ding our army of the shadow of inhumanity brought upon it by the excesses of certain individuals.

"May it please your Excellency, we count it a singular favor of Providence that our beloved country should, at this transition period, when confronted with tremendous issues, have fallen under the leadership of a statesman of such uncompromising fairness and high devotion to the dictates of justice. It is with the perfect assurance of your exalted statesmanship and absolute determination to seek the real good of the country in all measures of state that we presume to lay before you this memorial."

This is surely couched in terms, which, in our democratic habit of expressing opinions, are moderate and respectful to a nicety, and so it is with all the protests sent to his Excellency, the President, and to Members of Congress on this matter, from the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Bishop and priests of the Diocese of Leavenworth, the Advisory Board of the Federation of American Catholic Societies, the Federated Societies of New Jersey, the German Catholic Societies of Pennsylvania, the State League of German Catholic Societies of New York, the German Catholic Societies of Cleveland, Ohio, the Catholic Truth Society of Pittsburg. Observe that the clergy of Cincinnati and Hartford go right to the core of the question of religion in the schools in the Philippines. The proselytism they protest against is the secularization of schools, which is very harmful to the civil, as well as to the spiritual well-being of the people. They do not raise the question whether ministers are employed in the schools we have established there: of course they are, just as they are employed as American consuls, whether the State Department records them as ministers or not. Whatever Acting-Governor Wright may cable to meet the inquiry of the Secretary of War, announcements like the following speak for themselves:

"Within a few days Rev. Gilbert Nicholas Brink and his young wife will leave for the Philippines, where they will for several years make their home, Mr. Brink having secured a position which will practically give him charge of the public schools of one of the large islands. The reverend gentleman only a few days ago graduated from the Pacific Theological Seminary, and only this evening was he ordained as a minister."

[The Chronicle, San Francisco, despatch from Oakland, dated April 12, 1901, quoted in The Monitor, April 20, 1901.]

Whether Mr. Atkinson, the Superintendent of Education in the Philippine Islands, is a minister or not, matters little. It is not very reassuring to read in his article in the Atlantic Monthly for March last:

"The problem of establishing a modified American school system in the Philippine Islands, under existing conditions, is also the problem of supplant

ing an old system deeply interwoven with the religious beliefs and social institutions of a semi-civilized people. The Spanish messengers of the faith who came to these islands implanted the faith and education at the same time. He who fails to take into account the early services of the members of the religious orders will not form an adequate judgment of present forces. Shrewd and capable leaders among them controlled these people for centuries and built up an approach to civilized society by the introduction of a nominal change of faith and a plan of education which, although narrow, was not limited, as some think, in the number of persons who were somewhat educated. (1) In pursuit of church policy, the education of the individual person did not go very far. Higher education was for the select class. When a Filipino felt an inclination to acquire an intellectual education, he could do so only by becoming a pupil in the ecclesiastical schools. The friars learned the dialects, and, in their capacity as local supervisors of schools, blocked every attempt of the government to make Spanish the basal language of school instruction. As in other Oriental countries, religious ideas absorbed so completely the attention that a lamentable backwardness is noted in the advancement of public education. Impervious as it was to every liberalizing influence, the exclusively religious school system that the Americans found here was an anachronism, recalling European school systems of more than a hundred years ago. The instruction given, at its best, was weak in the side of thought work, and only fair in formal work. Nearly every organized town had its school, and in it the pupils were taught obedience, to read and write, more or less mechanically, the native dialect and the catechis n. A small fee was necessary for admission. In vitalizing power, in that which should elevate and uplift the race, the system was wholly lacking; and without this power any system must fail.

"Confucianism never had a stronger hold in China and Japan than the Church dogma had in the Philippines. Originality was a species of disloyalty."

In view of these opinions it is not surprising that proselytism should be charged to the school teachers in the Philippines. Whether the government approves of it or not, it is responsible for the state of things which necessarily follows on the system of schools imposed on the Filipinos against their wish; and its chief exponent in the department of education there is plainly in favor of what he considers the new and proper order of things. All advices from the acting governor to the contrary, what Governor Taft says of the report against the friars may be repeated here:

"The evidence on this point to the contrary is so strong that it seems clearly to establish that there were enough instances in each province to give considerable ground for the general report."

The curious delay on the part of our government to let Catholic school authorities know that some Catholic teachers would be appointed for the Philippine schools made the announcement seem

(1) See to the contrary "Statistics Concerning Education in the Philippines," compiled from the report of the Commissioner of Education, 1899-1900, by Rev. Samuel Hedges of Seton Hall College. (Italics ours.)

like an afterthought, and the attempt that was planned, but which, owing to Catholic activity in Boston, failed to proselytize the Cuban teachers at Harvard, is still fresh in our memory. In this respect some letters from Fernando Diego, and W. A. Stanton, both Jesuits, published in the Church Bulletin of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, New York, make strange reading, and they are only samples of what we have read, not from Jesuits, but from army officers and civilians in the Philippine Islands.

According to the public professions of the United States Government, America took possession of the Philippine Archipelago in order to secure to its inhabitants stable and just government on the one hand, and on the other to secure for the United States a point of vantage from the commercial and strategetical point of view. Had the United States Government kept these things exclusively in view, the problems that confronted them could have been readily and honorably solved in two years. The masses of the people would have been easily won over, and the ecclesiastical authorities and all the regular clergy, being fully aware that if there were not a restraining hand anarchy would reign supreme, were sincerely in favor of American occupation. The insurgent element, in reality, was made up of a very small minority of the people, but what gave it strength was the Katipunan Society, the native clergy, and foreign commercial interests.

The history of our occupation of the Philippine Islands, unfortunately, proves that the professions of the administration were mere pretexts. We have been governing the Philippines as if we held them simply for the purposes of exploitation, and of robbing eight million Catholics of their faith. That there is an eagerness to exploit the country to the detriment of the natives is evidenced by many facts. One may be quoted, and it is that when the amendment to the original Spooner Bill of 1901 was passed, restraining the Philippine Commission from giving franchises, except for one year, with the approbation of the President in each case, and for urgent reasons, there was sore disappointment, because it prevented the giving away to American corporations all such franchises as would have taken from the people the control of the natural resources of the islands.

Had the American authorities in the Philippines set their faces against the Katipunan Society; had they encouraged the members of the regular orders to return to their provinces, instead of allowing the native clergy (who are not yet all in sympathy with the United States) to occupy the posts vacated by the religious; had the leading conspirators, instead of being freed when taken, been severely dealt

with; had the authorities not allowed themselves to be guided by a few of them, and by four or five educated Filipinos, who are no friends of the Americans, but work simply for personal ends, and whose records are very bad; in fine, had the authorities availed themselves of the great moral force which the Catholic Church was ready to place at their disposal, by treating the Catholic Church properly, then, there would be perfect peace and order to-day in the Philippines, an enormous expense would have been saved, we would have complied with our promises, and justice would have been done.

From the very beginning of our occupation a spirit of antagonism by our authorities was made manifest, as if it was felt that one of the chief, underlying purposes of our war against Spain was to give a golden opportunity to the various sects to destroy Catholic influence and take away those people from the bosom of the Catholic Church.

It is subject to proof, not only that many officers permitted the desecration and robbing of numberless churches by our soldiers, but every means was employed to impede the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and to encourage the people not to pay rent for ecclesiastical properties, on the pretext that these properties belonged to each municipality separately, and not the diocese as a corporate body. Whilst strict censure was exercised over the press, yet it was allowed, and even encouraged, to attack the hierarchy, and especially the religious. Now, it is only proper to say a few words concerning the religious in these islands. For the purposes of this notice, they may be classed into two groups :

First. The four following orders: The Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Augustinians and the Recolletos.

Second.--The Society of Jesus, the Lazarists, the Benedictines and the Capuchins.

The two latter orders are very few in number and of very recent foundation.

The Jesuits conduct two large colleges in Manila. They have had no parishes properly so-called, but for years have done the most wonderful missionary work in the island of Mindanao.

The Lazarists had for their chief work the care of three dioceses and seminaries, and the establishment of the Sisters of Charity. Both Jesuits and Lazarists were at first not attacked by the Katipunan Society, the chief insurrectos, nor were they molested by our government; but in the year 1900-1901, the chief organs of the insurrecto . press, and, we regret to say, some of the American newspapers, published in Manila and elsewhere, made the vilest attacks against the

Jesuits, without the slightest restraint from the military government or civil commission, notwithstanding the express and repeated protestations of ecclesiastical authority.

With regard to the orders of the first named group, there has been from the beginning a systematic plan to depreciate them in public opinion, by all sorts of calumnies. The fact of the matter is, the Spanish Friars, very few of whom proved unworthy of their vocation, considering their number and surroundings, have done splendid work in the Philippines, to christianize, to educate, and to civilize these people. It may be said, without exaggeration, that most of what is good in the material and social life of the people of the Philippines is owing to the zeal and disinterestedness of the friars. Therefore, if we apply to them the Gospel criterion, that the tree is judged by its fruit, any serious-minded and honest man must acknowledge, that instead of having been attacked, they should have been defended. Instead of being looked upon with suspicion, they should have been protected by our authorities. They, from the beginning of our occupation of the archipelago, were sincerely in favor of it. On the one hand, they could not even dream that Spain would or could, under any circumstances, ever again occupy the Philippine Islands; and on the other, they clearly saw, that the severest dispensation of Divine Providence toward the people of the Philippines would have been to leave them to their own devices. It is then evident, that both from religious and political motives, they were ready to use their great influence in favor of American authority if they had been permitted to do so. They have been most jealously watched, and yet, not one of them has been incriminated or imprisoned for want of loyalty to the new order of things.

A great deal has been said concerning their accumulated wealth. These four powerful corporations have been in the islands for over three centuries, and yet the sum-total of that imaginary wealth does not amount in reality to over twenty million dollars. The purposes to which the revenue of their haciendas was devoted could not be more just. It was necessary to maintain colleges and seminaries, in order to train missionaries for their field of labor. In almost every town they built magnificent churches and convents, the latter of which enabled them to give hospitality to strangers, as there were no hotels. They contributed largely toward every public work. These haciendas were also intended as model farms, to teach the people the art of agriculture, and in time of distress, their granaries were always put at the disposal of the people. The moment the friars' lands become