Note 12 — Chapter XII · Otis and the War (Continued)

While the great Mohammedan island of Mindanao, near Borneo, with its 36,000 square miles12 of area, requires that the Philippine archipelago be described as stretching over more than 1000 miles from north to south, still, inasmuch as Mindanao only contains about 500,000 people all told,13 half of them semi-civilized,14 the governmental problem it presents has no more to do with the main problem of whether, if ever, we are to grant independence to the 7,000,000 Christians of the other islands, than the questions that have to be passed on by our Commissioner of Indian Affairs have to do with the tariff.