TO SEE "WHAT'S WHAT!"

To show his gratitude to the United States for what this country has done for the Philippines, A. C. Vicente, a Filipino, carved the above model of an American battleship by hand and presented it to the public library at Monterey, Calif., where it has been placed on permanent view, together with newspaper clippings explaining the artist's motive. Mayor W. G. Hudson of Monterey wrote Vicente a letter thanking him for the exhibit. Vicente has been in the United States ten years. Largely through extensive reading in public. libraries, he has acquired a good education.

Young Physician Here To Study

Jose V. de los Santos, of Gapan, Nueva Ecija, a young Filipino physician, is temporarily in Washington, having accompanied Resident Commissioner Gabaldon. He is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, and a former resident physician in the Philippine General Hospital, Manila, one of the best equipped hospitals of the Orient. He will remain in the United States for some time, for the further study of medicine.

International Newsreel Photo

HON. CARMI THOMPSON OF OHIO

Everyone has a different version as to just why Mr. Thompson is going to the Philippine Is'ands, as the personal investigator of President Coolidge.

But whatever he's going for, one thing seems certain he isn't making the trip for the purpose of recommending immediate and absolute independence.

Vol. 3

We're Pessimistic

Colonel Carmi A. Thompson, of Cleveland, Ohio, Commander-in-Chief of the United Spanish War Veterans, has been commissioned by President Coolidge to go to the Philippine Islands to make “a thorough survey of economic and other internal conditions."

Semi-official statements from the White House, War Department, and Department of Commerce, all give somewhat ambiguous and conflicting statements as to just what it is Colonel Thompson is expected to find and report from the Philippines. But undoubtedly he knows precisely what is expected of him, and will not disappoint his friends.

But if Mr. Thompson makes the kind of a report he might naturally under the circumstances be expected to make-and which we fear he will make--he will merely enlarge upon the importance of the Philippines as a vast treasure house, and a place for Americans to make money. He will ignore or depreciate the human side of the question, the fact that 12,000,000 men, women and children have been promised their independence, and that that promise has not been fulfilled.

If he makes such a report, his mission will have meant nothing to his reputation as an investigator or as a diplomat. But if he will allow his conscience and his Americanism to have full play, making a plea for the enlargement of the empire of democracy, he will go down in history as a friend of human liberty. And he will also immediately occupy a more conspicuous and commanding position in American politics than he will ever occupy if he but does the mediocre and the expected.

The vital point involved in the settlement of the Philippine question is a moral issue, and nothing else. The American Congress, in the Jones law, approved August 29, 1916, proclaimed the intention of the people of the United States to recognize the independence of the Philippines "as soon as a stable government can be established therein."

Stable government was to be the one and only condition precedent. No other

Washington, D. C., May, 1926

condition or attainment or virtue was to be required.

The words "stable government" do not imply anything indefinite. In the dictionary of the American State Department "stable government" has just as definite a meaning as the words white or black. The United States for nearly a century and a half in all cases in which she has recognized the independence of a country or the establishment of a new government has held that the words stable government mean a government elected by the peaceful suffrages of the people, supported by the people, capable of maintaining order and of fulfilling its international obligations.

The prescribed "stable government" has been in existence in the islands these many years. An American GovernorGeneral, after more than seven years' service in the Philippines, officially so reported to Congress, and a President of the United States confirmed his report in a message to Congress as long ago as December 7, 1920, adding: "It is now our liberty and our duty to keep our promise to the people of these islands by granting them the independence which they so honorably covet.”

To this affirmative and official certification of a stable government may be added as additional corroborative evidence the failure of Governor-General Wood to ever deny the existence of such a government. If General Wood could make out a case against a stable government, he would have done so long ago.

So, that, in a few words, it is not the Filipino people, but the United States Government that now is on trial, not only before the people of the Philippines, but before the whole world.

It was the United States that went before the world in the European war as the champion of the principle of self-determination; it was the United States Congress that twice in a period of eighteen months expressed its synpathy with the aspiration of the Irish people for independence, and it was the United States of America that was founded on the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

In all candor, can America afford to

No. 4

longer close its ears to the repeated pleas of a deserving people for an independence that should be theirs not only by divine right but because the United States solemnly promised it to them?

This is the moral question that must be answered in connection with the Philippine problem, and it is but a sheer waste of time and money to send Mr. Thompson to the Philippines to search for it, because it is not there. The answer is to be found right here in Washington, and nowhere else.

TRUE

C. F. Freeman, who spent many years in the Philippines as a newspaper man, and who recently toured the United States, declares that if the question of Philippine independence should be put up to the voters of the United States, it would be granted.

He is right. It is a significant fact that ninety-five per cent. of debates in American schools, colleges and universities on the subject of independence are won by the affirmative

La Follette

United States Senator Robert M. La Follette, greatest American progressive in the last fifty years, has never died. He still lives, and speaks, and votes, conscientiously serving his State and nation, in his young son, Bob, Jr.

There has not been an iota of change, cessation, or even the slightest interruption, in the old Senator's services to mankind. His boy is carrying on in a way that would fill the old fighter's heart with joy, could the latter but look down and witness it.

Bob, Jr., occupies one of the most fortunate positions of any man in American public life. He is free from worry, care and strife. His course is charted for him; all he has to do is to follow it. He doesn't have to lie awake nights, as the average statesman, trying to figure out whether to vote this way or that, and worrying what the probable political consequences might be as a result of his

vote.

He has his chart. Everything has been figured out for him. For many years he