While the Spanish troops now remained quietly in Manila, the

Filipino forces made themselves masters of the entire island

except that city.

"For three and one half months," says General Otis in describing

the facts of this same situation a year later, "the insurgents on

land had kept Manila tightly bottled [meaning while Admiral Dewey

had been blockading the place by water] * * * and food supplies were

exhausted." [96] "We had Manila and Cavite. The rest of the island

was held not by the Spanish but by the Filipinos," said General

Anderson, in the North American Review for February, 1900. "It is a

fact that they were in possession, they had gotten pretty much the

whole thing except Manila," said Admiral Dewey to the Senate Committee

in 1902. [97]

General Merritt took Manila August 13th, and sailed away for Paris

August 31st, and only a week after that General Otis wired Washington

(under date of September 7th) from Manila: "Insurgents have captured

all Spanish garrisons in island [of Luzon] and control affairs outside

of Cavite and this city." [98]

The recruiting by Aguinaldo of an army of 40,000 men with guns

within one hundred days after his little "Return from Elba"--"15,000

fighting men, 11,000 of them armed with guns," in fifty days, [99]

which number had swelled to nearly 40,000 men with guns in another

fifty days (by August 29th) [100]--is no more remarkable than his

progress in organizing his government and making its grip on the

whole island of Luzon effective in a short space of time.

As all Americans who know the Filipinos know how fond they are of what

government offices call "paper work," and how their escribientes [101]

can work like bees in drafting documents, it might be easy to ignore

Aguinaldo's various proclamations, already hereinbefore noticed in

Chapter II., as representing merely "a government on paper," were

there no other proof. But among the insurgent captured papers we

found long afterward, there is a document containing the minutes of

a convention of the insurrecto presidentes from all the pueblos of

fifteen different provinces, on August 6, 1898, which throws a flood

of light on the subject now under consideration. [102] This convention

was held at Bacoor, then Aguinaldo's headquarters, a little town on

the bay shore between Manila and Cavite. The minutes of the convention

recite that its members had been previously chosen as presidentes

of their respective pueblos in the manner prescribed by previous

decrees issued by Aguinaldo (already noticed), and that thereafter

they had taken the oath of office before Aguinaldo as President of the

government, etc. They then declare that the Filipino people whom they

speak for are "not ambitious for power, nor honors, nor riches, aside

from the rational aspirations for a free and independent life," and

"proclaim solemnly, in the face of the whole world, the Independence

of the Philippines." They also re-affirm allegiance to Aguinaldo as

President of the government and request him to seek recognition of it

at the hands of the Powers, "because," says the paper, "to no one is it

permitted to * * * stifle the legitimate aspirations of a people"--as

if Europe cared a rap what we did to them except in the way of regret

that it did not have a finger in the pie. However, they were not only

apprehensive, on the one hand, lest we might be tempted to take their

country away from Spain for ourselves, but also, on the other hand,

lest we might in the wind-up decide to leave them to Spain at the end

of the war. That this last was not an idle fear is shown by the fact

that during the deliberations of the Paris Peace Commission, Judge

Gray urged, in behalf of his contention against taking the islands

at all, that if Dewey had sunk the Spanish fleet off Cadiz, instead

of in Manila Bay, and the Carlists had incidentally helped us about

that time, we would have been under no resulting obligation "to stay

by them at the conclusion of the war." [103] When the presidentes in

convention assembled as aforesaid got through with their whereases and

resolutions they presented them to His Excellency the President of the

Republic, Aguinaldo, who then issued a proclamation which recited,

among other things: "In these provinces [the fifteen represented

in the convention] complete order and perfect tranquillity reign,

administered by the authorities elected" [104] according to his

previous decrees as Dictator, which decrees have already been placed

before the reader. The proclamation claims that the new government

has 9,000 prisoners of war and 30,000 combatants. The former claim

no one having any acquaintance with those times and conditions

will question for a moment. As to the 30,000 combatants, if he had

11,000 men armed with guns on July 9th and 40,000 on August 29th,

why not 30,000 on August 6th? Of course, men without guns, bolo men,

do not count for much in a serious connection like this now being

considered. In November, 1899, at San Jose, in Nueva Ecija province,

I heard General Lawton tell Colonel Jack Hayes to disarm and turn

loose 175 bolo men the colonel had just captured and was lining up on

the public square as we rode into the town. But we are considering how

much of a government the Filipinos had in 1898, because the answer is

pertinent to what sort of a government they could run if permitted now

or at any time in the future; and, physical force being the ultimate

basis of stability in all government, when we come to estimate how much

of an army they had when their government was claiming recognition as a

legitimate living thing, we must remember that "It was just a question

of arming them. They could have had the whole population." [105]

Now the great significant fact about this Bacoor convention of

presidentes of August 6th--a week before Manila surrendered to our

forces--is that in it more than half the population of the island of

Luzon was represented. The total population of the Philippines is

about 7,600,000, [106] and, of these, one-half, or 3,800,000 [107]

live on Luzon. The other islands may be said to dangle from Luzon

like the tail of a kite. Taking the tables of the American census

of the Philippines of 1903 (vol. ii., p. 123), as a basis on which

to judge what Aguinaldo's claims of August 6th amounted to if true,

the population of the provinces thus duly incorporated into the new

government and in working order on that date, was, in round numbers,

about as follows: South of Manila:--Cavite, 135,000; Batangas, 260,000;

Laguna, 150,000; Tayabas, 150,000; North of Manila:--Bulacan, 225,000;

Pampamga, 225,000; Nueva Ecija, 135,000; Tarlac, 135,000; Pangasinan,

400,000; Union, 140,000; Bataan, 45,000; Zambales, 105,000. This

represents a total of more than 2,000,000 of people.

But Aguinaldo's claims of August 6th are not the only evidence as to

the political status of the provinces of Luzon in August, 1898. Toward

the end of that month, Maj. J. F. Bell, Chief of General Merritt's

Bureau of Military Information, made a report on the situation as

it stood August 29th, the report being made after most careful

investigation, and intended as a summary of the then situation

according to the most reliable information obtainable, in order that

General Merritt might know, as far as practicable, what he would be

"up against" in the event of trouble with the insurgents. [108]

This report not only corroborates Aguinaldo's claims of August 6th,

but it also concedes to the Aguinaldo people eight other important

provinces--four south of the Pasig River with a total population of

about 630,000, [109] the only four of southern Luzon not included in

Aguinaldo's claim of August 6th, thus conceding him practically all

of Luzon south of the Pasig; and it furthermore concedes him four

great provinces of northern Luzon with a total population of nearly

600,000. [110] General Bell states that these last are "still in the

possession of the Spanish," but practically certain to be with the

insurgents in the very near future. "Insurgents have been dispatched

to attack the Spanish in these provinces," says the Bell report.

In this same report Major Bell said: "There is not a particle of doubt

but what Aguinaldo and his leaders will resist any attempt of any

government to reorganize a colonial government here." [111] When the

insurgent government was finally dislodged from its last capital and

Aguinaldo became a fugitive hotly pursued by our troops, he started

for the mountains of northern Luzon, passing through provinces he

had never visited before. The diary of one of his staff officers,

Major Villa, in describing a brief stop they made in a town en route

(Aringay, in Union province) says: "After the honorable President

had urged them [the townspeople] to be patriotic, we continued the

march." [112] They certainly did "continue the march." The Maccabebe

scouts, of which the writer commanded a company at the time, took

the town a few hours later, Aguinaldo's rear-guard retiring after

a brief resistance, following which we found, among the dead in the

trenches, a major other than Villa. Certainly, to read this little

extract from the diary of Aguinaldo's retreat is to feel the pulse

of northern Luzon as to its loyalty to the revolution at that time,

and is corroborative of these claims of Aguinaldo made in August,

1898, supplemented, as we have seen them, by General Bell's appraisal.

As to the political conditions which prevailed in southern Luzon,

particularly in the Camarines, in August and the fall of 1898,

information derived from one who was there then would seem appropriate

here. Major Blanton Winship, Judge Advocate's Corps, U. S. A., Major

Archibald W. Butt, the late lamented military aide to President Taft,

and the writer, lived together in Manila, in 1900, at the house of a

Spanish physician, a Dr. Lopez, who had been a "prisoner" at Nueva

Caceres, a town situated in one of the provinces of southern Luzon

(Camarines) in the fall of 1898. Dr. Lopez had a large family. They had

also been "prisoners" down there. No evil befell them at the hands of

their "captors." They had the freedom of the town they were in. They

had good reason to be pretty well scared as to what the insurgents

might do to them. But they were never maltreated. The main impression

we got from Dr. Lopez and his family was that the political grip of

the Aguinaldo government on southern Luzon was complete during the

time they were "prisoners" there. If anybody doubts the absoluteness

of the grip of the Revolutionary government on the situation in the

provinces which were represented at the Bacoor convention of August 6,

1898, above mentioned, when the Filipino Declaration of Independence

was signed and proclaimed, let him ask any American who had a part

in putting down the Philippine insurrection what a presidente, an

insurrecto presidente, in a Filipino town, was in 1899 and 1900. He

was "the whole thing." Even to-day the presidente of a pueblo is as

absolute boss of his town as Charles F. Murphy is of Tammany Hall. And

a town or pueblo in the Philippines is more than an area covered

by more or less contiguous buildings and grounds. It is more like a

township in Massachusetts. So that when you account governmentally for

the pueblos of a given province, you account for every square foot of

that province and for every man in it. For several years before our war

with Spain, nearly every Filipino of any education and spirit in the

archipelago belonged to the secret revolutionary society known as the

Katipunan. This had its organization in every town when Dewey sank the

Spanish fleet and landed Aguinaldo at Cavite. The rest may be imagined.

By September, 1898, Aguinaldo was absolute master of the whole of

Luzon. Before the Treaty of Paris was signed (December 10, 1898), in

fact while Judge Gray of the Peace Commission was cabling President

McKinley that not to leave the government of the Philippines to the

people thereof "would be to make a mockery of instructions," Aguinaldo

had become equally absolute master of the situation throughout the

rest of the archipelago outside of Manila.

Toward the end of July, 1898, our Manila Consul, Mr. Williams, who

was one of our consular triumvirate of would-be Warwicks, or "original

Aguinaldo men," of 1898, used to have nice talks with Aguinaldo about

the lion and the lamb lying down together without the lion eating the

lamb, and in one instance, at least, he goes so far as to represent

Aguinaldo as willing to some such arrangement--e. g., annexation, or

some vague scheme of dependence. But whenever we hear from Aguinaldo

over his own signature, we hear him saying whatever means in Tagalo

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." For instance, at page 15, of Senate

Document 208, he writes Williams, under date of August 1st, with

fine courtesy:

I congratulate you with all sincerity on the acuteness and

ingenuity which you have displayed in painting in an admirable

manner the benefits which, especially for me and my leaders, and

in general for all my compatriots, would be secured by the union of

these islands with the United States of America. Ah! that picture,

so happy and so finished * * * This is not saying that I am not

of your opinion * * * You say all this and yet more will result

from annexing ourselves to your people * * * You are my friend

and the friend of the Filipinos and have said it. But why should

we say it? Will my people believe it? * * * I have done what they

desire, establishing a government * * * not only because it was my

duty, but also because had I acted in any other manner they would

fail to recognize me as the interpreter of their aspirations,

and would punish me as a traitor, replacing me by another more

careful of his own honor and dignity.

Now that we know what was in the Filipino mind when General Merritt

arrived in the Philippines, let us see what was in the American

military mind out there at the same time. Says General Merritt:

"General Aguinaldo did not visit me on my arrival nor offer his

services as a subordinate leader." We trust the reason of this

at once suggests itself from what has preceded, including General

Anderson's dealings with the insurgent chief. The latter wanted some

understanding as to what the intentions of our government were, and

what was to be the programme afterward, should he and his countrymen

assist in the little fighting that now remained necessary to complete

the taking of Manila. Those intentions were precisely what Merritt

was determined to conceal. "As my instructions from the President

fully contemplated the occupation of the Islands by the American

land forces, and stated that 'the powers of the military occupant

are absolute and supreme and immediately operate upon the political

condition of the inhabitants,' I did not consider it wise to hold any

direct communication with the insurgent leader until I should be in

possession of the city of Manila." [113]

On one occasion General Merritt passed through the village of Bacoor

where Aguinaldo had his headquarters, but, says Mr. Millet [114]

in mentioning this, "They never met." After the taking of the city,

General Merritt remembered that with some 13,000 Spanish prisoners

to guard, and a city of 300,000 people, all but a sprinkling of whom

were in sympathy with the insurgent cause, on his hands, and an army

of at least 14,000 insurgents--probably far more than that--clamoring

without the gates of that city, and only 10,000 men of his own with

whom to handle such a situation, frankness was out of the question,

in view of his orders from the President. [115] Therefore, on the day

after the city surrendered, General Merritt issued a proclamation,

copying [116] verbatim from Mr. McKinley's instructions (ante)

such innocuous milk-and-water passages as the one which assured the

people that our government "has not come to wage war upon them * * *

but to protect them in their homes, in their employments, and in their

personal and religious rights; all persons who, by active aid or honest

submission, co-operate with the United States * * * will receive the

reward of its support and protection." But he carefully omitted the

words quoted above about the powers of the military occupant being

absolute and supreme, "lest his [Aguinaldo's] pretensions," to use

General Merritt's expression, "should clash with my designs." "For

these reasons," says General Merritt (p. 40), "the preparations for

the attack on the city were * * * conducted without reference to the

situation of the insurgent forces."

Here General Merritt is speaking frankly but not accurately. He means

he made his preparations without any more reference to the situation

of the insurgent forces than he could help. As a matter of fact,

their situation bothered him a good deal. They were in the way. For

instance, there was a whole brigade of them at one point between

our people and Manila. "This," says General Merritt (p. 41), "was

overcome by instructions to General Greene to arrange if possible

with the insurgent brigade commander in his immediate vicinity to

move to the right and allow the American forces unobstructed control

of the roads in their immediate front. No objection was made,"

etc. That reads very well--that about "arrange if possible," "no

objection was made," etc.,--does it not? Nothing there through which

"the lustre and the moral strength" of the motives that prompted the

Spanish war might be "dimmed by ulterior designs which might tempt

us," [117] is there? It was stated above that General Merritt was

speaking frankly in this report. He was. He probably did not know how

General Greene carried out the order to "arrange if possible with the

insurgent brigadier-commander." But it so happened that there was a

newspaper correspondent along with General Greene who has since told

us. This gentleman was Mr. Frank D. Millet, from whom we have already

above quoted, the correspondent of the London Times and of Harper's

Weekly. General Greene had known him years before in the campaigns of

the Turco-Russian war. Mr. Millet had been a war correspondent in those

campaigns also, and General Greene was there taking observations. So

that in the operations against Manila, Mr. Millet, being an old friend

of General Greene's, known to be a handy man to have around in a close

place, was acting as a civilian volunteer aide to the general. [118]

Here is Mr. Millet's account of what happened, taken from his book,

The Expedition to the Philippines:

On the afternoon of the 28th [of July, 1898], General Greene

received a verbal message from General Merritt suggesting that

he juggle the insurgents out of part of their lines, always on

his own responsibility, and without committing in any way the

commanding general to any recognition of the native leaders

or opening up the prospect of an alliance. This General Greene

accomplished very cleverly.

Mr. Millet then goes on to tell how General Greene persuaded one

of Aguinaldo's generals (Noriel) to evacuate certain trenches so he

(Greene) could occupy them, "with a condition attached that General

Greene must give a written receipt for the entrenchments." This

condition, Mr. Millet says, was imposed by "the astute leader"

(Aguinaldo). General Greene's "cleverness" consisted in purposely

failing and omitting to give the receipt, which Mr. Millet says

"looked very much like a bargain concluded over a signature, and was

a little more formal than General Greene thought advisable." The key

to this sorry business may be found in the first paragraph of General

Merritt's instructions to all his generals at the time:

No rupture with insurgents. This is imperative. Can ask insurgent

generals or Aguinaldo for permission to occupy trenches, but if

refused not to use force. [119]

"I am quite unable to explain," says Mr. Millet (p. 61), "why we

did not in the very beginning make them understand that we were

masters of the situation, and that they must come strictly under our

authority." The obvious reason was that a war of conquest to subjugate

a remote people struggling to be free from the yoke of alien domination

was sure to be more or less unpopular with many of the sovereign

voters of a republic, and more or less dangerous therefore, like all

unpopular wars, to the tenure of office of the party in power. So that

in entering upon a war for conquest, a republic must "play politics,"

using the military arm of the government for the twofold purpose of

crushing opposition and proving that there is none.

The maxim which makes all fair in war often covers a multitude of

sins. But let us turn for a moment from strategy to principle, and

see what two other distinguished American war correspondents were

thinking and saying about the same time. Writing to Harper's Weekly

from Cavite, under date of July 16th, concerning the work of the

Filipinos during the eight weeks before that, Mr. O. K. Davis said:

"The insurgents have driven them [the Spaniards] back over twenty

miles of country practically impassable for our men. * * * Aguinaldo

has saved our troops a lot of desperately hard campaigning * * *. The

insurgent works extend clear around Manila, and the Spaniards are

completely hemmed in. There is no hope for them but surrender." Writing

to the same paper under date of August 6th, Mr. John F. Bass says:

"We forget that they drove the Spaniards from Cavite to their present

intrenched position, thus saving us a long-continued fight through

the jungle." This gentleman did not tackle the question of inventing

a new definition of liberty consistent with alien domination. He

simply says: "Give them their liberty and guarantee it to them." In

the face of such plucky patriotism as he had witnessed, political

casuistry about "capacity for self-government" would have hung its

head. Yet Mr. Bass was by no means a novice. He had served with the

British army in Egypt in 1895, through the Armenian massacres of 1896,

and in the Cretan rebellion and Greek War of 1897. His sentiments were

simply precisely what those of the average American not under military

orders would have been at the time. After the fall of Manila he wrote

(August 17th): "I am inclined to think that the insurgents intend to

fight us if we stay and Spain if we go."

There were 8500 American troops in the taking of the city of Manila,

on August 13, 1898. The Filipinos were ignored by them, although they

afterwards claimed to have helped. As a matter of fact, the Spanish

officers in command were very anxious to surrender and get back to

Spain. The Filipinos had already made them "long for peace," to use

a famous expression of General J. F. Bell. The garrison only put up

a very slight resistance, "to save their face," as the Chinese say,

i. e., to save themselves from being court-martialed under some

quixotic article of the Spanish army regulations. The assault was

begun about 9.30 A.M., and early that afternoon the Spanish flag

had been lowered from the flag-staff in the main square and the

Stars and Stripes run up in its stead, amid the convulsive sobs of

dark-eyed senoritas and the muttered curses of melodramatic Spanish

cavaliers. Thanks to the Filipinos' three and one half months' work,

the performance only cost us five men killed out of the 8500. The

list of wounded totalled 43. Our antecedent loss in the trenches

prior to the day of the assault had been fourteen killed and sixty

wounded. So the job was completed, so far as the records show, at a

cost of less than a score of American lives. [120]

As Aguinaldo's troops surged forward in the wake of the American

advance they were stopped by orders from the American commander, and

prevented from following the retreating Spaniards into Manila. They

were not even allowed what is known to the modern small boy as "a

look-in." They were not permitted to come into the city to see the

surrender. President McKinley's message to Congress of December,

1898, describes "the last scene of the war" as having been "enacted

at Manila its starting place." [121] It says: "On August 13th,

after a brief assault upon the works by the land forces, in which the

squadron assisted, the capital surrendered unconditionally." In this

connection, by way of explaining Aguinaldo's treatment at the hands of

our generals from the beginning, the message says, "Divided victory

was not permissible." "It was fitting that whatever was to be done

* * * should be accomplished by the strong arm of the United States

alone." But what takes much of the virtue out of the "strong arm"

proposition is that Generals Merritt and Anderson were carrying out

President McKinley's orders all the time they were juggling Aguinaldo

out of his positions before Manila, and giving him evasive answers,

until the city could be taken by the said "strong arm" alone. For,

as the message puts it, in speaking of the taking of the city, "By

this the conquest of the Philippine Islands * * * was formally sealed."

When General Merritt left Manila on August 30th, he proceeded to Paris

to appear before the Peace Commission there. His views doubtless

had great weight with them on the momentous questions they had to

decide. But his views were wholly erroneous, and that they were so

is not surprising. As above stated, he did not even meet Aguinaldo,

purposely holding himself aloof from him and his leaders. He never did

know how deeply they were incensed at being shut out of Manila when

the city surrendered. In his report prepared aboard the steamship

China, en route for Paris, he says: "Doubtless much dissatisfaction

is felt by the rank and file of the insurgents, but * * * I am of the

opinion that the leaders will be able to prevent serious disturbances,"

etc. (p. 40). If General Merritt had caught the temper of the trenches

he would have known better, but he saw nothing of the fighting prior

to the final scene, nor did he take the field in person on the day of

the combined assault on the city, August 13th, and therefore missed

the supreme opportunity to understand how the Filipinos felt. Says

General Anderson in his report:

I understood from the general commanding that he would be

personally present on the day of battle. * * * On the morning of

the 13th, General Babcock came to my headquarters and informed

me that the major-general commanding would remain on a despatch

boat. [122]

Indeed, so reduced was Manila, by reason of the long siege conducted by

the insurgents, that the assault of August 13th, not only was, but was

expected to be, little more than a sham battle. Says Lieutenant-Colonel

Pope, chief quartermaster, "On the evening of August 12th an order was

sent me to report with two battalions of the Second Oregon Volunteers,

under Colonel Summers the next day on the Kwong Hoi to the commanding

general on the Newport, as an escort on his entrance into Manila. At

the hour named, I reported etc." [123] As soon as Spanish "honor"

was satisfied, up went the white flag and General Merritt was duly

escorted ashore and into the city, where he received the surrender

of the Spanish general.

In the Civil War, General Merritt had received six successive

promotions for gallantry, at Gettysburg, Yellow Tavern, Five Forks,

etc., and had been with Sheridan at Winchester. So the way he

"commanded" the assault on Manila is proof only of the obligations

we then owed the Filipinos. They had left very little to be done.

In his account of General Merritt's original personal disembarkation

at Cavite, Mr. Frank Millet acquaints his readers with a Philippine

custom we afterwards grew quite familiar with and found quite useful,

of keeping your shoes dry in landing from a rowboat on a beach

by riding astride the shoulders of some husky native boatman. The

boatmen make it a point of special pride not to let their passengers

get their feet wet. Mr. Millet tells us that a general in uniform

looks neither dignified nor picturesque under such circumstances,

and that therefore he will not elaborate on the picture, but that it

is suggestive "more of the hilarious than of the heroic." Presumably

when General Merritt went ashore on August 13th, from the despatch

boat from which he had been watching the assault on Manila, to

receive the surrender of the Spanish general, he followed the same

custom of the country he had used on the occasion of his original

disembarkation. So that in the taking of Manila, we were probably

literally, as well as ethically, like General Mahone of Virginia as

he is pictured in a familiar post-bellum negro story, according to

which the general met a negro on a steep part of the road to heaven,

told him that St. Peter would only admit mounted parties, mounted

the negro with the latter's consent, rode on his back the rest of

the toilsome journey to the heavenly gate, dismounted, knocked,

and was cordially welcomed by the saint at the sacred portal thus:

"Why how d' ye do, General Mahone; jess tie yoh hoss and come in."

CHAPTER V

OTIS AND AGUINALDO

Where people and leaders are agreed,

What can the archon do?

Athenian Maxims.

Major-general Elwell S. Otis and staff arrived at Manila August 21,

1898. [124] He relieved General Merritt and succeeded to the command

of the American troops in the Philippines, August 29th. Archbishop

Chapelle, who was papal delegate to the Philippines in 1900, once

said to the writer at Manila, in that year, that General Otis was

"of about the right mental calibre to command a one-company post

in Arizona." The impatience manifested in the remark was due to

differences between him and the commanding-general about the Friar

question. The remark itself was of course intended, and understood, as

hyperbole. But the selection of General Otis to handle the Philippine

situation was a serious mistake. He was past sixty when he took

command. He continued in command from August 29, 1898, to May 5,

1900, a period of some twenty months. The insurrection was held in

abeyance for some five months after he took hold, the leaders hoping

against hope that the Treaty of Paris would leave their country to

them as it did Cuba to the Cubans; and during all that time General

Otis was apparently unable to see that war would be inevitable in the

event the decision at Paris was adverse to Filipino hopes. A member

of General Otis's staff once told me in speaking of the insurrection

period that his chief pooh-poohed the likelihood of an outbreak

right along up to the very day before the outbreak of February 4,

1899, occurred. Before the insurrection came he would not see it,

and after it came he--literally--did not see it; that is to say,

during fifteen months of fighting he commanded the Eighth Army Corps

from a desk in Manila and never once took the field. His Civil War

record was all right, but he was now getting well along in years. He

was also a graduate of the Harvard Law School of the Class of 1861,

rather prided himself on being "a pretty fair jack-leg lawyer," and had

a most absorbing passion for the details of administrative work. They

used to say that the only occasion on which General Otis ever went

out of Manila the whole time he was there was when he went up the

railroad once to Angeles to see that a proper valuation was put on a

then recently deceased Quartermaster's Department mule. When he left

the Islands he remarked to a newspaper man that he had had but one "day

off" since he had been there. Unswerving devotion to a desk in time of

war, on the part of the commanding general of the army in the field,

seemed to him an appropriate subject for just pride. This showed his

limitations. He was a man wholly unable to see the essentials of an

important situation, or to take in the whole horizon. He was known

to the Eighth Corps, his command, as a sort of "Fussy Grandpa," his

personality and general management of things always suggesting the

picture of a painfully near-sighted be-spectacled old gentleman busily

nosing over papers you had submitted, and finding fault to show he knew

a thing or two. However, he had many eminently respectable traits, and

did the best he knew how, though wholly devoid of that noble serenity

of vision which used to enable Mr. Lincoln, amid the darkest and most

tremendous of his problems, to say with a smile to Horace Greeley:

"Don't shoot the organist, he's doing the best he can."

Before General Otis relieved General Merritt, the latter had written

Aguinaldo politely requesting him to move his troops beyond certain

specified lines about the city, [125] and Aguinaldo had replied

August 27th, agreeing to do so, but asking that the Americans promise

to restore to him the positions thus vacated in the event under the

treaty the United States should leave the Philippines to Spain. [126]

August 31st, Otis notified Aguinaldo, then still at Bacoor, his first

capital, that General Merritt had been unexpectedly called away,

and that he, Otis, being unacquainted with the situation must take

time before answering the Aguinaldo letter to Merritt of the 27th. On

September 8th, he did answer, in a preposterously long communication

of about 3000 words, which says, among other things: "I have not been

instructed as to what policy the United States intends to pursue in

regard to its legitimate holdings here"; and therefore declines to

promise anything about restoring the insurgent positions in the event

we should leave the Islands to Spain under the treaty. Commenting

on this in the North American Review for February, 1900, General

Anderson says: "I believe we came to the parting of the ways when we

refused this request." General Anderson was right. General Merritt

had on August 21st sent Aguinaldo a memorandum by the hand of Major

J. Franklin Bell which promised: "Care will be taken to leave him

[Aguinaldo] in as good condition as he was found by the forces of the

government." [127] In the role of political henchman for President

McKinley, which General Otis seems to have conceived it his duty to

play from the very beginning in the Philippines, it thus appears that

he was not troubled about keeping unsullied the faith and honor of

the government as pledged by his predecessor. His 3000-word letter to

Aguinaldo of September 8th ignores Merritt's promise as coolly as if

it had never been made. His only concern appears to have been to leave

the government free to throw the Filipinos overboard if it should

wish to. He peevishly implies later on that Aguinaldo's requests in

this regard were merely a cloak for designs against us (p. 40). But

his real reason is given in a sort of stage "aside"--a letter to

the Adjutant-General of the army dated September 12, 1898, wherein he

explains: "Should I promise them that in case of the return of the city

to Spain, upon United States evacuation, their forces would be placed

by us in positions which they now occupy, I thoroughly believe that

they would evacuate at once. But, of course, under the international

obligations resting upon us * * * no such promise can be given." [128]

In the sacred name of National Honor what of the Merritt promise? You

only have to turn a few pages in the War Department Report for 1899

from the Merritt promise to the Otis repudiation of it. Yes, General

Anderson was right. It was when General Otis practically repudiated

in writing the written promise of his predecessor, General Merritt,

that we "came to the parting of the ways" in our relations with the

Filipinos. Let no American suppose for a moment that the author of

this volume is engaged in the ungracious, and frequently deservedly

thankless task of mere muck-raking. He never met General Otis but once,

and then for a very brief official interview of an agreeable nature. He

is only attempting to make a small contribution to the righting of a

great wrong unwittingly done by a great, free, and generous people to

another people then struggling to be free--a wrong which he doubts

not will one day be righted, whether he lives to see it so righted

or not. General Otis's letter to the Adjutant-General of the army of

September 12th, above quoted, shows that he was holding himself in

readiness to carry out in the Philippines any political programme the

Administration might determine upon, which would mean that he would

afterwards come home and tell how entirely righteous that programme

had been. Had the Administration hearkened back to Admiral Dewey's

suggestion that the Filipinos were far superior to the Cubans, and

decided to set before General Otis in the Philippines the same task

it had set before General Wood in Cuba, we would have heard nothing

about Filipino "incapacity for self-government." General Otis would

have taken his cue from the President, his commander-in chief, and

said: "I cordially concur in the opinion of Admiral Dewey." Then he

would have gone to work in a spirit of generous rivalry to do in the

Philippines just what Wood did in Cuba. And the task would have been

easier. Had the Administration taken the view urged by Judge Gray,

as a member of the Paris Peace Commission, that "if we had captured

Cadiz and the Carlists had helped us [we] would not owe duty to stay

by them at the conclusion of the war," [129] and therefore we were not

bound to see the Filipinos through their struggle, General Otis would

have adopted that view with equal loyalty and in the presidential

campaign of 1900, he would have furnished the Administration with

arguments to justify that course. This would have been an easy task,

also, for two of Spain's fleets had been destroyed by us, leaving

her but one to guard her home coast cities, and making the sending

of reinforcements to the besieged and demoralized garrison of Manila

impossible. The native army she relied on throughout the archipelago

had gone over bodily to the patriot cause, and there was no hope

of successful resistance to it. But General Otis did not have the

boundless prestige of Admiral Dewey and so volunteered no advice. As

soon as the Administration chose its course, he set to work to prove

the correctness of it. From him, of course, came all the McKinley

Administration's original arguments against doing for the Filipinos

as we did in the case of Cuba. He was the only legitimate source

the American people could look to at that time to help them in their

dilemma. They were standing with reluctant feet where democracy and

its antithesis meet, and Otis was their sole guide. But the guide

was of the kind who wait until you point and ask "Is that the right

direction?" and then answer "Yes." Four days after General Otis sent

his above quoted letter of September 12th, to Adjutant-General Corbin,

Mr. McKinley signed his instructions to the Paris Peace Commissioners,

directing them to insist on the cession of Luzon at least, the

instructions being full of eloquent but specious argument about the

necessity of establishing a guardianship over people of whom we then

knew nothing. From that day forward General Otis bent himself to the

task of showing the righteousness of that course. "I will let nothing

go that will hurt the Administration," was his favorite expression

to the newspaper correspondents when they used to complain about

his press censorship. Hypocrisy is defined to be "a false assumption

of piety or virtue." The false assumption of piety or virtue which

has handicapped the American occupation of the Philippines from the

beginning, and which will always handicap it, until we throw off the

mask and honestly set to work to give the Filipinos a square deal on

the question of whether they can or cannot run a decent government of

their own if permitted, is traceable back to the Otis letter to the

Adjutant-General of September 12, 1898, ignoring General Merritt's

promise to leave Aguinaldo "in as good condition as he was found by

the forces of the government" in case we should, under the terms of

the treaty of peace, leave the Islands to Spain.

General Otis's letter of September 8th to Aguinaldo is apparently

intended to convince him that he ought to consider everything the

Americans had done up to date as exactly the correct thing, according

to the standards of up-to-date, philanthropic, liberty-loving nations

which pity double-dealing as mediaeval; and that he should cheer up,

and feel grateful and happy, instead of sulking, Achilles-like, in his

tents; and furthermore--which was the crux--that he must move said

tents. General Otis does not forget "that the revolutionary forces

under your command have made many sacrifices in the interest of civil

liberty (observe, he does not call it independence) and for the welfare

of your people"; admits that they have "endured great hardships, and

have rendered aid"; and avers, as a reason for Aguinaldo's evacuating

that part of the environs of Manila occupied by his troops: "It [the

war with Spain] was undertaken by the United States for humanity's sake

* * * not for * * * aggrandizement or for any national profit." After

stating, as above indicated, that he does not yet know what the

policy of the United States is to be "in regard to its legitimate

holdings here," General Otis proceeds to declare that in any event

he will not be a party to any joint occupation of any part of the

city, bay, and harbor of Manila--the territory covered by the Peace

Protocol of August 13th--and that Aguinaldo must effect the evacuation

demanded in the letter of General Merritt "before Tuesday the 15th"

(of September), i.e., within a week. Aguinaldo finally withdrew his

troops, after much useless parleying and much waste of ink.

There was some of the parleying and ink, however, that was not wholly

wasted. But to properly appreciate it as illustrative of the fortitude

and tact which the early Filipino leaders seem to have combined in

a remarkable degree, some prefatory data are essential.

Aguinaldo's capital was then at Bacoor, one of the small coast villages

you pass through in going by land from Manila to Cavite. From Manila

over to Cavite by water is about seven miles, and by land about three

or four times that. The coast line from Manila to Cavite makes a

loop, so that a straight line over the water from Manila to Cavite

subtends a curve, near the Cavite end of which lies Bacoor. Thus,

Bacoor, being at the mercy of the big guns at Cavite, and also easily

accessible by a land force from Manila, to say nothing of Dewey's

mighty armada riding at anchor in the offing, was a good place to

move away from. There it lay, right in the lion's jaws, should the

lion happen to get hungry. Aguinaldo had reflected on all this,

and had determined to get himself a capital away from "the city,

bay, and harbor of Manila," that is to say, to take his head out

of the lion's jaws. General Otis's demand of September 8th that

he move his troops out of the suburbs of Manila determined him to

move his capital as well. He moved it to a place called Malolos, in

Bulacan province. Bulacan lies over on the north shore of Manila Bay,

opposite Cavite province on the south shore. Malolos is situated some

distance inland, out of sight and range of a fleet's guns, and about

twenty-odd miles by railroad northwest of Manila. Malolos was also

desirable because it was in the heart of an insurgent province having a

population of nearly a quarter of a million people, a province which,

by reason of being on the north side of the bay, was sure to be in

touch, strategically and politically, with all Luzon north of the

Pasig River, just as Cavite province, the birthplace of Aguinaldo,

and also of the revolutionary government, had been with all Luzon

south of the Pasig. Should the worst come to the worst--and as has

already been indicated, the insurgents played a sweepstake game from

the beginning for independence, with only war as the limit--northern

Luzon had more inaccessible mountains from which to conduct such

a struggle for an indefinite period than southern Luzon. But while

the Otis demand of September 8th decided the matter of the change

of capital, Aguinaldo could not afford to tell his troops that he

was moving them from the environs of Manila because made to. He was

going to accept war cheerfully when it should become necessary to

fight for independence, but he still had some hopes of the Paris

Peace Conference deciding to do with the Philippines as with Cuba,

and wished to await patiently the outcome of that conference. Besides,

he was getting in shipments of guns all the time, as fast as the

revenues of his government would permit, and thus his ability to

protract an ultimate war for independence was constantly enlarging

by accretion. The Hong Kong conference of the Filipino revolutionary

leaders held in the city named on May 4, 1898, at which Aguinaldo

presided, and which mapped out a programme covering every possible

contingency, has already been mentioned. Its minutes say:

If Washington proposes to carry out the fundamental principles

of its Constitution, it is most improbable that an attempt will

be made to colonize the Philippines or annex them. [130]

On the other hand, the minutes of this same meeting as we saw

recognized that America might be tempted into entering upon a career

of colonization, once she should get a foothold in the islands. The

programme of Aguinaldo and his people was thus, from the beginning,

not to precipitate hostilities until it should become clear that,

in the matter of land-grabbing, the gleam of hope held out by the

American programme for Cuba was illusive. According to the minutes of

the meeting alluded to, such a contingency would, of course, "drive

them, the Filipinos * * * to a struggle for their independence,

even if they should succumb to the weight of the yoke," etc. Such

a struggle, as all the world knows, did ultimately ensue. That

part of the parleying following Otis's demand of September 8th

(that Aguinaldo move his troops) which was not useless was this:

In order to "save their face," with the rank and file of their

army, the Filipino Commissioners asked General Otis "if I [Otis,]

would express in writing a simple request to Aguinaldo to withdraw

to the lines which I designated--something which he could show to

the troops." [131] So, on September 13th, General Otis wrote such a

"request," and Aguinaldo moved his troops as demanded, but no farther

than demanded. He wanted to be in the best position possible in case

the United States should finally leave the Philippines to Spain,

and always so insisted. Long afterward General Otis insinuated in

his report that this insistence, which was uniformly pressed until

after the Treaty was signed, was mere dishonest pretence, to cloak

warlike intentions against the United States. Yet, as we have seen

above, one of our Peace Commissioners at Paris, Judge Gray, just

about the same time, was taking that contingency quite as seriously

as did Aguinaldo. And early in May, 1898, our Secretary of the Navy,

Mr. Long, had cabled Admiral Dewey "not to have political alliances

with the insurgents * * * that would incur liability to maintain their

cause in the future." [132] Before moving his troops pursuant to the

Otis demand of September 8th, the Otis "request" was duly published

to the insurgent army, and as the insurgents withdrew, the American

troops presented arms in most friendly fashion. "They certainly made a

brave show," says Mr. Millet (Expedition to the Philippines, p. 255),

"for they were neatly uniformed, had excellent rifles, marched well,

and looked very soldierly and intelligent." "The withdrawal," says

General Otis (p. 10), "was effected adroitly, as the insurgents marched

out in excellent spirits, cheering the American forces." Absolute

master of all Luzon outside Manila at this time, with complete

machinery of government in each province for all matters of justice,

taxes, and police, an army of some 30,000 men at his beck, and his

whole people a unit at his back, Aguinaldo formally inaugurated

his permanent government--permanent as opposed to the previous

provisional government--with a Constitution, Congress, and Cabinet,

patterned after our own, [133] just as the South American republics

had done before him when they were freed from Spain, at Malolos, the

new capital, on September 15, 1898. The next day, September 16th, at

Washington, President McKinley delivered to his Peace Commissioners,

then getting ready to start for the Paris Peace Conference, their

letter of instructions, directing them to insist on the cession by

Spain to the United States of the island of Luzon "at least." [134]

In other words, the day after the little Filipino republic, gay

with banners and glad with music, started forth on its journey,

Mr. McKinley signed its death-warrant. The political student of 1912

may say just here, "Oh, I read all that in the papers at the time,

or at least it was all ventilated in the Presidential campaign of

1900." Mr. McKinley's instructions to the Paris Peace Commission were

not made public until after the Presidential election of 1900. To be

specific, they were first printed and given out to the public in 1901,

in Senate Document 148, having been extracted from the jealous custody

of the Executive by a Senate resolution. It was not until then that the

veil was lifted. By that time, no American who was not transcendental

enough to have lost his love for the old maxim, "Right or wrong, my

country," cared to hear the details of the story. The Filipinos and

"our boys" had been diligently engaged in killing each other for a

couple of years, and the American people said, "A truce to scolding;

let us finish this war, now we are in it."

But to return from the death-warrant of the Philippine republic

signed by Mr. McKinley on September 16th, to its christening,

or inauguration, the day before. Mr. Millet gives an intensely

interesting account of the inaugural ceremonies of September 15th,

which as Manila correspondent of the London Times and Harper's Weekly

he had the good fortune to witness. Says he:

The date was at last * * * fixed for September 15th. A few days

before Aguinaldo had made a triumphant entry into Malolos in

a carriage drawn by white horses, and there had been a general

celebration of his arrival, with speeches, a gala dinner, open air

concerts, and a military parade. Mr. Higgins (an Englishman), the

manager of the Railway, kindly offered to take me up to Malolos to

witness the ceremony of the inauguration of the new government.

* * * The only other passenger was to be Aguinaldo's secretary

* * * a small boyish-looking young man. * * * [135]

It seems there had been a strike of the native employees of the

railway up the road.

Mr. Higgins calmly remarked to the secretary that, in his opinion,

if the affairs of the Filipino government were managed in the

future as they were at present, the proposed republic would be

nothing but a cheap farce. The secretary timidly asked what there

was to complain about.

Then came a tirade from Higgins, ending with, "I am going to lay this

* * * before Aguinaldo to-day, and I shall expect you to arrange an

interview for my friend and myself." Then, turning to the astonished

Millet, he said in English: "It does these chaps good to be talked

to straight from the shoulder. Since they came to Malolos, the earth

isn't big enough to hold them."

This scene on the train is, decidedly, as Thomas Carlyle would say,

"of real interest to universal history." Mr. Millet's Government was

a lion about to eat a lamb, but the head of his nation, Mr. McKinley,

clothed with absolute authority in the premises for the nonce, was

balking at the diet. Now, Mr. Millet rather admired the British

boldness, just as a Northern man likes to hear a Southerner talk

straight from the shoulder to a "darkey." As soon as the era of good

feeling was over, our people quit treating the Filipinos as Perry

did the Japanese in 1854, and began calling them "niggers." In fact

the commanding general found it necessary a little later to put a

stop to this pernicious practice among the soldiers by issuing a

General Order prohibiting it. But Mr. Millet's admiration would have

been somewhat toned down had he known what we found out later. The

real secret of Higgins's personal arrogance was this. The Filipino

government needed his railroad in its business. During the war

which followed, the insurgents long controlled a large part of this

railway, from Manila to Dagupan, which was the only railway in the

Philippines. The railway properties suffered much damage incident

to the war, and--just how willingly is beside the question--the

company rendered material aid to the insurgent cause. So much did

they render, that when Higgins had the assurance later to want our

Government to pay the damages his properties had suffered at the

hands of the insurgents, our government at Manila promptly turned his

claim down. Subsequently the London office of his company actually

inveigled the British Foreign Office into making representation to

our State Department about the matter--obviously a very grave step,

in international law. The claim was promptly turned down by Washington

also, and, happily, that "closed the incident." [136]

Having exploded Mr. Millet's bubble, let us resume the thread of

his story:

We reached the station [at Malolos] in about an hour and a half.

* * * The town numbers perhaps thirty or forty thousand people.

* * * From the first humble nipa shack to the great square where

the convent stands, thousands of insurgent flags fluttered from

every window and every post. * * * Every man had an insurgent

tri-color cockade in his hat.

Then follows a detailed account of being introduced, after some

ceremony, to Aguinaldo, who is described as "a small individual,

in full evening black suit, and flowing black tie." Higgins made his

complaint about the strikers, and Aguinaldo said, "I will attend to

this matter of the strikers," and then changed the topic, asking if

the visitors did not wish to attend the opening of the Congress--which

they did.

From Mr. Millet's account, it is evident that, like Admiral Dewey

and most of the Americans who first dealt with the Filipinos except

Generals Anderson, MacArthur, and J. F. Bell, he failed to take

the Filipinos as seriously as the facts demanded. At that time the

Japanese had not yet taught the world that national aspirations are

not necessarily to be treated with contumely because a people are small

of stature and not white of skin. Consul Wildman at Hong Kong at first

wrote the State Department quite peevishly that Aguinaldo seemed much

more concerned about the kind of cane he should wear than about the

figure he might make in history. Wildman did not then know, apparently,

that canes, with all Spanish-Filipino colonial officialdom, were

badges of official rank, like shoulder-straps are with us. The reader

will also remember the toothbrush incident hereinbefore reproduced,

told by Admiral Dewey to the Senate Committee, in 1902. That incident,

naturally enough, amused the Committee not a little. But we who know

the Filipino know it was merely an awkward and embarrassed answer due

to diffidence, and made on the spur of the moment to cloak some real

reason which if disclosed would not seem so childish.

Misunderstanding is the principal cause of hate in this world. When

you understand people, hatred disappears in a way strikingly analogous

to the disappearance of darkness on the arrival of light. The more

you know of the educated patriotic Filipino, the more certain you

become that the government we destroyed in 1898 would have worked

quite as well as most any of the republics now in operation between

the Rio Grande and Patagonia. The masses of the people down there,

the peons, are probably quite as ignorant and docile as the Filipino

tao (peasant), and I question if the educated men of Latin America,

the class of men who, after all, control in every country, could,

after meeting and knowing the corresponding class in the Philippines,

get their own consent to declare the latter their inferiors either

in intelligence, character, or patriotism.

But to return to the inauguration. Mr. Millet saw the inaugural

ceremonies in the church, and heard Aguinaldo's address to the

Congress. Of the audience he says "few among them would have escaped

notice in a crowd for they were exceptionally alert, keen, and

intelligent in appearance." Of this same Congress and government,

Mr. John Barrett, who was American Minister to Siam about that

time, and is now (1912) head of the Bureau of American Republics

at Washington--an institution organized and run for the purpose

of persuading Latin-America that we do not belong to the Imperial

International Society for the Partition of the Earth and that we are

not in the business of gobbling up little countries on pretext of

"policing" them--said in an address before the Shanghai Chamber of

Commerce on January 12, 1899:

He [Aguinaldo] has organized a government which has practically

been administering the affairs of that great island [Luzon] since

the American occupation of Manila, which is certainly better

than the former administration; he has a properly constituted

Cabinet and Congress, the members of which compare favorably with

Japanese statesmen.

The present Philippine Assembly had not had its first meeting when I

left the Islands in the spring of 1905. It was organized in 1907. In

the summer of 1911, I had the pleasure of renewing an old and very

cordial acquaintance with Dr. Heiser, Director of Public Health

of the Philippine Islands, who is one of the most considerable men

connected with our government out there, and is also thoroughly in

sympathy with its indefinite continuance in its present form. The

Doctor is a broad-gauged man likely to be worth to any government,

in matters of Public Health, whatever such government could reasonably

afford to pay in the way of salary, and is doubtless well-paid by the

Philippine Insular Government. He can hardly be blamed, therefore,

for being in sympathy with its indefinite continuance in its present

form. Doctor Heiser is a man of too much genuine dignity to be very

much addicted to slang, but when I asked him about the Philippine

Assembly, I think he said it was "a cracker-jack." At any rate,

I have never heard any legislative body spoken of in more genuinely

complimentary terms than those in which he described the Philippine

Assembly. I learned from him incidentally that their "capacity for

self-government" is so crude, however, as yet, that the members have

not yet learned to read newspapers while a colleague whose seat is

next to theirs is addressing the house and trying to get the attention

of his fellows, nor do they keep up such a buzz of conversation that

the man who has the floor cannot hear himself talk. They listen to

the programme of the public business.

Some five years ago in an article written for the North American Review

concerning the Philippine problem, the author of the present volume

said, among other things: "During nearly four years of service on the

bench in the Philippines the writer heard as much genuine, impassioned,

and effective eloquence from Filipino lawyers, saw exhibited in the

trial of causes as much industrious preparation, and zealous, loyal

advocacy of the rights of clients, as any ordinary nisi prius judge

at home is likely to meet with in the same length of time." [137] Any

country that has plenty of good lawyers and plenty of good soldiers,

backed by plenty of good farmers, is capable of self-government. As

President Schurman of Cornell University, who headed the first

Philippine Commission, the one that went out in 1899, said in closing

his Founder's Day Address at that institution on January 11, 1902:

"Any decent kind of government of Filipinos by Filipinos is better

than the best possible government of Filipinos by Americans." The

Malolos government which Mr. Millet saw inaugurated on September 15,

1898, would probably have filled this bill. Had the Filipino people

then possessed the consciousness of racial and political unity as a

people which was developed by their subsequent long struggle against

us for independence, and which has been steadily developing more and

more under the mild sway of a quasi-freedom whose princely prodigality

in spreading education is marred only by its declared programme that

no living beneficiary thereof may hope to see the independence of

his country, and that the present generation must resign itself to

tariff schedules "fixed" at Washington, there is no reasonable doubt

that the original Malolos government of 1898 would have been a very

"decent kind of government."

All through the last four months of 1898, the two hostile armies faced

each other in a mood which it needed but a spark to ignite, awaiting

the outcome of the peace negotiations arranged for in September,

commenced in October, and concluded in December. While they are thus

engaged about Manila, let us turn to a happier picture, the situation

in the provinces under the Aguinaldo government.

CHAPTER VI

THE WILCOX-SARGENT TRIP

A smiling, peaceful, and plenteous land

As yet unblighted by the scourge of war;

Where happiness and hospitality walk hand in hand

And new-born Freedom bows to Law.

Anonymous.

In the last chapter, we saw Aguinaldo's republic formally established

at Malolos, September 15th, claiming jurisdiction over all Luzon. In

Chapter IV., entitled "Merritt and Aguinaldo," we saw the political

condition of southern Luzon in August, 1898, and the following months,

and verified the correctness of Aguinaldo's claims as to complete

mastery there then. Let us now examine the state of affairs in northern

Luzon in the fall of 1898.

In Senate Document 196, 56th Congress, 1st Session, dated February

26, 1900, transmitted by Secretary of the Navy Long, in response to

a Senate resolution, may be found a report of a tour of observation

through the half of Luzon Island which lies north of Manila and the

Pasig River, made between October 8 and November 20, 1898,--note

the dates, for the Paris Peace Conference began October 1st and

ended December 10th,--by Paymaster W. B. Wilcox and Naval Cadet

L. R. Sargent. This report was submitted by them to Admiral Dewey under

date of November 23, 1898, and by him forwarded to the Navy Department

for its information, with the comment that it "in my opinion contains

the most complete and reliable information obtainable in regard to the

present state of the northern part of Luzon Island." The Admiral's

endorsement was not sent to the Senate along with the report. It

appears in a book afterwards published by Paymaster Wilcox in 1901,

entitled Through Luzon on Highways and Byways. The book is merely an

elaboration of the report, and reproduces most of the report, if not

all of it, verbatim. The book of Paymaster Wilcox may be treated as,

practically, official, for historical purposes. The preface recites

that in October, 1898, American control was effective only in Manila

and Cavite, that the insurgents, under Aguinaldo, who had proclaimed

himself President of the whole Archipelago, immediately after Dewey's

victory, were in supposedly complete possession of every part of

the Island outside of these two cities, that their lines were so

close to the outposts of our army that their people could at times

converse with our soldiers, and that General Otis's authority did

not extend much beyond a three-mile radius from the centre of Manila,

while Admiral Dewey held and operated the navy-yard at Cavite. "Even

the country between Manila and Cavite was in the hands of Aguinaldo,

so much so that our officers had been refused permission to land at

any intermediate point by water, and were prohibited from traversing

the distance by road." Wilcox and Sargent procured leave of absence

from Admiral Dewey to make their trip. They went first to Malolos, but

failed to get anything in the way of safe-conduct from Aguinaldo. He

is described, however, as of "great force of character * * * and

he dominates all around him with a power that seems peculiar to

himself." Wilcox had seen him before at Cavite. "He adroitly read

between the lines that the Government of the United States did not

then, nor would it at any future time, recognize his authority,"

says the writer.

Our travellers left Manila, October 8, 1898, on the Manila-Dagupan

Railway, for a place called Bayambang, which is the capital of

Pangasinan province, about one hundred miles north of Manila. In

Pangasinan "the people were all very respectful and polite and offered

the hospitality of their homes." From Bayambang they struck off from

the railroad and proceeded eastward comfortably and unmolested a day's

journey, to a town in the adjoining province of Nueva Ecija (Rosales)

where they received a cordial reception at the hands of the Presidente

(Mayor)--Aguinaldo's Presidente of course, not the Presidente left

over from the Spanish regime. "At this time all the local government

of the different towns was in the hands of Aguinaldo's adherents,"

says the descriptive itinerary we are following. The tourists were

provided at Rosales by order of Aguinaldo with a military escort,

"which was continued by relays all the way to Aparri" (the northernmost

town of Luzon, at the mouth of the Cagayan River). Paymaster Wilcox

says he carried five hundred Mexican dollars in his saddle-bags,

but used only a trifling portion of this amount, "for in every town

my entertainment was given without pay." They went from Rosales to

Humingan, in Nueva Ecija. At Humingan they were again entertained

by the Presidente at dinner, with music following, and comfortably

housed. The Presidente made many inquiries about "the War with

Spain and their own future." Their future, as revealed by the raised

curtain of a year later, was that their country was being overrun by

Lawton's Division of the Eighth Army Corps, the author of this volume

having passed through this same town of Humingan in November, 1899,

as an officer of the scouts used to develop fire for General Lawton's

column. They journeyed eastward through the province of Nueva Ecija

from Humingan to a little village (Puncan) in the foothills of the

mountains they planned to cross. Of this place and the hospitality

there, our traveller remarks: "I shall never forget the welcome of the

local official" the Presidente. Thence they proceeded a few more stages

and parasangs, northward over the Caranglan pass, into Nueva Vizcaya

province, the watershed of north central Luzon, and thence down the

valley of the Cagayan River via Iligan and Tuguegarao to Aparri, being

always hospitably entertained in every town through which they passed

by the Presidente or Mayor of the town, the local representative of

the Philippine republic. In the New York Independent of September 14,

1899, Cadet Sargent, in an article about this trip, gives the words

of the new Filipino national Hymn, which he describes as sung with

great enthusiasm everywhere he and Wilcox were entertained in the

various towns. I desire to preserve a sample verse of it here. The

music it is set to is much like the Marseillaise--quite as stirring:

Del sueno de tres siglos

Hermanos Despertad!

Gritando "Fuera Espana!

Viva La Libertad!"

which, being interpreted, means:

From the sleep of three centuries

Brothers, awake!

Crying "Out with Spain!

Live Liberty!"

Had another Sargent and another Wilcox made a similar trip through

the provinces of southern Luzon about this same time, under similar

friendly auspices, before we turned friendship to hate and fear and

misery, in the name of Benevolent Assimilation, they would, we now

know, have found similar conditions.

Some suspicions were aroused on one or two occasions, but once the

local authorities became convinced that the trip was being made

by consent of "The Illustrious Presidente" (Aguinaldo--"El Egregio

Presidente" is the Spanish of it) all was sunshine again. The Mayor

of each town--the Presidente--would receive from the escort coming

with them from the last town they had stopped at, a letter from the

Mayor, or Presidente, of said last town; the old escort would return to

their town, and a new one would be provided to give them safe-conduct

to the next town. This was no new-fangled scheme of Aguinaldo's. It

was an ancient custom of the Spanish Government, and was an ideal

nucleus of administration for the new government. Curiously enough,

the army knew practically nothing of this trip in the days of the

early fighting. All that country was to us a terra incognita, until

overrun by Captain Bacthelor, with a part of the 25th Infantry

in the fall of 1899, the following year. So was the rest of the

archipelago a like terra incognita, until likewise slowly conquered

by hard fighting. That is why we so utterly failed to understand

what a wonderfully complete "going concern" Aguinaldo's government

had become throughout the Philippine archipelago before the Treaty of

Paris was signed. Descending from the watershed of north central Luzon

in the province of Nueva Viscaya already mentioned, our travellers

reached the town of Carig, in the foothills which fringe that side

of the watershed. There they were met by Simeon Villa, military

commander of Isabela province, the man who was chief of staff to

Aguinaldo afterwards, and was captured by General Funston along

with Aguinaldo in the spring of 1901. Villa's immediate superior was

Colonel Tirona, at Aparri, the colonel commanding all the insurgent

forces of the Cagayan valley. Villa was accompanied by his aide,

Lieutenant Ventura Guzman. The latter is an old acquaintance of the

author of the present volume, who tried him afterwards, in 1901, for

playing a minor part in the murder of an officer of the Spanish army

committed under Villa's orders just prior to, or about the time of,

the Wilcox-Sargent visit. He was found guilty, and sentenced, but later

liberated under President Roosevelt's amnesty of 1902. He was guilty,

but the deceased, so the people in the Cagayan valley used to say,

in being tortured to death, got only the same sort of medicine he had

often administered thereabouts. At any rate, that was the broad theory

of the amnesty in wiping out all these old cases. Villa was a Tagal

and had come up from Manila with the expedition commanded by Colonel

Tirona, which expedition was fitted out with guns furnished Aguinaldo

by Admiral Dewey, or, if not furnished, permitted to be furnished. But

Guzman was a member of one of the wealthiest and most influential

native families of that province (Isabela). General Otis's reports

are full of the most inexcusable blunders about how "the Tagals"

took possession of the various provinces and made the people do this

or that. Villa's relations with Guzman were just about those of a New

Yorker or a Bostonian sent up to Vermont in the days of the American

Revolution to help organize the resistance there, in conjunction with

one of the local leaders of the patriot cause in the Green Mountain

State. Both were members of the Katipunan, the Filipino Revolutionary

Secret Society, an organization patterned after Masonry, membership

in which was always treated by the Spaniards as sedition, and usually

visited with capital punishment. Nearly every Filipino of any spirit

belonged to it on May 1, 1898, the date of the naval battle of Manila

Bay. It is the all-pervading completeness of this organization at that

time--it could give old Tammany Hall cards and spades--which explains

the astonishing rapidity of Aguinaldo's political success, i.e., the

astonishing rapidity with which the Malolos Government acquired control

of Luzon between May and October, 1898. Their cabalistic watchword was

"Paisano" (fellow-countryman), their battle cry "Independence." In

the fall of 1898, at the time of this Wilcox-Sargent trip through

Luzon, the Filipinos really "had tasted the sweets of Independence,"

to use the phrase of the people of Iloilo in declining on that ground

to surrender to General Miller in December thereafter and electing the

arbitrament of war. The writer is perhaps as familiar with the history

of that Cagayan valley as almost any other American. It is true there

were cruelties practised by the Filipinos on the Spaniards. But they

were ebullitions of revenge for three centuries of tyranny. They do

not prove unfitness for self-government. I for one prefer to follow

the example set by the Roosevelt amnesty of 1902, and draw the veil

over all those matters. With the Spaniards it was a case of Sauve qui

peut. With the Filipinos, it was a case, as old man Dimas Guzman,

father to this Lieutenant Ventura we have just met, used to put

it, of Me las vais a pagar, which, liberally interpreted, means,

"The bad quarter of an hour has arrived for the Spaniards. The day

of reckoning has come." I sentenced both Dimas and Ventura to life

imprisonment for being accessory to the murder of the Spanish officer

above named, Lieutenant Piera. Villa officiated as archfiend of the

gruesome occasion. I am quite sure I would have hung Villa without any

compunction at that time, if I could have gotten hold of him. I tried

to get hold of him, but Governor Taft's Attorney-General, Mr. Wilfley,

wrote me that Villa was somewhere over on the mainland of Asia on

British territory, and extradition would involve application to the

London Foreign Office. The intimation was that we had trouble enough

of our own without borrowing any from feuds that had existed under

our predecessors in sovereignty. I have understood that Villa is now

practising medicine in Manila. More than one officer of the American

army that I know, afterwards did things to the Filipinos almost

as cruel as Villa did to that unhappy Spanish officer, Lieutenant

Piera. On the whole, I think President Roosevelt acted wisely and

humanely in wiping the slate. We had new problems to deal with, and

were not bound to handicap ourselves with the old ones left over from

the Spanish regime.

It appears that Villa became a little suspicious of the travellers. He

detained them at Carig seven days. Finally there came a telegram from

his chief at Aparri, Colonel Tirona, to our two travellers, which read:

"I salute you affectionately, and authorize Villa to accompany you to

Iligan." At Iligan, the capital of Isabela province, the travellers

were lavishly entertained. They were given a grand baile (ball) and

fiesta (feast), a kind of dinner-dance, we would call it. To the light

Messrs. Sargent and Wilcox throw on the then universal acknowledgment

of the authority of the Aguinaldo government, and the perfect

tranquillity and public order maintained under it, in the Cagayan

valley, I may add that as judge of that district in 1901-2 there came

before me a number of cases in the trial of which the fact would be

brought out of this or that difference among the local authorities

having been referred to the Malolos Government for settlement. And

they always waited until they heard from it. The doubting Thomas will

attribute this to the partiality of the Filipinos to procrastination

in general. I know it was due to the hearty co-operation of the

people with, and their loyalty to, the then existing government,

and to their pride in it. Mr. Sargent tells a characteristic story

of Villa, whose vengeful feeling toward the Spaniards showed on all

occasions. The former Spanish governor of the province was of course

a prisoner in Villa's custody. Villa had the ex-governor brought in,

for the travellers to see him, and remarked, in his presence to them,

"This is the man who robbed this province of $25,000 during the last

year of his office." From Iligan our travellers proceeded to Aparri,

cordially received everywhere, and finding the country in fact, as

Aguinaldo always claimed in his proclamations of that period seeking

recognition of his government by the Powers, in a state of profound

peace and tranquillity--free from brigandage and the like. At Aparri

the visitors were cordially welcomed by Colonel Tirona, and much

feted. While they were there, Tirona transferred his authority to a

civil regime. Says Paymaster Wilcox:

The steamer Saturnus, which had left the harbor the day before

our arrival, brought news from Hong Kong papers that the Senators

from the United States at the Congress at Paris favored the

independence of the islands with an American protectorate. Colonel

Tirona considered the information of sufficient reliability to

justify him in regarding Philippine Independence as assured,

and warfare in the Islands at an end.

He then goes on to describe the inauguration of civil government

in Cagayan province. I hope all this will not weary the American

reader. It was vividly interesting to me when I read it for the first

time thirteen years afterward, in 1911, because it was such unexpected

information, so surprising. It will be equally interesting to all other

Americans who participated in putting down the subsequent insurrection

and in setting up the Taft civil government in that same valley three

years later. I was in that town, for a similar purpose, with Governor

Taft in 1901, after a bloody war which almost certainly would not

have occurred had the Paris Peace Commission known the conditions then

existing, just like this, all over Luzon and the Visayan Islands. Of

course the Southern Islands were a little slower. But as Luzon goes,

so go the rest. The rest of the archipelago is but the tail to the

Luzon kite. Luzon contains 4,000,000 of the 8,000,000 people out there,

and Manila is to the Filipino people what Paris is to the French and to

France. Luzon is about the size of Ohio, and the other six islands that

really matter, [138] are in size mere little Connecticuts and Rhode

Islands, and in population mere Arizonas or New Mexicos. Describing

the ceremonies of the inauguration of civil government in Cagayan,

the Wilcox-Sargent report to Admiral Dewey says:

The Presidentes of all the towns in the province were present at

the ceremony. * * * Colonel Tirona made a short speech. * * * He

then handed the staff of office to the man who had been elected

"Jefe Provincial" [Governor of the Province]. This officer also

made a speech in which he thanked the military forces * * * and

assured them that the work they had begun would be perpetuated

by the people, where every man, woman, and child stood ready to

take up arms to defend their newly won liberty and to resist with

the last drop of their blood the attempt of any nation whatever

to bring them back to their former state of dependence. He then

knelt, placed his hand on an open Bible, and took the oath of

office. [139]

Does not such language in an official report made by officers of

the navy to Admiral Dewey in November, 1898, show an undercurrent

of deep feeling at the position the Administration had put Admiral

Dewey in with Aguinaldo, when it decided to take the Philippines,

and accordingly sent out an army whose generals ignored his protege?

The speech of the provincial governor was followed, says the

Wilcox-Sargent report (same page) by speeches from "the other

officers who constitute the provincial government, the heads of

the three departments--justice, police, and internal revenue. Every

town in this province has the same organization." Article III. of

Aguinaldo's decree of June 18th, previous, providing an organic

law or constitution for his provisional government (see Chapter

II., ante) had provided precisely the organization which Wilcox

and Sargent thus saw working at Aparri and throughout the Cagayan

valley in October, 1898. The importance of all this to the question

of how the Filipinos feel toward us to-day, in this year of grace,

1912, and to the element of righteousness there is in that feeling,

is too obvious to need comment. Americans interested in business in

the Philippines come back to this country from time to time and give

out interviews in the papers declaring that the Filipinos do not want

independence. What they really mean is that it makes no difference

whether they want it or not, they are not going to get it. And it

is precisely these Americans, and their business associates in the

United States, who have gotten through Congress the legislation which

enables them to give the Filipino just half of what he got ten years

ago for his hemp, and other like legislation, and the Filipinos

know it. The gulf in the Philippines between the dominant and the

subject race will continue to widen as the years go by, so long as

indirect taxation without representation continues to be perpetrated

at Washington for the benefit of special interests having a powerful

lobby. If the American people themselves are groaning under this very

sort of thing, and apparently unable to help themselves, what is the a

priori probability as to our voteless and therefore defenceless little

brown brother. Like the sheep before the shearer, he is dumb. But to

return to our travellers and their journey.

A Norwegian steamer came into port [meaning the harbor of Aparri]

that afternoon, and this seemed our only hope. She was chartered by

two Chinamen * * *. At first they refused us permission to embark,

and declined to put in at any port on the west coast. No sooner

was this related to Colonel Tirona than he sent notice that the

ship could not clear without taking us and making a landing where

we desired. This argument was convincing.

Colonel Tirona provided them with a letter addressed to Colonel

Tino at Vigan, the chief town of the west coast of Luzon and the

capital of the province of Ilocos Sur, which province fronts the China

Sea. Messrs. Wilcox and Sargent proceeded aboard the Norwegian steamer

from Aparri westward, doubling the northwest corner of Luzon, and

steaming thence due south to the nearest port. Vigan was the Filipino

military headquarters of the western half of northern Luzon, just as

Aparri was at the same time of the eastern half. On the west coast

the travellers were treated always courteously, but with considerable

suspicion. The explanation is easy. That region is in closer touch

with Manila, and with what is going on and may be learned at the

capital, than is the Cagayan valley which our tourists had just

left. They bade the commanding officer at Vigan good-bye, November

13, 1898. Passing south through Namacpacan (which the command I was

with took a year or so later), they came to San Fernando de Union,

some twenty miles farther south along the coast road. Here they met

Colonel Tino and presented their letter from Tirona. He gave them a

dinner, of course. How a Filipino does love to entertain, and make

you enjoy yourself! Talk about your "true Southern hospitality"! You

get it there. "Speeches were made, and great things promised by

the Philippine republic in the near future" says Mr. Wilcox. After

the dinner and speech-making came the inevitable dance. After that

Colonel Tino started them off on their journey southward toward Manila

duly provided with carriages. Passing Aringay on November 18, 1898

[140] our travellers finally reached Dagupan, the northern terminus

of the Manila-Dagupan Railway, and there took a train for Manila,

120 miles away.

In his report covering the fall of 1898, General Otis always scoldingly

says of the Filipinos that in all the parleyings of his commissioners

with Aguinaldo's commissioners before the outbreak, the latter never

did know what they really wanted. The truth was they believed the

Americans were going to do with them exactly as every other white

race they knew of had done with every other brown race they knew of,

but they did not tell General Otis so. Mr. Wilcox, a more friendly

witness of that same period states their position thus at page twenty

of the report to Admiral Dewey: "They desire the protection of the

United States at sea, but fear any interference on land." "On one

point they seemed united, viz., that whatever our government may have

done for them, it had not gained the right to annex them," adding, in

relation to the physical preparations to make good this contention,

in the event of war, "The Philippine Government has an organized

force in every province we visited."

The whole tone of the Wilcox-Sargent report and the subsequent

Wilcox book is an implied reiteration, after intimate, extended,

and friendly contact with the people of all Luzon north of the Pasig

River, of Admiral Dewey's telegram sent to the Navy Department, June

23, 1898: "The people are far superior in intelligence and capacity

for self-government to the people of Cuba and I am familiar with both

races." In fact Messrs. Wilcox and Sargent do not raise the question of

"capacity for self-government" at all, any more than Commodore Perry

did when similarly welcomed in 1854 by the Japanese.

CHAPTER VII

THE TREATY OF PARIS

No man can serve two masters.

Matthew vi., 24.

Confine the Empire within those limits which

nature seems to have fixed as its natural bulwarks

and boundaries.

Augustus Caesar's Will.

This is a tale of three cities, Paris, Washington, and Manila.

Article III. of the Peace Protocol signed at Washington, August 12,

1898, provided:

The United States will occupy and hold the city, bay, and harbor

of Manila, pending the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace which

shall determine the control, disposition, and government of the

Philippines. [141]

The "Papers relating to the Treaty with Spain" including the

telegraphic correspondence between President McKinley and our Peace

Commissioners pending the negotiations, were sent to the Senate,

January 30, 1899, just one week before the final vote on the treaty,

but the injunction of secrecy was not removed until January 31,

1901--after the presidential election of 1900. They then were

published as Senate Document 148, 56th Congress, 2d Session. It was

not until then that the veil was lifted. The instructions to the Peace

Commissioners were dated September 16, 1898. The Commissioners were:

William R. Day, of Ohio, Republican, just previously Secretary of

State, now (1912) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United

States; Whitelaw Reid, Republican, then editor of the New York Tribune,

now Ambassador to Great Britain, and three members of the United States

Senate, Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota, William P. Frye, of Maine,

Republicans, and George Gray, of Delaware, Democrat. Senator Davis

died in 1900, and Senator Frye in 1911. Senator Gray has been, since

1899, and is now, United States Circuit Judge for the 3d Judicial

District. Among other things, the President's instructions to the

Commissioners said:

It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace

should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in

facing war. * * * The lustre and the moral strength attaching

to a cause which can be confidently rested upon the considerate

judgment of the world should not under any illusion of the hour

be dimmed by ulterior designs which might tempt us * * * into an

adventurous departure on untried paths.

By elaborate rhetorical gradations, the instructions finally get down

to this:

Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial

opportunity. * * * The United States cannot accept less than the

cession in full right and sovereignty of the island of Luzon.

Though already noticed, we venture, in this connection, again to

recall that in the month previous (August, 1898) a gentleman high in

the councils of the Administration [142] declared in one of the great

reviews of the period: "We see with sudden clearness that some of the

most revered of our political maxims have outlived their force." Among

these "revered maxims" thus suddenly fossilized by his ipse dixit,

Mr. Vanderlip exuberantly includes the teachings of "Washington's

Farewell Address and the later crystallization of its main thought

by President Monroe"--the Monroe Doctrine, adding that in lieu of

these "A new mainspring * * * has become the directing force * * *

the mainspring of commercialism."

As permanent chairman of the Philadelphia convention which renominated

Mr. McKinley for the Presidency thereafter, in 1900, Senator Lodge,

speaking of the issues raised by the Treaty of Paris, said: "We make

no hypocritical pretence of being interested in the Philippines solely

on account of others. We believe in Trade Expansion."

"Philanthropy and five per cent. go hand in hand," said Mr. Vanderlip's

Chief, Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, about the same

time. Such was the temper of the times when the treaty was made.

The first meeting with the Spanish Commissioners took place at Paris,

October 1st. The opening event of the meeting, the initial move of the

Spaniards, is extremely interesting in the light of subsequent events,

especially in connection with the Iloilo Fiasco, hereinafter described

(Chapter IX.).

"Spanish communication represents," says Judge Day's cablegram to

the President, [143] "that status quo has been altered and continues

to be altered to the prejudice of Spain by Tagalo rebels, whom it

describes as an auxiliary force to the regular American troops."

Even diplomacy, in a conciliatory communication limited to the obvious,

called the Filipinos our allies.

The Spanish initial move was more immediately prompted by the fact

that in point of absolute astronomical time Manila, though captured

when it was morning of August 13th there, was captured when it was

evening of August 12th, at Washington, and the protocol was signed

at Washington in the evening of August 12th. While this point was

material, because we had captured $900,000 in cash in the Spanish

treasury at Manila and much other property, the title to which, under

the laws of war between civilized nations, depended on just what

time it was captured, the matter was finally swallowed up and lost

sight of in the agreement to give Spain a lump $20,000,000 for the

archipelago. But the initial move had other aspects. In the event we

should take the Philippines off her hands, Spain was going to insist

that we should get back from the Filipinos, our "allies," and restore

to her all the Spaniards they captured after August 12th. She knew

that in all probability if we bought the Islands we would be buying

an insurrection, and she was "taking care of her own" at our expense.

The next feature of the proceedings entitled to attention in a

bird's-eye view like this, concerns the question whether we should

take only Luzon, or the whole archipelago. President McKinley cabled

Admiral Dewey on August 13th, the day after the protocol was signed,

asking as to "the desirability of the several islands," "coal and

other mineral deposits," and "in a naval and commercial sense which

(of the several islands) would be most advantageous." [144] Admiral

Dewey had replied, of course, that Luzon was "the most desirable,"

but volunteered no advice. He did state, "No coal of good quality can

be procured in the Philippine Islands," which is still true. Allusion

is made to this telegram in the proceedings, but no copy of it is

there set forth. On October 4th, our Commissioners wired President

McKinley suggesting that he cable out to the Admiral and ask him

"whether it would be better * * * to retain Luzon * * * or the whole

group." Mr. McKinley answered that he had asked Admiral Dewey before

General Merritt left Manila to give the latter his views in writing "on

general question of Philippines," and that "his report is in your hands

in response to both questions." But the commission replied that Admiral

Dewey had sent only a copy of a report of General Francis V. Greene's

and nothing else. There is no record of any further advice or opinion

from Admiral Dewey on the point except that in General Otis's Report

(p. 67) we get glimpses of a telegram that has never yet, apparently,

been published, sent by Dewey to Washington early in December, 1898,

suggesting that we "interfere as little as possible in the internal

affairs of the Islands." No; Admiral Dewey must be acquitted of having

ever counselled the McKinley Administration to buy the Philippines.

On October 7th the Commission telegraphed Washington that General

Merritt attaches much weight to the opinion of the Belgian Consul at

Manila, M. Andre, and that "Consul says United States must take all

or nothing"; that "if southern islands remained with Spain they would

be in constant revolt, and United States would have a second Cuba";

that "Spanish government would not improve," and "would still protect

monks in their extortion."

To this advice there was absolutely no answer. It was a case of "all or

nothing," and it had already become a case of "all" when on September

16th previous Mr. McKinley signed his original instructions to the

Commission stating "The United States cannot accept less than Luzon."

The Commission's telegram of October 7th goes on to quote from the

Belgian Consul's opinion that "Present rebellion represents only one

half of one per cent. of the inhabitants." The Consul was not before

them in person. They were quoting from a memorandum submitted by him

to General Merritt at Merritt's request, made at Manila and dated

August 29th, the day General Merritt sailed away from Manila bound

for Paris via the Suez Canal. He had brought the memorandum along

with him. From the previous chapters the reader will, of course,

understand that Americans and Europeans at Manila in August, 1898,

were paying very little attention to Aguinaldo and his claims as to

the extent of his authority in the provinces. It is therefore not

surprising that M. Andre's memorandum of August 29th should have made

the foolish statement, "Present rebellion represents only one half of

one per cent. of inhabitants." But it is eternally regrettable that his

statement on this point had any weight with the Commissioners, for it

was, or by that time at least (October 7th) had become, just about 99

1/2 per cent. wide of the mark. As a matter of fact, by October 7th

it would have been more accurate to have said, in lieu of the above,

"Present rebellion represents practically whole people." You see,

we started an insurrection in May, in October it had become a full

grown affair, and in December we bought it. The telegram of October

7th also quoted General Merritt as saying, "Insurgents would be

victorious unless Spaniards did better in future than in past,"

and as considering it "feasible for United States to take Luzon

and perhaps some adjacent islands and hold them as England does her

colonies." These are about the only two sound suggestions General

Merritt made to that Commission. In the next breath they quote him as

saying, "Natives could not resist 5000 troops." The fact that they

did resist more than 120,000 troops, that it took more than that,

all told, to put down the insurrection, is sufficient to show how

much General Merritt's advice was worth. He was right on two points,

as indicated. Both Spanish fleets had been destroyed and Spain had but

one left to protect her home coast cities. The death knell of her once

proud colonial empire had sounded. Decrepit as she was, she could not

possibly have sent any reinforcements to the Philippines. Besides the

Filipinos would have "eaten them up." General Merritt's suggestion to

"hold them as England does her colonies" was also sensible. In fact

that was the only thoroughly honest thing to have done, if we were

going to take them at all. England never acts the hypocrite with her

colonies. She makes them behave. She does not let native people preach

sedition in native newspapers, because of "sentimental bosh" about

freedom of the press, until the whole country becomes a smouldering

hot-bed of sedition. She has blown offending natives from the cannon's

mouth, when deemed necessary to cure them and their country of the

desire for independence. If we are going to have colonies at all, we

ought to govern them with the upright downright ruthless honesty of

the British. It is more merciful in the long run. But we ought not to

have colonies at all. For if there is one thing this republic stands

for, above all other things, it is the righteousness of aversion to

a foreign yoke.

In their telegram of October 7th, [145] the Peace Commissioners,

now squarely confronted with the question of forcible annexation,

begin to let the Administration down easy. They say:

General Anderson in correspondence with Aguinaldo in June and

July seemed to treat him and his forces as allies and native

authorities, but subsequently changed his tone. Merritt and Dewey

both kept clear of any compromising communications.

A despatch sent by Judge Day certainly comes from high authority. The

word "compromising" is therefore important. To say that Admiral

Dewey did not treat Aguinaldo as an ally is to raise a mere technical

point. But Aguinaldo never did get anything from him in writing. What

he got consisted more of deeds than words. And actions speak louder

than words. We had an alliance with Aguinaldo, a most "compromising"

alliance and afterwards repudiated it. Admiral Dewey made it and

General Merritt repudiated it. Dewey did, without the President's

knowledge, exactly what the President and the American people would

have had him do at the time. And Merritt did exactly what the President

ordered him to do. But between the making of the alliance, and the

repudiation of it, the President and the American people changed their

minds. I say the American people, because they afterwards ratified

all that Mr. McKinley did. You see the bitterness that lies away down

in the secret recesses of the hearts of the Filipino people to-day

has its source at this point. They had "a gentleman's agreement,"

as it were, with us, not in writing, made at a time when the thought

of a colony had never entered our minds. They fought in a common

cause with us on the faith of that agreement--drove the Spaniards

into Manila in numerous victorious engagements involving much loss

of life, on their part, keeping the Dons thereafter bottled up in

Manila on the land side while their "ally" Admiral Dewey was doing the

same on the sea side. The said Dons were living on horses and rats,

and famine was imminent when our troops arrived and began to finish

the work of taking the beleaguered city. And then, having changed our

minds and decided to annex the islands, we repudiated our "gentleman's

agreement," on the idea that the end justified the means. And the end,

as it has turned out, did not even justify the means, seeing that the

islands have proved a heavy financial liability instead of a profitable

asset. Judge Day's telegram to Secretary Hay of October 12th (p. 27)

contains this curious and surprising passage as to Cuba:

Senator Gray in favor of accepting sovereignty unconditionally

* * * that we may thereby avoid future complications with Cubans,

claiming sovereignty while we are in process of pacifying island

* * * We desire instructions on this point.

The future of Cuba, however, trembled in the balance but for

a moment. Before "the shell-burred cables" had had time to quit

vibrating with the question thus propounded, there came back this

splendidly clean-cut answer from the President:

We must carry out the spirit and letter of the resolution of

Congress [declaring war].

In characterizing Judge Gray's position, above indicated, as

"surprising," no reflection upon him is intended. On the contrary, such

a position, assumed by a man of such conceded intellectual probity,

is illuminating as to the attitude subsequently taken concerning the

Philippines by the Democratic Senators who voted for the treaty. This

attitude is stated by Senator Lodge, in his History of the War with

Spain, with all the incisive forcefulness to which the country has so

long been accustomed in the public utterances of that distinguished

man, and, seeing that no promise had been made, as in the case of

Cuba, Senator Lodge's statement of the position of those who voted

for the treaty should forever set at rest the stale injustice, still

occasionally repeated, that Mr. Bryan, "played politics" in 1898-9 in

urging his friends in the Senate to vote for its ratification. Says

Senator Lodge (History of the War with Spain, p. 231):

The friends of ratification took the very simple ground that

the treaty committed the United States to no policy, but left

them free to do exactly as seemed best with all the islands;

that the American people could be safely entrusted with this

grave responsibility, and that patriotism and common sense alike

demanded the end of the war and the re-establishment of peace,

which could only be effected by the adoption of the treaty.

October 14th, Washington wires the commission that Admiral Dewey has

just cabled:

It is important that the disposition of the Philippine Islands

should be decided as soon as possible. * * * General anarchy

prevails without the limits of the city and bay of Manila. Natives

appear unable to govern.

In this cablegram the Admiral most unfortunately repeated as true some

wild rumors then currently accepted by the Europeans and Americans

at Manila which of course were impossible of verification. I say

"unfortunately" with some earnestness, because it does not appear on

the face of his message that they were mere rumors. And, that they

were wholly erroneous, in point of fact, has already been cleared

up in previous chapters, wherein the real state of peace, order and

tranquillity which prevailed throughout Luzon at that time has been,

it is believed, put beyond all doubt. But what manna in the wilderness

to the McKinley Administration, now that it was bent on taking the

islands, was that Dewey message of October 14th, "The natives appear

unable to govern"!

On October 17th, Mr. Day wires Mr. Hay that the Peace Commissioners

feel the importance of preserving, so far as possible, the condition

of things existing at the time of signing the protocol, to prevent

any change in the status quo. He says:

Might not our government * * * take more active and positive

measures than heretofore for preservation of order and protection

of life and property in Philippine Islands?

How could we, when Aguinaldo and his people were in the saddle all

over Luzon, had taken the status quo between their teeth and run away

with it, and were prepared to fight if bidden to halt and dismount;

and, which is more, were preserving order perfectly themselves?

On October 19th, Mr. Hay repeated by wire to Mr. Day a cablegram from

General Otis which said: "Do not anticipate trouble with insurgents

* * * Affairs progressing favorably."

General Otis was making a desperate effort to humor Mr. McKinley's

"consent-of-the-governed" theory and programme. But it was a situation,

not a theory, which confronted him.

The date of the high-water mark of the Paris peace negotiations is

October 25th. On that day, Mr. Day wired Mr. Hay:

Differences of opinion among commissioners concerning Philippine

Islands are set forth in statements transmitted (by cable also)

herewith. On these we request early consideration and explicit

instructions. Liable now to be confronted with this question in

joint commission almost immediately.

Messrs. Davis, Frye, and Reid, sent a joint signed statement. They

urged taking over the whole archipelago, saying that, as their

instructions provided for the retention at least of Luzon, "we do not

consider the question of remaining in the Philippine Islands as at

all now properly before us." They also urged that as Spain governed

and defended the islands from Manila, we became, with the destruction

of her fleet and the surrender of her army, "as complete masters of

the whole group as she had been, with nothing needed to complete the

conquest save to proceed with the ample forces we had at hand to take

unopposed possession." The vice of this proposition, from the strategic

as well as the ethical point of view, is of course clear enough now.

Spain's government was already tottering in the Philippines when the

Spanish-American war broke out. To be "as complete masters as she had

been" was like becoming the recipient of a quit-claim deed. Also, ours

was not a case of taking "unopposed possession." An adverse claimant,

relying on immemorial prescription, was in full possession; all the

tenants on the land had attorned to him, and he and they were ready to

defend their claim against all comers with their lives. They reminded

one of the recurrent small farmer whom some great timber or other

corporation seeks to oust, patrolling his land lines rifle in hand,

on the lookout for the corporation's agent and the sheriff with the

dispossessory warrant.

Messrs. Davis, Frye, and Reid go on to say:

Military and naval witnesses agree that it would be practically

as easy to hold and defend the whole as a part.

Hardly any one can fail to read with interest the following accurate

and vivid picture which they give of the physical strategic unity of

the Philippine Islands:

There is hardly a single island in the group from which you cannot

shoot across to one or more of the others--scarcely another

archipelago in the world in which the islands are crowded so

closely together and so interdependent.

This explains also why the Filipino people are a people. Whenever

the American people understand that, they will give them their

independence, unless they get an idea that government of their people

by their people for their people would be distasteful to them.

In the memorandum of their views telegraphed to Washington on October

25th, Messrs. Davis, Frye, and Reid also say:

Public opinion in Europe, including that of Rome, expects us to

retain whole of Philippine Islands.

Archbishop Chapelle was in Paris at the time of these negotiations. He

afterwards told the writer in Manila that he got that $20,000,000 put

in the Treaty of Paris. The Church preferred that our title should be

a title by purchase rather than a title by conquest, and Mr. McKinley

was vigorously urging the latter. Between the legal effects of the

two, there is a world of difference. The Church outgeneralled the

President--checkmated him with a bishop. Look at that part of the

treaty which affects church property:

Article VIII. The * * * cession * * * cannot in any respect impair

the property or rights * * * of * * * ecclesiastical * * * bodies.

The Church of Rome, or at least some of the ecclesiastical

bodies pertaining to it in the Philippines, owned the cream of the

agricultural estates. By the treaty they have not lost a dollar. It

might have been otherwise, had not Mr. McKinley's original claim of

title by conquest been overcome at Paris.

Judge Day's memorandum of his own views, telegraphed on October 25th

along with those of his colleagues, stated that he was unable to agree

that we should peremptorily demand the entire Philippine group; that

In the spirit of our instructions, and bearing in mind the often

declared disinterestedness of purpose and freedom from designs

of conquest with which the war was undertaken, we should be

consistent in demands in making peace * * * with due regard to

our responsibility because of the conduct of our military and

naval authorities in dealing with the insurgents.

Again, he says:

We cannot leave the insurgents either to form a government [he of

course did not know what a complete government they had already

formed] or to battle against a foe which * * * might readily

overcome them.

He also was of course unaware how thoroughly anxious the Spaniards then

in the Philippines were to get away, and how completely they were at

the mercy of the new Philippine Republic and its forces. "On all hands"

says Judge Day, "it is agreed that the inhabitants of the islands are

unfit for self-government." Of course we knew absolutely nothing worth

mentioning about the Filipinos at that time. Judge Day then proposes,

for the reasons indicated, to accept Luzon and some adjacent islands,

as being of "strategic advantage," and to leave Spain the rest, with

a "treaty stipulation for non-alienation without the consent of the

United States." It seems to me that Judge Day's scheme was the least

desirable of all.

Senator Gray's memorandum of the same date is a red-hot argument

against taking over any part of the archipelago. He begins thus:

The undersigned cannot agree that it is wise to take Philippine

Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse

accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted

upon through our history. * * * It will make necessary * * *

immense sums for fortifications and harbors * * * Climate and

social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth * * *.

On whole, instead of indemnity, injury * * *. Cannot agree that

any obligation incurred to insurgents * * *. If we had captured

Cadiz and Carlists had helped us, would not be our duty to stay by

them at the conclusion of war * * *. No place for * * * government

of subject people in American system * * *. Even conceding all

benefits claimed for annexation, we thereby abandon * * * the moral

grandeur and strength to be gained by keeping our word to nations

of the world * * * for doubtful material advantages and shameful

stepping down from high moral position boastfully assumed. * * *

Now that we have achieved all and more than our object, let us

simply keep our word * * *. Above all let us not make a mockery

of the [President's] instructions, where, after stating that we

took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity * * *

and that we had no designs of aggrandizement and no ambition for

conquest, the President * * * eloquently says: "It is my earnest

wish that the United States in making peace should follow the

same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war."

The next day, October 26th, came this laconic answer:

The cession must be of the whole archipelago or none. The latter

is wholly inadmissible and the former must be required.

Probably the one thing about the Paris Peace negotiations that is

sure to interest the average American most at this late date is the

matter of how we came to pay that twenty millions. It was this way. On

October 27th, the Commission wired Washington:

Last night Spanish ambassador called upon Mr. Reid.

It seems they talked long and earnestly far into the night, trying to

find a way which would prevent the conference from resulting in sudden

disruption, and consequent resumption of the war. Mr. Reid made plain

the inflexible determination of the American people not to assume the

Cuban debt. The Ambassador said: "Montero Rios [146] could not return

to Madrid now if known to have accepted entire Cuban indebtedness,"

and asked delay to see "if some concessions elsewhere might not be

found which would save Spanish Commissioners from utter repudiation at

home." There is no doubt that the talk we are now considering was a

"heart-to-heart" affair, probably quite informal. Yet it is one of

the most important talks that have occurred between any two men in

this world in the last fifty years. Mr. Reid finally threw out a hint

to the effect that as the preponderance of American public sentiment

seemed rather inclined to retain the Philippines, "It was possible,"

he said, "but not probable that out of these conditions the Spanish

Commissioners might find something either in territory or debt [147]

which might seem to their people at least like a concession.!" [148]

It was the leaven of this hint that leavened the whole loaf. There

was doubtless much informal parleying after that, but finally, the

American Commissioners, having become satisfied that Spanish honor

would not be offended by an offer having the substance, if not the

form, of charity, and being very tired of Spain's sparring for wind

in the hope of a European coalition against us should war be resumed,

submitted the following proposal:

The Government of the United States is unable to modify the

proposal heretofore made for the cession of the entire archipelago

of the Philippine Islands, but the American Commissioners are

authorized to offer to Spain, in case the cession should be agreed

to, the sum of $20,000,000.

This alluring offer was accompanied with the stern announcement that

Upon the acceptance * * * of the proposals herein made * * *

but not otherwise, it will be possible * * * to proceed to the

consideration * * * of other matters.

Also, our Commissioners wired Washington:

If the Spanish Commissioners refuse our proposition * * * nothing

remains except to close the negotiations.

This was very American and very final. Washington answered: "Your

proposed action approved."

November 29th, Mr. Day wired Mr. Hay:

Spanish Commissioners at to-day's conference presented a definite

and final acceptance of our last proposition.

And that is how that twenty millions found its way into the treaty--not

forgetting the prayers and other contemporaneous activities of

Archbishop Chapelle.

After the tremendous eight weeks' tension had relaxed, and before

the final reduction to writing of all the details, we see this dear

little telegram, from Secretary of State Hay, himself a writer of note,

come bravely paddling into port, where it was cordially received by

both sides, taken in out of the wet, and put under the shelter of

the treaty:

Mr. Hay to Mr. Day: In renewing conventional arrangements do not

lose sight of copyright agreement.

And here is the last act of the drama:

Mr. Day to Mr. Hay, Paris, December 10, 1898: Treaty signed at

8.50 this evening.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION PROCLAMATION

Prometheus stole the heavenly fire from the altar of Jupiter to

benefit mankind, and Jupiter thereupon punished both Prometheus

and the rest of mankind by creating and giving to them the woman

Pandora, a supposed blessing but a real curse. Pandora brought

along a box of blessings, and when she opened it, everything flew

out and away but Hope.

Tales from AEschylus.

The ever-memorable Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, the Pandora

box of Philippine woes, was signed December 21, 1898, and its contents

were let loose in the Philippines on January 1, 1899.

Let us consider for a moment the total misapprehension of conditions

in the islands under which Mr. McKinley drafted and signed that famous

document--a misapprehension due to General Otis's curious blindness

to the great vital fact of the situation, viz., that the Filipinos

were bent on independence from the first, and preparing to fight

for it to the last. Take the following Otis utterance, for example,

concerning a date when practically everybody in the Eighth Army Corps,

and every newspaper correspondent in the Philippines, recognized that

war would be certain in the event the Paris Peace negotiations should

result, as common rumor then said they would result, in our taking

over the islands:

My own confidence at this time in a satisfactory solution of

the difficulties which confronted us may be gathered from a

despatch sent to Washington on December 7th, wherein I stated

that conditions were improving, and that there were signs of

revolutionary disintegration. [149]

There can be no doubt that, at the date of that despatch, General

Otis had been given to understand that under the Treaty of Paris

we were going to keep the islands if the treaty should be ratified,

and also that the if might give the Administration trouble, should

trouble arise with the Filipinos before the if was disposed of at

home. As heretofore intimated, in addition to his preference for

legal and administrative work to the work of his profession, in the

Philippines General Otis constituted himself from the beginning a

political henchman. Ample evidence will be introduced later on to

show beyond all doubt that all through the early difficulties, when

the American people should have been frankly dealt with and given the

facts, General Otis would, in the exercise of his military powers

as press censor, always say to the war correspondents, "I will let

nothing go that will hurt the Administration."

Let us see what the real facts of the Philippine situation were at

the date of the Treaty of Paris, December 10th, or, which is the same

thing, when General Otis sent his despatch of December 7th. When

the Treaty of Paris was signed, General Otis was in possession of

Manila and Cavite, with less than 20,000 men under his command,

and Aguinaldo was in possession of practically all the rest of the

archipelago, with between 35,000 and 40,000 men under his command,

armed with guns, and the whole Filipino population were in sympathy

with the army of their country. We have already seen the conditions

in the various provinces at that time and also the inauguration of

the native central government. Let us now examine the military figures.