Dear George: The Americans went into the Philippines in 1898. For the ensuing forty years we tried to do everything for that country that an enlightened, civilized nation could do for another. We established schools, sanitation systems, roads and communication nets, and in every way tried to inculcate in that Asiatic people a respect for our system of personal liberty and national independence based upon an economic system of free enterprise.
Forty years later I was serving in the Philippines and my work took me into all the provinces and principal villages of the country.1 Over the years the word "independencia" had become a great watchword in the islands--promoted and exploited by shrewd politicians who saw that if they could become independent of United States supervision they themselves would have far greater opportunity to exploit the masses. To promote their own interests (and I do not mean to say there were not among them some few real patriots), they promised to the people all sorts of things, including a much higher living standard when independence should arrive. And so the word "independencia" began to mean to the peasants in the countryside something to eat and something to wear--in other words, material betterment. That is what I found in the Philippines after forty years under the stewardship of the United States government.
I quote this experience merely to show that in this complicated question of striving for mutual security there is no simple answer ready to hand, one that will meet all the requirements of a world in crisis.
Personally I feel that the things argued in your letter to Paul Hoffman would have had particular application during the first decade and a half of this century and to the period between the two world wars.2 Both of those periods were for us and for much of the world years of relative calm and peace. The Russo-Japanese War was remote from our shores and only a few men were able to discern, as Henry Stimson3 did, critical situations that were building up all over the world and which were certain one day to cause us the worst kind of trouble. Nevertheless, could those years of peace been continued indefinitely, I do believe that education--education alone--supported by word, by precept and example could have gradually brought about the same respect, in most places in the world, that we hold for individual liberty and free enterprise.
Today such an educational effort is not, by itself, sufficient. This I believe because4 the circumstances and conditions that allowed a few men to put a steel plant in a corn field and another successful one in a marsh are as different from today's conditions in most of the Afro-Asian countries as day is from night. A country that has reached the saturation point in population long before its people understand or, indeed, even hear of the terms "personal rights" and "personal freedom" presents far different problems from those Americans faced in the first half of this century.
Just two other thoughts. The first is that few individuals understand the intensity and force of the spirit of nationalism that is gripping all peoples of the world today. They obtain, from a realization of their ambitions for national independence, fierce pride and personal satisfaction regardless of the individual's status within his own government. It is my personal conviction that almost any one of the newborn states of the world would far rather embrace Communism or any other form of dictatorship than to acknowledge the political domination of another government even though that brought to each citizen a far higher standard of living.
The other is a fact, which all of us know to be true, that a country such as ours could not exist, alone, in freedom were we surrounded by a sea of enemies, which all would be if they were Communist-dominated--and we would soon see our island of freedom take on a far different form. Many values that we have prized highly would disappear.
It is such thinking as all this that leads me to the conclusion that protection of our own interests and our own system demands and requires that we not only pursue diligently a plan of education and proselyting such as you outline in your long letter to Paul, but that we must at the same time understand that the spirit of nationalism, coupled with a deep hunger for some betterment in physical conditions and living standards, creates a critical situation in the under-developed areas of the world. Unless we have the fortitude and courage and stamina to meet the situation, we are not going to emerge unscathed from the struggle. Communism is not going to be whipped merely by pious words, but it can be whipped by a combination of the broadest and most persistent kind of education, coupled with a readiness on the part of ourselves--helped at least to some minor extent by the other free nations of the West--to face up to the critical phase through which the world is passing and do our duty like men.
What you have to say about collective planning resulting generally in unilateral payments and multilateral disposal of the money strikes a very responsive chord in my soul. In fact, I think that all I am trying to say is that neither education or mutual aid is in itself sufficient. Only in their unity will we find the strength necessary to do what we need to do.5
With warm regard, As ever
