Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 237

the naturally neighboring countries situated in the same geogiaphical plane would be drawn nearer and nearer to each
other every day, by the same means which progress and the
mechanical inventions put into the service of the free nations.
rt ~ These facts are of general character. The facts which we
may call isolated, and of more immediate meaning to our
future, because they keep relation with the present political and
indefinite status of our country, are the following:
1. The indirect repercussion, full of possibilities and consequences, the extent of which we cannot guess, which the
Filipino problem had in the naval Conference held in Washington in 1922 and which is now being held in London about
limitation of naval armaments;
2. The movement which is being initiated in the Pacific
States of America to exclude the Filipino immigrants under
the classification of Oriental workers and to limit the number
of Filipino workers to be allowed to enter the United States
as was done with the other independent countries, who sent
their annual contingent emigrants to the American soil without taking into account at all that we are a country under the
protection of the American flag;
3. The organized force which the producers of beet sugar,
the agricultural associated interests and the enormous American capital invested in Cuban sugar industry are working to
limit the free entrance of our products in the American market;
4. The revelation of Brigadier 'General Crowder, made in
the. tariff-hearings, that one of the plans issued by the Staff
of the American army is to close immediately the commercial
route between the United States and the Philippines in case
of war;
5. The Japanese exclusion law which Japan took as a
shock to her national dignity and to her prestige of first class
power in the world, and which the more prominent statesmen
of the empire consider a question not yet solved in a satisfactory way as to remind them constantly of that measure on the
day of the opening of the Japanese Diet;