It was a moment worth marking. When Filipinos had declared independence in 1898, the United States had fought a bitter, fourteen-year war against them. Generations of politicians had insisted, with some wavering during the Wilson years, that Filipinos were unfit for self-governance. Yet now, with no law or army forcing it to do so, the United

WITH THE END of the Second World War, a victorious yet financially devastated Britain, no longer able to bear the cost or justify the ideology of its colonial enterprise in India, finally granted to the greatest symbol of its imperialist ambitions—the jewel in the crown of its dwindling empire—its long-sought independence. On August 14, 1947,