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native is urged to confess. Sometimes the process has to be repeated. In one instance it was repeated thrice and the victim died.

I ask myself, why is it that we have become immersed in this slough? Why is it that we are called upon to consider accusations of extreme barbarity, on the part of American soldiers, the mere suggestion of which, three years ago, would have seemed impossible? It is because we are trying to do a thing which is contrary to the spirit of our institutions, to our traditions, to our ideals as Americans. We are going to extreme lengths just because we know that we have become for the moment alienated from our true self, that we are bidding defiance to the sentiments which are most congenial to us. Just as a kindly and humane person, when he is betrayed into resorting to cruelty, is apt to force the pace, is apt to become for the moment ten times more cruel than the more sullen and callous natures. We are engaged in trying to break the soul of a people, of a people that values good government, but rightly values self-government even more than good government, of a people that revolts against the idea of colonial subjection to us or to any other power, of a people that, however divided in other ways, is united in the demand for independence.

At first we were told that it was the ambition of Aguinaldo that prolonged the war. Aguinaldo is a captive, but the war still goes on. And Major Gardener tells us that we are sowing the seeds of revolution hereafter that will break out whenever an opportunity occurs. We were told that it was the ambition of a Tagalog oligarchy to acquire control of the archipelago that prolonged the war. But it seems that the Visayans are as stubborn in their resistance as the Tagalogs. No; it is not Aguinaldo, it is not a Tagalog oligarchy, it is the awakened national consciousness of a people that opposes us, a spiritual force which survives defeat, which the dispersion of organized armies cannot disintegrate, which, like a fire, goes on smouldering beneath the ashes, breaking out anew ever and ever again until either it achieves its aim or those who harbor that aim are exterminated. And torture is used, as a last attempt, to overcome by excessive physical pain that impalpable spiritual force, just as it was used in the Middle Ages to overcome heresy, with this twofold result: the extermination of the heretics, in the wars of the Albigentians, and the triumph of heresy in the Protestant Reformation.

Hear what President Schurman, the head of the first Philippine commission, says. Surely his testimony should be considered of

weight:

You could not find in all the islands a single Filipino who favors colonial dependence on the United States. If the Filipinos come to believe that our jingoes and imperialists represent the mind of the American people, they will, like the Boers, fight until they are annihilated: our crowning victory would be their utter extinction. [And this is precisely as one who represents them has recently put it: “independence or annihilation."] Our assertion of sovereignty is supported at the present time only by the federal party, who are numerically small, who are held together by the cohesive force of public office, and who, worst of all, are animated by the delusion that the Philippine Islands will be admitted, first as a Territory and then as a State, into the American Union. Apart from this exception, which rests on a misapprehension, the Filipinos are opposed to us and unanimously demand independence. . . . The Christianized Filipinos of Luzon and the Visayan Islands number about six and a half million souls. Formerly divided into rival communities, they have been solidly unified by the events of the past few years, and the new-born national consciousness clamors loudly and incessantly for independence. . . . They are fairly entitled to it; and, united as they now are, I think they might very soon be safely entrusted with it. In their educated men, as thorough gentlemen as one meets in Europe and America, this democracy of six and a half million Christians has its foreordained leaders. .. The American people cannot be democratic at home and despotic in Asia; and independence is the only alternative to despotism in the Philippines, except the admission of the islands as a State in the American Union, which is forever impracticable.

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The Philippine question is still an open one, as President Schurman steadily reiterates. Congress is not yet finally committed; the President is not; the nation is not. Why, then, should we not now give to the Filipinos the pledge which we gave the Cubans, but which we have studiously refrained from giving them—namely that we will recognize their independence, under reasonable guarantees, at the earliest possible moment? If this pledge had been given at the outset, in all human probability this whole wretched war would have been avoided. If it were given now, there is every hope that it would pave the way for peace.

This has been a bitter subject to dwell upon. But the facts must be made known, and public attention must be fixed upon them. We have no right to turn away from the contemplation of such facts because they are horrible, because we do not wish to believe them, because it mortifies our national self-esteem to entertain them. We have no right to regard the charges as to the conduct of the war as mere sensational news which we do not care to investigate, on which we have not the time to dwell, distracted as we are by the multiplicity of our other interests. If we have undertaken to interfere, as we have, in the destinies of another people, it is the duty of every one of us, of every citizen, of every man and woman, to weigh the evidence as it becomes accessible, to try to arrive at an impartial conclusion, and to influence public opinion so that justice may be done.

And there is above all this immediate duty: to demand that the

facts be made known, all the facts, whether they be damaging or not, that nothing be concealed. We do not wish to be kept in tutelage, we do not desire the officials in Washington to decide for us what it is safe for us to know. We ask that the doors of the Senate Investigating Committee be thrown open, that not merely a few favored news agencies but all the representatives of the press be admitted, to the end that the facts be promptly and fully conveyed to the public. The facts we want, all the facts, so that if there be an evil thing, we can purge that evil thing from amongst us.

Of this I, for one, am well assured, that whatever the commercial interests or the ambitions of individuals or of corporate bodies may suggest, the American people, as a whole, do not desire, even for the sake of the golden prizes of the trade with the Orient, or of a favorable station near the wealth of China, to march over the prostrate body of a people whose sole offence is their desire for liberty; that the American people do not desire, and will not permit, that the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, which we had believed to be a thing of the past forever, shall be revived under the sacred banner of this great Republic. FELIX ADLER.

OUR GROWING DEPENDENCE UPON THE TROPICS.

THE increasing contributions of the tropics to the comforts and requirements of daily life among the people of the United States must have been observed by every thoughtful individual who compares the well-supplied table of to-day with that of a quarter of a century ago, or contrasts the surroundings of his home or the conveniences of daily life with those of earlier years. Tropical and subtropical fruits are now the ordinary accompaniments of the table and in the hands and mouths. of the very urchins upon the streets. Sugar and coffee and tea and cacao, which by earlier generations were considered luxuries, are now necessaries of daily life everywhere. The average consumption of sugar, which in the year 1870 was thirty-three pounds per capita, was in 1901 sixty-eight pounds per capita; and the quantity of coffee consumed has increased from six pounds per capita per annum in 1870 to nearly twelve pounds per capita in 1901; that of cacao is six times as great per capita as in 1870; while that of tea is still as great per capita as in 1870, despite the great increase in the use of coffee and cacao. Silks and satins, which were luxuries only a generation or two ago, are now considered a necessary part of the wardrobe of a large share of the population. India-rubber, which a generation ago was almost unknown, is now utilized everywhere, for clothing, for household requirements, for machinery, and even for the tires of our carriages.

The great railway lines, having made their way westward across the continents and connected city with city and the interior with the sea coast, have turned at right angles and are now forcing their way toward the equator from both the north and the south temperate zones, bringing from those sections where nature produces with such lavish hand the sugar, the coffee and cacao, the fruits and nuts, the spices and gums and dyewoods, the silks, the fibres, and the rubber, or transferring them to the rapidly multiplying steamships for transportation to our doors and distribution among our whole people. The effect of this upon our daily life and upon the habits and health of our people is readily observed. Not only is there greater comfort among all the people in the

matter of clothing and personal and household conveniences, but the variety of food supply has greatly increased, and with these changes have come improved health and a lengthening of the span of life. Students

of vital statistics assure us that the average life of man has perceptibly lengthened in the past half-century, especially in the countries that have made much advancement in material conditions; and there can be no doubt that the increase in the variety and quantity of our food supply, in better clothing, and in other comforts and conveniences of life has contributed to, if not actually produced, this lengthening of the span of life.

This increase in the contributions of the tropics to the daily life of man has been general throughout the countries where prosperity or an activity in manufacturing and commerce is the rule; but it seems to be especially marked in the United States, which now imports more than a million dollars' worth of tropical and subtropical foodstuffs and raw materials every day in the year. The increased reliance upon the tropics is probably greater, proportionately, in the United States than in most other countries, since a much larger share of our sugar is drawn from the tropics than is the case with other, and especially the European, countries, which in most cases now produce their own sugar from beets. The United States has during recent years consumed nearly one-half of the cane sugar of the world which enters into international commerce, and more than one-half of the coffee of the world. In the year just ended, the importations of goods usually considered as of tropical or subtropical production amounted to 400 million dollars, or considerably more than $1,000,000 for every day in the year, including Sundays and holidays; while thirty years ago they amounted to but 143 millions, or less than $400,000 per day.

Even these figures fail to show the real growth in the importation and consumption of the products of the tropics, because the reduction in the value per unit of quantity is so great that in many cases a dollar's worth to-day means a much greater quantity of the article imported than it did in earlier years. The cost of sugar in the country from which it was imported averaged about 5 cents per pound in 1870, and 2.3 cents per pound in 1901, or less than one-half that of 1870. The cost of the coffee imported in the "seventies" averaged from 12 cents to 18 cents per pound; in 1899 and 1900 it averaged 6.5 cents; and in 1901 the average was 7.3 cents per pound. The average cost of tea imported from 1870 to 1880 ranged from 24 cents to 37 cents per pound at the port from which it was shipped to the United States, while in

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