endency
dominant in the Filipino, it is difficult to foresee what may happen
as education advances. The history of the world shows that national
prosperity has first come from industrial development, with the
desire and the need for education following as a natural sequence. To
have free intercourse with the outside world it is necessary to
know a European language. This is recognized even in Japan, where,
notwithstanding its independent nationality, half the best-educated
classes speak some European tongue. If the majority of the Filipinos
had understood Spanish at the period of the American advent, it might
be a matter of regret that this language was not officially preserved
on account of the superior beauty of all Latin languages; but such
was not the case. Millions still only speak the many dialects; and
to carry out the present system of education a common speech-medium
becomes a necessity. However, generations will pass away before native
idiom will cease to be the vulgar tongue, and the engrafted speech
anything more than the official and polite language of the better
classes. The old belief of colonizing nations that European language
and European dress alone impart civilization to the Oriental is an
exploded theory. The Asiatic can be more easily moulded and subjected
to the ways and the will of the white man by treating with him in his
native language. It is difficult to gain his entire confidence through
the medium of a foreign tongue. The Spanish friars understood this
thoroughly. It is a deplorable fact that the common people of Asia
generally acquire only the bad qualities of the European concurrently
with his language, lose many of their own natural characteristics,
which are often charmingly simple, and become morally perverted.

The best native servants are those who can only speak their
mother-tongue. In times past the rustic who came to speak Spanish
was loth to follow the plough. If an English farm labourer should
learn Spanish, perhaps he would be equally loth. One may therefore
assume that if the common people should come to acquire the English
language, agricultural coolie labour would become a necessity. In
1903 one hundred Philippine youths were sent, at Government expense,
to various schools in America for a four-years' course of tuition. It
is to be hoped that they will return to their homes impressed with
the dignity of labour and be more anxious to develop the natural
resources of the coun