f
sustaining, with ordered liberty for all the people.

There, then, is the doom we have reason to expect this Commission to
inflict on these temporarily turbulent wards of the Nation! First
order; then justice; then American civil rights, not for a class, or a
tribe, or a race, but for all the people; then local self-government.

But if your guests begin this task with the notion that they are the
first officials of a free people ever given such work, and must
therefore, American fashion, discover from the foundation for
themselves,--if they fancy nobody ever dealt with semi-civilized
Orientals till we stumbled on them in the Philippines,--they will waste
precious time in costly experiments, if not fail outright. It isn't
worth while thus to invent over again everything down to the very
alphabet of work among such people. We can afford to abate the
self-sufficiency of the almighty Yankee Nation enough to profit a
little by the lessons other people have learned in going over the road
before us.

From such lessons they will be sure to gather at once that if they now
show a trace of timidity or hesitation in their firm and just course,
because somebody has said something in Washington or on the stump, or
because there is an election coming on, they will fail.

In fact, if they do not know now, as well as they know what soil they
still stand on and what countrymen are about them, and if they do not
act as if they knew, that, no matter what the politicians or the
platforms say, and no matter what party comes into power, the American
people have at present no notion of throwing these islands away, or
abandoning them, or neglecting the care of them, they have not mastered
the plainest part of their problem, and must fail.

Above all, if there is a trace of politics in their work, or of seeking
for political effect at home, they will fail, and deserve to fail. In
this most delicate and difficult task before them there is no salvation
but in the scrupulous choice of the very best fitted agency available,
in each particular case, for the particular work in hand. If they
appoint one man, or encourage or silently submit to the appointment of
one man, to responsible place in their service among these islanders,
merely because he has been useful in politics at home, they will be
organizing failure and discredit in advance.

But they will do no such things. Not so has this body of men been
selected. Not such is the high apprec