e which has achieved more than the negro
race, but on the whole they are probably hardly better fitted for
self-government than the negroes of the South would be to-day if all
the whites should move away. As a Republican of some prominence at
home said to me in Manila: "A crowd of ten-year-old schoolboys in
Chicago would know better how to run a government."

The mere fact that the Filipinos are not capable of managing wisely
for themselves, of course, is not enough to justify a colonial or
imperialistic policy on the part of the United States. It is not our
business to go up and down the earth taking charge of everybody who is
not managing his affairs as well as we think we could manage for him.
But, in any case, there is no use to delude ourselves as to what are
the real qualifications of Mr. Filipino.

I believe that the United States should eventually withdraw from the
islands, but when it does so there should be an understanding with the
Powers that will prevent the natives from being exploited by some
other nation.

China Sea, off Manila Harbor.

{173}

XVIII

ASIA'S GREATEST LESSON FOR AMERICA

The prosperity of every man depends upon the prosperity (and therefore
upon the efficiency) of the Average Man.

So I have argued for years, in season and out of season, in newspaper
articles and in public addresses; and the most impressive fact I have
discovered in all my travel through the Orient is the fundamental,
world-wide importance of this too little accepted economic doctrine.
It is the biggest lesson the Old World has for the New--the biggest
and the most important.

In America, education, democratic institutions, a proper organization
of industry: these have given the average man a high degree of
efficiency and therefore a high degree of prosperity as compared with
the lot of the average man in Asia or Europe--a prosperity heightened
and enhanced, it is true, by the exploitation of a new continent's
virgin resources, but, after all, due mainly, primarily, as we have
said, to the high degree of efficiency with which the average man does
his work.

And while there may be "too much Ego in our Cosmos," as Kipling's
German said about the monkey, for us to like to admit it, the plain
truth is that, no matter what our business, we chiefly owe our
prosperity not to our own efforts, but to the high standards of
intelligence, efficiency, and prosperity on the part of our people as
a whole. We live i