"WELL, HE'S ASKING FOR IT."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 60, 12 March 1938, Page 15 (Supplement)

"WELL, HE'S ASKING FOR IT."

President Quezon advocated that complete independence be granted in 1938 or 1939, and it must be admitted that the suggestion met with applause in interested Amenaancirclee. For it musf be borne in mind that independence was legislatively accorded in Washington not so much to satisfy the emotional and understandable urge of the Filipinos to be fre» as to carry out the purposes of certain interests in the United States. First on the list were those representatives of agricultural production with which the Philippine Islands competed. Coconut oil competes with butterfat, so the farmers say. Sugar production in the Philippines is increasing at a time •when the efforts of the best minds in the American sugar industry are turned toward restricting it. On top of tTiese considerations the armed services have steadily and inevitably coine to the point of view that the Philippine Islands are a potential military liability as long: as they remain under the American flag. The Philippines would be an advance salient extremely vulnerable to attack. Their defence would have no conceivable value to offset the excessive cost in the protection of American shores against invasion.

Question of Defence Line There seems to be no question that American public opinion has come to endorse this estimate of the situation in repent years. The mounting tendency against non-involvment in foreign wars, as evidenced hy neutrality legislation, proposals for popular referenda on declarations of war to be waged abroad and similar indications, supports the modern military view that the United States should content itself with a defensive line drawn from Alaska, via the Hawaiian Islands, to the Panama Canal Zone. On that front the United States is supposed to be impregnable. From the Philippine view there are a number of developments to be feared, but they are not new epec'jres. It is quite obvious that, with the withdrawal of American sovereignty, Japan would have little military difficulty in conquering the Philippines any time it saw fit. The economic side of the picture is the one, if any, which might now affright those Filipinos who but yesterday loudly clamoured for independence. For the 40 years that the Ijnited States lias more or less accidentally been responsible for the welfare of the Philippine Islands, the economy of that potentially rich portion of the world has developed within th» framework of free tnu' i with the United States. Along ■wit', the acknowledged advantages, the isla ids have acquired a possible drawback in the form of a specialised ccoiinniv which not find other outlets after the grant of freedom. An economic conquest by Japan might not lie r ifficull. The <_'i ve-a nd-take of international trade would probably involve a, sub-ta ntial decrease in wages for Filipino labourers (and they are already low) if the Philippine Islands must sell their goo.ls in Japan as well as buy their supplies there. The Independence Act, as now in operation, provides that graduated application of American tariffs against imports from the Philippines shall be applied, starting in 1041. In that year will be levied against importations from the Philippines 5 per cent of the tariff duties imposed on like articles from other countries; in 1942 the rate will be 10 per cent, and so on until, in 194<i, 25 per cent of the lejral duties will be collected. From that level, however, which would fitill ;rraiit a most preferential in favour of Filipino products, the new station, in 1947, mui>t take the

the nature of a one-sided bargain, as things now appear, from which the Philippines alone would benefit. If Congress were asked to vote on this now there is no question that the ballot -WouM- be -overwhelmingly in favour? of bidding the Philippines fondly, but firmly, farewell.