week ago yesterday the Hong Kong papers announced that
Mr. Clarence Poe would be the guest at luncheon of his Excellency the
Governor-General, Sir Frederick Lugard, K. C. M. G., C. B., D. S. O.,
etc., and Lady Lugard, in the executive mansion; yesterday {162} I had
"chow" (food) in a Filipino's place, "The Oriental Hotel, Bar, and
Grocery," away up in the Province of Pangasinan, and climbed to my
room and cot on a sort of ladder or open work stairs such as one might
expect to find in an ordinary barn! It was the best place I could find
in town.

Nor do the incongruities end here. After getting my evening meal I
walked out in the warm December moonlight, past the shadows of the
strange buildings and tropical trees--and all at once there burst out
the full chorus of one of the world's great operas, the magnificent
voice of a Campanini or Caruso dominating all!

Great is the graphophone, advance agent of civilization!

Manila, P. I.

{163}

XVII

WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS DOING IN THE PHILIPPINES

There are so many islands in the Philippine group, which I have just
left behind me (I write in a steamer off Manila), that if a man were
to visit one a day, without stopping for Sundays, it would take him
eight years to get around. Most of these islands though, of course,
are little more than splotches on the water's surface and do not
appear on the map. The two big ones, Mindanao and Luzon, contain three
fourths of the total land surface of 127,000 square miles, leaving the
other one fourth to be divided among the other 3138 islets.

The land area statistics just given indicate that the Philippines are
about the size of three average American states and the population
(7,000,000) is about three times that of an average American
commonwealth. There are only about 30,000 white people in the islands,
and 50,000 Chinese. Chinese immigration is now prohibited.

The 7,000,000 native Filipinos who make up practically the entire
population represent all stages of human progress. The lowest of them
are head-hunters and hang the skulls of their human enemies outside
their huts, as an American hunter would mount the head of an elk or
bear. The great majority, however, have long been Christians and have
attained a fair degree of civilization. Even among the savage tribes a
high moral code is often enforced. The Igorrotes, for example, though
some of their number make it a condition of marriage {164} that the
young brave