Freedom Comes to the Philippines

by FRANCIS B. SAYRE

1

AS AMERICAN troops move again into the Philippines, a new era of American activity in the Far East opens up. Far more crucial than 1898 will he the years immediately ahead. How will America build for peace in Asia?

Take a look at the map of Eastern Asia. Here is China, with her 450 million people bound by abject poverty, but heroic and unconquerable. After the war China will probably crowd into the space of a few years a profound agrarian, plus an industrial, plus a social revolution, as Japan and Russia did before her. Not many years hence China will be intoxicated with the ferment of modernism and resurgent with new power.

Here is Japan, with her 73 million people embittered by the results of their unhappy adventure, crushed for the time being, frustrated and dangerous. Here to the south are French Indo-China, British Malaya, and the Netherlands East Indies, millions of human beings of different races and languages and cultures, looking forward with hope to some new solution under the United Nations of the difficult problem of colonial government.

Here, still farther south, are Australia and New Zealand, vigorous, growing parts of the British Commonwealth, ambitious for a powerful place in the Pacific world and determined that next time, when the yellow or brown races threaten to descend from the north, they will either be in a position to defend themselves successfully or else members of a community of states cooperating and armed to keep the peace.

A lawyer by training, FRANCIS B. SAYRE gained his first experience in the Far East when in 1923 he served as Adviser in Foreign Affairs to the Siamese Government. In 1925 and 1926 he negotiated in behalf of Siam new political and commercial treaties with the great powers. In 1933 he was called to Washington, where for six years he served as Assistant Secretary of State charged with the negotiation of the American trade agreements. The President appointed him High Commissioner to the Philippines in 1939, and he observed the islands closely and fairly during those precarious years when the Commonwealth was finding its feet. In 1942, after the departure of President Quezon, acting under instructions from President Roosevelt he escaped with his wife and young son by submarine from Corregidor when surrender was inevitable.

In the strategic center of all this mass of surging peoples, on the very crossroads of the great paths of commerce between Asia and America and the North and South Pacific, at the inevitable junction point of air route travel east, west, north, south, a dispersing center for pouring American ideas and American products into the Orient, stand the Philippines.

All of Asia, aspiring to freedom, has its eyes fixed on American conduct in the Philippines. There the drama is approaching climax. One misstep may cost America her chance to exert a profound influence for future peace in Asia. It is of infinite importance that the American people understand the problems of the Philippines and the intimate relationship of those problems to the future peace of Asia.

When I think of the Philippines the picture is filled with beauty. Never have I seen a fairer sight than the breath-taking view from the American High Commissioner’s residence at Baguio, the “summer capital” in Central Luzon. High up among the drifting clouds, from a jutting spur that stands out far above great empty spaces below, we used to look across bottomless valleys to range upon range of towering mountains to the north, fading away in the high distance, constantly under the play of sunlight and shadow and changing greens and blues, never two days the same, hauntingly beautiful, unforgettable.

I think of little-frequented roadways in the Southern Islands, winding in and out through groves of vivid green coconut palms, skirting along blue, surf-fringed bays. I think of the rice terraces at Bontoc, jeweled mountainsides of jade green color and intricate design, or of the hillsides of abaca trees at Davao, or of the great forests of giant tropical growth in the interior of Mindanao, as untouched as in the days when man first walked in the jungle.

The people who make their home in the 7000 islands of the Philippine archipelago are a mixture of many races. Approximately 85 per cent are an Indonesian-Malay blend. From the far parts of Eastern and Southeastern Asia, between the years 700 and 1450, came traders, fishermen, refugees, marauders, missionaries, invading conquerors. We know little or nothing about how or why they came. In spite of the unifying influences of three centuries of Spanish domination and of over a generation of American rule, primitive groups still tenaciously retain their ancient ways and individual characteristics. No single language is spoken throughout the Islands.

Deep in the mountain fastnesses of Luzon, far from roads or human habitations, I have chanced upon the most primitive beings I have ever met — stray Negritos, shy as wild animals, half-naked, hunting through the mountain forests with bow and arrow, sleeping on cold nights in the warm ashes of their campfires.

Revealing stories are told of them. One afternoon, soon after the outbreak of the Japanese war, a band of Negritos appeared at Fort Stotsenberg carrying two Japanese air pilots tightly bound. “Who are these men we saw descending from the sky?” was their laconic inquiry. “Japanese soldiers,” explained General Edward King. “Japan has declared war against the United States.” Their leader stepped forward. “Then I, King of the Negritos, declare war against Japan,” he exclaimed.

From these primitive Negritos, who number only a fewthousands, or from the far more numerous warlike and fearless Moros of Jolo and Mindanao, or from the head-hunting tribes of Northern Luzon, who still on occasion revert to their ancient practices, it is a far cry to the dapper, white-suited students of the University of the Philippines or to the lordly sugar planters who occupy positions of commanding importance in Manila and in the provincial capitals.

Of the total population of the Philippines about one per cent (166,000) are foreigners. About 70 per cent (117,500) of these aliens are Chinese, and according to the 1939 census some 29,000 were Japanese. The Americans in the Islands then totaled 8700 and the Spaniards 4600.

2

MOST casual American visitors gain hasty impressions of the Filipinos from wealthy mestizo families who dwell in affluent Manila homes, or from politicos who adroitly manipulate national and local political machines, or from the jostling and dense throngs of polyglot city peoples who crowd Manila streets or stake their money upon exciting games of jai alai on a hot April night.

But it is not the sugar magnates or Manila-trained professionals or government officials who will determine Philippine destiny. To understand the Philippines and to get to the heart of their problems one must turn to the untutored, poverty-ridden peasants who constitute the majority of the 17 million Filipinos in the Islands. The peasant lives simply, close to the land, cultivating with his lumbering carabao his bit of rice or camotes or tobacco, honest, happy-go-lucky, struggling to keep free from debt but proving generally an easy prey to the landlord and the moneylender.

His innate good nature shows in his smiling face; and somehow, in spite of his poverty, one feels that he has learned the high art of distilling happiness from life. His children are always at the center of his family life, and also his carabao and his fighting cock. I remember how outraged some were when, on the occasion of one of my inspection trips through Northern Luzon, t he local governor, unknown to me, had ordered the highroad over which I must pass cleared of all children, chickens, and carabaos. For two days they had to be confined so that the High Commissioner’s car could maintain its lordly course unimpeded.

Has the peasant’s life been really changed by forty years of American rule? Perhaps not so fundamentally as many Americans would like to think. But after the Americans came, at least he had uncontaminated water at the village well and was free from cholera and plague and smallpox. He could send his children to a good barrio school where they could learn to read and write English. Good roads and radios exposed him to stimulating outside influences. The ferment of coming independence is in his soul. He thinks of America as a friend who brought good gifts.

When the war broke and Japanese troops were hunting down their prey, it was to the native peasant that many a hard-pressed American or Filipino guerrilla turned for help and shelter. His loyalty through those dark days stands out, shining and unforgettable. The future of the Philippines is in his keeping.

Approximately 100,000 newly mobilized Filipino troops, many of them fresh in from the fields, some 12,000 Philippine Scouts, and some 19,000 American troops were in the Islands when the Japanese attacked. On Bataan and Corregidor, Filipinos and Americans stuck it out together, with insufficient food, munitions, and medical supplies, with no airplanes left, fighting a hopeless fight, with nothing ahead but defeat or death. Just before Corregidor fell, General Wainwright, its heroic commander, wrote these words: “As I write this we are subjected to terrific air and artillery bombardment and it is unreasonable to expect that we can hold out for long. We have done our best, both here and on Bataan, and although beaten we are still unashamed.”

That heroic fight was a magnificent vindication of forty years of American tutelage in the Philippines — forty years of patient and understanding effort to train for coming independence a people who had been for centuries held down under alien rule.

3

NEVER before has there been anything quite like the story of Philippine-American relationships.

Mr. Taft, the first Governor General of the Philippines, inaugurated the policy of “the Philippines for the Filipinos.” In less than two years legislative power over the Islands was transferred from the military governor to the newly created “Philippine Commission.” In the following year Governor Taft appointed three Filipinos as members of this Commission. In 1907 a Philippine Assembly was inaugurated as the lower house of the legislature, with the Philippine Commission serving as the upper house.

In 1913, President Wilson, pressing forward upon the policy of educating the Filipinos in the art of self-government, appointed to the Philippine Commission a majority of Filipinos. He proceeded to Filipinize the administration of the Islands as rapidly as possible. “We must hold steadily in view their ultimate independence,” he declared in his Annual Message of December 2, 1913, “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.”

Two and a half years later the passage of the Jones Act still further increased the sphere of Philippine autonomy by abolishing the Philippine Commission and creating in its place an elective Philippine Senate.

During the whole of this time America assisted the Islands with much of the best she had to give — men, ideas, sacrificial effort, money, material resources. She sent out men and women of skill and courage to teach and to serve, pioneers of Western democracy. The two peoples, aided by the talents of those from other countries, buckled down to work, to make the Islands one of the healthiest and happiest spots in the Pacific. They set up schools and raised the standard of literacy from 20.2 per cent in 1903 to 48.8 per cent in 1939. They taught English as a common language by which Filipinos of different tongues and different races could achieve national unity.

Americans inspired the building of roadways linking together distant parts of the Islands. They taught sanitation and inaugurated campaigns against disease, so that the scourges of cholera and smallpox were practically stamped out, reducing the death rate from 47.2 per thousand in 1903 to 16.87 per thousand in 1939. Americans and Filipinos together opened up mines, introduced revolutionary changes in agricultural and industrial methods, and developed new industries. The national income, measured by overseas and domestic trade values, increased fivefold. Through these common efforts Filipinos absorbed American ideas and American ways of life.

True, the Filipinos absorbed the bad as well as the good. Furthermore, much remained unachieved. In spite of many salutary and outstanding accomplishments, neither had a sizable independent middle class been developed nor a sound and balanced economy been achieved. The bulk of the newly created income went to the government, to landlords, and to urban areas, and served but little to ameliorate living conditions among the almost feudal peasantry and tenantry. The relative numbers of these tenants were not materially reduced. Maldistribution of population, of land, and of wealth in many forms continued. The gap between the mass of the population and the small governing class broadened, and many social problems remained unsolved.

But in spite of American shortcomings and failures and of Filipino ineptitude or misunderstanding, the peoples of the Philippine archipelago, within the span of a single generation, were transformed into a unified, progress-conscious nation, with vast ly improved general standards of living, a sound public school system, good sanitation and public health, modern roads and transport systems, and the developing ability to govern themselves. It was an outstanding achievement. The experiment proved that in the government of alien peoples a policy based upon the welfare of the governed rather than upon power politics and exploitation can be both beneficent and practical.

Exploitation is no longer a practical basis, under twentieth-century conditions, upon which to rest colonial administration. The problem of colonial government never will be solved until we realize that the supreme values to be conserved are human personalities. Because America’s underlying objective in her Philippine policy was the welfare of the Filipinos, the Filipinos fought to the death against the Japanese for American ideals and the American way of life.

In 1934 Congress passed the Philippine Independence Act, giving to the Filipino people the right to adopt a Constitution, to set up a largely autonomous Commonwealth Government for an interim ten-year period, and thereafter to enjoy complete independence. The Act provides for a Commonwealth President and Vice President and for a legislative Assembly, all freely elected by the Filipino people. Under the provisions of the Act the date set for full independence is July 4, 1946.

On November 15, 1935, the new Commonwealth Government was inaugurated. Manuel Quezon, one of the most colorful figures of the Far East, was elected as the first President. Always dramatic, charming beyond words to all whom he set out to win, impulsive, adroit, daring, ambitious, he had outwitted and outmaneuvered every rival and stood clearly at the forefront, the unquestioned political leader of the Philippines.

During the six years that followed, the Filipino people proved that they are capable of self-government. They organized a smoothly running Assembly. They established Commonwealth courts. They set up provincial governments. They successfully took over the public administrative services. What was lost in increased costs of government, in lowered standards, in slackened achievements, was more than offset by newly won experience and national self-respect.

4

AFTER the inauguration of the Commonwealth Government, through the difficult transition stage leading to independence, it became the delicate task of the United States High Commissioner, who represented the President in the Philippines, to give as much help as possible to the Filipino people — largely by personal influence and suggestion rather than by constitutional authority. The exercise, no matter how tactful, of even such residuary power as remained in American hands was frequently an irritation to Filipinos. Quite understandably they wanted to see the Philippine flag flying at the top of the masthead and not underneath the American flag.

Delicate situations constantly arose. For instance, there was the issue of education. For forty years Americans had labored, and labored valiantly, to overcome the appalling illiteracy prevailing at the end of Spanish rule. They had built elementary government schools in every small barrio, organized high schools and universities, and lifted education above sectarian pressures and politics.

In 1940 the Philippine Assembly passed an act authorizing wide revision of the elementary school system, reducing the elementary course from seven to six years. This was followed by strong agitation on the part of certain sectarian groups to reduce the high school and the college course each from four to three years. Feeling ran high. The controversy was interrupted by the outbreak of the war. At the same time President Quezon was seeking to establish Tagalog as the national language, in spite of the fact that adequate Tagalog textbooks and Tagalog literature do not exist and that Tagalog is distinctly a minority language in the Philippines. And under the Commonwealth form of government these were issues exclusively for the Commonwealth to decide.

Even in financial matters American officials, in the main, had to follow a hands-off policy. By virtue of careful and efficient administration the United States had turned the government over to the Filipino people in 1935 a highly solvent administration with considerable surpluses and reserves. Under the six years of the Commonwealth Government, however, expenditures had increased at such a pace that in spite of augmented revenues there were mounting deficits which were met by the use of surpluses built up under the American administration; and for the fiscal year 1942 the Assembly had voted to meet the current deficit by use of the remaining surplus from previous years and by the sale of a bond issue of 10 million dollars. The continued expenditure by the Commonwealth Government of the large sums turned over by the United States, collected as excise taxes on Philippine coconut oil, varying from 17 to 20 million dollars every year, and equal to nearly 40 per cent of the Commonwealth revenues from all other sources, contributed to the maintenance of prices and production costs at levels well above those of other tropical countries with which the Philippines will have to compete after attaining independence.

In short, six years of experience proved the Commonwealth experiment serviceable and workable as an interim arrangement for a youthful people attaining nationhood, but impracticable and unsatisfactory as a permanent form of government. It has spelled irritations and frustrations on both sides. It has meant in the last analysis division of power between two widely different peoples. Such an arrangement is unsatisfactory to both peoples and therefore lacks stability.

In the Philippines the hour has struck. Independence is the only practicable way forward. Commitments have been made and expectations have been built up on the part of both peoples. There is no turning back now.

Are the Filipinos ready for independence? There is only one way in which that question can be truly answered. That is through the actual experiment. Was the United States ready for independence in 1776? There were many people at that time who would have answered no. By actual experiment we proved that we were.

In a strongly rooted independent Philippine nation America has a crucial stake. For over forty years we have been at work implanting in the Filipinos our ideas of individual liberty and the democratic way of life. Their success means our success in furthering American ideas and ideals throughout the strategic East.

Last June Congress passed a joint resolution to make good the pledge of freedom. In words portentous for the future of the Filipino people, Congress authorized the President, “after proclaiming that constitutional processes and normal functions of government have been restored in the Philippine Islands, and after consultation with the President of the Philippines, to advance the date of the independence of the Philippine Islands by proclaiming their independence as a separate and self-governing nation prior to July 4, 1946.”

Thus America stands committed to give to the Filipino people full independence after the Japanese aggressors are driven out and “constitutional processes and normal functions of government” have been restored to the Philippines. Standing today at the helm of the Commonwealth government-in-exile is Sergio Osmeña, who as Vice President succeeded President Quezon upon the latter’s death on August 1, 1944. President Osmeña, of the same age as President Quezon and formerly his political rival, has for many years been a leader in Philippine public life. Dependable, of tempered and reasoned judgment, wise, respected throughout the Philippines, he promises in the difficult years ahead to prove an able leader, friendly to Americans and always ready to coöperate.

5

PRRHAPS the greatest difficulty confronting the new government will be how to achieve economic independence. When the Philippines became part of the American nation in 1898, the Filipinos were given free access to the highly protected American market — one of the richest in the world. This right to send Philippine products into the United States free of duty and to sell them there for remunerative prices, while other nations had to pay high duties on similar imports into the United States, proved to be an economic gold mine for the Filipinos. For instance, because they could ship sugar duty-free to the United States, Philippine sugar producers in 1937 received about 41 million dollars more than they would have obtained if they had sold an equivalent amount of sugar at the world price.

Under such conditions it has been inevitable from the outset that the Filipino people should concentrate their productive effort upon those commodities which could be sold in the United States market at prices maintained above world levels by American legislation. Of the total value of Philippine exports, the United States accounted for 19 per cent in 1900, 46 per cent in 1910, 70 per cent in 1920, and an average of 85 per cent in the five years ending in 1940.

In short, although during the past forty years we were doing everything possible to prepare the Filipinos for political independence, the effect of our economic policy was to make them even more dependent upon the United States. With four fifths of Philippine products before the war dependent upon American markets, the United States could not suddenly shut Philippine producers out of the duty-free American markets without entailing grave injury to the entire Philippine economy.

Permanent free entry for Philippine products in the American market offers no solution. If the Filipino people are ever to have the independence which they crave, clearly their fundamental economy and means of livelihood must be free from dependence upon changeable legislative majorities in the United States Congress. Political independence without economic independence would be a mockery. Furthermore, if stable foundations are to be built for a lasting world peace, the post-war trade arrangements must be built upon equality of commercial treatment to all and not upon special trade preferences and discriminations. If the United States grants and receives exclusive preferential treatment in areas with which it has close political ties, it would be difficult for us successfully to oppose imperial and Dominion preferences in the British Empire and elsewhere.

The solution has been sought in gradual and progressive increases of American duties on Philippine products. The Independence Act of 1934 provided for increasing economic limitations and restrictions upon the shipment of Philippine products to the United States during the interim ten-year period. The Joint Preparatory Committee on Philippine Affairs, which explored the problem in 1937 and 1938, recommended that the elimination of Philippine preferences should be achieved only gradually and progressively at the rate of 5 per cent a year for twenty years.

The present war has profoundly changed the situation. Since 1941, Filipinos have been able to ship no sugar or other products to American markets. It is reported that sugar cultivation, except for home consumption and the manufacture of alcohol for fuel, has been practically stopped. The copra and coconut oil industry is also stagnant. Attempts to grow cotton as a commercial crop are said to have failed.

When liberation comes, presumably sugar cultivation in the Philippines will be on a home-consumption basis. If the new Philippine government after the war is wise enough and strong enough to prevent a return to pre-war sugar production figures, one of the great milestones on the way to economic independence will be passed.

The building of the new Philippine economy will call for a high order of planning and statesmanship. Largely because of American activity for the past forty years, the Filipino’s standard of living and also his living costs have risen considerably above those of his competing Far Eastern neighbors.

Of course, the bulk of production will continue to be for home consumption; and here other considerations will apply. But the Filipinos will need imports from abroad; and to buy these, they must produce a considerable quantity of goods for export.

If and when independence shuts the Filipinos out of the protected American markets, they will be forced to sell in world markets in competition with other areas with lower standards of living and production costs. They will have to turn away from the production of surpluses like sugar, which are salable only in the protected American market, and learn to produce goods which they can sell at a profit in world markets. To achieve this, Filipinos must improve and lower the cost of their products through increased skill and scientific knowledge, through labor-saving devices, through utilization of byproducts, through inventive ingenuity along a thousand different lines.

The solution of their economic problem will be a thorny and difficult task. It is not insoluble. American ingenuity and technical skill will be at the call of the Filipinos to help in the solution.

Last June Congress passed a Joint Resolution (S. J. Res. 94) creating a Filipino Rehabilitation Commission, composed of an equal number of Americans and Filipinos, to “investigate all matters affecting post-war economy, trade, finance, economic stability and rehabilitation of the Philippine Islands” and “ to formulate recommendations based upon such investigations and for future trade relations between the United States and the independent Philippine Republic when established.”

Because the present economic dependence of the Filipinos upon the United States is largely of our own making, and because it is to our own interest to build for future stability in the Pacific, the Filipino people must be given their independence under such conditions as will assure them sound economic foundations for their future. The American people will not be content with anything less.

6

THERE remains the question of United States naval and air bases in the Philippines. The Independence Act of 1934 authorized the President of the United States to acquire or retain “naval reservations” in the Philippines, and the Joint Resolution of 1944 (S. J. Res. 93) authorized the President to withhold or to acquire such bases, in addition to any provided for in the Act of 1934, “as he may deem necessary for the full and mutual protection of the Philippine Islands and of the United States.”

It is not a question of a great power for its own interests imposing its will by might upon a small, unwilling nation. The responsible leaders of the Commonwealth Government want the United States to retain bases in the Philippines. They know that an American base in the Islands would have to be protected by American armed forces; and that, modern warfare being what it is, protection of the base would involve protection of the entire Philippine archipelago. From the point of view of the Philippines, the grant of a naval or air base is a cheap price with which to buy protection by the most powerful navy in the world against foreign aggression.

The real question is whether the United States desires to acquire such bases at such a cost. The answer depends in part on the issue of what is to be the future role of the United States in world affairs and particularly in the Pacific. Are we henceforth to draw into our own continental orbit and seek to avoid all involvements in the Far East, or are we to continue as a great Pacific power, playing an active, decisive part in the Far East? The present course of international events in reality leaves us no choice.

The world has become a unity. Twentieth-century conditions force either participation in world activities or else atrophy and extinction. The day of “magnificent isolation” is past. The United States is compelled, irrespective of its desires, to play an active part in the Pacific and in the Far East or cease to be a great power.

The peoples of the world today are interlocked economically, socially, politically. China needs American goods. The United States in the post-war world will need Chinese markets if we are to keep our men at work. The same is true of Australia, of New Zealand, of Malaya, of the Philippines. People cannot sell without buying. Trade is a two-way process. In our twentieth-century closely integrated world, ignorance or backward conditions or disease in any one spot vitally endangers all. If we accept that view, what follows? Should the United States establish naval or air bases in the Philippines?

However, the answer transcends the Philippine problem. It relates in part to the kind of international organization for maintaining world security which will emerge from the present war.

If the post-war world is to be built again upon the outlived nineteenth-century system of competing, rival sovereignties and a continually teetering, ever precarious balance ol power, then the United States will inevitably continue to seek its own security through its own armies and navy and air power; and it will want its own naval and air bases in those parts of the world where fighting is likely to break out. So will every other great power. If that is to be the course which we and other great powers follow in the post-war world, the retention of powerful Philippine naval and air bases will not save us. For the whole world will then be following the pathway to disaster.

If, on the other hand, the post-war world is to be built upon modern reality; if the United Nations join in setting up a world organization built upon the cooperative effort of all to advance human welfare, to elevate standards of living, and to enforce a common ride of justice and law in place of strongarmed international savagery, the Philippines cease to be an international problem. The independent Philippines then become an outpost in the Pacific for the enforcement of international order in the interest of world security.

It is against this background that the matter of naval and air bases in the Philippines must be considered. The maintenance of justice and law, whether by national or international organizations, requires armed forces. Some strong Philippine base will probably be necessary for the maintenance of order in the post-war world. The vital issue is whether henceforth bases such as these will be held by individual nations, owing responsibility to no one in order to protect and further their own selfish interests, or whether they will be held by or for the world community in order to protect and maintain an organized peace.

The days of imperialism are numbered. Stable peace cannot rest on any system of alien government based upon exploitation. This applies to every country and to every race, white, yellow, brown, or black. The only possible basis for an enduring civilization is equality of human rights, regardless of race or creed or color. The Atlantic Charter is as applicable to the Pacific as it is to the Atlantic. Humanity knows no geographical bounds.

Pacific peoples no less than Atlantic peoples have the right “to choose the form of government under which they will live.” Pacific peoples no less than Atlantic peoples are entitled to “access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.”

In the light of these fundamentals the program of the United States in the Philippines assumes fairly distinct outlines. Our first step obviously is to drive the Japanese invaders from the Islands.

Second, we must thereupon establish the complete independence of the Philippine Islands as a separate and self-governing nation.

Third, the United States and the new Philippine government must work out some practicable program for the winning of economic independence. The United States is morally bound to assist the Filipinos in finding a way to achieve independence without economic shipwreck. But continuing free entry for Philippine goods to the protected American market offers no solution.

Fourth, the Filipino people will emerge from the war economically stunned, with many of their properties in ruin. The United States will want to help them to their feet with assistance in the most constructive form possible.

Fifth, the United States and the Philippine nation must unite in working out common security measures, if possible with the other United Nations. Such measures will presumably include the establishment of naval and air bases in order to protect and maintain the world’s peace in the Pacific.

The eyes of the world, and particularly of every people in Asia, are upon the Philippines. The measure of American influence for good in the Far East for years to come will depend largely upon the wisdom and the sincerity of American conduct in the Philippines.

In 1776, America in the Western world struck out along a new pathway for democracy and human freedom. Her achievement forms one of the shining chapters in human history. In the months and the years ahead America has the chance to assist in writing a new chapter in human progress and freedom in the Far East. What is written will depend in large part upon the outcome of the Philippine adventure.