Note 12 — Chapter XXVIII · The Road to Autonomy

I believe that the Moros should be left as they are for the present. The time for solving that problem has not yet been reached. Mr. Jones himself evidently bases his idea of allowing the Moro country representation in the Philippine Congress, or legislature provided by his bill, on the probability that enough Christian people will vote, down there, to make up an electorate that would not be “impossible,” i.e., absurd. For instance, he tells me that a great many people have moved into Mindanao from the northern islands for commercial reasons, and, if I recollect correctly, that Zamboanga, the most beautiful little port in Mindanao, which hardly had 10,000 people when I was there, now has possibly 50,000. But the Moro question need not stand in the way of setting up an independent government in the Philippines in 1921, as proposed by his bill. You have material for thirteen original states, representing a population of nearly seven million Christian people, in Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands. Why delay the creation of this republic on account of 250,000 semi-civilized, crudely Mohammedan Moros in Mindanao—a separate island lying off to the south of the proposed republic?12 A happy solution of the matter would be to send Mr. Jones out there as Governor-General and let him work out the problem on the ground. He has had a long and distinguished career in the public service, twenty-two years in Congress. His public record and speeches on the Philippine question from the beginning would make him to the Filipinos the very incarnation of a bona fide intention on our part to give them their independence at the earliest practical moment, that is, at some time which the living might hope to see. When Governor Taft and Mr. Root drew the Philippine Government Act of 1902, the former had already been president of the Philippine Commission for two years, had been all over the archipelago, and knew it well. Suppose the Taft policy should be substituted by the more progressive Jones policy. Mr. Jones, or whoever is to change the policy, ought to have as much acquaintance with the subject, acquired on the ground, as Mr. Taft had when he formulated his policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. The nucleus of the Taft policy was stated by Governor Taft to the Senate Committee in 1902, as follows13: