that particular time might jeopardize the interests of the Philippine people. What response in gratitude or appreciation did this unselfish devotion to duty receive from those who were enjoying both security and sinecures through his efforts? The following will show.

In December, 1912, a bill was offered in Congress providing for immediate autonomous government in the Philippines, with complete independence shortly thereafter. President Taft, in opposing the wisdom of such action, stated in a special message to Congress (December 6, 1912):

We must not forget that we found the Filipinos wholly untrained in government. Up to our advent, all other experience sought to repress rather than encourage political power. It takes a long time and much experience to ingrain political habits of steadiness and efficiency. Popular government must ultimately rest upon common habits of thought and upon a reasonably developed public opinion. No such preparation for self-government, let alone independence, are now present in the Philippine Islands. Disregarding even their racial heterogeneity, and the lack of ability to think as a nation, it is sufficient to point out that under liberal franchise privileges only about 3 per cent. of the Filipinos vote and only 5 per cent. of the people are said to read the public press. To confer independence upon the Filipinos now would, therefore, subject the great mass of the people to the domination of an oligarchic and probably exploiting minority. Such a course would be as cruel to those people as it would be shameful to us. I believe that no one to whom the future of this people is a responsible concern can countenance a policy fraught with the direst consequences to those on whose behalf it is ostensibly urged.

Because of this plea on behalf of the Filipino masses, President Taft was made the object of a vitriolic attack by members of the Philippine Assembly, a body which owed its very existence to his initiative. His sincerity and judgment were questioned, his motives impugned, and his friendship for the Philippine people denied, the Assembly adopting by unanimous vote a resolution supporting the

independence bill before Congress and asking its immediate

passage.

The same treatment was accorded Hon. Dean C. Worcester, for twelve years Secretary of the Interior of the islands, whose constant journeyings throughout the archipelago gave him intimate knowledge of every stratum of the population. Because he championed the rights of the wild men and the downtrodden and voiceless among the people, and told brutal and unpleasant truths concerning the treatment accorded them, his name became anathema among that small coterie of Filipino ilustrados who seek to dominate the Government, and who regard their less fortunate fellow creatures as legitimate spoil.

This has been and still is the fate of any one who argues, or intimates, that the Philippine people are not yet ready for complete independence. No matter how deeply concerned such person may be for the welfare of the people as a whole, nor how sincere or well-founded his convictions, he immediately becomes a target for attack by that minority element which controls publicity, and which is supposed, however erroneously, to represent public opinion. The comparatively recent onslaught upon GovernorGeneral Wood, engineered for political and personal ends by Manual Quezón and a few subservient satellites, amply illustrates this fact. Plaudits are the exclusive portion of those who praise or flatter, or who urge immediate independence, regardless of the motives or "inducements" which inspire their action.

VII

THE WRECKING OF A GOVERNMENT—1913-21

IN 1913, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, became Presi

dent of the United States. The Philippines were then, as they are now, terra incognita to most Americans and had cut no actual figure in the campaign. Since 1900, however, when Bryan sought to make the Philippines a "Paramount Issue," the Democratic party had carried a stereotyped platform pledge to grant the Filipinos immediate or early independence, and its leaders now felt impelled to make some gesture in the matter. By a strange fate, Mr. Wilson, now called upon to effect this party declaration, had, as student and historian, specifically pointed out why such proposed step-given the existing condition of the Philippine people would violate every principle of history and natural law. In a lecture on Constitutional Government delivered at Columbia University in 1907, he referred to our Philippine obligations as follows:

Self-government is not a mere form of institution, to be had when desired if only proper pains be taken. It is a form of character. It follows upon the long discipline which gives a people self-possession, self-mastery, the habit of order and peace and common counsel, and a reverence for law which will not fail when they themselves become the makers of law-the steadiness and self-control of political maturity. And these things cannot be had without long discipline.

The distinction is of vital concern to us in respect of practical choices of policy which we must make, and make soon. We have dependencies to deal with and must deal with them in the true spirit of our institutions. We can give the Filipinos constitutional government, a government which they may count upon to be just, a government based

upon some clear understanding, intended for their good and not for our aggrandizement; but we must for the present supply that government. But we cannot give them self-government. Self-government is not a thing which can be "given" to any people, because it is a form of character and not of constitution. No people can be “given the self-control of maturity. Only a long apprenticeship of obedience can secure them the precious possession, a thing no more to be bought than given. They cannot be presented with the character of a community, but it may confidently be hoped that they will become a community under the wholesome and salutary influence of just laws and a sympathetic administration; that they will, after a while, understand and master themselves, if in the meantime they are understood and served in good conscience by those set over them in authority.

We, of all people in the world, should know these fundamental things and should act upon them, if only to illustrate the mastery in politics which belongs to us of hereditary right. To ignore them would be not only to fail and fail miserably, but to fail ridiculously and belie ourselves. Having ourselves gained self-government by a definite process which can have no substitute, let us put the people dependent upon us in the right way to gain it also.

Translated, this means that it is not given to any government or people to work miracles. However great our desire, we cannot override ethnological truth or hurdle the slow processes of evolution. If the Malay is to escape his inheritance it must be by the same road we have travelled, and history records that the journey was a slow and painful one. We may inaugurate a few "short cuts," but the ingrained racial characteristics and habits of ten millions of people cannot be transformed in a generation, nor in many generations.

Acting upon this historical truth, our early administrators bent their energies to giving the islands a good government, a government wherein the people would be protected in their rights and at the same time learn, through precept and example, the essentials to any possible self-governing, self-respecting democracy.

Let it be said to our credit also, that however the

Philippine question was used at home to lure votes from an uninformed electorate, none of this party juggling found echo in the islands. Of the five governors-general who served prior to 1913, Taft and Ide were Republicans, Wright and Smith were Democrats, while the politics of Governor Forbes were unknown until the eve of his departure. Before receiving their respective appointments as Chief Executive, Judge Taft had served in the islands over a year; General Wright three years and a half; Judge Ide six years; General Smith eight years, and Mr. Forbes five and a half years. All of them-and they were men of calibre and character-out of a fund of knowledge of the situation gained through years of study, experience, and observation, pursued a uniform policy, which was to further the betterment of the people and the development of the islands as a whole, retaining in their own hands, or in those of responsible subordinates, such a measure of control as would insure an honest, efficient, and just administration. Fitness for employment was not determined by party affiliations ten thousand miles away. The question was one of men, and of our duty as Americans to serve in the best possible way the needs of this people whom we had taken into our household.

With affairs in this shape came the change of administration at Washington in 1913. There was nothing really inimical to the policies of this new administration in the work then being done in the islands. The Republican party had granted the Filipinos an Elective Assembly in 1907, and of the nine members of the Philippine Commission, four were Filipinos. Natives were in entire control of local affairs, save as experience showed a wise supervision to be necessary, and were being incorporated into the civil service as rapidly as they qualified therefor,