Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-08

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lands amalgamate. To
amalgamate they must have common
language. That language Is being do
| mated to them by the Americans, As
French is the lingua franca of the
courts of Europe, so English is tho
language of commerce in the sea ports
of the Orient, and it Is rapidly becom-
| ing the common tongue of trade In in
terror Asia as well as Malaysia and
! Australia. 1t is therefore the most
widely useful language for the Filipino.
If nothing occurs to interfere with
the work now in progress in the Phil
| ippines the various peoples of the ISL
ands will be brought closer together
within ten years of American occupa-
| ton than they We're in three centuries
of Spanish domination. This is true
because no effort was made to make
the Spanish language the tongue Of the
tribes throughout the Archipelago. In
telligent Filipinos realize that the first
| step toward naturalization must be
the e>improvement of relations between
the various divisions of the islanders,
and that there Is no more rapid man
ner of doing this than by acquiring a
vehicle Of accommodation.
Ethnologists may speak of the eighty
four tribes in the Philippines as being
racially homogeneous, but they are in
reality a heterogeneous group of peo-
pies speaking thirty or forty Ian
guages each unintelligible to those
speaking another If one were to ask
a Manila Filipino who the Filipinos
are, the reply would be that they are
the Tagalogs. A Bicol,, a Benguet
1gorot, a Visayan, an Ilocano, u Moro
or a representative of any one of a
score of other tribes, might make an en-
tirely different answer
Between the so-called Indonesians of
the interior of Mindanao, who are sup
posed to be of mixed Caucasian blood,
and the Negritos, who are aborigines
of a pure negroid type, there is as
wide a difference as there is between
the Bedouin Arab of the North African
deserts and the Sudanese. The Taga-
| log, with a heritage of centuries of
| Spanish influence has nothing in COM
mon with the wild tribes that consti-
tute a considerable part of the popula-
| ton of the islands. Because of physi-
cal stamina due to residence in the hill
country, these wild tribes would be n
source of military strength if they
| should become part of a nation de-
voted to the cause of independence.
| Equally as far apart as the Malayan
| mountaineers of northern Luzon and
the civilized Tagalogs, are the peace
fully inclined Visayans and the blood
| thirsty Moros, to whom the killing of
Christians is q Roman holiday.
Approximately one-tenth of the Fill
ipinos spoke Spanish when the Ameri-
cans took charge Of the Islands. The
most widely spoken tongue was the
Yisayan. but Tagalog was the polite
language of the Islands, and that
spoken by the dominant race. At pres
ent about 100000 school children are
studying English. So great a number
of young Filipinos have learned the
language since the system of instruc-
tion was inaugurated that In even the
remote provincial towns the traveller
may nearly always find a dimnutive
brown brother" who can converse
with him. This young person Is al
ways an "Americanista." He has
learned to love his American teacher,
and has discovered the falsity of the
fantastic tales of the inhuman cruelty
and rapacity of the Americana" +"
which were circulated few years ago.
The Filipino child who enters school
entirely ignorant of English Is able
within a few days to understand the
direction of his teacher, and within a
year he has a vocabulary sufficient to
express ordinary wants and IDEAS The
in the heart of the Luzon highlands,
and whose father has but recently
been persuaded that head hunting is
open to objection upon etchical grounds,
is able to tell the American visitor
about the points Of interest in his
barrio. After the third year of in
struction he is found reading a New
York magazine or an island newspa-
per printed in his adopted tongue. His
letters in English may be written in
style suggesting Wallace Irwin's
Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy," but
like that precocious fictional investiga-
tor of affairs he is cleverer than his
grasp of grammar would indicate.
At the time of the beginning of the
American occupation the masses of the
Filipinos felt that Spanish had been
wrongly withheld from them. They
asked for English as a political conces~
sion. When 1t was proposed to bring
900 American teachers to the islands
the Filipinos earnestly requested that
the number be doubled. The request
was granted There was, therefore, an
agreement that English was to become
the common language of the Filipinos
under American rule, an agreement de-
signed to illustrate the principle of