Philippine Independence

The House passed the McDuffie Bill yesterday with scarcely a murmur of protest, and all signs lead us to believe that the Senate will rapidly follow suit. This McDuffie Bill is a revised version of the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill rejected by the Philippine Legislature last year, and it grants the Islands an even more complete independence. The changes in the Bill have been favorably commented upon by the President of the Philippine Senate, Manuel Quezon, and other prominent leaders in that legislature, and it is to be expected that the Bill will be immediately granted the required sanction by the Filipinos.

A year ago, when the Philippine Legislature refused to accept their independence on the terms of the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill, the principal monkey wrenches in the machines of ratification were the provisions that the United States Army and Naval bases would not be given up to Philippine control, and that a practically prohibitive sugar tariff would be levied at once. There is hardly any question as to the justice of the Island objections to harboring American Army bases on their otherwise independent soil. Obviously, independence in such a case would be but a gesture of none too friendly diplomacy. The McDuffie Bill provides that these Army bases be relinquished and that the future status of the naval bases be the subject for discussion between the Philippine and American governments promptly following the Bill's ratification. This seems another bilious case of Congressional fence-sitting. Foreign powers will make apt mention of Manchukuo when the U. S. A. grants the Philippines independence and reserves for itself naval and coaling stations. The Filipinos appear to have hopes that future negotiations will eventually do away with these vestiges of our imperialism, but the reservations lend an air of duplicity to the whole proceeding.

Congressman Robert Bacon of Long Island was almost the only active opponent to the passage of the McDuffie Bill in the House. He declared that an amendment of the Constitution was required to relinquish colonial possession and that the United States had a moral duty to continue her occupation. Moral duties and constitutionalities have little weight with Senator Smoot's sugar lobby, however, and considering the obvious desirability of increasing local and Cuban sugar production, the nobility of Bacon's sentiment was better quashed than quaffed. In an era of economic nationalism, the charitable support of colonial possessions, however Christian, must be swept away. Philippine motes are ocularly harmless compared with the beam of depression. The McDuffie Bill remains a rough-hewn measure, but, even if Congress insists on eating its cake and having it too, there's time to munch the crumbs later. JUDAS.