_My Fellow-Citizens_:
The Northwest, whose sons in the Civil War added such brilliant pages
to the honor roll of the Republic, likewise bore a full share in the
struggle of which the war with Spain was the beginning; a struggle
slight indeed when compared with the gigantic death wrestle which
for four years stamped to and fro across the Southern States in the
Civil War; but a struggle fraught with consequences to the Nation, and
indeed to the world, out of all proportion to the smallness of the
effort upon our part.
Three and a half years ago President McKinley spoke in the adjoining
State of Minnesota on the occasion of the return of the Thirteenth
Minnesota Volunteers from the Philippine Islands, where they had
served with your own gallant sons of the North Dakota regiment.
After heartily thanking the returned soldiers for their valor and
patriotism, and their contemptuous refusal to be daunted or misled by
the outcry raised at home by the men of little faith who wished us to
abandon the islands, he spoke of the islands themselves as follows:
“That Congress will provide for them a government which will bring
them blessings, which will promote their material interests as well
as advance their people in the path of civilization and intelligence,
I confidently believe. They will not be governed as vassals or serfs
or slaves. They will be given a government of liberty, regulated by
law, honestly administered, without oppressing exactions, taxation
without tyranny, justice without bribe, education without distinction
of social condition, freedom of religious worship, and protection in
‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
What he said then lay in the realm of promise. Now it lies in the
realm of positive performance.
It is a good thing to look back upon what has been said and compare
it with the record of what has actually been done. If promises are
violated, if plighted word is not kept, then those who have failed in
their duty should be held up to reprobation. If, on the other hand,
the promises have been substantially made good; if the achievement has
kept pace and more than kept pace with the prophecy, then they who
made the one and are responsible for the other are entitled of just
right to claim the credit which attaches to those who serve the Nation
well. This credit I claim for the men who have managed so admirably
the military and the civil affairs of the Philippine Islands, and
for those other men who have so heartily backed them in Congress,
and without whose aid and support not one thing could have been
accomplished.
When President McKinley spoke, the first duty was the restoration of
order; and to this end the use of the Army of the United States—an
Army composed of regulars and volunteers alike—was necessary. To put
down the insurrection and restore peace to the islands was a duty
not only to ourselves but to the islanders also. We could not have
abandoned the conflict without shirking this duty, without proving
ourselves recreants to the memory of our forefathers. Moreover, if
we had abandoned it we would have inflicted upon the Filipinos the
most cruel wrong and would have doomed them to a bloody jumble of
anarchy and tyranny. It seems strange, looking back, that any of our
people should have failed to recognize a duty so obvious; but there
was such failure, and the Government at home, the civil authorities
in the Philippines, and above all our gallant Army, had to do their
work amid a storm of detraction. The Army in especial was attacked in
a way which finally did good, for in the end it aroused the hearty
resentment of the great body of the American people, not against the
Army, but against the Army’s traducers. The circumstances of the war
made it one of peculiar difficulty, and our soldiers were exposed
to peculiar wrongs from their foes. They fought in dense tropical
jungles against enemies who were very treacherous and very cruel, not
only toward our own men, but toward the great numbers of friendly
natives, the most peaceable and most civilized among whom eagerly
welcomed our rule. Under such circumstances, among a hundred thousand
hot-blooded and powerful young men serving in small detachments
on the other side of the globe, it was impossible that occasional
instances of wrongdoing should not occur. The fact that they occurred
in retaliation for wellnigh intolerable provocation can not for one
moment be admitted in the way of excuse or justification. All good
Americans regret and deplore them, and the War Department has taken
every step in its power to punish the offenders and to prevent or
minimize the chance of repetition of the offence. But these offences
were the exception and not the rule. As a whole our troops showed not
only signal courage and efficiency, but great humanity and the most
sincere desire to promote the welfare and liberties of the islanders.
In a series of exceedingly harassing and difficult campaigns they
completely overthrew the enemy, reducing them finally to a condition
of mere brigandage; and wherever they conquered they conquered only to
make way for the rule of the civil government, for the introduction
of law, and of liberty under the law. When, by last July, the last
vestige of organized insurrection had disappeared, peace and amnesty
were proclaimed.
As rapidly as the military rule was extended over the islands by
the defeat of the insurgents, just so rapidly was it replaced by
the civil government. At the present time the civil government is
supreme and the army in the Philippines has been reduced until it is
sufficient merely to provide against the recurrence of trouble. In
Governor Taft and his associates we sent to the Filipinos as upright,
as conscientious, and as able a group of administrators as ever any
country has been blessed with having. With them and under them we
have associated the best men among the Filipinos, so that the great
majority of the officials, including many of the highest rank, are
themselves natives of the islands. The administration is incorruptibly
honest; justice is as jealously safeguarded as here at home. The
government is conducted purely in the interests of the people of the
islands; they are protected in their religious and civil rights; they
have been given an excellent and well administered school system, and
each of them now enjoys rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness” such as were never before known in all the history of the
islands.
The Congress which has just adjourned has passed legislation of high
importance and great wisdom in the interests of the Filipino people.
First and foremost, they conferred upon them by law the present
admirable civil government; in addition they gave them an excellent
currency; they passed a measure allowing the organization of a native
constabulary; and they provided, in the interests of the islands, for
a reduction of twenty-five per cent in the tariff on Filipino articles
brought to this country. I asked that a still further reduction should
be made. It was not granted by the last Congress, but I think that in
some shape it will be granted by the next. And even without it, the
record of legislation in the interests of the Filipinos is one with
which we have a right to feel great satisfaction.
Moreover, Congress appropriated three million dollars, following the
precedent it set when the people of Porto Rico were afflicted by
sudden disaster; this money to be used by the Philippine government
in order to meet the distress occasioned primarily by the terrible
cattle disease which almost annihilated the carabao or water-buffalo,
the chief and most important domestic animal in the islands. Coming
as this disaster did upon the heels of the havoc wrought by the
insurrectionary war, great suffering has been caused; and this misery,
for which this Government is in no way responsible, will doubtless in
turn increase the difficulties of the Philippine government for the
next year or so. In consequence there will doubtless here and there
occur sporadic increases of the armed brigandage to which the islands
have been habituated from time immemorial, and here and there for
their own purposes the bandits may choose to style themselves patriots
or insurrectionists; but these local difficulties will be of little
consequence save as they give occasion to a few men here at home again
to try to mislead our people. Not only has the military problem in the
Philippines been worked out quicker and better than we had dared to
expect, but the progress socially and in civil government has likewise
exceeded our fondest hopes.
The best thing that can be done in handling such a problem as that in
the Philippine Islands, so peculiar, so delicate, so difficult and so
remote, is to put the best man possible in charge and then give him
the heartiest possible support, and the freest possible hand. This is
what has been done with Governor Taft. There is not in this Nation
a higher or finer type of public servant than Governor Taft. He has
rendered literally inestimable service, not only to the people of
the Philippine Islands but also to the people of the United States,
by what he has done in those islands. He has been able to do it,
because from the beginning he has been given absolute support by the
War Department, under Secretary Root. With the cessation of organized
resistance the civil government assumed its proper position of
headship. The army in the Philippines is now one of the instruments
through which Governor Taft does his admirable work. The civil
government, of which Governor Taft is the head, is supreme, and will
do well in the future as it has in the past, because it will be backed
up in the future as it has been in the past.
Remember always that in the Philippines the American Government has
tried and is trying to carry out exactly what the greatest genius
and most revered patriot ever known in the Philippine Islands—José
Rizal—steadfastly advocated. This man shortly before his death,
in a message to his countrymen, under date of December 16, 1896,
condemned unsparingly the insurrection of Aguinaldo, terminated just
before our navy appeared upon the scene, and pointed out the path
his people should follow to liberty and enlightenment. Speaking of
the insurrection and of the pretence that Filipino independence of a
wholesome character could thereby be obtained, he wrote:
“When, in spite of my advice, a movement was begun, I offered of my
own accord, not only my services, but my life and even my good name
to be used in any way they might believe effective in stifling the
rebellion. I thought of the disaster which would follow the success of
the revolution, and I deemed myself fortunate if by any sacrifice I
could block the progress of such a useless calamity.
“My countrymen, I have given proof that I was one who sought liberty
for our country and I still seek it. But as a first step I insisted
upon the development of the people in order that, by means of
education and of labor, they might acquire the proper individual
character and force which would make them worthy of it. In my writings
I have commended to you study and civic virtue, without which our
redemption does not exist.... I can not do less than condemn, and I do
condemn, this absurd and savage insurrection planned behind my back,
which dishonors us before the Filipinos and discredits us with those
who otherwise would argue in our behalf. I abominate its cruelties
and disavow any kind of connection with it, regretting with all the
sorrow of my soul that these reckless men have allowed themselves to
be deceived. Let them return, then, to their homes, and may God pardon
those who have acted in bad faith.”
This message embodied precisely and exactly the avowed policy upon
which the American Government has acted in the Philippines. What the
patriot Rizal said with such force in speaking of the insurrection
before we came to the islands applies with tenfold greater force
to those who foolishly or wickedly opposed the mild and beneficent
government we were instituting in the islands. The judgment of the
martyred public servant, Rizal, whose birthday the Philippine people
celebrate, and whom they worship as their hero and ideal, sets forth
the duty of American sovereignty; a duty from which the American
people will never flinch.
While we have been doing these great and beneficent works in the
islands, we have yet been steadily reducing the cost at which they
are done. The last Congress repealed the law for the war taxes, and
the War Department has reduced the Army from the maximum number of one
hundred thousand allowed under the law to very nearly the minimum of
sixty thousand.
Moreover, the last Congress enacted some admirable legislation
affecting the Army, passing first of all the militia bill and then
the bill to create a general staff. The militia bill represents the
realization of a reform which had been championed ineffectively by
Washington, and had been fruitlessly agitated ever since. At last we
have taken from the statute books the obsolete militia law of the
Revolutionary days and have provided for efficient aid to the National
Guard of the States. I believe that no other great country has such
fine natural material for volunteer soldiers as we have, and it is the
obvious duty of the nation and of the States to make such provision as
will enable this volunteer soldiery to be organized with all possible
rapidity and efficiency in time of war; and, furthermore, to help in
every way the National Guard in time of peace. The militia law enacted
by the Congress marks the first long step ever taken in this direction
by the National Government. The general-staff law is of immense
importance and benefit to the Regular Army. Individually, I would not
admit that the American regular, either officer or enlisted man, is
inferior to any other regular soldier in the world. In fact, if it
were worth while to boast, I should be tempted to say that he was
the best. But there must be proper training, proper organization and
administration, in order to get the best service out of even the best
troops. This is particularly the case with such a small army as ours,
scattered over so vast a country. We do not need a large Regular Army,
but we do need to have our small Regular Army the very best that can
possibly be produced. Under the worn-out and ineffective organization
which has hitherto existed, a sudden strain is absolutely certain to
produce the dislocation and confusion we saw at the outbreak of the
war with Spain; and when such dislocation and confusion occurs it is
easy and natural, but entirely improper, to blame the men who happen
to be in office, instead of the system which is really responsible.
Under the law just enacted by Congress this system will be changed
immensely for the better, and every patriotic American ought to
rejoice; for when we come to the Army and the Navy we deal with the
honor and interests of all our people; and when such is the case
party lines are as nothing, and we all stand shoulder to shoulder as
Americans, moved only by pride in and love for our common country.