364 The National Geographic Magazine 



as the experience is in accord with the 

 conditions which you expect to meet and 

 to which you expect to apply that expe- 

 rience. The peoples that the English 

 have had to handle in the tropics have 

 been the Mohammedans and the Hin- 

 doos. They are a people whose religion 

 is so deepseated that it is impossible to 

 hope that they may ever in any great 

 numbers be made Christians. The Mo- 

 hammedans look with disdain on Chris- 

 tianity as an older religion. They have 

 a new patent, and therefore they look 

 with contempt on European ideas and 

 on American ideas. Now, in the Phil- 

 ippines we have a very different condi- 

 tion of affairs. We have 6 millions of 

 people, nearly 7 millions, who are sin- 

 cere Christians, and who have been so 

 for 2 50 years. They are Christian chil- 

 dren because they have been brought up 

 by the friars, who thought that it was 

 unwise to expose them to the tempta- 

 tions and demoralizations of the Spanish 

 or any other world. But they did in- 

 still in them the principles of Christian- 

 ity, and they did turn their faces, their 

 minds, and their ambitions toward Eu- 

 rope and toward America. It is from 

 these two countries that these people 

 derived their ideas. Therefore I think 

 that we are right in saying that experi- 

 ence founded on dealing with Moham- 

 medans and Hindoos in respect of pop- 

 ular self-government may be doubted as 

 an absolute guide as to what we may 

 expect to do with people who are the 

 only Christian Malays and the only far- 

 Oriental Christians. 



Another objection which may be made 

 to the education of these people is that 

 if you educate them you will educate 

 some of them so that they will become 

 unruly ; they will become constant revo- 

 lutionists, and you will always have 

 trouble. Well, I agree that it is possi- 

 ble to educate a man much beyond his 

 capacity, so that he uses his education 

 for purposes for which a man of much 

 less education would not waste it. But 



the advantage and absolute necessity 

 in a popular government of having pub- 

 lic opinion that comes from a wide- 

 spread intelligence, not profound, not 

 university, but based on primary edu- 

 cation, furnishes an antidote for the 

 poison of the revolutionary tendency of 

 light-headed, irresponsible characters. 



You can tell often whether a people 

 are fitted for education by whether 

 they take to it or not. We have in the 

 Philippines a much severer struggle to 

 teach the Filipinos than they would 

 have in the Malay states, or in Java, or 

 in India, because we have a people who 

 have no common language that is fit to 

 be used by a civilized people, and there- 

 fore we have not only to teach them, 

 but we have to teach them a different 

 language from their mother tongue. 

 There are some twelve different dialects 

 or languages in the Philippines among 

 the civilized tribes, and until they shall 

 have a common language, it is hope- 

 less to expect solidarity as a nation 

 or intelligence as a people. Therefore 

 we determined that we ought to teach 

 them English. It is true that they had 

 learned, some of them — about 7 per 

 cent of them — Spanish, but they did not 

 look to Spanish as a language which 

 they cherished. Spanish is not the lan- 

 guage of the Orient. Spanish is not 

 the language of free institutions, and 

 we concluded that as the question was 

 only between teaching 93 per cent and 

 100 per cent we might as well do the 

 job thoroughly and teach them English. 



ARE WE FORCING ENGLISH DOWN 

 THEIR THROATS AS WITH A 

 FORCE PUMP? 



Now, our anti-imperialist friends say, 

 and I think that even the president of 

 Cornell University has intimated, that 

 we are forcing English down the throats 

 of an unwilling people as with a force 

 pump. As a matter of fact, the teach- 

 ing of English began before civil gov- 

 ernment reached the islands; the instinct 



