The Americans are said to be greatly depressed by the
news from Cuba and the Philippines. The Cubans are said to be so discontented that they threaten insurrec- tion, and the President has found it necessary to remove one of the disaffected from the "Cuban Cabinet" or local Committee which provisionally administers the island. The Filipinos, again, are still recalcitrant, they successfully bide Aguinaldo, and they are so hostile in the interior that the Americans actually govern only Manila and a small district stretching for fifty miles into the interior. The resistance is said to be fostered by the priesthood, and one " judge " who went out to the islands to report on their condition is so impressed with this fact that he makes the insane proposal of expelling all Catholic friars. It is there- fore believed in some quarters that the Union will withdraw both from Cuba and the Philippines, leaving them to govern themselves under a guarantee that no foreign Power shall be allowed to interfere with them. We doubt both the stories and the deductions from them. One half the state- ments circulated are inventions for electoral purposes, and the other half will not prove sufficient to affect American policy. Our friends across the water are not the kind of men to give up any project because it takes time and money, and to be beaten in a piece of work in which the English always succeed will gall the national pride. They will, we conceive, resolve "to worry through" as they did in the Civil War, and will come out at last on the other side, having spent no doubt more millions and more lives than were at all necessary. That is our usual experience too, the great exception being the occupation of Egypt.
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