Whether our promise looked to the true welfare of the Philippines may still be a debatable question. But there is not a .vestige of doubt that our assurances were received in good faith by the Filipino. and they can not now be withdrawn or revised without compromising and doing detriment to him. Turn now to the long concatenation of statements by Presidents. members of presidential Cabinets. representatives of the United States in the Philippines. spokesmen for business. agriculture. and laborprotagonists and antagonists of Filipino nationhood: President McKinley. at the very outset of the American occupation. said to the American people: " The Philippines are ours not to exploit. but to develop. to civilize. to educate. to train in the science of selfgovernment." And he expressed the hope that the American commissioners would be received as bearers of "the richest blessings of a liberating rather than a conquering nation." Jacob Gould Schurman. president of the first Philippine Commission. was undoubtedly speaking the mind of President McKinley as well as his own when he said: "The destiny of the Philippine Islands is not to be a State or a Territory in the United States of America. but a daughter republic of oursa new birth of liberty on the other side of the Pacific. which shall animate and energize those lovely islands of the tropical seas. and rearing its head aloft. stand as a monument of progress and a beacon of hope to all the oppressed and benighted millions of the Asiatic Continent." I have been unable to find any direct statement by William H. Taft when he was President. but he spoke pretty decisively on the subject when he was Secretary of War. In a report to President Roosevelt in 1908.