Opera Bouffe

Filipino politicos like the dramatic gesture; and if it be a bit strained or ridiculous on the occasion, it is no matter to them. At home, they have found that the open sesame to election and reelection, to political preferment and profit is to declare for Philippine independence above all things else. And if the declaration profits them little before the Secretary of War at Washington, they are not greatly put out.

Independence is a good thing, but it needs to be approached with circumspection, else in the capturing it yields and entirely vanishes. But many--a great many--Filipino politicians are not concerned with independence, for the advocacy of it gains their ends; and to achieve independence would deprive them of their easiest road to office. So they play with the independence idea and, with a true gift for the dramatic, dress it in a thousand garbs and adorn it with a thousand gestures. Now they squabble with the Governor General; now they send themselves a-junketing to Washington; always they play with the 1,000,000 peso "Independence Fund" voted annually by the legislature, from which they replenish their pockets without rendering account. This year for Christmas they thought they would dramatize independence in a new yuletide comedy for their electorate. So they gathered their best minds together and with pen, ink and paper indicted a letter to the League of Nations' International Labor Bureau. They asked how they might join the Bureau and said that they hoped someday to join the League. Critics who like the Filipino people better than Filipino politicians picture the latter strutting before their constituencies with a New Year rodomondate: "One step more and we shall be a full-fledged member of the family of nations. We shall slap France upon the back, raise our hat to England--with a touch of hauteur to show we are her equal. We can be a trifle patronizing to our late, fortune-fallen master, Spain. As for this overbearing U. S., we shall cut him dead."