The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-11-26

OF that, Is a good thing Tor party 10
push in a national campaign. Of course
there will be great Endorsement Of the
present national administration; its war
and peace policy, etc, but it is generally
conceded that tariff and currency are
both settled in the minds Of the American
people and they are not looking toward
expansion and seeing what it means TO
them. As indicative of the course which
will be followed by the Republicans in
congress and in the next campaign, the
following utterance of Senator Henry Ca
bot Lodge of Massachusetts is a fair
sample:
owe must not, of course he said yes
terday, 'lose sight of the humanitarian
side Of the Philippine problem; but, after
all, the American people must be con-
WINGED that through the possession Of the
islands we have become an eastern power
and are in g. position to command the
commerce of the Orient. With our flag
floating over the Philippines we can de-
mand an open door in China and can
prevent Russia from monopolizing Chi
nese trade
Dr. George F. Becker, a government
Philippines, has returned, and has fled
with the department Of the interior
very interesting report. He treats of the
origin Of the Philippines. and the follow
ing is a partial synopsis Of his views:
The most notable feature Of the report
submitted by him has relation to the
presence of ancient man in Luzon and
other islands of the group. His opinion
is that the ape-hke creature termed the
missing link may have had its earliest
haunts IN those isles of the sea, at time
when, not less than 100000 years ago, they
were connected with the mainland of
Asia by a sort of land bridge via Borneo.
In this opinion DR.. Becker comedies
with the late Professor o. c. Marsh, of
Yale University, who expressed belief
that the Philippines were, at all events,
among the earliest localities inhabited by
the human species, even if the latter did
not actually start there. The time may
have been half million years ago, but
science always wishes to be conservative.
There are excellent reasons, however, for
believing that homo sapiens-the true hu-
man being as distinguished from the ty-
pical ape-existed on the island Of Luzon,
or in that immediate neighborhood, in the
epoch called the Pnocene along toward
the end of the Tertiary period. Now, the
Tertiary ended about 200, 600 years back,
with the great Ice Age, and thus enc
gets a notion of the extreme antiquity as
slgnable to the first families of the Phil
ippines.
DR.. Becker surmises that the black
dwarfs of Luzon and other islands of the
descended from the primitive human
stock in question. These black pygmies,
now nearly extinct. who have not ad-
vanced even as far as the stone age, are
astonishingly monkey-like in aspect and
in their ways, the sounds they utter in
lieu of language resembling the short and
sharp shrieks of those animals. Appar-
entity. they are distantly related TO GER
tain savages discovered in the interior Of
Borneo. not exceeding four feet in stat
ure. whose wrinkled skins are covered
with hair and who sleep in caves or in
trees. living on mice and such other small
mammals as they can catch. These Wild
people Of Borneo Gan neither be tanned
nor employed for any work, and their
speech is the gable Of bruteS.
All this and-Metcalf and Funston talk
is not seriously regarded by the war de-
partment. and by the Kansans and others
here. Of course an affidavit is generally
supposed to amount to something, and
one who deliberately and maliciously and
falsely makes one is regarded as open 20
a suit for libel TO say the least. But
the war department is satisfied with the
course Of both the Kansas generals, so .
it is not likely it viii take serious cog
nizance of these charges. Secretary and
Adiutsnt General Corbin are both quite
emphatic in the belief that there is moth .
ing in the charges.
Here IS what ]. Sterling Morton, for /
merly secretary Of agriculture, and now a .
Nebraska editor has 20 say of Kansas in (
a recent issue of his paper:
The conservative has always held that
Kansas was constantly in paroxysmal (
politics ana sociological contortions by .
hereditv. The territory was settled by 4
car loads of job-lot humanity sent in by /
the southern fre-eaters Of the south and
the Reecher Rifle and Bible clubs of the
north From such a beginning has been .
bred A race Of quick-action emotionals
who can give one year eighty thousand !
Republican majority and the next elect .
an ex-confederate colonel congressman T
a.-large over a federal Republican gen !
eral."
There is something significant in a re /
cent letter received from the Trarsvaal, (