WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE PHILIPPINES?
Chamberlin, William Henry
What Shall We Do With The Philippines? By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN IVISITED the Philippine Islands in the course of a swing around the circuit of southeastern Asia some 8 years ago. And the...
...MacArthur has shown first-rate quality as a statesman by always insisting on respect for the Philippine civil administration, headed by President Sergio Osmena, the constitutional successor of the late Manuel Quezon...
...The Filipinos doubtless possess their full share of Boss Hagues and there were serious problems of undue concentration of land in big estates in some regions, and of village usury...
...A Philippine state, therefore, would possess more representatives in Congress and more electoral votes than our most populous state, New York...
...The Philippine Commonwealth, until the Japanese invasion, was functioning successfully...
...There are, broadly speaking, 3 possible patterns for our future relations with the Philippines...
...Actually the Philippine experience in self-government did not suggest the necessity of choosing between Quezon's alternatives...
...In time it may be necessary for the Philippines to create a more balanced economy, less dependent on this single crop of sugar...
...The Filipinos were very definitely paddling their own canoe...
...But there are several compelling objections to the statehood idea...
...MacArthur has displayed in all his Pacific operations, achieving maximum results with minimum forces and remarkably small casualties, but to the determination of the majority of the Filipino people to regain their freedom...
...A Tribute To MacArthur Again in striking contrast to the situation in colonial countries which were overrun by the Japanese, the Philippines never gave up resistance...
...It would also represent a reckless squandering of the moral capital which America has built up in the Orient by its decision to leave the Filipinos free to manage their own affairs...
...There has been bitter opposition to unlimited Filipino migration to the United States...
...It will be both generous and wise, from the standpoint of long-term American interests in the Orient, to give the Philippines a helping hand until they can stand on their own feet again...
...This would possess an incidental advantage...
...I could not help wondering why a native of the Netherlands Indies would wish to risk trouble with the Japanese in order to listen to discussions of such unfamiliar subjects...
...And over half the Philippine exports consisted of sugar which could not have been sold profitably to the United States in the face of a normal tariff barrier and could scarcely have been sold elsewhere...
...But the main fact that considerable numbers of Filipinos were in arms against the Japanese all the time emerges unchallenged...
...This would be an outrageous betrayal of our pledged word and of a friendly people that fought hard and suffered greatly in resisting the Japanese militarist attack...
...The swift reconquest of the principal strategic regions in the Philippines is a tribute not only to the masterly tactics which Gen...
...No doubt technically good administrative jobs were performed, both in Malaya and in French Indo-China...
...The average Filipino would have little understanding of American political and economic problems, just as the average American would have a very hazy idea of what would be desirable or undesirable in the Philippines...
...But the natives had little, if anything, to say about their government...
...The United States maintained small military and naval forces in the Islands and retained control of foreign affairs...
...There is a wise Greek saying that even the gods cannot make the past as if it had never been...
...One may hope that the example of a self-governing Philippine republic will be a peaceful dissolvent for Western imperialism in neighboring countries...
...The late President Manuel Quezon once remarked that he would rather see the Philippines run like hell by Filipinos than run like heaven by Americans...
...In Manila, on the other hand, when I called on the Minister of Labor I met not an American, but a Filipino, who was hospitable and expansive and enthusiastic about his work and who insisted on taking me to see a slum-clearance project which was just being carried out...
...This was a more picturesque version of the declaration by the British Liberal statesman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, that good government can never be a substitute for self-government...
...This was not because the Filipino necessarily cherished any more sentimental attachment to America than an Indonesian might have felt to the Netherlands, an Annamite to France, or a British Malayan to Great Britain...
...Liberation Pays Dividends For after 1935 the Philippines acquired Commonwealth status as a transition to the complete independence which was to come on July 4, 1946...
...Questions of military and naval and air bases, of landing rights for air transportation companies must be worked out, but on a basis of equal negotiation, not of dictation...
...It was impossible for the newly trained, inadequately equipped Philippine Army to keep the field indefinitely against the vastly superior Japanese forces...
...Most of the troops who fought last stand battles, against overwhelming odds on Bataan were Filipinos...
...Another alternative would be to grant statehood to the Philippines...
...And the Philippines must continue to be run by representatives of the Filipino people...
...But the Philippines were completely independent, completely on their own, as regards the management of their internal affairs...
...About 80 per cent of Philippine exports and imports were to and from the United-States in 1940...
...They recognize that the guerrilla movement was handicapped by lack of arms and organization, that there were occasional flare-ups of old tribal feuds...
...With all apologies to the phrase of the late Wendell Willkie, we are still far from attaining the "One World" stage...
...The Philippines are an indispensable link in the future Far Eastern security system...
...And the strongest impression I brought back from that trip was the political difference between the Philippines, on one hand, and such colonial countries as British-controlled Malaya and French In-do-China, on the other...
...There were always guerrilla forces operating in some parts of the archipelago, keeping contact with Gen...
...The country has been pillaged and Manila has been gutted in the course of the struggle...
...I always believed that the American policy in the Philippines would pay political and military dividends in the event of a great crisis...
...The articles are candid...
...For it represented the only example of a colonial power voluntarily relinquishing sovereignty over a country with the population, size, and natural wealth of the Philippine archipelago...
...One hopes that this idea will receive no support in any responsible quarter...
...The imagination of the Filipinos has been attracted by the idea of independent nationhood...
...The Philippines, as a United States possession, enjoyed free trade relations with the continental United States...
...But, partly no doubt because the process had been gradual, because American policy had been directed toward the objective of training the Filipinos for self-government, there was no visible change when administration passed entirely into Filipino hands...
...Surely a broadcast by a Filipino, describing how the Filipinos, a predominantly Malay people, like the natives of the Netherlands Indies, were governing themselves, would have possessed a good deal more inspirational effect in encouraging the Indonesians to rebel against Japanese rule...
...The population of the archipelago was about 1G million in 1939 and tends to grow rapidly in normal times...
...They are a stepping-stone to the mainland of Asia in the air routes of the future...
...But in the immediate future they deserve a reasonable economic break from the United States...
...A Helping Hand Honest implementation of Philippine independence remains both the right solution and the expedient solution...
...And when the tide of Japanese conquest swept over southeastern Asia and the adjacent archipelagoes, it was in the Philippines, and only in the Philippines, that the people offered vigorous and effective opposition...
...President Osmena is scheduled for a series of conferences in Washington...
...The whole question of the future of the Philippines appears in a new light after the tragic experiences which Americans and Filipinos have shared during the last 3 years and more...
...But independence by itself is not enough...
...When I would ask for a meeting with a responsible government executive in Singapore or Hanoi I always found myself talking with a British or French official, as the case might be...
...But the Philippines never surrendered...
...When I was in Indo-China I casually got into conversation with a native who frequently remarked, while he recited a long bill of complaints against the French administration: "If the French here were only like the Americans in the Philippines...
...And there is no warrant in the American Constitution or in American ideals for first and second class citizenship, for taking on the Filipinos as citizens and holding them at arm's length in the matter of immigration...
...Recently I happened to learn of projected OWI broadcasts to the Netherlands Indies on the subjects of Soviet industrialization and collective farming...
...There remains another difficulty in connection with independence...
...But just because American participation in Philio-pine defense, as a part of a general postwar scheme for Far Eastern security, will most probably have to be on a larger scale than was envisaged when the Commonwealth was inaugurated in 1935, there must be scrupulous respect for Philippine self-government in domestic affairs...
...Except for a small minority of voluntary collaborators with the Japanese, Filipinos in the future will be glad to hear the sound of American airplanes, will welcome the protection of powerful American naval bases...
...It would bring the economy of «he archipelago, still unduly geared to a high production of sugar for the formerly duty-free American market, squarely within the American customs union and avoid some serious prospective dislocations...
...The dark predictions of a few "old Philippine hands" about the utter predestined unfitness of an Oriental people for democracy, about a catastrophic breakdown of administrative standards, and rampant civil war in the areas inhabited by Mohammedan Moros were not realized...
...And this was true as regards every other department...
...MacArthur through secret radio stations, harassing and keeping occupied Japanese forces, furnishing valuable information...
...The Saturday Evening Post recently published a series of articles on the guerrilla movement in the large southern island of Mindinao, written by an American who helped to organize it...
...It was because there was a Filipino government to fight for...
...And it must be recognized in all humility that our score of achievement in race relations with Negroes and Mexicans, Japanese and Chinese within our gates has not been good enough to warrant the daring experiment of taking on 16 million new Oriental fellow-citizens...
...And its significance extended beyond the Philippines...
...We could go hard-boiled and imperialistic and rule the islands with a high hand and a plentiful supply of tanks and B-29s...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
