RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
fought for independence and that it was against our most cherished principles to hold any people against their will. But they didn't take into consideration the fact that the Filipinos were Malays, not ten per cent. of them with even a primary education, used only to a theocratic and absolute government and without any experience in the rule of the people. Nor did they consider that our forefathers had, for a century and a half before the revolution, been carrying on what was really self-government and were better fitted by training and tradition to make self-government work than any people in the world. They indulged in sentiment to the exclusion of thought; and so the situation was created.
The idea of complete independence was never shouted from the housetops in Spanish times, but the new flag represented free speech, a free press, and such freedom generally as the Filipinos had never dreamed of in their wildest aspirations and the "illustrados" and the men who had tasted power in the insurrection against Spain were not slow to take advantage of it. An alluring conception of independence, freedom from all restraint and the enjoyment of luxurious ease, really, was sent abroad among the densely ignorant masses by the handful who had education, with the result that by the time the American government was free really to face the issue, the demand for our immediate withdrawal was unanimous, or nearly so.
But it couldn't be done. Aguinaldo tried his hand at a government for six months and failed miserably. Corruption was rife. Chaos reigned; the country was impoverished and absolutely unprotected; and it didn't take the Americans long to recognise the fact that "independence" meant nothing more nor less than the merciless exploitation of the many by the few and the establishment of worse conditions than any the people had ever known.
So we stayed; there was nothing else to do; and the insurrection against constituted authority was taken up where it
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