---
title: 'The Filipino People, August 1916, p. 6: ''The Man Who Embalmed "Fitness"'''
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/the-filipino-people-man-who-embalmed-fitness-1916/
description: Page 6 of the final issue of the independence-advocacy monthly 'The Filipino People' pairs the editor's pledge of accuracy with an editorial praising…
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

**Content note:** Partisan colonial-politics editorial using epithets for opponents (slander, 'Herod from Harvard'). This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![The Filipino People, August 1916, p. 6: 'The Man Who Embalmed "Fitness"'](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/the-filipino-people-man-who-embalmed-fitness-1916.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/the-filipino-people-man-who-embalmed-fitness-1916.jpg)

# The Filipino People, August 1916, p. 6: 'The Man Who Embalmed "Fitness"'

Page 6 of the final issue of the independence-advocacy monthly 'The Filipino People' pairs the editor's pledge of accuracy with an editorial praising Governor-General Harrison. It sets the slogan 'The Philippines for the Filipinos' and 'the greater good of the Filipino people' against opponents charged with 'base slander', and calls a predecessor's administration 'Herod from Harvard'.

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
THE FILIPINO PEOPLE
Issued Monthly by MANUEL L. QUEZON, Washington, D. C.
MANUEL L. QUEZON - - - - - - Editor
[...]
This journal is devoted solely to the interests of the Filipino People, whose name it bears; and to the fair and truthful exposition of the relations between the Philippines and the United States, with a view to hastening the ultimate establishment of Philippine independence upon a self-governing republican basis; by the aid and with the recognition of the United States.
AUGUST, 1916

THE FILIPINO PEOPLE
"THE FILIPINO PEOPLE" is issued by me as the Resident Commissioner from the Philippine Islands, as an official medium for expressing the views of the people whose name it bears. In stating facts regarding conditions in the Philippines, I give them as I know them, without intending that they shall be colored by any influence or prejudice, that they may be set forth authoritatively and with the greatest possible approach to accuracy.
I assume in my official capacity all responsibility for the ideas offered and the statements made; and I desire solely to bring about a better understanding in the Philippines and in the United States of the real conditions which exist in both countries.
MANUEL L. QUEZON, Resident Commissioner from the Philippine Islands.

THE MAN WHO EMBALMED "FITNESS"
When President Wilson sought a man who would give the force of actual practice to the policy of "The Philippines for the Filipinos" (acclaimed in words but denied in deeds by his three Republican predecessors) his mind's eye settled upon the Hon. Francis Burton Harrison, of New York. Mr. Harrison accepted the Governor-Generalship of the Philippines. He has carried out the President's mandate.
He wronged no man, American or Filipino, in faithfully performing the tasks which called him to Manila. But because he lived up to the letter of the McKinley-Taft-Roosevelt doctrine, every act of his administration was made the target of misrepresentation and base slander. His motives were impugned. Publicly and privately, he was exposed to the slings and arrows of partisan opponents who hesitated at no extremity of falsehood in order to delude the American people into the belief that he was the Siva, the Destroyer, of all that had been created by American occupation of the Philippines.
Yes, Mr. Harrison has been a "Destroyer" in the Philippines. He "destroyed" prejudice, to begin with. He brought to a summary end the rule of coercion and chaos which was rapidly creating a wide and deep chasm between Filipinos and Americans. Courageously and wisely, he destroyed the system by which the insular treasury was being pillaged for the benefit of callously covetous corporate contractors. He found the finances in a critical condition. He made the insular government self-supporting, self-sustaining despite adverse circumstances created by the war.
For three years before his arrival, the Philippine Assembly had refused to vote approval of the extravagant Forbes appropriation bills. Herod from Harvard had to fall back upon the provision in the law which continued the appropriations in the last approved money bill. The Commission and the elected Philippine legislature had nothing in common; Mr. Harrison and the legislature - not to speak of the entire Filipino people - worked as one man. Why? Because they had the self-same objective in view - the greater good of the Filipino people.
In applying the President's policy so as to enable the Filipino people to prove their capacity in handling difficult executive as well as legislative work, Mr. Harrison did much to open the eyes of Congress and the American people as to actual facts of "Filipino fitness." It was a body blow which made the rabid

[Photograph caption] HON. FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON, Governor-General of the Philippine Islands.
```

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

```
Printed in English; no translation needed.
```

Subscription and postal lines of the masthead are omitted ([...]); text of the left column, the editorial and the portrait caption as printed on page 6. The page ends mid-sentence ('...which made the rabid'); the sentence continues on page 7 ('...[an]nexionists writhe', per the issue text) and is not part of this image.

[← Mecca, the Pilgrims' Way now made safe by the Arabs (The Graphic, 1 July 1916)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/graphic-mecca-pilgrims-way-arab-revolt-map-1916/) [The Labor Call (Melbourne), 'The Same Old Enemies', page 6, 14 September 1916 →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/labor-call-same-old-enemies-1916/)

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