Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1915 — Former President Taft Against Philippine Independence. [ARTICLE]

Former President Taft Against Philippine Independence.

Jan. 2.—Former President Taft gave his-vuaws today on the administration bill for ultimate independence of the Philippines to the senate committee working on the measure. “When President McKinley sent me to the Philippines,” said Mr. Taft, “I told him that I thought that we ought not to be in the islands. He said to me that we had the bear by the tail and that we had to stay. Our first' purpose in being in there is to get out. “This discussion must depend a good deal on what you mean by self-government. We cannot give the Philippines self-government, be-* cause it cannot be given. We cannot present the Pilipina people with a character. It must be acquired. One way to acquire it is through hard knocks, as the AngloSaxon race acquired it. When we went to the'Philippines we tried to give it to them by maintaining a constitutional form of government as an object lesson and by educating the people in the language of free institutions. We tried to have the gov-ernmept participated in, but not controlled by the natives. You cannot make over a people in one generation. Particularly you cannot when that is a generation of adults and a vast majority of that generation is woefully ignorant. • It cannot be done. tion where I can say just what I think. You have called me ljere; I did not ask to come, and I'm going to tell you just what I know about things. “Now,” he continued, “what time do I think will be neeessary to train the Filipinos for self-govern-ment? The time that shall give to those people an opportunity to learn English so that they shall be am English speaking people. That will take more than one generation and probably more than two, if you count thirty years as a generation. You can’t educate all of the people —you haven’t got the. money.” ; The former president related .many incidents of his life in the Philippines and his association with the people. Many of f, * I dealing with the characteristics of the Filipinds, rocked the committee and the spectators who crowded the room with laughter.