30 AUGUST 1913, Page 2

The Secretary of the Interior in the Philippines has made

a special report in which, says the New York correspondent of the Times, he asserts that peonage and chattel slavery exist extensively in the Philippines, and that legislative remedies are blocked in the Assembly by persons interested in peonage. As Mr. Bryan is in favour of granting immediate independence to the Philippines, and as a large number of Americans are unquestionably tired of their oversea burden, the report is likely, as the correspondent predicts, to make a, " sensational contribution to the approaching controversy."