It was pleasant to perceive that American enterprise and administration have transformed Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, from a medieval into a modern city. Its newly constructed streets and pavements, water-works and drainage, electricity and the trolley, have turned this old and dilapidated Spanish town into a place of order and beauty. Its parks and gardens, its municipal buildings and hospitals, are an object-lesson to all beholders. The walls of the fort still remain, but the moat has been filled up. The Roman Catholic Cathedral shows the large designs of a former priesthood to capture the people by architecture and ceremonial. But Protestant churches, missions, and schools, are coming to have the first place in popular esteem. The former palace of the Spanish governor is now the meeting-place of the democratic legislature, and the Jones Bill, recently passed by our Congress, but now locally known as "the Bill Jones," has given hopes of a complete and speedy Filipino independence. Our observation of the place, and our intercourse with residents of Manila, lead us to doubt the wisdom of our immediate relinquishment of authority over these islands. Eager as are the Filipino leaders for self-government, they have not yet learned the art of self-restraint. The recent trouble in the great hospital illustrates this. Its American superintendent has resigned his office, for the reason that his Filipino staff and subordinates conspired to make discipline and sanitary regulations impossible. They desired to manage the institution themselves, when they were incompetent to enforce cleanliness and order. What happens in hospital work happens also in all branches of civil administration. It will take a whole generation to raise up officials who can be trusted to do their work for the public good, rather than to provide comfortable and remunerative positions for themselves. We visited the spot, five miles away, where our American troops, under Admiral Dewey, landed to besiege the town. We motored to Fort McKinley also, where our soldiers still command the situation. But our main interest was in the mission schools and in the interdenominational theological seminary. In these educational institutions all the instruction is in the English language. They are Americanizing as well as evangelizing the population. The establishment of universal and compulsory school attendance will in a few years turn a Spanish-speaking into an English-speaking people, and will unify the education and the civilization of the islands. Nothing indeed is more remarkable in the Orient than the gradual superseding of the native dialects by the printed and spoken English. In the great country of India, it is to be remembered, English is the required language in school and court, as well as in every government office. Even the Romanizing of written Chinese and Japanese will make vastly easier the political unity and the religious evangelization of China and Japan.