Bishop F. W. Warne, Methodist, in a communication to the Christian Advocate, has the following to say concerning present conditions as he finds them in the Philippines:—
Our Native Fijian Evangelist, Pauliesi Bunoa, and Wife.
The improvements during two years are very marked. An English merchant, who has been here ten years, said to me, “Manila under the Americans has improved a century in two years.” In sanitation, roads, business enterprise, and in the provision for the education of the people, there are certainly very marked improvements. I visited the Teachers'13Training Institute one morning, and found 500 of the brightest young people of the islands, representing twenty-five provinces, present, getting lessons in the best methods of instruction and learning English. They were to be together for about six weeks, and then were to go to their homes and teach what they had been taught, and were to return again. I was interested to note that the educational department of the government had adopted precisely the same method of getting education started in the islands as we had for getting religious education among the villagers of India. We bring in our brightest and teach them for a term of weeks, and then send them back to teach what they have been taught. It reminds one of the proverb about “great minds.” There have been improvements in the regulation of the liquor traffic, and there are not so many drunken soldiers on the streets of Manila as when I first visited it. Nevertheless, the saloon and canteen stand out as the blots on the American occupation of the Philippine Islands. There are, after all the improvements, eighty-eight licensed American saloons in Manila for about 5,000 Americans. Is that equaled anywhere else? The Filipino people, up to date, scarcely patronize the American saloon.
