The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-07-12
What Shall We Do
With Philippines I
From Golfers Weekly.


@IE time Is not far off when Amer
leans OF all parties will have 10
determine which of several meth
ods of disposing of the conquest
the first fruits of which were gar-
nered by Dewey at Cavite, deserves TO
be adopted. II has been suggested, first,
that. on the conclusion of the war. we
should restore the islands to Spain, either
gratuitously or in consideration of a Pc
cuniary indemnity; secondly. that we
should sell them TO Japan or to some Eu-
ropean power thirdly. that we should
permit the insurgents, who certainly un-
der Aguinaldo have evinced the capacity
of fighting, to establish an Independent
government; fourthly. that we should
keep them. Let us consider. In their or
der. these various proposed solutions OF
an interesting problem.
%
That we should restore the Philippines
to Spain Is ous of the question. To return
them gratuitously would be wicked; to re-
turn them in consideration of an in-
demnity would be base. In either case,
we should be guilty of execrablc treach-
cry and perfidy toward the insurgents,
who have hailed us as deliverers, and
have made our cause their own. If we
could contemplate such an act, we should
be estopped from committing 1t by the
humanitarian professions with which we
began the war. We proclaimed to Spain
| and to foreign powers that our funda-
mental motive in our recourse to arms
was the liberation of the Cubans from in
| tolerablc oppression. But, If our sense of
| duty to civilization forbade us to leave
the Cubans any longer under Spanish
rule, we cannot overlook the fact that
| Spanish rule has been every whit as in
| tolerable in the Philippines as in the An
| titles. In some respects, indeed. the half
castles and the Christianized Tagals. who
constitute the bulk of Aguinaldo's sup
porters in Luzon, have had to suffer hard
| ships more intoerable than those to
| which the inhabitants of Cuba and Porto
Rico have been subjected. We may.
| therefore, take for granted that, what
ever other mode of dealing with the
| Philippines may eventually find favor
with our Governme the replacing of
| their inhabitants under the hateful yoke
| of Spain will never be, for a moment,
| thought of.
| We pass to the second suggestion. that
we should sell the islands either to Japan
or to some European power Here 1t
should be borne in mind that the Tagals,
who number some two millions, are
| Christians, and that the more numerous
| Visayas, who inhabit the islands between
| Luzon and Mindanao, are all Christians
| Now, with all their absorption of the arts
| of civilization, 1t cannot be denied that
| the Japanese are pagans. and does any
body suppose that public opinion IN the
| United States would tolerate the sale Of
five million Christians to a pagan ma
tion? The question needs only to be put
| to elicit a negative answer. 1t is then
| either to Russia. Germany, France or
| Great Britain that we must sell the is
| lands, if at all. Obviously. we have no
moral right to make over the archipelago
| to any of the powers named without the
| consent of the insurgents, whose aid we
have accepted and whose interests We
have pretended to espouse. With the OK
ception of Great Britain, there is not one
of the four powers mentioned to whose
rule the insurgents would willingly sub
NIT for their leaders are well aware thl {,
although almost any regime would be
preferable to the Spanish. they could not
look to Germany. France or Russia for
any large concession of the privileges
of self-government. To the assertion of
| British suzerainty the insurgents might
not object, but it is extremely doubtful
whether England would think it worth
while to pay MS a large sum for a ces-
sion which would almost certainly excite
against her a combination of all the 9TH
er maritime powers interested in the
Far East. Moreover, it is less for Eng
lands ADVANTAGE to occupy the Philip
pines herself than it is to see them oc-
cupied by us, for she knows that our COM
mercial interests in China are identical
with her own, and that our possession OF
the islands would give us the means of
enforcing our wishes at Pekin. We may
dismiss therefore, as inadmissable or i'm
practicable the proposal to transfer the
Philippines to Japan or 10 any great mar