THE FRIARS WILL NOT "GO."
THE erstwhile cry that "the friars must go" from the Philippines has about died out, and there is little probability that they will go. The Catholic Mirror says:— The new Secretary of War, ex-Governor Taft, has not been for four years in the Philippines for nothing. He has learned some very noteworthy things. He set out not very long ago with the conviction that in the interests of the islands "the friars must go." This was the note of the former Secretary of War, and he himself concurred in the conclusion. He found the program impracticable, and now he comes forward, frankly to set forth the reasons why such a cry should never have been raised and such a conclusion arrived at. Then the Mirror quotes from an address of Secretary Taft, at a banquet of the Presbyterian School Union of Philadelphia, in which he lauds the friars very highly, from whose work we received "ready to hand more than six million of Malays, who are Christians and who are receptive to our civilization." Of course our government never had a legal right to expel them. The cry came from native Filipinos, and the question always was one of polity on the part of Rome, whether to withdraw them (temporarily perhaps) in order to conciliate native priests and their sympathizers. But the sale of their lands greatly minimizes their power and influence.