244 



The National Geographic Magazine 



while acting under said detail shall have 

 the rank, pay, and allowances of a 

 colonel." 



The Division of Insular Affairs, there- 

 fore, on July i, 1902, became the Bu- 

 reau of Insular Affairs of the War De 

 partment, and the Secretary of War in 

 pursuance of the above authority de- 

 tailed the speaker as chief. 



Organization a?id Personnel. — The or- 

 ganization of this Bureau has been 

 changed from time to time to meet the 

 constantly changing conditions which 

 the daily necessities demanded and has 

 now been worked out into a permanent 

 organization consisting of the follow- 

 ing divisions : Correspondence, Record, 

 Compilation and Cuban Records, Statis- 

 tical, Accounting, Philippine Insurgent 

 Captured Records, and the Purchasing 

 and Disbursing Division. To this last 

 Division is also attached the Philippine 

 purchasing agency, or office, in New 

 York, comprising a force of ten em- 

 ployes. This last force is paid out of 

 Philippine revenues, while the force of 

 the Bureau proper is paid out of United 

 States funds, in the form of three sepa- 

 rate lump appropriations of Congress. 

 The present legislative appropriation 

 bill, however, places this Bureau on a 

 permanent basis by providing for a stat- 

 utory classification of its various em- 

 ployes. The present force of the Bu-' 

 reau, which has been reduced, and 

 which has accomplished the work, is 

 composed of one law officer and a force 

 of seventy-five employes, with the ad- 

 dition of an army officer temporarily 

 detailed. 



The Bureau of Insular Affairs is hard 

 to define. It may be called a clearing- 

 house for all questions as between the 

 government of the Philippine Islands 

 and the government of the United 

 States. It is by the act above quoted 

 a federal instrumentality of the United 

 States and the representative in this 

 country upon which the government of 

 the Philippine Islands relies, through 



the Secretary of War, for proper pres- 

 entation to Congress of all legislative 

 requirements of the Philippine Islands, 

 as well as to do those things in the 

 United States required by the Philip- 

 pine Islands of the governmental agency 

 in the mother country. 



As Mr Root has shown in the quo- 

 tation above made from his report, the 

 government of the Philippine Islands is 

 in the Philippines, composed of men se- 

 lected by the Administration for merit 

 alone to govern under the broadest con- 

 stitutional limitations, agreeable by anal- 

 ogy to the essential principles upon 

 which our own government is estab- 

 lished. 



The study of successful colonial gov- 

 ernments, especially of those far sepa- 

 rated from the mother country, as in the 

 present case of the Philippine Islands — 

 some 10,000 miles away — shows they 

 have been generally administered by a 

 separate department of the home govern- 

 ment. It will be admitted, I assume, by 

 any one who has given thought to the 

 subject, that if the government of the 

 Philippine Islands was put in leading 

 strings and the various divisions of the 

 Philippine Government administration 

 assigned to the different executive de- 

 partments in this country , friction would 

 ensue ; that the entity created in the 

 Philippines would be disturbed, and 

 that comprehensive development would 

 not be practicable. 



This policy has been recognized by 

 the Administration that has had to do 

 with the question of territory in the 

 Orient, and the affairs of that govern- 

 ment happen to be in the Bureau of In- 

 sular Affairs, which in turn, by a natu- 

 ral force of circumstances, happens to 

 be in the War Department. I say nat- 

 ural, as the present civil government of 

 the Philippines was made possible only 

 by the admirable temporary civil ad- 

 ministration of the military. 



This transition from military to civil 

 government was gradual, but took place 



