INDEPENDENCE
AND THE PRICE
Fear
of Economic Ruin
By Gareth
Jones
Manila,
Philippines,
March/April 1935
When
on May 14, Filipinos go to the polls to record their vote for
independence; they will be taking an action, which will have a profound
influence upon the Far East. In
voting for the Philippines Commonwealth, which in ten years automatically
becomes the Philippines Republic, they are bringing into being a new
nation in one of the world’s strategically most important points, lying
to the south of China, between the Asiatic mainland and the wealthy and
densely populated Dutch East Indies, and on the path to New Guinea and
Australia
Nothing
illustrates so clearly the United States’ withdrawal from the Far East
and her trend towards isolation and self-sufficiency as her voluntary
abandonment of these islands, with 14,000,000 inhabitants and with vast
supplies of raw materials, including the richest source of iron ore in the
East. But although this
abandonment of control over an Asiatic people may appear a gesture of
noble unselfishness it has really been the result of the most unscrupulous
and cynical lobbying of a group of American sugar and farming interests
who fear the competition of Philippine products, and it is accompanied by
trade restrictions which bring dread of the future to all in Manila who
have the slightest knowledge of commerce.
A
visitor arriving on the day when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the
Constitution of the Philippines and by a stroke of the pen, brought the
yearned for freedom to the Filipino people would expect to find signs of
rejoicing throughout the islands. Instead
of gratification, however, there was expressed in private conversations
even with extreme nationalists a gloom, which contrasted violently with
the joy with which most peoples in history have greeted the culmination of
battles for independence.
The
Filipinos’ fear of the independence for which they have long cried
arises out of their expectations oh troubles in foreign affairs, in
commerce, in the Church, and in politics.
In
foreign affairs Filipinos, Europeans, and Americans in Manila fear that if
the United States leaves the islands to complete independence in 1945-6
Japan will be unrivalled in her supremacy over the Pacific that she will
be able to dominate the Philippines commercially, that she may be tempted
to intervene in the internal affairs of the Philippines, and even take
military and naval control of the islands. That this fear has some justification was confirmed to me by a
conversation with a Japanese authority who said: “We shall want to
penetrate the islands commercially. There
is no need for us to come in any other way as long as the Filipinos are
courteous and peaceful. But
if there is chaos in the independent Philippines then it will be the duty
of a civilised nation to step in and use force.”
British and Dutch Anxiety
The
possibility of Japanese control of the Philippines already arouses alarm,
among the British and the Dutch in the Pacific. The British fear that Japanese domination in Manila would endanger
the possession of Hong Kong, that the Japanese, gaining naval, air, and
military control of strategic points, would be able to bring pressure to
bear upon the Chinese to raise high tariffs upon all foreign goods other
than Japanese, that the prestige of the white peoples would sink if the
biggest white nation, the United States, meekly abandoned territory for an
Asiatic Power to step in, that the United States, yielding to Filipino
nationalism will have nationalistic reverberations in British India and
in the Malay States, and that a path of expansion towards the south and
especially Australia, will be opened to the Japanese. The Dutch fear that Japanese control of the Philippines would bring
a potential enemy within striking distance of the rich oil areas of
Borneo; they remember that Japan lacks oil as well as other raw
materials abundant under the Dutch flag, and they silently pray
that the banner of the Rising Sun will not replace the Stars and
Stripes in the Philippines.
The
Filipinos themselves have little desire to exchange the kindly, almost
pampering, rule of the Americans for the possibility of a more military
over-lordship of the Japanese. But
the blows which the United States Act granting independence - the
Tydings-McDuffie Act - deals to Filipino trade may one day create a
pro-Japanese trend among the population. Indeed, at the present moment the
fear that Filipino commerce will be strangled by separation from the
United States is the main cause of among Filipinos. Since Free Trade was established between the Philippine Islands and
the United States in 1909, the Filipinos have been made almost entirely
dependent upon the United States as a market for their goods.
|
GARETH JONES
(1905 -35) |