The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-12

pathetic. If the natives are ever to do the American character justice. he thinks the Americansswho go to the Philippines must first of all change their character and manners Even the teachers, if report can be trusted, have become rowdies. and scores of them deserve to be deported.
 Mir. Taft says: Give us hundred years and we may outgrow these diffi- culties. Let the question of independ- ence then be preached. if need be. but not sooner. But is this anything but the enthusiasm of an initiator over his own work. and does not all history speak loudly against it? Is it likely that a succession of Tafts can be pro- vided? And if we turn from official life to private life, can the leopard change his spots, or the Anglo Saxon his unsociability? And can Ameri- cans of the sort that go to try their fortunes in the tropics ever be expected to succeed in the role of sympathetic friends and help elder brothers?
 The trouble is that every step in the success of the Taft programme will 0ANCd llCW hllluS OL llOQDtC- NdPE'OSN the Filipinos take all the education we give them-that will only make them the more frantic for independence-it is the educated" natives of India who are the really troublesome enemies of British rule there, and if independence lis out of reach. there will be endless agitation for Statehood, as even now in Porto Rico it is beginning.
 It is impossible seriously to believe that a hundred years or two hundred years will be different from twenty. They will still show a terrier-and-rat relation. History shows that no force endures like hatred of the alien ruler. The Filipinos had it when we arrived there, and they have national ideals which no yellow race except the Japa- nese has ever possessed. We have inn mensely deepened this side of their na- ture, enriching their history with in- perishable legends and traditions and with a procession of heroes and mar tyrs. Two hundred years will alter this no more than twenty.
 1 Secretary Taft is too good liberal to say the word never" when indepen- dence is suggested. He simply says, For Gods sake, don't mention such thing just now. Let things drift along as they are indefinitely" Does he for get that it was through the Mckinley policy of drift that we lost our hold on the original situation? Benevolent drifting can hardly be much more satis- factory than crafty drifting. People, minds are settled, not unsettled by a ! certainty, and when Secretary Taft af- firms the contrary I can only suspect his interest in his own schemes of gov ernment to be growing a little convul- sive.
 1 The real obstacle to promise of inde- pendence by our congress is the old hu- man aversion to abdicating any power once held. When love of power and the desire to do good run in double harness the team is indeed difficult one to stop
 Cant and sophistry then celebrate theii golden wedding. It is then that we i have to kill thousands in order to aver the killing of tens or hundreds by ont another. It is then that the boss-ruleo ! Yankee finds the sacred duty laid upor him of preserving alien races from be- i ing exploited by their own politicians.
 If after twenty years or so we let the Filipinos part in peace, it is likely that some American commandments will De broken. But the situation will have { this much of good about it, that 1t vii then have become endigenous and spon- taneous. It will express native ideals and natives will be able to understand 1t. Continuity is essential to healthy growth. Let the Filipino leaders try their own systenl-no peaple learns tt live except by trying. We can easily
 protect them against foreign interfer. ence; and if they fail to be good exact ly according to our notions, is not tht world full even now of other people oi whom the same can be said, and fol whose bad conduct towards one another we agree that it would be folly to make ourselves responsible?
 Any national life, however turbulent should be respected which exhibits fer 'iments of progress, human individuali- ties. even small ones, struggling in thu direction of enlightenment. We know to our cost how strong these forces hay.
 been in the islands. Let them work ou their own issues. We Americans surely
 do not nonopolize all the possible forms Iof goodness.
 It is for such reasons as these that
 with all respect for Secretary Taft
 am not in the least degree converted b9 his pronouncements against promising lthe F'ilipinos independence William James in the Boston Transcript.