When I published my article on the History of Separatism in the Spanish colonies, in the _Deutsche Rundschau_ for July, 1898, I said that the colored peoples of a colony would always be inclined to struggle for the independence of their native country, because the rule of the mother country of the colony makes their access to the highest positions in the state impossible. I declared, further, that in the Philippine Islands the contempt manifested toward the colored tribes by the Spanish press had contributed very much toward making the gulf between rulers and ruled progressively deeper and harder to bridge. The natural conceit and sensitiveness of the colored races in America could never weigh as heavy in the scale as those of the colored Filipinos do, because in America the creoles and their numerously represented crosses were the real upholders of separatist ideas, so that when the idea ripened into an act they held the leading of the movement in their hands. Indians and negroes have there never been more than the _plebs contribuens_, or the tributary class, and "food for cannon." Only in single exceptional cases have leading spirits ever risen from out of these lower castes; and where the separatist movement has been confined to these colored primitive races, as in Haiti, it has led not only to cutting loose from the mother country, but also to a more or less complete renunciation of European civilization. In saying this I cast no condemnation upon the negroes, for, whenever in our civilized states the proletariat and the populace have struck down or cast out all the cultivated and half-cultivated classes, the same sort of "nigger management," with only differences corresponding with the environments, has gained place among us as in the great islands of the Antilles. Very different are the conditions in the Philippine Islands; and, in view of the importance which the "skin question" plays in the conflict raged by the Americans, I think it proper to deal further with this fundamental question of Philippine politics, especially since the journals and the politicians, at least those of America, have given very little attention to the matter. The small number of creoles, of whom, besides, the principal part live in the city of Manila, which the Americans have in their power, would not alone explain why the war of independence and the formation of the Philippine republic must be spoken of as pre-eminently the work of Christian, civilized Malays and mestizos. For there are in America countries, like Paraguay, where the number of whites is even smaller than in the Philippine Islands, and yet the separatist movement and the foundation of the state were the exclusive work of the creoles.