President Roosevelt on May 30th attended the annual festival of
the veterans of the Army, and made a most bold and striking speech on the situation in the Philippines. He said the Americans would teach the Filipinos how to use their freedom, and then, but not till then, " decide whether they should be independent or bound to America by the ties of com- munion, friendship, and interest." This will greatly please the party which holds that on American principles the Filipinos are entitled, like the Cubans, to a protected independence, and another difficulty has been removed by an arrangement with the Vatican. The immense estates owned by the Orders are to be sold to the American Government. As to the cruelties alleged against the soldiers, the President denied that they were anything but exceptional. The provocation had been terrible, the soldiers being constantly tortured and mutilated, and there had been instances of vengeance which must be severely punished; but the men who condemned these crimes, and rightly condemned them, condoned the much more cruel lynching of negroes in their own communities. Was all America responsible for those crimes, or only the actual lynchers? This sharp condemnation of an atrocious practice tolerated in a few States by opinion will, it is said, cost the President thousands of votes ; but that is a mistake. It will soothe the conscience of millions in the North, while even in the South it will increase respect for the speaker, lynching being one of those offences which even those who practise them never attempt to justify. Nine Americans in ten, too, are delighted to believe that the head of the State is a man who is seeking something higher than mob votes at his next election.
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