Mindanao's
36,000 square miles constitute nearly a third of the total area of
the Philippine archipelago, and more than that fraction of the 97,500
square miles of territory to a consideration of which our attention
is reduced by the process of elimination above indicated. Turning
over Mindanao to those crudely Mohammedan semi-civilized Moros would
indeed be 'like granting self-government to an Apache reservation
under some local chief,' as Mr. Roosevelt, in the campaign of 1900,
ignorantly declared it would be to grant self-government to Luzon
under Aguinaldo. Furthermore, the Moros, so far as they can think,
would prefer to owe allegiance to, and be entitled to recognition as
subjects of, some great nation. Again, because the Filipinos have no
moral right to control the Moros, and could not if they would, the
latter being fierce fighters and bitterly opposed to the thought of
possible ultimate domination by the Filipinos, the most uncompromising
advocate of the consent of the governed principles has not a leg to
stand on with regard to Mohammedan Mindanao. Hence I affirm that as
to it, we have a distinct separate problem, which cannot be solved in
the lifetime of anybody now living. But it is a problem which need not
in the least delay the advent of independence for the other fourteen
fifteenths of the inhabitants of the archipelago--all Christians living
on islands north of Mindanao.
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