Chapter XVII: White Filipinos, Aguinaldo, and the Busy Moth

In my last letter I believe I changed my style somewhat and became an historian. I realize I'm serving up several different styles of narrative in these letters, and know it's taking a chance to adopt the historical. History is dry stuff, but another chapter of it seems necessary to clear the situation at this mile-post I'm passing--the Philippine Islands.

You can't get the President of a republic running around in the woods, and as goodly a land as the Philippines in chaos, and then go off and leave it without some further word of explanation than I gave in my last letter, in which I left the President safely anchored on a farm.

The Philippine Islands at this time were in a fearful mess. The natives were half child, half savage. Dirt, vice, degradation, war, pestilence, everything but famine, were the rule--you cannot starve these people; they live in a land of perpetual summer: clothing not a necessity; and they can pick their living off the trees.

Under the stimulus of being named "Little Brown Brothers" to the nation which had discovered them, they bucked up and went to it; and they have made the most wonderful progress in the past sixteen years!

From the worst city they have made Manila the best city in the Orient. There is not another city in Japan, China, or India that can equal it in cleanliness and healthfulness, with well-paved roads running through it, and leading out from it in all directions. One of these roads they have made, a hard macadam, none better anywhere, reaches clear across the Island of Luzon, from Manila Bay to the Pacific Ocean, 110 miles. They have actually eclipsed their big white brothers in respect to roads.

We wait until population and improvements in the way of well-tilled farms strike us, and then, after a great while, in rare instances, after enough wagons and horse flesh have been worn out hauling produce over muddy soft dirt roads to build a good road several times, we get wise and build a good road. Not so our progressive Filipinos. They put the road through first. Then, when the country settles up, and the natives decide to come down out of the trees and till the land, there will be a good hard road to haul their produce over.

_We_ ought to be jarred out of our rut--get discovered.

That 110 miles of road runs largely through rich bottom land, the major part of which is as innocent of cultivation as Adam and Eve were of clothing before the Lord caught them stealing apples.

Occasional villages of nipa palm shacks, stuck up on bamboo poles, are passed, the chief industry of the owners of the shacks being to roost in them out of the sun and rain, when they are not out gathering something to eat that Nature provides without labor. But they have made good roads.

There is not another city in the Orient that equals Manila in hotel accommodations; in an up-to-date telephone system; in electricity and ice; in rapid transit by trolley, carriages, and automobiles; in a fire department, and a live and enterprising press.

These Filipinos are truly a wonderful and progressive people!

I've been so busy stepping over the ground in seven-league boots, jumping from premise to conclusion, that I haven't, perhaps, dwelt enough on details.

The inhabitants of the islands are not all of the same color. There are two colors--white and chocolate brown. The latter is the popular shade--you might say they are the style. The whites are the most dejected, forlorn bunch I've ever seen. They give me the jimjams, the willies, and I want to get away. The Filipinos' wonderful progress dates back sixteen years, from the time the white population began to make its appearance here, and the casual observer might draw conclusions.

But conclusions are the last thing in the world an historian should tamper with. He should confine himself to reciting facts, and let statesmen and politicians draw conclusions--and their pay.

The white population is leaving the islands--those who can get away. Those who can't, whose fortunes are tied up in the islands, put one in mind of a lot of ship-wrecked voyagers, who, with all hope of succor abandoned, are waiting for their ship to sink.

They have expatriated themselves (it amounts to that), and for sixteen years have become acclimated--invested their lives and fortunes in the islands. But they are not the right color--their color is against them.

Back in the old district school days in one of McGuffey's readers (was it the Fifth?) there was a very eloquent speech by some statesman (name has slipped my memory), entitled: "Whither Are the Cherokees to Go?"

It was an impassioned appeal. The reading of that speech used to swell my little chest till the buttons on the little bob-tailed jacket we used to wear in those days, called "a round-about," gave way. Won't someone make a speech for these white Filipinos? They ought to have an advocate somewhere, even though they _are_ white. They aren't to blame for that. The Lord made them that way.

* * * * *

I've been to see Aguinaldo at Cavete, about twenty-five miles from Manila, over a good automobile road. I went in company with Dr. Fitzsimmons, of the Manila Municipal Commission, and Mr. Watson, of the Manila Cable News. Mr. Watson acted as interpreter, as Aguinaldo does not speak English.

We found Aguinaldo at a neighboring village, where he had just been initiated into the order of Masons.

He invited us to go to his home, where we paid him a short visit. I found Aguinaldo a very courteous and genial gentleman, and when I told him that he was spoken of as the George Washington of the Philippines, he modestly protested at the honor of such a comparison.

When I reminded him that he, like Washington, had retired to the farm, he reminded me that Washington took up agriculture after his people had secured their independence, while the Filipinos were still looking for theirs.

I asked him if he thought it for the best interests of the Filipinos to have the islands turned over to them at this time, and he thought it was. I told him it was a great object lesson to the Filipinos to see their foremost countryman turning his attention to the soil, the islands' chief source of wealth, and he told me that many of them were doing the same thing.

After some general remarks we left Aguinaldo on the piazza of his home, which, in comparison with the average Filipino's residence, was commodious and palatial.

He is very much in earnest in tilling his 3,000 acres; and we gave hearty assurance of our most earnest wish that he would come out victorious in the battle he was waging against a pest of moth which was disputing with him the title to his crops.