Gratitude is due the friars for the teachableness of the Filipino as our Government finds him today. His intellectual and spiritual inheritance for ten generations is in accordance with our own, wherein he has an advantage over Chinese and Japanese, for he can assimilate American ideas better, and American ideas, thanks to the expanse and freedom of American life, are keenly active towards the world's enlightenment. Mr. Taft believes thoroughly that today is too soon to give the Filipinos independence, because they lack experience. They would - not know how to exercise political franchise, but the present Filipino government is demonstrating that it is a question merely of time, perhaps of only one generation, when the Filipinos may be allowed to govern themselves freely. He is not sure that then they will desire independence, but time will tell. He is emphatic in declaring his belief that America must guide at present. Mr. Taft says that the presence of the Americans in the Islands is essential to the due development of the lower classes and the preservation of their rights. If the American Government can only remain in the Islands long enough to educate the entire people, to give them a language [English] which enables them to come into contact with mod Bringing in the Egrotoe Chiefs to Meet the Secretary ern civilization, and to extend to them from time to time additional political rights, so that by the exercise of them they shall learn the use and the responsibilities necessary to their proper exercise, independence can be granted with entire safety to the people. I have an abiding conviction that the Filipino people are capable of being taught self-government in the process of their development, that in carrying out this policy they will be improved physically and mentally, and that as they acquire more rights, their power to exercise moral restraints upon themselves will be strengthened and improved. Meantime they will be able to see, and the American public will come to see, the enormous material benefit to both arising from the maintenance of some sort of a bond between the two coun tries which shall preserve their mutually beneficial business relations. No one can study the East without having been made aware that in the development of China, Japan and all Asia are to be presented the most important political questions for the next century, and that in the pursuit of trade between the Occident and the Orient the having such an outpost as the |