The Nome daily nugget., 1936-04-25
By WILLIAM c. UTLEY

r 1893, when Admiral DeweyS
 guns had hardly concluded their
 pronOuncement that America had
 become world power, and the echoes were still rumbing over Ma nlla bay, the 1O,OOOOOO inhabitants of the Philippines were already demand Ing complete political independence.
 Ten years from this coming Fourth of July they may get it at last, after a long struggle, both physical and diplo- matic. President Franklin D. Roose- welt signed his name in ink to the con stitution of the new Philippine gov ernment. So did Manuel Quezon, pres ident of the island senate. Six weeks before that, members of the Philippine house of representatives signed it, one of them in his own blood.
 Philippine independence has not al- ways been our worry. The struggle had it's beginning centuries before the United States ever existed.
 The story really opens, so far as the white race is concerned in the year 1521, when Fernando Magellan, that most irrepressible of all gadabouts, discovered" the archipelago of the eastern Pacific. It may be well inn agined that Skipper Magellan's heart ieS, with many moons on the open sea having depleted their food supply to the extent that the dinner menu con sisted of fricassee of leather rggingS and boiled tongue (of shoe), hailed the islands with delight. The native rice and sugar, which would have been just another Tuesday night dessert at Mrs. Gomez Seaman's home back in sunny Spain, must have looked to them like banquet for the gods.
 Senor Magellan is still there, but not because he fell in love with the scen- cry. He was killed by natives on the island of Mactan. And what remained of his stout-hearted crew continued around the globe without him.
 When the boys got back home they were pretty much the toasts of their respective communities and were in. vited to address the local Kiwanis and Rotary and the Iberan equivalent of what we call the Hot Stove league. Egged on with bribes of hot tamales and rare Castillian wines. they were not above spellbinding wide-eyed SC. noritas with reluctant admissions of tht.r daring deeds. Mixed in with their revelations there was probably little truth and the word eventually got out that there were Philippine is- lands somewhere in the Pacific, say about two mutinies and three famines out from Barcelona.
 Bulied the Natives.
 At any rate, Spanish sailors of the next generation again found the Phil ippines, and began bullying. the na. tves into submission in 1865, gaining complete control In 1870. It is doubt full if these Spaniards knew, or any body else knew until the Rand McNal. ly map makers got busy, that their new colonial holdings included 7,OS3 is- lands-two of them, LuZon and Min danao. 10000 and 3S00O square miles in arpa, and nine others more than 1000 square miles apiece.
 However, Filipinos, like elephants. never forget, and the idea of complete independence kept ranking in their minds for quite spell until in 1S96 it swelled forth in open revolt under Emilio Aguinaldo. The Spanish rul- CTS pacitied Senor Aguinaldo with threats, promises and goodness knows how many pesetas, and he and his principal henchmen retired to the het- erogeneOus Obscurity of Hong Kong in 1897, there to plan their subsequent revolt of 1898.
 In that year America won the war with Spain and Spain ce.ded the islands The Filipinos thought they ought to be