We do not quite understand the news from the Philippines.
The Americans believe they have forty thousand men there ; they win every engagement with small loss—for example, they defeated four thousand Filipinos this week at Pasig, with little loss—yet they seem to make no serious advance. They use too many men, and have some difficulty not explained in penetrating into the interior. It is not easy to comprehend, either, what the Filipinos are fighting for, unless they are under some illusion as to American designs. The English under such circumstances would occupy a district, establish a just civil government, and then move on, while before them would move the report that their government, on the whole, was quite endurable. Guerilla war sounds formidable, but it is excessively unpleasant to guerillas ; and when they find that they are fighting for nothing, they very soon abandon it. The Americans should use the people themselves, who understand the country, and who, if decently paid, will fight quite well enough. They have plenty of them at band in the lower castes, who are sick of 'raga domination. Is there not too much disposition to think of the Filipinos, who are as civilised as the wilder peoples of India, as if they were Red Indians with no civilisation at all P We have not seen one decree establishing civil tribunals, or indicating what kind of civil laws are to be obeyed, or how far Filipino creeds, customs, and tenures will be respected.
