Norwich bulletin., 1913-12-03
by those responsible to the people for carrying them iRte effect
N.Az PHILIPPINE CONTROL.


 Must Hold Ultimate independence Tn
 View and Strive to Fit Filipinos For Seis Government at Future Date.
 These are all matters of vital do- nestle concern, and besides them. out side the charmed circle of our own na- tional life in which our affections com mand us, as we'll as our condolences, there stand out our obligations toward our territories over sea. Here we are trustees. Porto Rico. Hawaii, the Phil ippines. are ours, indeed, but not ours to do what we please with. Such ter ritories. once regarded as mere posses sions, are no longer to be selashly ex- plotted; they are part of the domain of public conscience and of serVieeable and enlightened statesmanship.
 We must administer them for the people who live in them and with the same sense of responsibility to them as toward our own people in our domestic affairs. No doubt we shall success fully enough bind Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands to ourselves by ties of justice and interest and affection, but the performance of our duty to- ward the Philippines is a more diff cult and deba table matter. We can satisfy the obligations of generous jus tice toward the people of Porto Rico hy giving the ample and familiar rights and privileges accorded our own citizens In our own territories and our obligations toward the people of Ha- wall by perfecting the provisions for self government already granted them, but In the Philippines we must go fur ther. We must hold steadily in view their ultimate independence, and we must move toward the time of that independence as steadily as the way can be cleared and the foundations thoughtfully and permanently laid.
 Acting under the authority conferred upon the president by congress, have already accorded the people of the is- lands a majority in both houses of their legislative body by appointing five instead of four native citizens to the membership of the commission. believe that in this way we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel and their sense of responsibility in the ex- ercise of political power and that the success of this step will be sure to clear our view for the steps which are to follow.
 Step by step we should extend and perfect the system of self government in the islands. making test of them and modifying them as experience discloses their successes and their failures: that we should more and more put under the control of the native citizens of the archipelago the essential instruments of their life, their local instrumentali- ties of government their schools, all the common interests of their commu- mites and so by counsel and experience set up 8 government which all the world will see to be suitable to a peo- pie whose affairs are under their own control.
 At last, I hope and believe, we are beginning to gain the confidence of the Filipino peoples. By their counsel and experience. rather than by our own, we shall learn how best to serve them and how soon it will be possible and wise to withdraw our supervision. Let us once find the path and set out with firm and confident tread upon it, and we shall not wander from it or finger upon it.