The independent., 1903-02-12
DEATH AND STARVATION
The Result OF the Republican Policy In the
Philippines-Presiden Schurman
Makes Remarkable speech

o
There was an immense meeting at
Cooper Institute the other day to con-
slider the suffering in the Philippines,
about which the plutocratic dailies
have so little to say. On that occa-
sion President Schurman made re-
markable speech, from which The In
dependent makes the following ex-
tracts:
The new year has opened with
peace in the Philippine islands; and
as the clouds of war which for four
years have hung over that unhappy
archipelago roll away. and the blind
ing passions which war arOuseS grad
ually subside, the American people
are coming to discern with clear vi
sion and in dry light the real nature
of their undertaking in what was once
with roSeate expectation described as
'thOse gems and glorieS of the trOplc
seas" And | think no man will
charge me with Misrepresentation if |
say that the heartrendng spectacle on
which our latest sun has just risen
in Luzon and the Visayas-the uni
versal devastation of long and ruth
less war, the complete obliteration of
towns and villages, the transfOrma-
ton of fruitful plains and valleys in
to desolate wastes and bowling wild
erness, the vast, uncOunted loss of
human life the destruction of nearly
all farm animals, the annihilatiOn of
capital, the paralysis Of agriculture,
trade and commerce, the arrangement
of the currency. the dread specters
of poverty, famine, cholera and the
pestilence that walketh at monday,
men, women and children-brethren
of ours and fellow-Christians perish
ing like wantOn flies in summer, and
the whole nation sick at heart, sullen
in temper, unreconciled to American
rule and, though disarmed and over
mastered by force, yet resOlutely de-
termined to achieve national indepen-
dence, which we still deny them
this, l say, is an accumulation of ca
lamities that must touch our hearts
with the profoundest pity and COM
bination of problems that must
awaken in our minds the gravest anX-
iety and concern, not unmingled, per-
haps, with self-reproach or even re-
morse"
Mr. Schurman finds that the spirit
of freedom is indelibly rooted in the
breasts of the Filipinos and that the
war has welded them into one nation.
There are no longer separate and
Jealous tribes-they are as thorough
Iy united as were the thirteen Ameri-
can colonies by the war of the revolu
ton.
We must reckon, he says. with
the spirit and temper of these people
as we'll as make provision for their
material welfare. Among freemen,
however it be with slaves, their state
of mind is a far more vital matter
than mere bodily condition. Men will
despise comforts and fling away life
itself in pursuit of some moral ideal
or political end. Now there are two
facts which will serve to interpret
to us the political sentiments of the
Filipinos. First, there is not, I be-
lieve, a single man of them who will
consent that his country should be
permanently a dependency or colony
of the United States, which is the pol
icy of our imperialists This circum-
stance, which all recent information
confirms. [ noted in the report of the
first Philippine commission, explicit
ly stating that even those Filipinos
who were supporting American SOW
ereignty-the minority, indeed-did so
in the expectation that after an inter-
val of American training and tutelage,
the Filipinos should be granted their
independence. And, secondly, of that
vast majority who were compelled by
force to acquiesce in American SOW
ereignty, thousands have died and
hundreds of thousands are still ready
to die in the cause of Philippine in
dependence. Here is another crucial
fact. Our war with the FilipinOs has
made a nation of them; they are no
longer Tagalogs or Visayans or Ilo-
Canos, but one people with a single |
national consciousness and a single
national heart. If the idea of indie
pendence was originally the dream of |
Aguinaldo and the TagalOgs, it is to-
day the hope. the goal and the reso-
lutte determination of a nation Of g. |
100000 united FilipinOs.
"While the American people were
divided on the opening phases of the