The Problem of the Pacific Peoples and Problems of the
Pacific. By J. Macmillan Brown. 2 Vols., illustrated. (Fisher lJnwin. 50s.) l'utt good or for ill the feet of India have been set by us on the path which leads towards independence. As we watch the heterogeneous peoples of Hindustan walk along that dillicult track, it is eminently worth while to observe the progress of another group of Eastern peoples along the same road, and the interrelations of the Americans and the Filipinos afford a valuable object-lesson in this regard. In the Philippine Islands we have a people who differ among them- selves in race, in language and in religion ; who are torn by internal feuds, the warlike and virile Moros of the South hating the soft-fibred and intriguing Filipinos of the North ; of whom two-thirds are illiterate, and who have no tradition of any other type of government than a paternal despotism, which after all makes living very simple. Into this Oriental medley the Americans, with the noble idealism of inexpe- rience, suddenly in 1916 discharged a constitution, which endowed the Filipinos with practical self-government. With a passion for talk and politics, which has always characterized a race even slightly tinged with Spanish blood, the Filipinos plunged gleefully into the task, with the result that "graft" is rampant (Filipino delegates to Washington in 1923 drew £18 a day each, plus a yearly allowance of £180 for clothes, and one dinner cost them, or their State, £112), that they strive all they can to rid themselves of any American administrative control, and that in 1921 the Filipino National Bank became unable to meet its current obligations. Still the Filipinos con- tinue to clamour for independence, " complete, immediate and absolute." The very schoolboy in Cebu, when asked to define a cow, replies " A cow is an animal with four legs, one at each corner. The cow gives milk,. but as for me, give me liberty or give me. death." And Senator Quezon, a prominent politico, is credited with saying : " Better a government run like hell by the Filipinos than one run like heaven by the Americans," an utterance which may be compared with an observation of Lord Curzon 's in the House of Lords to the same effect. • Inci- dentally, the Americans, after conceding to the Filipinos their independence, are to shoulder all financial and international
responsibility, whilst the Filipinos spend the money and deal with their external relations as they choose.
Great are the principles of abstract theory. But what of practicalities ? What of the great mass of the Filipino peoples, to whom " the Americans long ago promised a stable and just government " ? In these words Mr. Roosevelt seems to touch very nearly the danger of self-determination, which, as things go at present, appears to mean little more than " the Philippines for the Filipino politicians." There is much food for thought in this able and painstaking book. The author is neither sensation-monger nor narrow-minded, but describes soberly and honestly the conditions now prevailing in the Philippines, which convey a lesson (and a warning per- haps) to more than Americans:
There is also another aspect of this Philippine question which deserves consideration. It is beyond doubt that the American occupation of these islands is, as Mr. Roosevelt says, " one of the great stabilizing factors in the politics of the Far East." Remove it, and the door is open to irresistible economic pressure (if not something more) from the North. It would be " suicidal," Mr. Roosevelt thinks, for Japan to go to war with America about the Philippines, but Mr. Macmillan Brown, in his Peoples and Problems of the Pacific, says boldly that war is inevitable : " Japan and America are like two fighting-cocks circling round each other, ready for emer- gencies." Both writers thus contemplate at least the possi- bility of war, but the danger of it would be, so Mr. Roosevelt believes, greatly neutralized if America continues to hold the key-position in the Philippines, and if and when we succeed in establishing a powerful naval base at Singapore. Such a war, if it did come, would be a danger not alone to the Philippines, but would mediately or immediately imperil both Australia and New Zealand.
So far we have dwelt mainly on Mr. Roosevelt's very im- portant book, because the geographical situation of the Philip- pines has given them a position of centrality in the world's affairs which other Pacific islands do not possess. But in doing so it must not be taken that we are blind to the many and picturesque merits of Mr. Macmillan Brown's volumes. In' addition to chapters which deal with international Pacific problems (but which are only a very small part of his work) we
are presented with a gossiping conspectus (rather too discursive at times) of the life, religion, scenery and history of these happy islands of " violet peaks uplifted thro' the crystal evening air." His survey is partly the result of first-hand knowledge, and in part the outcome of diligent collation. Though it contains not much that is specially new, it is eminently readable and preserves for us the fast-vanishing glamour of those coral-fringed islands, high or low, where once the care-free beach-comber could loll on his mat with a native wife to fan him, or stroll lazily in the silver dark of the tropic alight along the broom-road, " listening to the roar Of the breakers on the reef outside That never reach the shore."
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