The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1902-01-08
THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM
The American Constitution and
Greed of liberty Are Being Sorely
Tried.

Tried.
Sooner or later we must reach a
ultimatum with the F%ilipinos. Alread
the island and their incidents hav
cost us nearly $500, 600 900 How lon
the people of this nation will c0nsen
to pay out q half million of dollar
every day TO prolong this experiment
in imperial colonialism is Oh unguess
able conundrum. But that they vii
tire of it eventually is certain.
What are we doing in tho islands
anyhow? Certainly we are not pacify
ing them with dispatch and decorum
True, every once in q while the accom-
modating typewriter of the authorize
over there announces that "tho wa
is over,"but before the typewriter as
surance gets fairly afloat the cabl,
brings news that the furlive aud pug
nacious Filipinos have bobbed up in
fresh locality and boloed a platoon o.
their p~aciticators. Forty Thousand
soldiers is the minimum force that sc
experienced and honest a fighter as
General Chaffee con siders adequate tc
maintain even the present guerrill
campaigns in The islands. He does
hot venture to say how many would
be needed tt really hold the inhabitants
in leash and peace. The truth seems
to be that we are to have war on our
hands in the archipelago just as long
as we seek to reduce it TO subsection
and to the processes of our policy OF
Americanization of the Inhabitants.
Our experience Is almost sure to be
that of the Dutch in their conquest and
possession of Java. at last We will
have to abandon the government of
the people to their own wills and me-
thOds, leave them to tEeir own domestic
customs, institutions and pursuits,
and ourselves hold only the seaports,
whereby TO profit by the trade aud Fri.
butte that we can compel the natives to
give to us alone. We car quarantine
them against the world and their only
commerce must be with us. Beyond
that we will always find 1T difficult,
dangerous and disastrously expensive
to go.
Thus far, if reliable reports have
been made by our statesmen and SCI
diers who have been in the islands, we
have made little progress in commend
ing to the Fillplnos our type of western
civilization. We are slowly finding
out for ourselves what the Spaniards,
after three hundred years of effort,
could have told us at first hand. A
majority of those Malaysian tribes are
undoubtedly as uncivilizable as the
American Indians. The imposition
upon them of the restraints and re-
quirements of our civilization is the
imposition of a bondage of death. II
means the slower, perhaps, but equally
sure extinction of the Filipino as it
did of the West Indian under Spain
and the North American Indian under
our own dominance. Instinctively the
Filiplnos resist the processes that they
know will end In their destruction as a
people. Turbulence, lawlessness and
barbaric warfare must always attend
our policy Of benevolent assim. lalion.
Nor are we entering upon a promis-
ing career of Characterization among
them. The Roman Catholic friars,
who are more adept in the art of con-
verting the heathon to Christian for
mulArIes than we, have but a meager
fruitage TO boast from their century
long efforts with the Fiiipinos. Those
of them who are professed Catholics
are not eager candidates for our Pro-
proselytism and those of them
who adhere to the Mohammedan re-
iigion are likely to yield even less to
our western Christian cults than they
have to the friars and the faith of
Rome.
In the educa ional field we have be
gun with a system and an enthusiasm
in excess of the demands
of the situation. Our plans are about
on a par with those of an exuberanS
drummer trying to induct the tropical
native into a suit of woOlens, Wauken-
fast shoes, an ulster and q plug hat
Fred w. Atkinson, the American
superintendent of education in the is
lands, makes a very futile report of his
elaborate cndeavors to get. up the Mas
sachusetts pubic school scheme in the
archipelago. At the head of the
Springfield High school, with ample
means in control, with eager, intelli-
gent, ambitious young Americans for
material, Mr.. Atkinson was conspi-
cuous as an educational CT terpriser.
But in the Philippines he has run his
nose against a hard proposition. A
thousand American teachers; as inapt
the environment to which they have
BIZ u transplanted rs polar bears would
be IN Florida, they are laundering
abOu. in discomforts and disgusts, yet
f%atuously trying to cram modern educa-
ton into the Filipino kids according to
the strict rules of Froebel, Postallozi
and Horace Mann.
The civil governments which our
academic commission arc organizing
appear 10 be fearfully and wonderfully
devised to produce rather than reduce
chaos. Their legislative features would
give Scion a pain in the neck and cause
Justinian a neuralgia under his bump
of equity. The Filipino is the slave of
ingraincd tribal traditions a2d prac-
tees, or else the trucalent product of
the Latin idea of absolutism in GOV ern-
ment. AS q drilled and commendable
citizen he is as initiative as q monkey
and as repetitious as a parrot. Our
effort to investh him with self-govern.
ing authority and aeeuse of democratic
responsibility isa freakism that pales
anv nrODOsitiOn that ever blew off the