The White Pine news. [volume] (Ely, Nev.) 1906-1910, 1908-09-01

NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. that this country
was totally incapable of governing
such a dependency.
From the other side of the Atlantic
came similar coments. All the En-
glish newspapers, and the greater
part of the English statesmen, com
mented upon valuable experience OF
Great Britain in governing India and
said that without such a training
American government in the Phil
ppines was certain 10 prove a failure.
In fact. fetch has grown up in
this country, relative to the supposed
~ wonderful wisdom of the English
rule in India, and the poor showing
that this country makes in the Phili-
ppines compared to it.
The results do not bear out the
claim. British India is at present far
less prosperous and hardly as well
governed as the Philippines, despite
the fact that that England has been
in India more than a century and the
United States in the Philippines for
only ten years.
The Saturday Evening Post of
Philadelphia. published the following
relative TO the situation in British
India at the present time:
Drastic legislation is shaping TO
discourage sedition in India. and
wheat, which literally millions of In
dians need for nourishment, is week
ly exported to Liverpool. England
has long been taking the weat and
sending back anti-sedition laws.
During the last forty years of the
nineteenth century some fifteen mill
lion people persisted of famine in In
dia-not because means of transport
tation were lacking, still less because
the country was not abundantly cap
able of producing all the food
its inhabitants needed, but because
the people were too wretchedly poor
to buy it.
Lord Curzon estimated the average
annual income of the agricultural
(three-quarters of the
whole) at $6 head. in land rich
in natural resources, whose density
of population is less than half that of
England, Scotland, only half that of
Japan, and but little more than half
that of Italy and Germany. So naked
and helpless are the people that at
any adverse breath they die like flies.
From these people England draws
in one way and another, about a
hundred and fifty million dollars
maintaining the six-dollars-a-
head level. Such is the largest fact
concerning English rule in India
Security OF life and property has
been aehieved-that is, of the En-
glishman's life and property The
Indian has no property to secure, and
his life depends upon whether it
happens to rain abundantly at the
right season in his own neighbor-
hood.
That many millions of Indians,
year in and year out, never have en-
ough food to satisfy their hunger is
the testimony of Englishmen them
selves. They testify also to many mil
lions of acres that might be brought
under cultivation by public works.
such as drainage and irrigation, while
steady productivity of the area al
ready cultivated could he assured by
like works.
The United States has done for the
Philippines all it ought to do. We
ought. as Mr.. Taft urges, to grant
free trade in a limited degree, at
least; but. taking things as they are,
We have grounds to congratulate
ourselves on the success of our rule
in those islands. The stability of
that rule and the prosperity of those
islands We're founded while Mr.. Taft
was governor. They will continue
and progress while be is president
GnIHI.G SlNOEID DDnuUI.N