372 The National Geographic Magazine 



examination, and he compares it with 

 the examination that a man has to pass 

 to enter the colonial service of Hong- 

 kong, China, or Calcutta, India. That 

 is an examination, I should judge from 

 what he says, equal to that a man must 

 pass when he gets the degree of 1 ' A. B. ' ' 

 at Harvard or Yale. Well, I said to 

 Mr Ireland that if that were the kind 

 of examination we had to put a man 

 through we would not have anybody in 

 the government service of the islands. 

 That is all right for a country that has 

 been 250 years in colonial government, 

 with such a lot of sons anxious to go 

 out somewhere and fit themselves for the 

 service ; that has been in the business 

 long enough to establish schools and 

 universities in England, where they 

 directly fit people for the service, and 

 that has been sufficiently long in the 

 colonial service to establish a service 

 where you have a pension, and where 

 a man may look to that service as the 

 service of his life, and as a place from 

 which, at the very reasonable age of sixty 

 or sixty-two years, he may retire on his 

 pension knowing that he and his family 

 will be taken care of. Now, it is pos- 

 sible to get men under such circum- 

 stances ; and no one has a more pro- 

 found admiration for the colonial service 

 of England than I have. I know that 

 it is an admirable service, and I wish 

 that we, too, could have such a service ; 

 but the idea of talking about our hav- 

 ing such a service when we have been 

 in the islands three years, and that we 

 could have a university education as a 

 basis for a complete civil service seems to 

 me to indicate that our brother Ireland 

 shot too far. He did not know how 

 ' ' to restrain himself, ' ' as Lord Coke 

 said, " to the fitness of the thing." 



IF WE INTRODUCE CHINESE WE WILL 

 HAVE A REVOLUTION 



Now, the next issue that Mr Ireland 

 makes is a very serious one — one, I 

 agree, upon which strong arguments can 



be made upon both sides — and that is 

 the question as to whether we should 

 admit Chinese laborers to the islands to 

 build them up. Mr Ireland says that 

 we have no laborers in the islands wor- 

 thy of the name, and that if we expect 

 to do anything there we might as well 

 at once admit the Chinese ; that they 

 would build up the islands, and that it 

 would be for the benefit of the Filipinos. 

 But I do not think that Mr Ireland 

 looked at the result of that policy as he 

 saw it exhibited at Singapore and in the 

 Straits Settlements, with a full consid- 

 eration of what it meant to the Malays, 

 who were there before they admitted the 

 Chinese, for he found that all the busi- 

 ness and all the work and all the money 

 and all the influence and everything that 

 was worth having was Chinese. There 

 is a superficial appearance of English in 

 the government, but the money and the 

 work and the business are largely Chi- 

 nese, and our friends the Malays sit 

 around in the park and enjoy the sight. 

 They are relegated to the back bench. 

 Now, then, that is certain to be the case 

 if we admit the Chinese to the Philip- 

 pines, and the question is whether under 

 our promise to them to govern the Phil- 

 ippines for the benefit of the Filipinos 

 we can afford to bring about a condition 

 in which the Filipinos shall be relegated 

 to the back seat and the Chinamen shall 

 be invited forward to share all the ben- 

 efit that may come from the development 

 of the rich country. 



Another reason why we cannot do it 

 is because if we do we will have a rev- 

 olution. There is the deepest feeling 

 possible against the admission of Chi- 

 nese into those islands. There are to- 

 day about 50,000 of them in the islands r 

 if not more. The reason why the Fili- 

 pinos do not like the Chinese is this : 

 A Chinaman will come into the islands 

 and he will work for twelve or fifteen 

 dollars (silver) a month — that is, six 

 dollars or six dollars and a half a month. 

 He will save out of that about ten dol- 



