Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 28, 1907

A Protest from Porto Rico

TULIO LARRINAGA, Porto Rico’s resident commissioner at Washington, expresses himself as follows concerning this government’s attitude toward that island:—

Why can not the American Congress deal with us as Spain did—give us a little measure of self-government, and increase it year by year? That would be the fair thing to do. We are almost in despair about our ever getting anything from Congress. It is eight years since the Americans took possession of our affairs, and to-day we have not as much home rule as we had under Spain.

It sounds peculiar, this plea of a Porto Rican for the liberties he enjoyed under the Spanish régime from which he was liberated by a republic. The republic is providing for the Porto Ricans a system of education far more comprehensive than Spain ever furnished, and illiteracy in Porto Rico, among the younger generation at least, will soon be the exception rather than the rule. But a republic ruling a subject people is one of the most striking paradoxes of the world, and breeds dissatisfaction in the breasts of the people so ruled, be the rule never so good.