e "press-the-button"
system if they get what they want. Nor can the American Government, if
it remain here, do any more than it is now doing to urge the Filipino
into real industrial and mental activity. Until the Filipino takes
more interest in _things_ than he takes in himself; until he learns to
approach life from some other standpoint than the social one, and with
some other object than seeing how large a figure he can cut in it,
it makes no difference what flag flies over his head, his national
existence is an artificial one, a semblance of living nourished by
the selfishness of those with whom he has commercial relations.

The intelligent Filipinos (I speak of the ordinary middle classes
of Manila and the provinces, not of the really eminent Filipinos
who are associated with the Government, for with them I have
little acquaintance) have had so little practical contact with
the great world, so little conception of what a strong commercial
and manufacturing nation is, that it is impossible to make them
understand that no nation of the present day can achieve greatness
except by industry. If you can get them to talk freely, you find
them absorbed in a glorious dream of the Filipino people dazzling
the world with pure intellectuality--a Philippines full of poets,
artists, orators, authors, musicians, and, above all, of eloquent
statesmen and generals. They do not reflect that a statesman is wasted
who has nothing but a handful of underfed people to govern, and that
it is commerce and agriculture which furnish the propelling power
to the ship of state on which the statesman is a pilot. They want
to be progressive, and their idea of progress is a constant stream
of mechanical appliances flowing like water into the Philippines
from other lands; but they do not even consider where the money is
to come from to pay for all the things they want. They howl like
victims over taxation, but they have a hazy idea that it is the duty
of their Government to seek out every labor-saving machine in the
world and to buy it and to put it in operation in the Philippines
till the inhabitants have accustomed themselves to its use, and have
obtained through its benefits the wherewithal to indulge in more
of the same sort. They do not concern themselves with the problem
of the Government's getting the money to do all this, other than
they think that if we Americans were out of the way, and the six or
eight million pesos of revenue which go