The eradication of Spanish, the revolutionaries' language. American-promoted Filipino. IV

General Wood, at a recent banquet in Manila, is reported as making the following definition of a stable government:

A stable government means civic courage, courts of justice which give equal opportunities to the senator as well as to the simple tao, resources ready for disposal at any moment they are needed by the country, organization which will enable the country to defend its integrity, adequate hospitals all over the Islands which are not found in the provinces we have just visited, social organization which shows keen human interest in the protection of the needy and the poor, effective public sanitation, common language, and many others.
[underscoring supplied]

Diogenes, with his lamp, searched for less than this! All of the requirements mentioned by General Wood would be desirable in the Philippines; so they would be in the United States. Could either country ever fulfil them in the eyes of a hostile critic? Do any of the existing governments of the world to-day fulfil them? Would not the "common language" bar Switzerland, where there are four official languages, -French, German, Italian and Romansh? One fourth of the Canadians speak French, and English is hardly understood in Quebec. Would the Canadians relish this test as applied to them? Are they unfit for independence because they have not a "stable government"? Have they "adequate hospitals" throughout the provinces, and an "organization which will enable the country to defend its integrity" against all comers? Has Belgium? Has the millennium yet arrived in any part of this troubled globe? I seriously doubt it.

Author: Harrison, Francis Burton, 1873-1957.Publication Info: New York,: The Century co., 1922.