Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/491

Rh in America the creoles and their numerously represented crosses were the real upholders of separatist ideas, so that when the idea ripened into an act they held the leading of the movement in their hands. Indians and negroes have there never been more than the plebs contribuens, or the tributary class, and "food for cannon." Only in single exceptional cases have leading spirits ever risen from out of these lower castes; and where the separatist movement has been confined to these colored primitive races, as in Haiti, it has led not only to cutting loose from the mother country, but also to a more or less complete renunciation of European civilization. In saying this I cast no condemnation upon the negroes, for, whenever in our civilized states the proletariat and the populace have struck down or cast out all the cultivated and half-cultivated classes, the same sort of "nigger management," with only differences corresponding with the environments, has gained place among us as in the great islands of the Antilles.

Very different are the conditions in the Philippine Islands; and, in view of the importance which the "skin question" plays in the conflict raged by the Americans, I think it proper to deal further with this fundamental question of Philippine politics, especially since the journals and the politicians, at least those of America, have given very little attention to the matter.

The small number of creoles, of whom, besides, the principal part live in the city of Manila, which the Americans have in their power, would not alone explain why the war of independence and the formation of the Philippine republic must be spoken of as pre-eminently the work of Christian, civilized Malays and mestizos. For there are in America countries, like Paraguay, where the number of whites is even smaller than in the Philippine Islands, and yet the separatist movement and the foundation of the state were the exclusive work of the creoles.

Why has it been thus? Because the Indians and the negroes do not possess that inclination toward civilization and that capacity for assimilation that are evident in the colored populations of the Philippine Islands. It is supposed that the Philippine Malays have Japanese blood in their veins; but, all the same, whether the supposition is founded or unfounded, it is certain that not only do they resemble the Japanese more or less in features, but that also many mental traits are common to them with these wide-awake Orientals, and they even excel them in a moral respect. The school statistics show them superior to their Spanish lords. The Filipinos have no larger percentage of illiterates than Spain of those who can not read and write. And, as a bishop exclaimed with astonishment, there are in those islands villages where it would be hard to find a person