THE PHILIPPINES

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18642, 21 May 1932, Page 4

THE PHILIPPINES

A Bill providing for the autonomy, within eight years, of the Philippine Islands has passed through the United States House of Representatives by a large majority. The support for the Bill is distinctly mixed. There is a strong current of genuine feeling against any form of colonial imperialism in the United Slates, and now that the policy of intervention in the affairs of Central America Is not being pressed so nakedly as. in the Coolidge regime the attention of the anti-imperialists has swung back to the long-standing claims of the Philippines. There are other and more material reasons for supporting the Rill. While the Islands are a territory of the United States their produce" enters the country untaxed. This pains American sugar-beet farmers; still more it pains American capitalists who have put their money into Cuba and are exasperated to see Cuban sugar kept out by a tarif, while Philippine sugar comes in free. There are others who wish to check not only the products of the islanders but the Filipinos themselves. During the last ten years there has been a rapid increase in immigration. There are now more than 50,000 Filipinos in the United States and, as they are concentrated on the Pacific coast, there is beginning to be a “Filipino problem” similar to, though still on a smaller scale than, the Chinese and Japanese racial problems in California. But immigration cannot be checked so long as the Filipinos are citizens of the United States. The Bill will also meet with a warm response in the islands, where the governing classes, at least, are strongly for independence. It Is unlikely to become law in the Immediate future. Mr Stimson, the Secretary of State, himself a former Governor of the Philippines, is strongly against it on strategic grounds. But a compromise, in the form of muchincreased local autonomy, is not unlikely. A good many members of Congress are beginning to feel that any settlement of the question would be better than none.