The Philippines by Way of India

MAY, 1913

BY H. FIELDING-HALL

THE Editor of the Atlantic Monthly has been good enough to ask me if there is anything I can say about the task of the United States in the Philippines— the difficulties that arise from such a relationship between a Western democracy and an Eastern people, and in what way they can be surmounted.¹

I have never been to the Philippines. The nearest I have been is Hong Kong, and the only Filipinos I have seen are the quartermasters on the P. & O. boats running from Hong Kong to Japan. Neither have I been to the United States, though I have many friends there. Of first-hand knowledge, therefore, I have none. Yet I think there are some things I can say.

The Filipinos are an Eastern people, not so very far removed, according to what I hear, from some other Eastern peoples whom I know well; the United Stales holds a people which is cousin to my own, removed in distance and in circumstance, yet akin, and the task before the United States and the Philippines — how mutually to aid in the task of creating a stable and a good government in those Islands — is the same task that has confronted, and that still confronts, us in India. In greater things, therefore, there is a similarity between the English in India and the Americans in the Philippines, and the differences are only of local circumstances of time and place and persons. The objective and the principles are the same.

I will therefore ask the reader to come with me first to India and to Burma, to see somewhat of things there: how the same problems which confront America in the Philippines confront us there; what lies below those problems; and the only possible solution there is for them. We may so acquire some principles and some ideas which are not merely local, but are universal; not temporary, but permanent; not true only of the English in India, but of the Americans in the Philippines. They would require adaptation in method and in detail, but that is little. When you know what to aim at, you will find out how to hit it.

The first knowledge to acquire is, not that of forms, institutions, customs, habits, conventions, parties, but that of humanity itself. For that includes all things, and conventions of all kinds are but garments it endues to keep it warm, or ornaments to render it attractive, or fetters bound upon it by circumstance or fate. Let us therefore look at humanity in the East.

When you go there, the first impression it gives you is of its apartness. All seems so different from what you are accustomed to at home. It. is not only that the setting — of blue skies, of palms and tropic flora, of a strange architecture, all bathed in sunlight — is so strange; it is tire people. Their skins are black or brown; their faces, their hair, their clothes, their voices, are quite different. Their ways are not our ways; even their walk is different. It cannot be, we think, that any common humanity binds us two. Theirs is a life apart; within their skins there is a soul apart, an Eastern soul, unlike the Western, hardly akin to it, a thing divided far from us.

Even when time has brought us a little familiarity with these people the strangeness is not lessened. It grows. All that we observe of them denotes difference, and not likeness, to ourselves. In their ways of life, their marriages, their religions, they are apart from us. We do not understand them.

We cannot understand them. Therefore why try? The Oriental mind is inscrutable. Could you understand it, it were not worth the trouble. Therefore why bother? They are our servants, laborers, we buy and sell for them, we rule them. Enough. Leave it at that. And there for the most it is left.

Yet for him who will not stop there, for whom a barrier exists only to be climbed, who cares to go behind the appearances of things to things themselves, a way soon opens. Gangler, the World-Seeker, went beyond this barrier to the land of Utgard and learned secrets; come with me beyond this deceptive zone of outward things into the heart of the East, and you, too, shall learn secrets. They may be useful. Let us see.

All this apartness is but surface. It is the expression which differs, not the emotion or the thought sought to be expressed. Humanity is one, has the same hopes and fears, moves toward the same ideals, and there is no difference East or West.

Of course this knowledge comes but slowly, and by bits. You note, for instance, that when husband and wife go traveling together, the man walks in front, careless and free, and the woman walks behind, carrying the bundle. Therefore you say, ‘The Oriental cares not for his women; he despises his wife and uses her as a beast of burden.’ Most Occidentals never get further than that. But if you are observant you go out in the jungle yourself, and you discover things. When you walk abroad there are difficulties and dangers. The paths are overgrown and thorny, creepers must be cut back, there are cattle and buffaloes to be driven off, and buffaloes are ugly creatures; there are snakes. In the villages are village dogs which snarl and snap. You are a man, yet you will be glad of some one to go in front of you with a hatchet to clear your way. No woman would walk in front, and the man must be free. Now you see the reason why the man walks in front. If you want to confirm it you inquire and find that this is true. Thus the Japanese, the Burman, goes in front of his wife for the same reason that the Occidental goes behind — from courtesy. If he continues to do so when it is unnecessary, as in towns where there are roads, it is because a convention once formed is hard to break, East or West.

With this as a clue you can go on and make discovery after discovery, and finally you learn to know this, that East or West the instinctive relationship of the sexes is the same. The ideal is the union of one man and one woman: first, into one flesh, and following that, into one spirit. Polygamy, infant marriage, and all other deviations, are the result of environment.

Polygamy had its origin in the surplus of women over men due to the loss of the latter by war or the dangers of uncivilized life. Infant marriage and zenanas were barriers raised by subject nations against the lust of conquerors or of priests. Polyandry was due to the necessity of restricting population by killing the female babies; the means of subsistence had reached its limit. Human nature is forced into these channels by circumstance first, and they are perpetuated by convention, because afterwards each child is educated to believe in the ways of its fathers as it grows up. It is convention fossilized. But human nature is not altered; and underneath, the soul is the same. It would burst these bonds if it could; it does when it can.

Read their folk tales, their love stories, those which warm the hearts of boys and girls, of men and women, ay, even of the old; those which, rising from the heart, appeal unto the heart. Their ideals are our ideals. We do not in the West reach very near them yet; they reach less near, perhaps, but that is circumstance and flesh, not soul. It is the hardness of our hearts. It will take us long ages yet to reach our ideals. As it is with love, which is the mother emotion of all the emotions which are life, so with all others. Easterns wish and strive for just what we wish and strive for. The method is different, must be different. ‘A cosy fireside’ appeals not to them, nor does ‘ the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land’ appeal to us Northerns, but the ideal is the same. The soul of humanity, the World-Soul, is one. Its infinite variety of expression is due to the different media through which it is exhibited. It strives ever toward the same ideals, to be realized by different methods, because there is no absolute, but all things are relative, to time, place, and person.

It is the same with governments. The first ideal of every people in its government, in forming or accepting it, is to attain freedom. There is freedom from attack from without, freedom from anarchy within; that is the first necessity. These may be achieved under many forms of government; they accept that which offers the best possibility of individual freedom. A foreign despotism may be the best at the time. But, later on, other necessities manifest themselves, and a people becomes conscious that to develop individually it must develop corporately as well, that an individual is but a cell in the life of a nation. To develop the nation, local government is a necessity, but it is a later necessity than the two first mentioned.

All this was manifested very clearly in India. Long ago there were selfgoverning communities in India, with a wide degree of individual freedom, sex equality, and a relatively high civilization. These decayed under the stress of various forces, the most powerful of which was religion. Anarchy began to appear, and consequent on anarchy there was the foreign domination of the Moguls. This was accepted as a lesser evil than anarchy. But this rapidly decayed, and anarchy again arose. Then the English appeared, and the country for the most part accepted their rule gladly, because it insured peace, internal and external, and a relatively high system of jurisprudence and administration. India was able to recover from the wars which had desolated it and to draw free breath again. The Mutiny was not, for the most part, a people’s war, but an insurrection of mercenary troops who strove for empire. In the whole course of the history of our Indian conquest there was only one people’s war, and that was in Burma in 1885-90.

When we had made our conquests we had to organize a whole system of administration. Of the old indigenous systems of a thousand years ago nothing was left. The Mogul system which we had succeeded disappeared on the defeat of its heads. It was not founded in the soil. It was a government from above. Its local officers were not heads of local organisms; they had not grown up, but stretched down. The heart, was not in the people below, but in the emperor or ruler at the top. When he was deposed, all his fabric of government fell with him. It was not indigenous. Nothing remained but innumerable villages, each a community in itself.

We therefore set to work to establish a new system of government. Again, it was not indigenous. It was imported, like the officials who worked it. True, it had strong roots, but they were in England, not in India. It is from England that the government derives its strength. It is a branch of a great tree whose roots are six thousand miles away. It is adapted to the needs of India, but is not Indian. Were we defeated in the North Sea it would disappear as rapidly and completely as the Mogul Empire did; its trunk being felled, it would wither away. It cannot draw any nourishment from India.

Now you can begin to see how the present discontent in India has arisen. For long, India was content. It wanted peace, and we gave it peace; it wanted time to grow, and we gave it time and opportunity. We were, under the circumstances, not only the best available government, but the best conceivable government. I do not say that we acted from altruistic motives, but I do say that the results were admirable.

But things have changed. India has had a hundred years of peace and individual liberty, it has now begun to realize that life holds more than this. Its various nations are realizing their nationhood, and wishing to express it in more than words. They are also realizing many other things. Our laws are better than no laws at all, but they are defective; our administration is better than anarchy, but it is alien and unsympathetic. Not being rooted in the soil, it does not respond readily to the people’s needs. It has to reason out things. Now reason is a very bad substitute for that instinctive knowledge which comes from identity.

Hence the very natural unrest, an unrest which grows, and must grow, because it is in the nature of things for it to grow. India is chafing at her swaddling-bands, and the older and stronger she grows, the more she will chafe.

What is to be done?

Indianize the government, say some. Appoint Indians instead of Englishmen to be administrators. Gradually replace the personnel till India is governed entirely by Indians.

There could not be a more disastrous mistake than to attempt this. The cry is founded on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of governments, their functions and duties, the causes of their stability and health. You cannot Indianize an English institution. You cannot put Indian wine into English bottles.

A government to be strong and healthy must be rooted firmly in some soil. Where would an Indianized government of India be rooted? Not in India. It would not be representative of anything there. It would be responsible to Downing Street, not India. It would take its orders from England; it would look to England for help in difficulties. It is a perfectly impossible thing to imagine a government of India with Indian officers.

Then establish local parliaments, say some.

With what functions?

To rule? They could not rule. The government of India, which is a branch of the Imperial government, could not be controlled, even in details, by any local assembly. How could it?

To advise? There is nothing so absolutely futile as an individual or an assembly whose sole duty is to advise. The only assurance that the advice offered will be reasonable comes from the fact that the adviser accepts the responsibility if it be wrong. But to give these assemblies responsibility would be to give them power. They would be untried, made up of men with no experience of government: lawyers and newspaper editors for the most part. They would rest on nothing. A limited franchise would be useless, and to enfranchise three hundred millions is impossible. They could have no knowledge, nothing behind them. They would simply invite disaster.

What then is to be done?

India cannot go on as it is. Even down to the peasants the unrest is real, if inarticulate. And it is well-founded.

There is only one thing to be done. You must begin at the beginning and cultivate again in India a local tree of self-government. The germs are there. All India is made up of local communities called villages (not necessarily one hamlet). These have had from time immemorial a common life. Each is an organism in itself and accustomed to self-government.

Unfortunately, the village organism has been greatly injured by us. My experience is of Burma and Madras, but what is true of them is true universally. We have weakened and debilitated the self-governing unit by continual interference. This has been done with the best motives, of course. We have sought efficiency and justice. But you can get neither in this way. The village community itself can alone manage its communal affairs with any efficiency or justice. Interference makes bad worse. I know by much personal experience that there is nothing they dread and hate like this interference. If the villages were maintained on their old basis, no interference would ever be necessary. If it seems so now it is because the organism has been weakened by injudicious and ignorant interference till it sometimes will not work at all. These should be restored to their original status, and helped to develop themselves naturally, to grow and expand. Little by little, greater powers and responsibilities would be given them. Then they would naturally fall into groups, — there were such in old days, — natural groups, not artificial like our districts; and to each group a council and executive — the direct outcome of the village council and executive — could be allowed. To these bodies greater powers could be assigned.

In this way a natural, and therefore efficient, system of self-government could be encouraged. What exact form it might take as it grew, no one can tell. It would become manifest in the working. The principal condition for its health is that it be not interfered with. If rightly constituted, it would require no interference, only encouragement and help. Thus under the shadow of the English Tree of Government, a local tree with a myriad roots would slowly rise, and as it rose the English Tree should retract its shadow. So alone would a firm, a living organism of government be built up, that would be so securely founded as to fear no storm.

How long it will take the English government to see this, I do not know; but it is the only way, and in time it must be seen. It will take time to succeed. Nations are not made in a day. But it is bound to come.

Now let us see whether from the state of India we cannot deduce principles that will apply equally to the Philippines. I think we can.

The first is that individual liberty must be secured. This is the condition on which all else depends and grows; it can be done only by the American government.

It can be done only by the American government in its own way. It cannot be done in the Philippine way, or by Philippine agency. The American government of the Philippines must be American first. It must be as far as possible in sympathy with the Philippine people, but it must never allow that to affect its efficiency. It can only be efficient by being purely American, drawing its strength, its ideas, and its methods from America. By methods I do not mean methods of constituting a government — election and representation; but methods of administration which should be adapted mutatis mutandis to the Philippines. Americans can efficiently work only American methods, just as we in India can efficiently work only English methods.

Therefore do not allow Filipinos, however well-educated and able, to enter your superior service. It has been tried in India, and has failed. The causes of failures are many, and are obvious. The machinery of the higher government being American, only Americans can work it efficiently. An American alone thoroughly understands the object of the laws and can administer them. The American alone has that camaraderie with other officials and with non-officials, merchants, bankers, etcetera, which is so absolutely necessary in order that the machinery may run smoothly. An American alone has the necessary authority; and, moreover, the people dislike and distrust their follows who enter what is really a foreign service. This is very noticeable in India. The people at large accept an Englishman’s rule because he is an Englishman, and England rules India. But the Indian in our service they regard rather as a traitor. He has left them; he has accepted foreign ideas; he rules his fellow men not by reason of their suffrage, but by reason of foreign appointment. He is, and must be, inefficient. He cannot represent the people before government because he is himself a government official. Therefore keep your higher administration purely American.

But that government must be in sympathy with the people, and make things as easy for them as possible.

It is exactly here that the difficulty begins.

I suppose it is natural for all of us, English or American or German, for every nationality, to think that in its methods it has discovered not merely what is best relatively to itself and its times, but to the absolute. We think our laws approximate to the absolutely right, our courts to the absolutely just, our land and revenue systems to the absolutely efficient. We have only to transplant them as they are, to insure good results. There could be no greater mistake, for there is no absolute in these matters. They are all relative.

To begin with, there are the courts of criminal justice. Do not suppose you can take your codes and apply them in the Philippines as in America. You cannot. Every people has its own ideas on certain matters connected with crime, which differ from those of other peoples. For instance, in English law an assault is little; a theft, no matter how small, is a serious matter. To the Oriental it is the reverse; a theft is a small matter, an assault a great one; he estimates his self-respect and dignity above his pocket.

Again, no Oriental believes in severe punishment for crime. He considers our punishments wickedly severe, therefore he often wall not complain, or give evidence, or he gives false evidence. Remember that ‘summum jus, summa injuria,’ and where juries do not exist to mitigate and put common sense into law, great harm may be done. It is done in India.

Therefore try to find out how the people at large regard crime; try to get their perspective. You will find that it differs from yours considerably, owing to the difference of circumstances. It is as true a view as yours; as regards the actual circumstances, a much better view. They want to prevent and stop crime quite as much as you do. Therefore get your courts into accordance with the consciences of the people. Otherwise they will become what ours are in India.

It is the same with civil law. Our procedure is far too complicated and too expensive. For all small cases it should be made cheap, expeditious, and sensible. An Oriental wants a case settled. He would far rather have it settled against him than that the case should drag out indefinitely. They have often told me this. Do your best, therefore, to make the first hearing complete, and have no appeals. It is advocates who create the delays. Do not let your courts, and therefore your justice, fall into the hands of barristers, pleaders, or advocates. As matters stand in India, the barristers or advocates are usually the principal parties, the judge is no one. The people hate this; they misuse it and abuse it.

If the people had their way, there would be no one between the judge and the parties. He would have subordinate officials to prepare each case for his hearing under his directions, and there would be no advocates.

Consider now what an enormous amount of money goes to lawyers and barristers. For what? Mainly to obscure and pervert justice. Do not let the Filipinos be lawyer-ridden as we are in India.

Do not try to reform the people by laws, as we have tried to do by the gambling acts. Law is to preserve public morality, not private morality.

Remember that if you get your courts out of touch with the people you will not only encourage perjury, as in India, but you will make them hated and inefficient.

As to land, bear in mind that the objective is an industrious, independent peasantry. Great estates are injurious, and give rise to political discontent. Therefore so frame the land laws as to tell for the former, and against the latter. To keep the small farmer independent there should be Raiffeisen banks ² in every village, such as I began in Burma. Their value in every way is great; it is beyond computation, not merely financially, but as an educative force.

And whatever you do, never allow the Filipinos to be exploited by your own people — monopolists, great corporations, and so on. In India we have almost, though not quite, escaped this; and it is greatly to our advantage. In their own places they have great value in encouraging and building up industries. But there is danger. Remember that the people do not differentiate much between a foreign company and a foreign government. They see a connection — even if we do not.

Finally comes education; that is to say, helping the children to develop their powers of observation and intelligence and self-command. That is the only education. Reading, writing, and all other matters which are taught are instruction, which is quite different. Instruction has its value, but it is nothing compared to that of education.

Therefore let your schools be secular, because religions of all kinds arc more apt to dull the intelligence than to develop it. If the parents want their children to learn religion, let them arrange it. The duty of the American government in the Philippines is, not to any form of religion, but to the intelligence of the children. You will find that the people will like this. They dislike the subsidizing of denominational schools of all sorts, even of their own denomination. They do not like the mixture. It is a Western idea to mix up education and religion. I do not say that it is not done in the East, but I do say that the people do not approve of it.

But of what use to enter into details. If your officers, and therefore your administration, have sympathy, that is to say, understanding, if your administration can look at things as the people do, it will soon see how best to adapt itself to the people. If it be remembered always that the people have common sense, that they think and reason just as you do, only from data which are different because their circumstances are different, the difficulty soon disappears. It requires no special gift to understand an Oriental people; anybody can do it if he will give up his prejudices and self-righteousness and try.

So, having established an administration in sympathy with the people, an administration purely American, strong and living because a branch of the American government at Washington, you can with a clear conscience take the next step. Under the ægis of this administration, a local system of government should be encouraged.

This will be an even greater difficulty. It will require great study, great tact, great self-repression, a sympathy which does not mean being sorry for the Filipinos, but being able to see things with their eyes. It must not be an imported system, but a natural and indigenous system. Unless it is that, it is worth nothing, for it will have no life.

Villages should be granted as much autonomy as possible. Each village should have its council and headman, its village fund, its duties, and its powers. The headman should be considered, not a government official, but the representative of the village before government.

Every village organism should have the power of trying all petty cases of crime, or civil disputes, without appeal. And no advocates or lawyers should be allowed on either side. In small cases the headman and a councilor can discover truth far better without such interference.

Then, villages should be grouped in natural divisions, each group with its council and its fund, for, say, local roads, bridges, and so on, with, again, local jurisdiction in certain matters.

A local government board should be formed at headquarters to supervise this local self-government, and this board should be, if not at first, certainly before long, purely native. This is where your educated and able native will come in; here he will be invaluable.

And so gradually the organism, and the ability of the people for managing it, would grow; and it would become stable. As they grew, more and more duties and powers should be handed over to it. Gradually American protection and direction could be withdrawn, until at length from these local bodies you could draw a truly representative and effective assembly to govern the whole country.

I do not say that it would be easy to do this. It would be most difficult, but it would be worth doing.

Meanwhile have nothing to do with elective assemblies, or assemblies of any kind which would have power of advice without responsibility. They would be fatal. Do not be affected by the discontent of a small educated class. They are not the people.

You must not deliver from one tyranny to raise another, which would be the worse because it would have America behind it.

So will you establish eventually your principles of no taxation without representation. You will render representation not only possible but true: a representation, not of individuals, but of communities. And when the Philippines have grown to be a nation, they will be a daughter nation to you.

I know no other way in which you can accomplish this.