THE FOUR FREEDOMS UNDER THE AMERICAN FLAG

...Moreover, what we do in Puerto Rico is better known and understood in all Latin-America than here at home, and it is judged not merely on its own merits, but as a measure of the American attitude toward the rest of the peoples of this hemisphere...

...but he was careful to make it plain that he sponsored it only "by request" and not of his own volition, ^en...

...Much worse is the clause requiring Puerto Rico to bind itself automatically to go to war when we do, whether it conceives our war to be just or unjust...

...The Four Freedoms Under The American Flaa By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD WHEN the Populares Party, headed by Luis Munos-Marin, swept Puerto Rico in the election last November, taking every seat in the Legislature except 4, not a single dispatch nor article reporting this astounding wiping out of practically all opposition appeared in the continental press...

...Certainly there are no manufacturers in Puerto Rico to amount to anything, and even if the endeavors of the Tugwell government and the Legislature to stimulate very much needed business enterprises should meet with complete success, it is, of course, obvious that any competition of an island 100 miles long and 40 miles wide with the vast industrial machine which has just conquered Europe would be utterly ridiculous...

...That is of course not the case...

...As for the independence proposal, that is enormously complicated...

...Strictly speaking Puerto Rico will never be an entirely independent state as long as the war system is maintained in the world, for there are far-reaching American military and naval reservations specified in S-1002 which must be put into a treaty or treaties, and the proposed constitution of the new republic...

...The Tydings bill gives the United States the right to move troops at will around Puerto Rico, but the Army and Navy would do that anyway if they decided that the security of the United States demanded it...

...One of those freedoms ia not the freedom to starve to death under the American flag...

...It is high time that the Puerto Ricans were given the chance to decide their future destiny, but it must be said frankly that there is no chance of S-1002 passing in anything like its present form...

...But the persistence of the old American idea that every portion of the globe which is not American is a business enemy bent upon destroying our American economic life will make it very difficult to get any measure through Congress granting perpetual free trade to Puerto Rico...

...Our self-respect demands it...

...For, if we should exclude the Island from our tariff system after freeing it—as we are pledged to exclude the Philippines after they have been given independence—a free Puerto Rico might be wholly impossible...

...THIS last measure was dratted by a committee of Puerto Ricans appointed by Munos-Marin in order to make good his pledge to the electorate during the campaign last Fall that if his party was given control of the Legislature he would do his uttermost to obtain for the islanders the right to vote for or against independence...

...Another ought to be the right of our dependencies in five Caribbean to decide upon what shall be their own way of life...

...What have we been fighting this war for ? Just to illustrate again our superb Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, or do we mean what we say when we deelare that we are for the Four Freedoms for all people...

...The bill in question was introduced by Sen...

...Indeed, this question is holding ba«k the independence movement in Puerto Rico, for that island is in the unhappy position of being in large measure a one-crop country with everything depending upon the disposition of its sugar crop on favorable terms, because half of the people of Puerto Rico are directly employed by the sugar industry and a quarter more are indirectly affected by its progress...

...Tt is hardly possible that the Congress would agree to let the Puerto Ricans decide whether the island shall or shall not become the 49th State...

...PUERTO RICO is not merely tied up with the United States in a military way...

...We were too busy defeating Germany, and the same silent treatment has been given by our newspapers to the introduction of a bill in the United States Senate, S-1002, which would bestow upon the Puerto Ricans the right to vote whether to remain in their present colonial status, or to obtain statehood, or become a dominion, or cut loose altogether and be an independent republic...

...Its whole future and the possibility of independence hang upon the future economic relations between this little Caribbean island and ourselves...

...Under the Senate bill, no duty is to be levied by the United States upon any article imported from the republic of Puerto Rico if it is set up, and none is to be levied by Puerto Rico upon any importation from the United States "except by the mutual consent of the two governments and upon such terms and conditions as they may agree upon...

...our national honor is at stake...

...The Puerto Ricans would be justified in thinking that the silence of the press on this vitally important bill is the result of a press conspiracy...

...The bill also specifies that after independence we shall continue our great aid to agriculture, education, public roads, public health, soil conservation, social security and unemployment, work relief, etc., all of which has recently gone as high as $80,000,000, in a year, but this help to the new republic is gradually to be reduced by a commission of 3 economic experts from the United States and 2 from Puerto Rico, as rapidly as the island's economic development permits...

...Tydings has long been committed to the independence of Puerto Rico as well as of the Philippines...

...Millard Tydings, Maryland Democrat, on May 15...

...Nonetheless for the present, until a better one is offered, this one should be pushed and discussed all over the country—if it is possible to break through the curtain of silence...

...of course, many who object to this, but objection is idle...

...We have shown in this war that we are prepared to go to almost any lengths to make our Latin-American neighbors fight with us when hostilities begin, even to the extent of interfering with their domestic concerns and specifying with what foreign countries a sister-republic may or may not deal in a business way...

...Again, the proposal of a dominion status is an entirely new departure in the history of American government and is therefore bound to be looked upon as an effort to engraft a British device upon our constitutional system...

...Of course the Puerto Ricans ought to have their independence if they want it and if it is economically possible for them to exist by themselves...

...It is obvious, too, that the present bill will in due time give way to one entirely different...

...There are...

...It is merely another illustration of how utterly indifferent the United States is to the condition of its own wards and fellow-citizens in Puerto Rico, although we seem to have unlimited time and unheard of billions to mix into the affairs of the rest of the world...

...it would doubtless prefer to follow the historic policy of itself deciding the issue after the inhabitants of the dependency have as a whole appealed for admission as a State...

...The concession made by the Puerto Ric: ; is merely a recognition that the island is, after all, totally in the power of the American colossus...

...WHY anybody should wish to put tariffs on imports from Puerto Rico is extremely difficult to understand except on the basis of the crass selfishness of American sugar-growers...

...EVEN more important is the fact that the present conditions are a crying disgrace to us, as any one knows who has visited the island, seen the slums and the swollen bellies of the underfed, undernourished children that come to the few relief stations for a beggarly breakfast every morning...