Speech #560028231

To accept the Tagal followers of Aguinaldo as representing the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands would be just as intelligent as to hold that because William Penn made a treaty with the Delawares we thereby bound and were bound to the Sioux. Pawnees. and Apaches. who roamed over the great plains of the West. There has never been a Filipino nation. there has never been a Filipino government. there is not a scintilla of evidence that at any period they had any central government whatever or were capable of having any form of government larger than a village community which was not an unrestrained Asiatic despotism. whether exercised by a Sultan in the Mohammedan regions or by some military dictator of like political instincts among those who had come under the rule and example of Spain. Of selfgovernment. as we understand it or as it is understood by Western civilization. there has never been the faintest conception in the Philippine Islands. and there never will be unless we give them the opportunity. and by slow processes teach them what it is. Geographically and ethnicallybecause they are scattered islands and because the people are divided among 84 tribes in all stages of development. from savagery to civilization. speaking fifty or sixty different dialects or languages. with every form of religionthey are today not only unfit for selfgovernment. but from the physical facts alone selfgovernment is impossible to the Philippines as a whole.