But, without going so far as to
predict armed strife, it would seem that any government, not held
together by some strong external power, would soon begin to break
up. Its various elements, not only differentiated from one another
by speech, but physically separated, in many cases, by the seas,
would tend to fall apart. The Visayas, for example, would refuse
sooner or later to acknowledge the Tagalog supremacy of Luzon. If
we proceed farther south still, what practicable bond can be found
to exist between Mindanao, peopled by Mohammedans and savages,
and Luzon or Panay or Negros? The consequences of such a disruption
as is here predicted must occur to everyone. The gravest of these,
gravest in that it would defeat our purpose in granting independence,
would be foreign intervention. Japan would most certainly insist on
being heard. Now, the Filipinos, as a whole, prefer our sovereignty
to that of the Japanese. England, too, would have a right to interfere
for the protection of her commercial interests in the Archipelago. It
exercised this sort of right, in 1882, by seizing Egypt in behalf of
civilization in general.
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