AN APPEAL TO REASON
The arguments of those, who would retain the Islands purely for
so-called benevolent motives, today consist mostly in prophecies of
disaster. These men claim to see the downfall of all that is good in
the Philippines in the event of American withdrawal. Suppose we view
the record which the Filipinos have made within the last quarter of
a century. We need not do this in detail, as that would demand too
much time and space, but we can view the work as the American critics
themselves have seen it.
An examination, therefore, would show that the record of the Filipinos
has been like that of every other nation in the world for a similar
period of time. There has been unwise legislation and excellent
legislation. There have been ill-advised appointments as there are in
every country on earth, but there have also been admirable choices for
administrative and judicial positions. The people have regularly held
their elections with earnestness but with fairness, and with orderly
conduct. Said Governor General Wood to the Philippine Legislature in
1922:
I congratulate you and through you the Filipino people, on
the orderly and lawful conduct of the recent elections which,
notwithstanding the keenness of the struggle and the appearance of
a strong new party in the field, were conducted with due regard
to the rights of the candidates and with the absence of fraud and
irregularity which would be a credit to any people.
Of course, the Filipinos have made mistakes. There have been errors
in the conduct of their affairs, and these, sad to relate, have been
meticulously picked out, enlarged, colored and blazoned before the
American public by the retentionists who would fain base their campaign
for indefinite control on the ground that the natives are incapable of
governing themselves. But on the whole, what does the record show? The
Wood-Forbes mission after spending six months in the Islands making the
most exhaustive investigation for a report to a Republican President
said, “no people under the friendly tutelage of another, have made so
great a progress in so short a time”[1]. The Filipino progress in the
estimation of the late President Harding “is without parallel anywhere
in the world”[2]. Are these testimonials not convincing enough? Must
there be absolute perfection? Must there be a Utopia in the Islands?
But there are those who would say that this progress has been due
entirely to the “constant support and supervision at every step by
Americans.” This is a great assumption. That is what every teacher is
apt to think of a pupil’s achievement, but the pupils seldom agree and
they generally have a right to think differently. The good schools,
the good roads, the good water, the improved sanitary conditions—how
were they achieved? At the outset the Americans contributed advice
and direction—the Filipinos contributed the money and the labor.
Now practically all four elements are contributed by the Filipinos
themselves. If more American advice is needed in the future along these
lines, this advice can be secured by paying for it as has been done
in the past, but it will then be cheaper because there will be none
of the heavy expenses attending American administration. This is what
Asiatic nations like Siam have done, and they have achieved success and
prosperity and have also maintained their honor as well.
It was Mr. Taft who at one time said that to confer independence
upon the Filipinos would be “to subject the great mass of their
people to the dominance of an oligarchical and probably exploiting
minority.” Where have the Filipinos been all these years? For a long
time they were under the domination of five oligarchs, the American
Commissioners, and with the passing of years that number was reduced to
one—the American Governor General under no responsibility to the people
over whom he rules. This kind of oligarchy has been a stubborn fact—the
Filipino “oligarchical minority” is a pure fancy.
That there will be leaders among the Filipinos is undoubtedly true,
just as there are leaders and “bosses” in the political circles of the
United States, and these leaders, like all leaders, will be a minority
of the people, but they will at least be men of the same blood, the
same aspirations, and the same traditions as their followers. These
leaders will at least understand their constituents and have respect
for them and sympathize with them, which is a very different thing
from the government of millions of people by a few foreigners who
look down upon the governed as members of an inferior race, and upon
that assumption rest their right to govern. Well did Mr. Curry of New
Mexico, who served eight years in the Philippines as governor of three
provinces, finally say:
The government which the Filipinos will establish may not be
approved by the ordinary American citizen, but it will suit the
Filipinos themselves.
And that is the final test. The best government for any people is the
government which they like.
Let us examine even more closely, however, the prophecy that if given
entire independence the Filipinos would “fall a prey to the strongest
of the sectional aggregations.” What does that statement mean? It
means only that the strongest party will carry the elections, and the
defeated party like all defeated parties here and elsewhere will bewail
the fact that the country has become a “prey” to the officers in power.
These prophecies are the familiar weapons of political contests. They
do not frighten the Filipinos and they should not frighten Americans.
There is also the prophecy among retentionists that the Filipinos, if
independent, will give up all that is good and take to mutual slaughter
as the best way to settle their domestic difficulties. This argument
is absurd. Filipinos have learned that good water is healthy and that
good roads are useful, and they have no more desire to die of disease
or to be killed in battle than peaceful Americans have. The instinct
of self-preservation is as strong among them as it is among the
Anglo-Saxons.
The Philippine schools which received such great impetus under early
American guidance, why did they become so pronouncedly successful? Why
are there more than a million children attending schools today? It is
because the Filipinos have sent their children there to be taught.
What made them do this? No law has compelled it. The children went
and studied because they wanted to learn—Americans did not implant
the desire in their breasts. It was already there in 1900 and it will
remain there when America has gone.
How is the rest of the world today faring in this matter of
self-government? Are there not nations all over the world governing
themselves, not as the United States would have them, but as they
themselves prefer? Nor are the eyes of the American people free from
beams. We have only to read the morning paper to see things proposed
and too often carried out by American governors, legislators, and
statesmen, municipal, state and national, that more intelligent
Americans deplore. And yet the remedy for these evils is not to invite
some more successful nation to come and govern the United States, but
to let the parties in error correct the abuses themselves. Well did
President Eliot say:
“Political freedom means freedom to be feeble, foolish and sinful in
public affairs as well as freedom to be strong, wise and good.”
And this is true of all freedom—individual or political. If the
Filipinos should quarrel, therefore, which they have not yet done
where the national independence of their country has been concerned,
let the nation now free, whose way to freedom has not been made through
dissension and folly, through bloodshed and civil war, cast the first
stone.
But does bloodshed and civil war necessarily threaten the future of
a Philippine republic? Too often it has been said that anarchy would
inevitably ensue if the United States left the Islands. Let us look at
this closely. When the American troops reached the Islands in 1898,
there was no anarchy and the Filipinos were governing themselves. But
more blood was shed in the Filipino-American war that ensued than in
the three hundred years of Spanish oppression. There is no reason to
think that Asiatics are more prone to civil war than Europeans. Turn
the pages of history! The War of the Roses, the English Revolution and
the wars with Scotland and Ireland occurred while the British nation
was in the making. Gettysburg and Antietam, Fredericksburg and Cold
Harbor—do not these names mean something to Americans? Are there not
gray-haired men even today who remember the days when Americans killed
their brother Americans on the field of battle? Remember that, and then
bear in mind that Asiatic nations have endured as long as the memory of
men extends, undestroyed by civil war. Why then should it be assumed
that the Filipinos would develop a passion for slaughtering each other
which would exceed the measure allowed to civilized nations?
Nor is this all. The history of the Philippines has shown that its
people are natural republicans possessed of the democratic spirit, and
the more recent pages of their history are illumined with the most
eloquent proofs of their unity. Whenever or wherever the opportunity
has been presented to them they have availed themselves of it by an
attempt to establish a republic. When the American people first became
acquainted with the Filipinos the latter were engaged in a fight for
national independence. When success seemed within reach they set up not
a Tagalo Republic, or a Republic of Luzon, but a Philippine Republic
established by representatives from the Islands. They did not then
draw a separate constitution for each province but instead prepared a
constitution for the whole group of islands, and when the national hymn
was composed by the revolutionists it was addressed not to any portion
of the archipelago but to the whole adored fatherland. There is not a
region in the whole archipelago which has not been sprinkled with the
blood of its inhabitants in their struggle for the liberty of their
country. “They could have had any number of men,” said Admiral Dewey in
1898, “it was just a question of arming them. They could have had the
whole population.”
A great deal of harm has been done by Americans who misrepresent the
true condition of the Philippines, that of calling the Filipinos
tribesmen in particular being the most current infamy. The Filipinos
know that to this day they are being thus discredited by innuendo
if not by direct misrepresentation. They know that the majority of
Americans in the Islands look upon them with undue authority and hardly
concealed contempt. This attitude is not new to an Anglo-Saxon and
where there is political mastery as well, the feeling of superiority
is augmented. All this is, of course, offensive to the Filipino and it
is an offense which seriously threatens the respect and the admiration
which they have for all liberty-loving and democratic Americans.
Assuming, however, for the purposes of argument, that the American
administration has governed well, what is there to assure the
continuance of good government under their supervision? The whole
policy of today which was really begun by Mr. Taft is founded on
the assumption that the American people are and will continue to be
unselfish toward the Filipino, and that they can be trusted as well to
keep men in office anxious to carry out this unselfish and altruistic
policy. Is this view compatible with human nature as justified by the
experience of the American people at home? Have they forgotten the
Tweed Ring and the Teapot Dome, to give only two illustrations?
There will always be in the future, as there has been in the past, a
body of Americans anxious to make money and hoping to find it in the
Philippines. There will always be governors naturally solicitous for
the success of their administration and unwilling to disclose the
facts which might lead to criticism or condemnation. They will always
tell some of the Americans at home, as Mr. Taft told some thousands
of “excellent and prominent gentlemen,” not to intermeddle because
they are “very little able to understand” the situation. And then, of
course, there will always be the great body of the good-natured but
over-busy American people knowing little and caring less about their
distant subjects and believing what Americans say about them because
the latter are of their own flesh and blood. How many, how many indeed,
are the Americans today who, on finding a small headline in some
obscure corner of the daily newspaper to the effect that the “Filipinos
want independence,” casually dismiss the subject by remarking, “Oh
well, they shall have it when they are ready.”
It is in that manner that the good-natured American prides himself
on the fair dealing which Filipinos are to receive from people of
an alien race. Why do not these Americans pause a moment to consider
whether their own house is in such good order, and whether they are
willing to trust their own countrymen in matters concerning the life
and the destiny of their own country. Do they not see their own
officials, judges, mayors, governors and legislators directly opposed
to public opinion and severely criticized in the newspapers and on the
stump? So little is their trust in their own elected officers that they
do not in many jurisdictions permit these men to occupy their positions
for even a brief period of time without the additional safeguard of
the recall, the initiative and the referendum, or a provision against
re-election.
When we find representatives of a defeated political party in America
prophesying all sorts of evil because their opponents, men of the
same blood, color and ability as themselves, are placed in power by a
majority vote,—when Americans will not trust Americans at home, how can
the good-natured citizen, with nothing at stake in the Philippines,
confidently hope that men can be trusted with absolute power over
millions of aliens whom they consider their inferiors, and where
there is no public opinion which they may fear, no American press to
criticize them, no initiative, no referendum, no recall? Does the graft
which disgraces every city in the United States disappear in the
Philippines? Men are essentially selfish, and power is always used to
benefit him who wields it.
There is another argument, however, which has been constantly urged by
retentionists as well as by well-meaning Americans to the effect that
an independent Philippines would become a prey to Japanese aggression
and commercial exploitation. What are these arguments worth? It is well
for these kindly Americans to first consider certain significant facts
concerning Filipino-Japanese relations.
In the first place, then, it must be remembered that the Japanese and
Filipinos always have maintained the best of relations. Both peoples
respect each other, both nations sympathize with one another. Japan
has also every desire to gain the abiding confidence of the Filipinos
for, as the leader of the Far East, she wants all the other smaller
nations to look upon her as their champion and their defender. She can,
therefore, ill afford to make any move which may create the enmity of
eleven million people.
Nor has Japan shown any desire to make the Philippines a “hitching
post” as Secretary Day of McKinley’s cabinet had openly advocated
twenty-seven years ago. Although Filipino doors have been open to
Japanese immigration in the past, less than seven thousand have availed
themselves of it, the tropical climate of the archipelago being
extremely distasteful to them.
Assume, however, that Japan does cherish secret intentions against
Filipino autonomy, there is this to be considered,—that a Japanese base
on Philippine waters would be a direct threat to British supremacy in
that corner of the world. Hongkong is thirty-six hours by passenger
steamer from Manila, Borneo almost touches the island of Palawan,
Singapore is but a step away, and even Australia may well be considered
to be on the direct line of trade. Is it conceivable then that Great
Britain will permit Japanese occupancy without raising a hand of
protest? And it is currently known that English statesmen wield a
mighty influence in the foreign affairs of the Japanese Empire.
Japan has, furthermore, made it clear through the utterances of her
acknowledged statesmen that if a proposal to neutralize the Philippines
were made she would be among the first to affix her seal to such
a binding covenant. Now these covenants of neutralization are, of
course, not final, and they cannot guarantee for all time the security
of the archipelago. But this much is certain,—that promises of that
nature become sacred in the eyes of the world and if openly repudiated
turn friends into foes. Where the interests of other nations become
endangered, who having relied upon such promises, as well they might,
have acted upon them, repudiation makes war justifiable. Well did Japan
herself herald her participation in the World War in these words:
We of Japan took up arms against Germany because a solemn treaty
was not to us “a scrap of paper”.... We are in the war, we insist
on being in it, and we shall stay in it because earnestly, as a
nation and as individuals, we believe in the righteousness of
the cause for which we stand; because we believe that only by a
complete victory for that cause can there be made a righteous,
honorable and permanent peace, so that this world may be made safe
for all men to live in, so that all nations may work out their
destinies untramelled by fear[3].
And the Filipinos believe in the Japanese word even if the Congress of
the United States apparently does not. Both peoples also realize that
they have everything to gain by maintaining an attitude of friendship
and coöperation because their economic interests demand it, Japan being
essentially a manufacturing nation and the Philippines thriving purely
on agriculture. And as peoples of the Far East they have additional
reason to stand on good terms, that they may present a direct front to
Anglo-Saxon aggressions.
What now of American exploitation in the Philippines? Early in 1924,
the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila issued for the third
time a little pamphlet which was widely distributed in the United
States. It was entitled, the _Philippine Problem Presented from a New
Angle_. After elaborately building an argument to the effect that the
Philippines can never be given their independence by Congress because
they are as much a part of American domain as California and Louisiana,
and hence can only be alienated by a constitutional amendment,
these boosters of Philippine trade presented the following tempting
considerations to the American public at home.
They said:
1. No unconditional promise of independence has ever been made [to
the Filipinos] even in the preamble to the Jones Bill[4].
2. We are here by right, we are here by conquest and we have a
title by conquest and a title by purchase[5].
3. We are here as possessors, and we are here as sovereigns; we are
here as owners and controllers of absolute sovereignty[6].
4. The Philippines are larger than New England and Pennsylvania
combined.... They are United States territory ... [and are]
inalienable by Congress[7].
5. The American people own 63,000,000 acres of public domain in
this territory[8].
6. Your Philippine territory is the base for your trade with
China[9].
7. This portion of the world is the great arena of future
commerce[10].
8. Hard fibre! Magic phrase of commerce! The product that beckoned
the first Yankee clippers to Manila! In its Philippine territory
the United States holds exclusively the premier hard fibre region
of the world, sole source of Manila hemp that binds the homeland
harvests and outfits homeland ships. The homeland requires
two-thirds of all Manila hemp grown in this territory and none of
merchantable quality grows elsewhere[11].
9. In this territory homeland farm products find a growing annual
market. And so with homeland manufactures[12].
10. Think about this territory; learn about this territory; tell
your Congressmen to lay off of this territory as to base attempts
to withdraw or curtail your sovereignty![13]
11. Take a national view of this territory; endorse the organized
territory movement. We need such an act[14].
12. “Vizualize!”[15]
And so on _ad infinitum_,
(Signed) +The American Chamber of
Commerce of the Philippine Islands.+
These statements need no comment. They are self-incriminating and
constitute in the face of all fair opposition the strongest arguments
why the Philippines should be free. This movement on the part of the
American business men in the Islands was, of course, not new. In the
past as in the present, they have been one of the most fruitful
sources for the propagation of misinformation regarding Filipino
incapacity. Can the statements of Americans in the Philippines be worth
a whit, in the face of this evidence?
Let the American public, therefore, be warned for the drive has not
abated. Today we find business interests and even public men openly
advocating the retention of the Islands, not indefinitely but for all
time, in order that the American nation may ride on inflated wheels.
America will never let the Philippines go [said Congressman James
Begg to the Filipinos during his visit to the Islands a few months
ago]. She cannot.... Much of America’s future prosperity is
intertwined with the future of the Far East. The Philippines are
America’s outposts in the doorway to the Orient.... America is now
on the ground. Our troops are here, our flag is here[16].
Do the American people sanction these views? If they do, then they
should say so openly and frankly,—it would be more humane and less
cowardly. If they do not, and we believe that the latter is the truth,
then it is time that an overwhelming public sentiment should make
itself felt against these imperialists and thus destroy the greatest
menace which lies in the path of Filipino autonomy, of Filipino
freedom, of Filipino life itself.
But there is an even deeper reason why delay may prove fatal. Today,
the United States is the greatest nation in the world of men. But that
distinction has also been enjoyed by other nations as well, who then
felt so secure and so confident in their positions that no one dared
prophesy the ruin which the future held in store for them. Persia,
Greece, Rome, Spain—where are they today?
When the French historian Guizot asked Lowell how long the American
republic would last, he replied, “As long as the ideas of the men who
founded it continue dominant.” These ideas are indeed the foundation of
the American government, and whatever weakens them endangers the life
of the Republic.
There are today certain domestic problems which threaten the security
of the nation and which Americans must definitely settle among
themselves. There is the question of restraining the power of capital
and suppressing the excesses of labor; there is the task of hindering
the immoderate usurpation of governmental powers by a minority, and
there is the nation-wide effort to inculcate in the minds of the masses
the necessity of obedience to law. To meet these problems the American
people must have a deeply-rooted faith in their institutions and a
passionate love of justice.
They cannot, therefore, afford to insist that the American Declaration
of Independence was not meant to apply to the Filipinos; they cannot
repudiate the words of the men who framed that document when they said,
“Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of
America that the rights for which we contended were the rights of human
nature”; they cannot govern millions of men in a foreign land where the
constitution does not protect them,—and still hope to preserve in full
strength that faith in the equal rights of men which is the soul of the
American nation.
Truly did Froude say,
If there be one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this,
that free nations cannot govern subject provinces. If they are
unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own
constitution, the constitution itself will fall to pieces, through
mere incompetence for its duties.
This, then, is an appeal to reason,—if a Federal Union cannot live half
slave and half free, can it live with millions of men denied a voice in
the government which controls them?
How long will the people of the United States assert a right to a
foreign country conquered confessedly by “criminal aggression” and held
by acts carefully kept from their knowledge through misrepresentation,
concealment and what Mr. Lodge called “hypocritical pretences” of
altruism? The people of the United States consider themselves
sensible, keen and benevolent. Can they read the record presented in
these pages and not resent the things which have been done in their
name and insist upon a new assertion of the great principles upon which
their government rests?
REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER XIII
[1] Wood-Forbes Report, p. 11.
[2] Reply to Second Independence Mission.
[3] Speech of Viscount Ishii, Ambassador Extraordinary of the
Imperial Japanese Mission before the United States Senate,
August 29, 1917.
[4] _Philippine Problem Presented from a New Angle_, published by
American Chamber of Commerce, Manila, 1924, p. 8.
[5] _Ibid._, p. 10.
[6] _Ibid._, p. 10.
[7] _Ibid._, p. 75.
[8] _Ibid._
[9] _Ibid._
[10] _Ibid._
[11] _Ibid._
[12] _Ibid._
[13] _Ibid._
[14] _Ibid._
[15] _Ibid._
[16] _Philippine Free Press_ (an American weekly), July 18, 1925.
Transcriber’s Notes:
• Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
• Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+).
• Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
• Redundant half-title pages and blank pages were removed.
• New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.