My countrymen:
An historic drama has just been unfolded before our eyes. The American flag has been lowered from the flagstaffs in this land… not in defeat, not in surrender, not by compulsion, but by the voluntary act of the sovereign American nation. The flag which was first raised in conquest here has been hauled down with even greater glory. The Stars and Stripes will no longer fly over this land; but in the hearts of 18,000,000 Filipinos and in the eyes of many millions more in this part of the world, the American flag flies more triumphantly today than ever before in history. Some hundreds of yards from here at Fort San Antonio Abad, the American flag was first planted in 1898. As its brave colors fluttered down from the flagstaff a moment ago, the cycle of history had completed a full turn. In the culmination today, America justified her destiny. For America, today’s act of renunciation was the climax of triumph… for enlightenment, for democratic values, for liberty. We mark here today the forward thrust of the frontiers of freedom.
I have raised the Philippine flag to wave henceforth alone and unshadowed over the entire Philippines. American sovereignty has been withdrawn. It has been transferred and is now possessed in full measure by the Filipino people.
We have thus reached the summit of the mighty mountain of independence toward which we and our fathers have striven during the lifetime of our people.
As the spokesman for America predicted half a century ago, the Filipino people now look back with gratitude to the day when God gave victory to American arms at Manila Bay placed this land under the sovereignty and protection of the United States.
The birth of this nation is attended today by dignitaries from many lands. It is attended by the personal representative of the President of the United States, by leaders of the Congress and of the armed forces and other high officials of the American government.
The President of the United States has proclaimed our independence. The Republic of the Philippines has now come into being, under a constitution providing a government which enthrones the will of the people and safeguards the rights of men. The historic event has been completed. There remains for us only to evaluate the significance of what has occurred.
There are moments when men should pause in their humbleness and look beyond the passing shadow of events to see the towering magnitude of the forces which have been brought to bear upon the affairs of current time. I judge this such a moment, and I am humble before it.
We who are gathered here personify, but no more than that, the act of establishing a new nation. All of us are mere symbols of the millions of men, and the hundreds of hopes which are involved in our passing pageant.
It can be said that the eyes of the world are upon us. But the world is not listening especially to the brittle words we say, words which pass quickly from hearing and fade soon from even the printed page. The peoples of the earth see in this occasion a magnificent flowering of the human spirit, an interval of grandeur in an epoch in which the grandeur of unselfishness is rare indeed. The peoples of other nations are listening to the words uttered here not so much as words but as sounds which have echoes in the human soul… mystic sounds unlimited by time or language… sounds which ring in intimate harmony with the voices of freedom heard… now remote… now insistent… since the dawn of human history.
This occasion, this event which happened here, responds to a cry which is common to all mankind. This cry, the cry for freedom, for liberty, and for dignity resounded in ancient times from the hillsides of Greece; in the Middle Ages, from the high plateaus of Bohemia and the green countrysides of Britain; in the beginning of modern times, from the canals of Venice, from the narrow streets of Paris; and finally and most memorably, from the bright new world which began on the western shores of the Atlantic.
The revolutionary doctrines so immemorably phrased and immortally achieved by the early Americans had not sprung full-grown from the American soil. They were convictions which had been distilled from the product of centuries of thought, of struggle and of sacrifice. On the shores of Galilee, 2,000 years before, a people small in numbers had defended the dignity of man and the glory of God. In the shadows of the towering Alps, the heroic Swiss had fought for home and freedom against the ruthless tyrant. These events and a thousand more went into the making of the American Revolution. The labored thoughts of centuries of scholars, the lyrics of a thousand poets, the insurgence of numberless philosophers, all contributed to the ferment of ideas which found final form in the America of 1776.
American democracy was established. The miracle was that it succeeded. And with its success the eternal search for freedom took new heart and courage. In France the human spirit broke its bonds only to be subdued again by military despotism. The Old World was shaken to its foundations. Anxious kings and princes took violent steps against the doctrines of liberty. But freedom did not die, the struggle for freedom did not end. It gained new impetus as the American democratic experiment continued to flourish, to give hope to men who loved liberty in every land. Gradually democracy moved irresistibly westward across a vast continent until it reached the shores of the Pacific.
Nor did the broad ocean stay the westward surge of the pioneers of liberty. They planted its seeds in this land… seeds which bear today their richest fruit.
So as we embrace our national freedom, we must see in it, as other peoples of the world do, not alone the product of our struggles and strivings, not alone the altruism of America, but also the final product of the world’s age-old quest for liberty. We owe to our own heroes… to Rizal, to Del Pilar, to Bonifacio, to Mabini, to Quezon and to many others a gratitude of memory, both deep and abiding. But in this supreme moment we must likewise pay tribute to the great apostles of freedom of many lands who contributed to our independence and nationhood just as surely as if they had lived and died on our soil. Kosciusko, LaFayette, and Simon Bolivar were all soldiers of liberty, equally with Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The origin of our liberties reaches far back into antiquity, but it was America, who, through the past two centuries, incubated the concepts of freedom and the equality of men, which have now found such firm lodging in the Philippines.
Long before the coming of America to the Philippines, our aspirations for nationhood had been influenced by thoughts and doctrines originating in the United States. The philosophers of our several revolutions were inspired by the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Bill of Rights, and the Federal Constitution. Our patriots of those early days demanded the rights of free speech and of free press and of self-government. We well recall those who died here on the altar of religious freedom. When the first Philippine Republic was proclaimed, its constitution provided for a representative democracy. The Philippine Declaration of Independence borrowed even the language of the great American charter of liberty.
When American troops landed on these shores in 1898, they found in full cry the yearning for freedom. American control had to be spread by force of arms throughout the Islands. But the conquerors spoke strange words into Filipino ears. They said that America had come not to exploit but to teach, not to tyrannize but to lead, not to own but to liberate. To our great surprise and to the wonder of the entire world this promise was kept. The benevolent stewardship was discharged with scrupulous regard. The successive spokesmen America sent here reiterated and emphasized the intentions of the United States to educate the Filipinos for freedom.
General Arthur MacArthur, the gallant chieftain who led the first armies of occupation, early won our confidence, for he spoke to us not as the captain of a conquering host but as a friend and liberator. Americans have maintained that role ever since. The presence here today of the great son of that first leader adds scope and significance to the present hour. The name of MacArthur will be forever emblazoned in the pages of our history.
Our independence missions to the United States received without exception kindly and sympathetic hearings. Our aspirations for independence were given consistent support and encouragement. In 1916 the Jones Act promised us freedom as soon as we should be ready for it. In 1933 and 1934 that promise of independence became a compact between two peoples. The Filipinos, subdued and conquered in 1900, were accepted in 1934 as partners in agreement. The mighty nation whose power awed the earth, whose wealth and substance had won a great conflict in 1918, offered us our independence, promised to restore to us our national birthright and took steps to prepare us for our national freedom.
Then came the war. General Douglas MacArthur directed that heroic defense which has become a legend in military history. The Filipino people thronged to the colors to do battle for their motherland. They continued to resist under the American flag even after that flag was lowered in temporary surrender. When General MacArthur at the head of his valiant legions of liberation returned in 1944, his forces were swept up in a tidal wave of gratitude and were carried forward on a mighty current of acclaim and support. The scattered remnants of his Filipino forces of 1941, their ranks filled out with the heroic guerrillas, flocked to his standards and added fury to the successful assault upon the enemy.
The world cannot but wonder today as we become a nation. A new era has come to the Orient. The first democratic Republic has been established in this quarter of the globe. Freedom has been granted our people, a freedom requested by peaceful petition and freely granted by the American Congress. There are members of that Congress here today and among them are men to whom our obligation of gratitude is deep and everlasting. We will never forget their long and ardent labors for our liberty and welfare. They are heroes of our history and of our people. Their place in our hearts is secure.
And now we must turn our eyes from the past and inspect as well as we can the dim and uncertain future.
From this day forward our international responsibility is absolute. As we are the masters of our own destiny, so too we must bear all the consequences of our actions. If we surmount the difficulties that beset us, if we conquer the obstacles which bar our way, our people will grow great in the eyes of men. But if we strut with false pride upon the world stage, if we berate with bombast our friends and benefactors, if we lend, for reasons of political expediency, comfort and encouragement to the enemies of peace and freedom, if we invite poverty, chaos and disorder to inhabit our land, we will break faith with our noble past and imperil our national future.
No longer are we protected by the mantle of American sovereignty. No longer can we look to America to shield us from follies or excesses. There is no redress for our actions beyond the immutable laws of justice among nations. Our period of apprenticeship is past. We are an adult in the council of nations. Our decisions must be gravely made; they will be gravely judged. Our wartime heroism has commanded the respect of the world. We dare not sacrifice that respect.
From this day forward, it is not the leaders of government alone who will be judged. By the actions of our government, the Filipino people will be appraised. Our actions in the next years will determine the estimate the world will place upon our national character. Heavy is the weight of responsibility we bear as we start out upon the dangerous paths of independence. The ever-present guide is gone. We must find our own way, with the instincts we have inherited, with the wisdom we have acquired.
Words must cease to be substituted for thoughts and judgments. In a troubled world where our alliance with one group of nations or another might help determine the fate of mankind, we cannot afford to hesitate or choose capriciously. We cannot be epicures at the international table. We must select our fare, and adhere to that selection. Our alliances must be firm and unshakeable. Our loyalties must be strong and enduring.
I judge that our choice has been made. In the presence of our honored guests today, in the presence of the representative of the sovereign American Nation, I state my firm conviction that we have already subscribed irrevocably to the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. Those principles are now embodied in the basic law of our land. We are committed to the cause and the international program of the United States of America. We are pledged to the support of the Four Freedoms.
We are in the atomic age. We cannot stay the swift advance of time even if we would. The world shrinks with each passing hour. Wings carry men across deserts, oceans and mountains. The wide waters have ceased to bar access to our land. The stratosphere is now an avenue for swift flight or swift destruction.
In such a world we cannot retreat within ourselves. We cannot live in unconcern for the world’s opinion. We cannot bar from our shores the products of other lands. We cannot build on principles of isolation. Today the affairs of Trieste must be our concern. Today we, too, have an interest in the Mediterranean. The problem of Palestine is our problem. The Poles and the Czechs are our neighbors; their fate concerns us as intimately as the destiny of China, the future of Manchuria or the welfare of Malaya. The world today is one.
While we gain the glorious gift of freedom, it is accompanied by a charter of obligations. Today the concept of independence is overshadowed by the dynamic growth of international interdependence. On all fronts the doctrine of absolute sovereignty is yielding ground. Heavier and heavier grows the pressure of the world’s anxiety for peace and security. That pressure is directed against the principle of total sovereignty. We have, by our membership in the United Nations, already surrendered some of our sovereignty. If called upon to help in the enforcement of peace, we must supply that help. We have, as have other nations, granted the right of the United Nations to utilize our land and our resources, if required for the purposes of international security. The cry for a World Federation of Nations is again welling from many throats. Should this come to pass, our sovereignty would be further curtailed. We cannot obstruct that development. In the world of nations we lack the authority of power. We must depend on the world’s conscience for our protection and salvation.
But we have yet a greater bulwark today… the friendship and devotion of America. That friendship, which is the greatest ornament of our independence, raises us far above the level of our intrinsic power and prestige. There are many nations aspiring to world recognition. There are many peoples who merit the sympathy and understanding of mankind. There are few who are poorer in wealth of goods and economic power than our new-born Republic. In both Asia and Europe, the small nations tremble in the shadows of insecurity or are pawns in the insidious politics of power. Freedom, if it ever existed in many of those lands, has been erased. Famine, actual starvation, stalks the streets of cities and the by-roads of countrysides. What help they receive to avert epidemic and hunger must wait through the long processes of international consultation, and is subject to the moves and counter-moves of conflicting interests. America is the source of almost all of the assistance furnished the stricken areas of the world; and the American Congress, appropriating with troubled and divided conscience for the bare relief needs of these lands, looks askance at the political complexions of the governments in some of those areas. We, of the Philippines, are spared that trial. American aid to us is direct and whole-hearted.
In other parts of the world, nations not fastened in the iron control of fear are locked in internal chaos, with civil war rampant and governments holding power by the tyranny of might.
The Middle East writhes in ferment. Africa is a political battleground, the Iberian Peninsula seethes with unrest – only the western hemisphere, the lands and peoples of the New World, are relatively free, secure and without fear … the New World and the democratic British Dominions overseas. Only these of the small nations of the earth are content in their security. And for these nations, through one means or another, the United States is the guarantor. Their security is a measure of the unselfish power of America. In the western hemisphere, the stability of governments and their freedom from interference and coercion are the results of the Good Neighbor Policy and the Monroe Doctrine. The British Dominions, for their part, owe a large measure of their security to their geographic position within the American defense sphere.
Any doubts which may still linger in some quarters of the earth as to begin intentions of America should be resolved by what she has so nobly and unselfishly accomplished here.
Should we in the Philippines disdain the support of this modern Colossus whose might is the hope and strength of the world? No free nation today can, to its advantage, scoff and snarl at the United States, whose broad shoulders bear the awful weight of world peace. Subtract the influence of the United States from the rest of the world, and the answer is chaos. Perhaps we have not fully understood what has taken place in the past five years. There have been withdrawn from the balanced scales of world power the might of Japan in the East and of Germany and Italy in the West. The attrition of war has diminished the strength of Britain and broken almost entirely the authority of France. China is in the agonized throes of national rebirth. There are only two major poles of power in the world today… Russia and the United States, both of them bestriding the oceans, facing Orient and Occident. Not since the Peace of Rome was broken by the onslaught of the barbarians twenty centuries ago has there been a comparable situation. The mind of man can scarcely conceive of its implications. The world may well shudder, contemplating the possible consequences. But men of good will in many lands, desperately loving peace, have brought forth the United Nations, noble in concept, and worthy in purpose, a hopeful answer to the prayers of the humble peoples of the earth.
We are a member of the United Nations. Even as a Commonwealth, we signed the charter of that organization. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s strong desire that we should be considered a nation among nations even before our independence, even while our land was in the clutches of the enemy. The signature of Manuel Quezon is affixed to the Declaration of the United Nations. Today we may well rededicate ourselves to the ideals of the United Nations, to the preservation of peace and the promotion of justice among men.
But as we pledge ourselves to this world organization, it is well to bear in mind that today the United Nations is no stronger than its strongest power, and that it is the leadership of the United States which has given to this body its soul and strength.
The world cannot but have faith in America. For our part, we cannot but place our trust in the good intentions of the nation which has been our friend and protector for the past 48 years. To do otherwise would be to forswear all faith in democracy, in our future, and in ourselves.
As we pursue our career as a nation, as we churn through treacherous waters, it is well to have a landfall that we may know our bearings and chart our course. Our safest course, and I firmly believe it true for the rest of the world as well, is in the glistening wake of America whose sure advance with mighty prow breaks for smaller craft the waves of fear.
The Philippines aspires to greatness. We seek, along with all other nations, after glory. We seek eminence among the peoples of the earth. But we will not sacrifice peace to glory. We will not trade the happiness of our people for national fame. We will not yield freedom or liberty for economic well-being. We will search for, and I trust we will find, that happy formula for security, for friendship and for dignity that can be combined with the elevation of the economic status of our citizens, and with the preservation of our liberties in a world of peace and equal opportunity for all nations.
We are a troubled people. Our economic goods are destroyed and our homes and buildings are in shambles. We must rebuild a levelled land. Against a background of destruction, we acquire our sovereignty, we receive our national heritage. We must perform near-miracles to bring prosperity to this, our land. The work of two generations was reduced to rubble in the passionate moments of war. Now we must rebuild in months what was created in decades. Time wields her whip-lash over us. Delay and decay stand in impatient turn at our door. Swift must be our actions lest the dynamics of chaos overtake our efforts. To succeed in this imperative, we have the assistance and support of the United States. Without that assurance, our prospects would be bleak and grim.
In all this we will maintain the implacable substance as well as the noble forms of democracy. We will stay our progress, if it is necessary, to permit time for democratic counsels. We are determined to reflect in the actions of government the will of the majority of the people We will move with the speed indicated by the people’s wisdom.
We will eschew the symbols and shibboleths as well as the motives of dictatorship. We cannot avoid the process of pause and advance which is the democratic way. Laws and institutions are more certain guides than the unchecked will of men, however benign their purpose.
In our economic life, we will continue to embrace, as we have in the past, free but guided enterprise. That is our system. We will defend it against the deceptive allures of communism, of militarism, and of fascism. We will not give comfort or countenance to those anti-democratic creeds. Proponents of these views will be protected in their right to hold and openly to advocate them. They will not be protected in subversive schemes to destroy the structure of this nation or of its free institutions. Alien anti-democratic “isms” will not be permitted to misuse the priceless privileges of freedom for the systematic destruction of liberty.
We have surveyed at length our relations with the United States and with the rest of the world. We have discussed the significance of our nationhood in transcendental and in immediate terms. But this nation is above all a nation of people. Its government exists by the consent of the governed, and seeks to express the will of the governed. The welfare of all the people must be our primary concern. The toil and sacrifice we have laid out for ourselves must be directed not for the exaltation of the state, but for the elevation of all our citizens, for their greater happiness, for their economic security, for their well-being, for the attainment of greater opportunities for their children. The sweat of the toiler’s brow must be fairly and fully rewarded. The products of enterprise must flow in proper measure to those who participate in all the processes of production. There must be neither masters nor serfs in our economic system.
As we stand at this moment, facing the thorny path of the future trying our first unaided steps on the road which leads to tomorrow, let us take comfort in our national sturdiness and courage. We are 18,000,000 strong. Our people bear well the burdens of adversity. The national spirit is one of humility, of gentleness, and kindly brother hood. Stout of heart and firm of purpose, prudent and wise in the deep wisdom of nature and of God, our people have great reservoirs. This land, this child of freedom, has great responsibilities to America. We are a staging area of democracy in this part of the world. But whatever our role in history, of one thing we may be sure … the Filipino, strong in his faith and steadfast m his loyalty, will support his nation, come what may. This daughter land of America, sprung from the hardy stock of Asia, will not be awed by difficulties. It will live and endure the shocks of time. This is our faith, and this is our resolve. With the help of the Divine Providence, our steps will be illumined by the shining countenance of truth and of righteousness … our spirits will be eased from the weariness of toil by the grace of knowledge that our people’s happiness is our goal.
Our independence is our pride and our honor. We shall defend our nation with our lives and our fortunes. As a poet wrote long ago:
“Let independence be our boast
Ever mindful what it cost.
Ever grateful for the prize.
Let its altar reach the skies.”
