We all respect as good and wise men, many officials who have advised the retention of the Philippines. We all have the same respect for the reverend prelate in the Vatican. When those of us who are Protestants reject the religious tenets peculiar to his branch of the Christian Church, it is with a distinct confession that the Pope knows a thousand times as much as most of us regarding details of his Church's history and doctrine. A cabinet officer may know far more than forty college presidents combined about details of Philippine life and conditions. But his opinion of whether our voters can be trusted to do justice a century hence to people of alien race and instincts, which is a cardinal point at issue, is worth no more than that of any other man of equal intelligence. Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs probably knew ten times as much about the negroes and the conditions of slavery in the South before the war as Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner. Were they therefore the better judges of the institution of slavery? We have not yet, at any rate, formed the fixed habit of counting them infallible. Neither in the Northern States, because not many people have had "personal experience" in the black belt, do they concede the claim that one should leave the settlement of the political status of the negro to reactionaries among the white folk there, who have summered and wintered him and therefore "know better than Northern college professors what they are talking about." Indeed in each

successive chapter of this unhappy Philippine history we have accepted flatly this specious Southern logic-and we are paying the price.

Our duty to promise independence to the Philippines as soon as, under any form of government which they choose or which naturally and properly comes to control, they can keep the peace and be no menace to other peoples, is a duty recognised and earnestly enforced by many men of high intelligence who have had "personal" knowledge of the Philippines. In the matter of personal experience and knowledge of the Filipino people, it is a question of one set of men against another. Disagreement about fact is just as common as disagreement about theory. The real differences of view have little to do with the extent of respective opportunities for particular observation. They have little to do with ideas of expediency or consistency. They are profound differences in political philosophy. The neutralisation of the Philippines, which has been previously discussed, should of course be coincident with the granting of independence. Our increased navy, due to holding the islands, is helping visibly to increase other navies. The burden of armaments the world over is growing vastly out of proportion to increase in population or wealth or danger.

There is a greater issue than even the education and rapid political development of the Filipino people, desirable as that is. This greater issue is not merely that our retention of the Philippines

involves us in increased naval and army expense equal to upwards of $100,000,000 a year. The greater issue is that of the world's colossal increase of armaments, the danger of war, and the paralysis of business by even rumours of war. Not merely the welfare of eight millions, but progress toward lowering armaments by more than seven hundred millions of people is more or less involved in the question whether we speedily secure the neutralisation and independence of the islands. Neutralisation cannot be granted if we retain them.

With increased pressure brought to bear for the exploitation of the Filipinos by capital, is there much likelihood that we shall ever abandon the imperial for the fraternal policy unless we do it soon? Neutralisation and the grant of independence would not mean withdrawal of our counsel and friendly help in education, and they would permit the employment by Filipinos of experts like the American Mr. Shuster in Persia, or Sir Robert Hart, so many years at the head of the customs in China.

The time is passing when any one nation may be permitted to take a weaker people under its sole domination; hereafter this should be done only by a joint agreement of the powers. Just as no man in any township, no matter how superior his status or however large his estate, has a right to dominate over an ignorant or shiftless neighbour, except as selectman he is delegated authority by the town meeting, so when the world is a little further

organised, the self-imposed guardianship by any privileged nation of an unprivileged and backward people must cease. No sophistry about there being “no alternative except to leave them to anarchy" can satisfy a nation that wants to deal justly. Long before complete world-federation is achieved, a group of strong nations may provide control and guidance of the savage races while depriving any one nation of the right to exploit them selfishly.

CHAPTER IX

THE

TWO MASTER MINDS

HE elder of the two subjects of this chapter, Jean de Bloch, born a poor Polish Jew in Warsaw in 1836, began life as a peddler, and rose to power, wealth, fame, and membership in the nobility. He became a great administrator of railroads, financing thousands of miles of railroad, and was intermediary between the Czar's ministers and the banking fraternity. A man of deep sympathies and shrewd insight, he travelled far and wide and wrote many books on industry, economics, society, and politics. He was a lifelong student of war and studied especially its relations to transportation and the commissariat. His greatest book, The Future of War, was a compilation, analysis, and demonstration of statistics and scientific facts, gathered by the great military experts of Europe, which his synthetic mind comprehended and revealed in their bearing upon our complex civilisation. His book, which passed under the critical review of six generals, has been called more influential in the promotion of peace than any other book since Grotius's Rights of War and Peace, and it was one of the three influences that