THE PHILIPPINES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9194, 25 March 1908, Page 2

THE PHILIPPINES.

» WHERE AMERICA FAILS ENGLAND SUCCEEDS. That the Philippines have proved a nut too hard for the United States to crack is known and admitted, and the contrast betwixt British and American methods of colonial administration explains the failure. Says Mr Sydney Brooks, in the "Westminster Gazette " :— "The American journals scarcely ever mention the American Empire except to deride it. The people at large are bored with the 6ubject. They know nothing about it, and care less; they have almost forgotten that it has any claim upon them at all. Among the Army officers who have served in the Philippines I found a fervent wish that they might never serve there again. Among the people generally I detected a confused, irritated consciousness thai* American rule had been a failure and an almost universal desire that some ' way out ' might be discovered. AN ABSURD PARLIAMENT. "Early in August, elections were held for the .first popular legislature that the Philippines had ever seen. Only about a third of the possible voters took the trouble to register, and less than 10 per cent actually voted. But that, of course, is not the fault of the Americans. They have done what they said they would do. They have given their wards a national legislature. After nine years of American rule a congeries of peoples, many of whom live in trees, the bulk of whom are still in the tribal stage of civilisation, and all of whom have been ruled for the past four hundred years or so under Spanish tutelage, are adjudged fit to undertake the full responsibilities of democracy. " And there you have the whole American theory of what colonial government should be. They hold that the practice of self-government is in itself a training in character and morale; and that all peoples, white, black, brown, or yellow, at whatever stage of civilisation, are equally fitted to profit by it. HOW THE SCHEME WORKS. " It is an amazing theory, . and it has led in the Philippines to some amazing results. The Americans had not been five years in the archipelago before they began to dot it with native' municipalities. There are now some 600 of those elected bodies ; their officials .-lumber over 3500; and the elected . counoillors total 8000. Even at this distance I can almost hear them talking — talking all at once, brilliantly, interminably, talking as only men who can do nothing else except embezzle can talk. And above these municipalities, and in a measure proceeding from them, are 40 provincial governments. The provincial Governor is a native elected for two years by the municipal councillors of the province, 'in joint convention assembled.' He has an American supervisor and an American treasurer to keep him straight; and these three direct the provincial machinery, levy and collect taxes, plan public works and superintend the municipalities. " And the apex of this wondrous structure hitherto has been, the Philippine Commission of seven members, three of whom have been Filipinos. A Commission of seven members and a Lower House of from fifty to 100 to govern a people that has never known, that has never evolved, that has no instinct for and no comprehension of, anything but the direct rule of a single head. "But that is not all. The Commission has never had anything like plenary powers. Its resolutions and acts have had to be referred incessantly to Washington, not to a Colonial Office at Washington — no such thing exists — but to Congress; and Congress, which knows nothing of the Philippines, and is provincial to the core, ratifies, rejests or ignores, just as the whim, takes it ; passes impossible laws, which the Commission has had to enforce; attempts to govern the archipelago as though it were a State of the American Union. The result is a variegated chaos. MELANCHOLY RESULTS. " There is no confidence between the people and the Government. The Filipinos hate the Americans as they never thought of hating the Spaniards. The educational policy, the theme only a few years ago of unstinted self-praise, has been proved by experience to be hasty, ill-thougnt-out, extravagantly expensive and heedless of the prime value of character-training. And while schools and political conventions have been multiplied without the slightest regard for Filipino needs and instincts, the material development of the archipelago has been virtually at a standstill. " Imnine years of rulership the Americans^ have done next to nothing in building railways, opening up communications, deepening rivers, constructing canals, or improving any harbours except that of Manila. " Even though the cost of the army and police falls on the American Treasury, the system of government established in the Philippines remains one of the most expensive in the world, the natives paying nearly half the total value of their exports for the privilege of being ruled under the Stars andi Stripes. Taxation is piling up and trade is either stagnant or declining. The Americans have spent some eighty millions sterling on the Archipelago* and neither they nor the natives have anything solid to show for it. " Quixotic in its idealism, selfish and even monopolistic whenever material intersts are at stake, ultra-visionary at one point, ultra-bureaueratio at another, unpractical and unsympathetic at all, American rule in the Philippines has indeed bean a strange affair. So far as.it has gone, the first attempt ever made to ' hustle' and Americanise the East looks like breaking down."-