The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-06-15

however indefensible, sinks into insig
nificance.
The different peoples of the Philip
pine have been waging war. not for
free government of their own as did
our Revolutionary Fathers, but as the
savage tribes OF North American In
dams fought against the onward man oh
of civilization. They are not to be
compared with the Patriots of 1776
Aguinaldo, who caused the assassina-
ton of General Luna, his comrade in
| arms, a George Washington indeed.
Did General Washington instigate the
assassination of Charles Lee after
Monmouth? The provocation was
greater. Comparing the instructors to
our Fathers, Bishop Potter pronounces
IAN impertinence."
| An officer of the United States navy
| not long since told the writer that it
had been his fortune to be stationed
some years in South American ports
and he had observed that it is almost
impossible for the Spanish American to
comprehend the operation of the Ang-
| lo-Saxon mind and that it is equally
almost impossible for the Anglo-Saxon
to understand how the mind of the
Spanish-American works Our plain
yes and no are incomprehensible to the
hn n &c nil n
and Indian heredity, is accustomed toI
duplicity and is looking for something
underneath the surface. Our gener-
osity and forbearance have often been
misunderstood, though commercial and
political relations are perhaps slowly
clearing away misconceptions on both
sdes. If this state of things is true Of
our sister republic of South America,
how much more true is it in the case
of our unfortunate brethren of the
some utter barbarians.
The following is the substance OF a
message recently received from two
Moro chiefs of Bacolod:
war If you do not get out of here and
go back to the sea. Within this month
we want war to begin, and If you do
not want it, you are a lot of cowardly |
rescals.''
Let US remember that the United |
States, at great cost to itself. is giving !
a government to a people who have
never before had a government worthy
of the name; is implanting a respect
for law among barbarous tribes who
have had little or no conception of
what law means; is introducing sys-
tenn of public instruction into a coun-
try hitherto enshrouded in the dark
ness Of ignorance; is enforcing civilized
methods of sanitation by which thou
sands of lives have already been saved
and many thousands more will be saw
ed in the future.
In his last annual message to Con-
gress the President says:
ION July last, on the 126th ami
versary of the declaration of indepen-
dence, peace and amnesty were pro-
in the Philippine Islands.
Not only does each Filipino enjoy such
rights to life, liberty. and the pursuit
of happiness as he has never before
known during the recorded history of
the islands, but the people taken as a
whole now enjoy a measure of self
government greater than that granted
to any other Orientals by any foreign
power and greater than that enjoyed
by any other Orientals under their own
save the japanese alone
Let us not regret that the United
States is doing this manifest duty.
though at the expense of its blood and
treasure. Let us not be impatient that
these obligations have been placed up
on US by chance, shall we say?-or
rather by divine providence. Political
affairs in Delaware, Rhode Island, New
York city, and elsewhere, the race
question in the South, misunderstand-
ings between capital and labor, social
conditions in the slums of our large
cities, make US mindful that there are
problems here which demand the at
-ention of the best minds. But shall
duties abroad be neglected? Because
here are heather at our own doors.
shall We give up foreign missions?
There is faint of selfishness in such
an enthusiastically on the part of
Il Il l. |