The absolute present necessity for accurate information by the people
of the United States respecting the Philippines has been met in no
more satisfactory manner than by this book.
The author, Mr. Ramon Reyes Lala, is a Filipino and was born
in Manila. His collegiate education was completed in England and
Switzerland. A long sojourn in Europe has instructed him in European
thought, tendencies, and methods. He has lived in the United States
for many years, and has become, by naturalization, a citizen of
this country.
He collected the historical material for this work largely from the
Spanish archives in Manila before the last rising of the people of
Luzon in rebellion against Spain. His mastery of the English language
is that of the thorough scholar. His qualifications for his work
are those of the student, trained by many studies. He possesses
by nativity the gift, incommunicable to any alien, of giving a
true color and duly proportioned form to his delineations of his
own people. These endowments have enabled him to produce a work of
striking and permanent value.
The most meritorious feature of Mr. Lala's book is unquestionably
its impartiality of statement and judgment. This is particularly
apparent in his descriptions of the moral and intellectual character
of his countrymen. No defect is extenuated, nor is there any patriotic
exaggeration of merits. The capacities and limitations of the Filipinos
are plainly and photographically depicted. The difficulties and
the facilities of their political control by the United States are
weighed in a just balance by the reader himself in considering these
portrayals of national character.
This colorless truth of statement appears not alone in Mr. Lala's
special descriptions of the character of his people. It is also
manifest, as it is incidentally displayed, in his many expositions of
the systems and methods of labor, of social usages, of domestic life,
of civil administration, of military capacity, of popular amusements
and of religious faith. The result is that he has communicated to
the reader an unusually distinct conception of national and ethnic
character. This is always a very difficult task. The most graphic
portrayal in this respect most commonly enables the reader merely to
perceive indistinctly, but not clearly to see.
The book is of a most practical character. Its statements of commercial
history and methods, and of past and present business and industrial
conditions, are most satisfactory. Such an exposition is at this time
most indispensably needed. Everybody knows, in a general way, that the
Philippine Islands produce sugar, rice, hemp, tobacco, coffee, and
many other agricultural staples, and that they are rich in minerals
and valuable woods. But heretofore it has been very difficult to
obtain specific information upon these subjects. Mr. Lala has given
this information. The practical man, the farmer, the manufacturer, the
merchant, the miner is here informed concerning resources, methods,
prices, labor, wages, profits, and roads. While this information is
not technical, it is instructively full and is evidently reliable.
The descriptions of the processes of cultivating and preparing hemp,
sugar, coffee, rice, and tobacco, and the suggestions of the ways
by which these methods can be easily improved, and the products made
more profitable, are, in every way, most satisfactory.
The Philippines began to come under European control with the
administration of Legaspi, the first Governor-General, in 1565,
long before the English had colonized any portion of North America.
For about three hundred and fifty years the Spanish system has been
in contrast with that of every other colonizing nation. It has been
worse than the worst of any of these. While there is no elaborate
contrast of these systems in Mr. Lala's book, he nevertheless
depicts so thoroughly the manifold and inveterate rapacity, cruelty,
corruption, and imbecility of Spanish colonial administration, that he
also discloses the vast possibilities of the better contrasted systems.
No war was ever yet waged in the interests of humanity, as the war
against Spain unquestionably was, that did not produce consequences
entirely unforeseen at its beginning. This truth was never more
convincingly confirmed than by the war just ended. The United States
demanded the evacuation by Spain of Cuba and Cuban waters. Compliance
by Spain would have limited the consequences to the evacuation. She
did not comply. She chose the arbitrament of war, and the result was
her extirpation from her insular possessions in the West Indies and
the Philippines.
This providential and revolutionary event imposed upon the United
States duties unforeseen, but none the less imperious. As to the
Philippines, those duties are complicated by the irresistible
tendencies which seem to make certain the dismemberment of China,
and the subjection of that immemorial empire to all the influences of
Western civilization. This is an event not inferior in importance to
the discovery of America by Columbus, and the interest of the United
States in its consequences is of incalculable importance. With this
interest its relations to the Philippines is inseparably connected,
and those relations present for consideration policies which disenchant
the situation of all idealism and make it intensely practical. To this
possible result the war waged against the United States by Aguinaldo
and his followers has decisively contributed.
But, in any event, whatever the relations of the United States to the
Philippines may finally become, the book of Mr. Lala will undoubtedly
influence and assist the considerate judgment of those whose duty shall
call them to determine the momentous questions which are now enforcing
themselves for solution upon the attention of the American people.