr. McKinley a.s.sumed it without pretending to know anything much about the Filipinos, the motive being that the Islands would be profitable to us. When Mr. Taft went to the Philippines in 1900, he went, not to investigate the correctness of Mr. McKinley's a.s.sumption, which was implied in the purchase, but to champion it; not to give advice concerning the righteousness of having taken over the Philippines, but to bolster up the policy. He a.s.sumed the burden of proof before he knew anything about the facts. The burden has been on him ever since. Any subordinate who helps him to bear that burden, finds favor in his eyes. But the burden is greater than he can bear. The proof fails. The proof shows that the Filipino people ought to be allowed to pursue happiness in their own way instead of being made to pursue it in Mr. Taft's way. Once you pretend that our true object in the Philippines is the "pursuit of happiness" for them, The Taft policy is condemned by the facts; and that is why I am opposed to it. The record shows this. He admits it. But he insists, with a sigh, that in some other generation they will be happy. Meantime, we are drifting toward our next war carrying in tow 8,000,000 of human beings who, if neutralized and let alone would not be disturbed by our next war, but whose destinies now must be dependent upon the outcome of such war, however little they may be concerned in the issues which bring it about.

The shifty opportunism which once actually held out to the Filipinos the hope of some day becoming a State of the United States of America, has long since lapsed into the silence of shame, because no American ever honestly believed that the American people would ever countenance any such preposterous proposition. And so a free republic based on representative government is face to face with the proposition of having a "crown colony" on its hands which wishes to be, and could soon be made fit to be, a free republic also.

If a federal republic cannot live half slave and half free, can it live with millions of the governed denied a voice in the federal government confessedly forever?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ROAD TO AUTONOMY

Oh be ye not dismayed Though ye stumbled and ye strayed.

Kipling--A Song of the English.

He who points out a wrong without being prepared to suggest a remedy presumes upon the patience of his neighbor without good and sufficient cause. Up to this point the wrong has been unfolded, with such ability as was vouchsafed the narrator, "from Genesis to Revelations," so to speak; also his own att.i.tude as an eye-witness, and its evolution from the Mosaic doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, to the more Christian doctrines of the New Testament. Let us now consider the remedy.

In the course of our travels with the army in the earlier chapters of this book, we first followed its northern advance, from Manila over the great central plain drained by the Rio Grande and crossed by the railroad connecting Manila Bay with Lingayen Gulf; its further advance from the northern borders of the plain over the mountains of Central Luzon; and its march from the central mountains to the northern sea, at the extreme northern end of the archipelago. We thus saw in detail the military conquest and occupation of that part of Luzon lying north of the Pasig River. Before leaving that part of the subject, the way the provinces thus occupied were grouped into military districts was indicated. Following the lines of the military occupation, it was shown that Northern Luzon was naturally and conveniently susceptible of division into four groups of provinces, which groups might ultimately be evolved into self-governing commonwealths--States of a Philippine Federal Union, as follows:

Name of State Area (sq. m.) Population

Ilocos [531] 6,500 650,000 Cagayan [532] 12,000 300,000 Pangasinan [533] 4,500 625,000 Pampamga [534] 5,000 650,000 ------ --------- Total 28,000 2,225,000

It will be remembered that after our narrative had followed the occupation of Northern Luzon by the American forces to practical completion, we turned to that part of Luzon lying south of Manila, and followed the military occupation as it was gradually extended from the Pasig River to the extreme point of Southern Luzon. Before closing the review of that military panorama, suggestions were made for an ultimate grouping of the provinces of Southern Luzon into two governmental units intended to be ultimately evolved into states. Those suggestions contemplated grouping the provinces of the lake region bordering on the Laguna de Bay and the adjacent provinces, into a territory designated for convenience as Cavite. [535] This territory was to include all of Southern Luzon except the hemp peninsula, which lies to the south of the Lake country. It was also suggested in the same connection that the three provinces of the hemp peninsula might form a convenient ultimate State of Camarines. In other words, two states can be made out of Southern Luzon as follows:

Name of State Area (sq. m.) Population

Cavite 8,500 700,000 Camarines 7,000 600,000 ------ --------- Total 15,500 1,300,000

To recapitulate: All of Luzon except Manila and the vicinity can at once be divided into the six groups of provinces above mentioned--"territories," having what we are accustomed in the United States to call a "territorial form of government," and intended to be made states later. Luzon is about the size of Cuba (a little over 40,000 sq. miles), is twice as thickly populated (nearly 4,000,000 to Cuba's 2,000,000), and is not cursed with a negro question, as Cuba is.

The above totals, be it remembered, are only round numbers, but they get us "out of the woods" so to speak, and away from a lot of unp.r.o.nounceable names. They show you how to handle Luzon as if it were about the size of Ohio--which it is. And, as has already been made clear in the earlier part of this volume, Luzon "is" the Philippines, in a very suggestive sense of the phrase, since it contains half the land area of the archipelago (outside of the Mohammedan island of Mindanao), and half the total population of the whole archipelago, besides being eight or ten times as large as any other island of the group except Mindanao; and it also contains the city which is the capital and chief port of the archipelago, and has been the seat of government for over three hundred years--Manila. And Manila is eight or ten times as large as any other town in the archipelago.

After the occupation of Luzon, General Otis's extension of our occupation to the Visayan islands was reviewed, and in that connection it was pointed out that each of the six largest of those islands to wit, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Leyte, Samar, Bohol, might be ultimately evolved into six states. [536]

The smaller islands lying between Luzon and Mindanao could easily be disposed of governmentally by being attached to the jurisdiction of one of the said six islands.

There is to-day no reason why a dozen Americans could not be at once appointed governors of the twelve prospective autonomous commonwealths above indicated, just as the President of the United States has in the past appointed governors for New Mexico, Arizona, and other territories of the United States which have subsequently been admitted to the Union. If the Congress of the United States should promise the Filipinos independence, to be granted as soon as American authority in the Islands should so recommend, the dozen territorial governments intended to be evolved into states of an ultimate federal union could soon be whipped into shape where they could take care of themselves to the extent that our state governments to-day take care of themselves. American representatives of American authority in the Islands, sent out to work out such a programme, might be instructed to watch these twelve territorial governments, granting to each the right to elect a governor in lieu of the appointed governor as soon as in their judgment a given territory was worthy of it. I have no doubt that such recommendations would follow successively as to all of said prospective states inside of four or five years. Whether this plan is wise or not, it certainly is not, as far as I am concerned, "half baked." Some five years ago, in the North American Review, [537] I suggested that Luzon could be so organized within less than ten years by American territorial governors selected for the work, naming the Honorable George Curry of New Mexico, formerly Governor of the territory of New Mexico, and now a member of Congress therefrom, as an ideal man to organize one such territory. It is true that there are not eleven other men as well qualified for the work as Governor Curry. In fact he is probably better qualified for the work than any man living. The language used as to Governor Curry in the North American Review article referred to was as follows:

If the inhabitants of these regions were told by a man whom they liked and would believe, as they would Curry, that they were to have autonomous governments like one of the Western Territories of the United States, at the very earliest possible moment, and urged to get ready for it, they could and would, under his guidance. We would get a co-operation from those people we do not now get and never will get, so long as we keep them in uncertainty as to what we are going to do with them. If next year we should formally disclaim intention to retain the islands permanently, and set to work to create autonomous Territories destined ultimately to be States of a Federated Philippine Republic, whenever fit, we would soon see the way out of this tangle, and behold the beginning of the end of it.

Whenever the twelve territorial governments should be gotten into smooth working order under elected native governors, the Philippine archipelago would then be nearly ready for independence, so far as its internal affairs are concerned. The danger of their being annexed on the first pretext by some one of the great land-grabbing powers should be met by our guaranteeing them their independence, as we do Cuba, until they could be protected by neutralization treaties, such as protect Belgium and Switzerland to-day, as explained in the chapter which follows this. Powers not specifically granted to the several states-in-embryo should of course, until the final grant of independence, be reserved to the central government at Manila. Manila and Rizal province would be available at almost any time as a thirteenth state. So that when the twelve states above suggested had shown themselves capable of local self-government, Manila and Rizal province might be added to make the final one of thirteen original states of a Philippine Republic.

Any American who has seen a Filipino pueblo transformed, as if by magic, from listless apathy to a state of buzzing and busy enthusiasm suggestive of a bee-hive, by preparations for some church fiesta, or for the coming of some dignitary from Manila, has seen something a.n.a.logous to what would happen if the Filipino body politic should suddenly be electrified by a promise of independence under some such programme as the above. A generous rivalry would at once ensue all over the archipelago in each of the twelve prospective states. Each would seek to be the first to be recommended by American authority as ready for statehood. I do not believe the annals of national experience contain any a.n.a.logy where every member of a given community has rallied to a common cause more completely than the whole Filipino people would rally to such a prospective programme of independence. The unanimity would be as absolute as the kind we saw among the American people at the outbreak of the Spanish War, when Congress one fine morning placed fifty millions of dollars at the disposal of President McKinley by a unanimous vote.

I especially invite attention to the fact that the above programme throws away nothing that has been done by us in the Islands in the last twelve years in the way of organization. It simply takes it and builds upon it. Congress should not attempt to work out the details from this end of the line. We should send men out there from here to work them out, with local co-operation from the leading Filipinos. Men animated by the idea of working out a programme under which the living may hope to see the independence of their country, should be sent out to take the place of the men now there who are irrevocably committed to the programme of indefinite retention with undeclared intention, which holds out no hope to the living. It is not wise to arrange the details of the programme by act of Congress without a year or two of study of the situation by such men on the ground. An act of Congress which goes into details before getting the recommendations of such men will inevitably set up a lot of straw men easy for the other side to knock down. All you need is a program, sanctioned by Congress, containing a promise of independence, and men sent out to the islands to work out the program. They would report back from time to time, and the Congress by whose authority they went out would have no hesitation in being guided by their recommendations. If unpatriotic greed for office among the Filipinos, or other opposition animated by evil motives, should block the game, your Americans so sent out would have to recommend the calling of a halt. This ever-present shadow in the background would in turn throw the shadow of ostracism over all demagogues.

Meantime the Filipinos should be given a Senate, or upper house, in which, the thirteen prospective "states" should be represented by two men, the bill therefor to be framed out there, and sent back here to Congress for approval. This would give them under the plan here suggested, as soon as the Americans sent out should so recommend, a Senate of twenty-six members. At present, if the native a.s.sembly, or lower house, does not pa.s.s the annual appropriations necessary to run the government, the appropriation act of the preceding year again becomes law. At present, the upper house is the Philippine Commission. By withholding its consent, it can prevent any legislation whatsoever. So, at present, the a.s.sembly is little more than a debating society. All questions as to appropriations, veto of legislation, and other details, in the event the Filipinos are given a Senate also, should be left to be fixed in the bill recommended by the men sent out to work out the program of promise.

On March 20, 1912, Honorable W. A. Jones, the distinguished veteran Congressman from Virginia, who is Chairman of the Committee on Insular Affairs, introduced in the House of Representatives a bill ent.i.tled "A bill to establish a qualified independence for the Philippines, and to fix the date when such qualified independence shall become absolute and complete." The greater part of what precedes this paragraph of this chapter was written prior to March 20, 1912. Mr. Jones's bill works out the details of the independence problem in a manner somewhat different from the plan I suggest, but that does not make me any the less heartily in favor of the principle which his bill embodies. The supreme virtue of the Jones bill is that it promises Independence at a fixed date, July 4, 1921. It ends the cruel uncertainty, so unjust to both the Filipinos and to the Americans in the Philippines, that is contained in the present program of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. Five years ago, in the North American Review for January 18, and June 21, 1907, the writer hereof expressed the belief that an earlier date was feasible, thus:

If three strong and able men, familiar with insular conditions, and still young enough to undertake the task [538] were told by a President of the United States, by authority of the Congress, "Go out there and set up a respectable native government in ten years, and then come away," they could and would do it, and that government would be a success; and one of the greatest moral victories in the annals of free government would have been written by the gentlemen concerned upon the pages of their country's history.

As Mr. Jones's bill allows four years more of time, I believe it to be absolutely safe.

Governor Curry, the Congressman from New Mexico hereinabove mentioned, who spent eight years in the Philippines, agrees with the fundamental principle of the Jones bill, that as to making a definite promise of Independence within a few years, and does not consider 1921 too early.

Under the present law, the Philippine a.s.sembly has some eighty members, each supposed to represent 90,000 people, more or less. This tallies, roughly, with the census total of population, which is 7,600,000. [539] Under the existing law in the Philippines, the qualifications for voting are really of two kinds, though nominally of three kinds. There is a property qualification, and there is an educational qualification. In any case, in order to vote, the individual must be twenty-one years old, and must have lived for six months in the place where he offers to vote. The property qualification requires that the would-be voter own at least $250 worth of property, or pay a tax to the amount of $15. The explanation of how a man may not own $250 worth of property and yet pay $15 taxes is that under the old Spanish system, which we partially adopted, a man might pay such cedula or poll-tax as he preferred, according to a graduated scale, certain civic rights being accorded to those voluntarily paying the higher poll-tax which were denied to those paying less. The educational qualification requires the would-be voter to speak, read, and write either English or Spanish, or else to have held certain enumerated small munic.i.p.al offices under the Spaniards--before the American occupation. Mr. Jones's bill proposes to add the speaking, reading, and writing of the native dialect of a given locality [540] to the educational qualification. This would double, or perhaps triple, the electorate, and would, in my judgment, be wise. Thousands upon thousands of natives who only speak a little Spanish can both speak, read, and write their native Tagalo, Ilocano, or Visayan, as the case may be. The total of those qualified to vote for members of the a.s.sembly in 1907 was only about 100,000. At a later election, that number was doubled. If there are 7,500,000 people in the archipelago, one fifth of these should represent the adult male population, say 1,500,000. Under Mr. Jones's bill, the electorate would probably increase to half a million long before the date he proposes for independence, July 4, 1921. But all such details as qualification for voting might, it seems to me, be left to people on the ground, their recommendations controlling. Under a promise of independence by 1921, a very fair electorate of at least one third, possibly one half, of the adult male population, could be built up. As the majority report on the Jones Bill, dated April 26, 1912, says:

For nearly ten years the average public-school enrolment has not been less than 500,000. [541]

I believe that the Moros should be left as they are for the present. The time for solving that problem has not yet been reached. Mr. Jones himself evidently bases his idea of allowing the Moro country representation in the Philippine Congress, or legislature provided by his bill, on the probability that enough Christian people will vote, down there, to make up an electorate that would not be "impossible," i.e., absurd. For instance, he tells me that a great many people have moved into Mindanao from the northern islands for commercial reasons, and, if I recollect correctly, that Zamboanga, the most beautiful little port in Mindanao, which hardly had 10,000 people when I was there, now has possibly 50,000. But the Moro question need not stand in the way of setting up an independent government in the Philippines in 1921, as proposed by his bill. You have material for thirteen original states, representing a population of nearly seven million Christian people, in Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands. Why delay the creation of this republic on account of 250,000 semi-civilized, crudely Mohammedan Moros in Mindanao--a separate island lying off to the south of the proposed republic? [542]

A happy solution of the matter would be to send Mr. Jones out there as Governor-General and let him work out the problem on the ground. He has had a long and distinguished career in the public service, twenty-two years in Congress. His public record and speeches on the Philippine question from the beginning would make him to the Filipinos the very incarnation of a bona fide intention on our part to give them their independence at the earliest practical moment, that is, at some time which the living might hope to see. When Governor Taft and Mr. Root drew the Philippine Government Act of 1902, the former had already been president of the Philippine Commission for two years, had been all over the archipelago, and knew it well. Suppose the Taft policy should be subst.i.tuted by the more progressive Jones policy. Mr. Jones, or whoever is to change the policy, ought to have as much acquaintance with the subject, acquired on the ground, as Mr. Taft had when he formulated his policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. The nucleus of the Taft policy was stated by Governor Taft to the Senate Committee in 1902, as follows [543]:

My own judgment is that the best policy, if a policy is to be declared at all, is to declare the intention of the United States to hold the islands indefinitely, until the people shall show themselves fit for self-government, under a gradually increasing popular government, when their relation to the United States, either of statehood, or of quasi-independence, like the colony of Australia or Canada, can be declared after mutual conference.

The policy which Mr. Jones has favored for the last twelve years is almost as well known to the Filipinos as are the views of Mr. Taft himself.

In conclusion, the writer desires to say, with especial emphasis, that the suggestions outlining the plan which forms the bulk of this chapter are presented in a spirit of entire deference to the views of any one else who may have considered this great subject carefully, especially to the views of Mr. Jones, whose bill is so entirely right in principle. The one supreme need of the situation is a definite legislative declaration which shall make clear to all concerned--to the Filipino demagogue and the American grafter, as well as to the great body of the good people of both races out there--that the governing of a remote and alien people is to have no permanent place in the purposes of our national life; and that we do bona fide intend to give the Filipinos their independence at a date in the future which will interest the living, by extending to the living the hope to see the independence of their country. And the Jones Bill does that.