If the natives are ever to do the American character justice, he thinks, the Americans who go to the Philippines must, first of all, change their character and manners. Even the teachers, if reports can be trusted, have become rowdies, and scores of them deserve to be deported. Let the question of independence then be broached, if need be, but not sooner. The trouble is that every step in the success of the Taft programme will breed new kinds of trouble. It is impossible seriously to believe that a hundred years or two hundred years will be different from twenty.
History shows that no force endures like hatred of the alien ruler.
The Filipinos had it when we arrived there, and they have national ideals which no yellow race except the Japanese have ever possessed. We have immensely deepened this side of their nature, enriching their history with imperishable legends and traditions and with a procession of heroes and martyrs. Two hundred years will alter this no more than twenty. Let things drift along as they are indefinitely. Benevolent drifting can hardly be much more satisfactory than crafty drifting.