It is then that we have to kill thousands in order to avert the killing of tens or hundreds by one another. It is then that the boss-ruled Yankee finds the sacred duty laid upon him of preserving alien races from being exploited by their own politicians. If after twenty years or so we let the Filipinos part in peace, it is likely that some American commandments will be broken. But the situation will have this much of good about it, that it will then have become endogenous and spontaneous. It will express native ideals, and natives will be able to understand it.
Continuity is essential to healthy growth.
Any national life, however turbulent, should be respected which exhibits ferments of progress, human individualities, even small ones, struggling in the direction of enlightenment. We know to our cost how strong these forces have been in the islands. Let them work out their own issues. We Americans surely do not monopolize all the possible forms of goodness. It is for such reasons as these that, with all respect for Secretary Taft, I am not in the least degree converted by his pronouncements against promising the Filipinos independence.