Statement Refusing to Recognize the Philippine Puppet Government.

On the fourteenth of this month a puppet Government was set up in the Philippine Islands with Jose P. Laurel, formerly a Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, as "President." Jorge Vargas, formerly a member of the Philippine Commonwealth Cabinet, and Benigno Aquino, also formerly a member of that Cabi net, were closely associated with Laurel in this movement. The first act of the new puppet regime was to sign a military alliance with Japan. The second act was a hypocritical appeal for American sympathy which was made in fraud and deceit and was designed to confuse and mislead the Filipino people.

I wish to make it clear that neither the former collaborationist "Philippine Executive Commission" nor the present "Philippine Republic" has the recognition or sympathy of the Government of the United States. No act of either body is now or ever will be considered lawful or binding by this Government.

The only Philippine Government is that established by the people of the Philippines under the authorization of the Congress of the United States—the Government of the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands. At my request, the principal executive officers of the Commonwealth were transferred in 1942 from Corregidor to Washington.

Further, it is our expressed policy that all the resources of the United States, both of men and materials, shall be employed to drive the treacherous, invading Japanese from the Philippine Islands, to restore as quickly as possible orderly and free democratic processes of government in the Islands, and to establish there a truly independent Philippine Nation.

Our sympathy goes out to those who remain loyal to the United States and the Commonwealth; to that great majority of the Filipino people who have not been deceived by the promises of the enemy and who look forward to the day when the scheming, perfidious Japanese shall have been driven from the Philippines. That day will come.