Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-10-19
TAFT ON THE PHILIPPINES
Avoided The Real Issue As It Stands
 Tc.IDay.

The Hon. William H. Taft. who totally negleets the duties of secre, tary of war, while he goes about the country making speeches for his par. ty, told Hartford audience. yester- day Il lot of Philippine history, and also related how state governments had been promised to Arizona ano } New Mexico when that part of Uncle ! Sam's territory was annexed half a century ago. He said that the fulfil ment of the. promise had been defer. red because the people of those terri tories are not yet ready for what he calls self-government. That is enc of his reasons why it is not best t. promise anything in regard to the Filipinos now. Every point of real interest and importance in regard to. the relations between the Philippines and the United States was carefully avoided by the war secretary in last nights speech. But he doubtless ac- complished his object, which was to spread the belief that the Philippines ought to be kept in subjection per manently as a colony of the United States, that the people there are nat urally unfit to be free and indepen- dent: and that they owe great debt of gratitude to the Spanish friars, whom they have treated very badly.
 Of course the secretary had nothing to sly about the conduct of the p0li- ticians at Washington in refusing his Own-urgent appeals for free trade be- tween the Philippines and this coun- try; nothing about the serious depres- sion in the business of the islands, caused by American administration at . Manila; nothing about the tremendous burden of internal taxation recently "a hry a Wright .& Co.,; nothing about the re- cent visit of a score of educated IefifE pinos to the United States and the strengthened desire for Philippine in- dependence which they carried back to Manila; nothing about Luke Wrsght's despotic suppression of all the efforts of these gentlemen to make public the results of their visit to the United States, worthy of Russian governor in Finland.
 The main fact suppressed at all times by Taft and all the republican Darfizans is that Admiral Dewey told the exact truth when he stated in the summer of 1898, that the Filipinos were better fitted for government than were the Cubans at that time. There is not the slightest reason to be lfeve that the Filipinos would have been less successful than the Cubans have been if we had helped them to set up a government of their own as soon as Spanish authority had been set aside in the islands in 1898. John Barrett. writing i'll the Review of Re views in 1S99-five years ago-of his observations in the islands, said: ssIn the matter of native participation nni believer that they are capable of a mach larger degree of responsibility than that for which they are common ay given credit When I consider how well, in view of all conditions, the Siamese are governing their little country and are really making decided progress, and when again l see how prosperous the Malay protected states gre, Judging from my own personal study of these countries, do not see any reason why q large proportion of the responsible positions should not be held by the leading Filipinos." The Eilfuinos have been at all times since we first attempted to s'assimilatea them better fitted for self government and independence than the Japanese were when Commodore Perry "opened up" their country in 1853. If an Amer jean admiral were sent out now on an errand like Perry's to any part of the earth he would be expected to make an American colony of the people whose waters and soil he had invaded. But when Perry opened up" Japan the United States congress had not learned hok to govern territories out. side the constituti tion.-Hartford Times.