The Filipinos can run a far better government than the Cubans. In 1898, when Admiral Dewey read in the papers that we were going to give Cuba independence, he wired home from Manila:
These people are far superior in their intelligence, and more capable of self-government than the people of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races.
After a year in Cuba and nearly six in the Philippines, two as an officer of the army that subjugated the Filipinos, and the remainder as a judge over them, I cordially concur in the opinion of Admiral Dewey, but with this addition, viz., that the people of those islands, whatever of conscious political unity they may have lacked in 1898, were welded into absolute oneness as a people by their original struggle for independence against us, and will remain forever so welded by their incurable aspirations for a national life of their own under a republic framed in imitation of ours. Furthermore, the one great difference between Cuba and the Philippines is that the latter country has no race cancer forever menacing its peace, and sapping its self-reliance. The Philippine people are absolutely one people, as to race, color, and previous condition. Again, American sugar and tobacco interests will never permit the competitive Philippine sugar and tobacco industries to grow as Nature and Nature's God intended; and the American importers of Manila hemp--which is to the Philippines what cotton is to the South--have, through special Congressional legislation still standing on our statute books--to the shame of the nation--so depressed the hemp industry of the islands that the market price it brings to-day is just one half what it brought ten years ago.
If three strong and able Americans, familiar with insular conditions and still young enough to undertake the task, were told by a President of the United States, by authority of Congress, "Go out there and set up a stable native government by July 4, 1921, [1] and then come away," they could and would do it; and that government would be a success; and one of the greatest moral victories in the annals of free government would have been written by the gentlemen concerned upon the pages of their country's history.