August 13th, and 5000 more had arrived under command of Major-General
Elwell S. Otis a week or so after the fall of the city. [150] They had
13,000 Spanish soldiers to guard. In addition to this, by the terms of
the capitulation, the city (population say 300,000), its inhabitants,
its churches and educational establishments, and its private property
of all descriptions had been placed "under the special safeguard of
the faith and honor of the American army." [151] Some 4500 to 5000
more troops began to swarm out of San Francisco bound for Manila in
the latter part of October, 1898, the last of them reaching Manila
December 11th, the day after the Treaty of Paris was signed. After
that there were no further additions to General Otis's command prior
to the outbreak of war with the Filipinos, February 4, 1899. [151] Of
these (approximately) 20,000 men, only 1500 to 2000 were regulars,
having the Krag-Jorgensen smokeless gun. The rest were State volunteers,
armed with the antiquated Springfield rifles, the same the 71st New
York and the 2d Massachusetts had been permitted to carry into the
Santiago campaign the summer before. Aguinaldo's people were equipped
entirely with Mausers captured from the Spaniards, and other rifles,
bought in Hong Kong mostly, using smokeless ammunition. Major (now
Major-General) J. F. Bell, who is, in the judgment of many, one of the
best all-round soldiers in the American army to-day, was in charge
of the "Division of Military Information" at Manila both before and
after the taking of the city. General Bell has done many fine things,
in the way of reckless bravery in battle at the critical moment and of
bold reconnoitring in campaign, and what he fails to find out about
an enemy, or a prospective enemy, is not apt to be ascertainable. In
a report bearing date August 29, 1898, [152] prepared in anticipation
of possible trouble with the Filipinos, he estimated the number of
men under arms that Aguinaldo had at between 35,000 and 40,000. This
estimate is based by General Bell in his report on the number of guns
out in the hands of the Filipinos, which he figures thus:
Captured from Spanish militia 12,500
From Cavite arsenal 2,500
From Jackson & Evans (American merchants
trading with Hong Kong) 2,000
From Spanish (captured in battle) 8,000
In hands of Filipinos previous to May 1, 1898 15,000
------
Total 40,000
From this number General Bell deducts several thousands as having
been recaptured by the Spaniards, or bought in. I at once hear some
former comrade-in-arms of the Philippine insurrection say: "Oh,
no. They couldn't have had as many as 40,000 guns, or near that." I
thought the same thing when I first read General Bell's report on the
matter. But he removes the doubt thus: "They are being continually
sent away to other provinces."
We did not understand Aguinaldo's movements then. All his troops were
not around Manila. From what I learned from General Lawton and his
staff in 1899, my belief is that Aguinaldo had perhaps 30,000 men
with guns around Manila, and out along the railroad, at the time of
the outbreak of February 4th. It is idle, of course, at this late
date, to claim that the Filipinos were not bent on independence
from the first. The matured plans of their leaders, formulated at
Hong Kong May 4, 1898, before they ever started the insurrection,
preserved in the captured minutes of the meeting already noticed,
[153] provide the programme to be adopted in the event we should be
tempted to keep the islands. In that event, they were prepared against
surprise, or any necessity for making new plans, and were agreed to
accept war as inevitable. From the first, they made ready for it.
Governmentally and strategically, the Philippine Islands, except
Mohammedan Mindanao, which is a separate and distinct problem,
may be described very simply and sufficiently as consisting of the
great island of Luzon, on which Manila is situated, and the Visayan
group. [154] We are already familiar with the conditions in Luzon in
December, 1898. You hear a great deal about the Philippine archipelago
consisting of a thousand and one islands, but there are only eight
that are, broadly speaking, worth considering here. The moment a jagged
submarine ledge peeps out of the water it becomes an island. And even
before that it may wreck a ship. But we are talking about islands
that need to be charted on the sea of world politics. The Visayan
Islands that really count at all in a great problem such as that we
are now considering, are but six in number: Panay, capital Iloilo;
Cebu, capital Cebu; Bohol, Negros, Samar, and Leyte. [155] Iloilo is
some three hundred and odd miles south of Manila, and, besides being
the capital of Panay, is the chief port of the Visayas and the second
city of the archipelago, Cebu being the third. Under the Spaniards,
as now under us, a vessel might clear from either of these places
for any part of the world. As we saw in the chapter preceding this,
as early as November 18th, Admiral Dewey had cabled Washington that
the entire island of Panay was in possession of insurgents, except
Iloilo. By the end of December, all the Spanish garrisons in the
Visayan Islands had surrendered to the insurgents. (Otis's Report,
p. 61.) Iloilo did not surrender to the insurgents until the day
before Christmas. But let us not anticipate.
December 13th, General Otis received a petition for protection signed
by the business men and firms of Iloilo (p. 54), sent of course
with the approval of the general commanding the imperilled Spanish
garrison. December 14th, he wired Washington for instructions as
to what action he should take on this petition, saying, among other
things, "Spanish authorities are still holding out, but will receive
American troops"; and adding one of his inevitable notes of optimism as
to the tameness of Filipino aspirations (at Iloilo) for independence:
"Insurgents reported favorable to American annexation."
General Otis knew the Spanish troops were hard pressed by the
insurgents down at Iloilo, and eagerly awaited a reply. President
McKinley was then away from Washington, on a southern trip, to Atlanta
and Macon, Georgia, and other points, and nobody at home was giving
any thought to the Filipinos, while they were knocking successively
at the gates of the various Visayan capitals, and receiving the
surrender of their Spanish defenders. It was getting toward the
yuletide season. President McKinley was engaged, quite seasonably,
in putting the finishing touches to the great work of his life,
which was welding the North and the South together forever by wise
and kindly manipulation of the countless opportunities to do so
presented by the latest war. It was a season of general peace and
rejoicing in a thrice-blessed land, and nobody in the United States
was looking for trouble with the Filipinos. With our people it was a
case of ignorance being bliss, so far as the Philippine Islands and
their inhabitants were concerned. In his Autobiography of Seventy
Years, Senator Hoar tells of an interview with President McKinley
concerning his (the Senator's) attitude toward the Treaty of Paris,
early in December, 1898. [156] "He greeted me with the delightful and
affectionate cordiality which I always found in him. He took me by the
hand, and said: 'How are you feeling this winter, Mr. Senator?' I was
determined there should be no misunderstanding. I replied at once:
'Pretty pugnacious, I confess, Mr. President.' The tears came into
his eyes and he said, grasping my hand again: 'I shall always love
you whatever you do.'"
It behooves this nation, and all nations, to consider those
tears. They explain all the subsequent history of the Philippines
to date. Mr. McKinley had proved himself a gallant soldier in his
youth, and he knew something of the horrors of war. He was also
one of the most amiable gentlemen that ever lived. But it is no
disrespect to his memory to say that while Mr. McKinley was a good
man, Senator Hoar was his superior in moral fibre, and he knew it,
and he knew the country knew it. He knew that Senator Hoar was going
to fight the ratification of the treaty to the last ditch, speaking
for the Rights of Man and such old "worn out formulae," and that his
only defence before the bar of history would have to rest on "Trade
Expansion," alias the "Almighty Dollar." Those tears were harbingers
of the coming strife in the Philippines. They were shed for such lives
as that strife might cost. They were an assumption of responsibility
for such shedding of blood as the treaty might entail. The President
returned to Washington from his southern trip on December 21st, and
on December 23d (p. 55) cabled General Otis the following reply to
his request of December 14th for instructions:
Send necessary troops to Iloilo, to preserve the peace and protect
life and property. It is most important that there should be no
conflict with the insurgents. Be conciliatory but firm.
Senator Hoar had put Mr. McKinley on notice that he was going to
present the ethics of the case in the debate on the treaty. Congress
had gone home for the holidays, and after it re-assembled in January
the treaty would come up. The vote was sure to be close, and a too
vigorous manifestation of belief on the part of the Filipinos that
this nation was not closing the war with Spain animated by "the same
high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war" (Mr. McKinley's
instructions to the Peace Commissioners) might defeat the ratification
of the treaty. Indeed, the final vote of February 6th, was so
close that the Administration had but one vote to spare. The final
vote was fifty-seven to twenty-seven--just one over the necessary
two-thirds. The smoke of a battle to subjugate the Filipinos might
"dim the lustre and the moral strength," as Mr. McKinley had expressed
it in his instructions to the Peace Commissioners, of a war to free
the Cubans. Therefore there must be no trouble, at least until after
the ratification of the treaty. President McKinley had invented in
the case of Cuba a very catchy phrase, "Forcible annexation would be
criminal aggression," and every time anybody now quoted it on him
it tended to take the wind out of his sails. So benevolently eager
was that truly kind-hearted and Christian gentleman to avoid the
appearance of "criminal aggression" that he evidently got to thinking
about that telegram of December 23d in which he had authorized General
Otis to send troops to the relief of the beleaguered Spanish garrison
at Iloilo, and also about the message from Admiral Dewey received
November 18th previous, to the effect that the entire island of Panay
except Iloilo was then already in the hands of the insurgents. The
result was that he decided not to let his conciliatory proclamation
of December 21st await the slow process of the mails, and therefore,
though it consisted of something like one thousand words, he had it
cabled out to General Otis in full on December 27th. It is now here
reproduced in full because it precipitated the war in the Philippines,
and is the key to all our subsequent dealings with them [157]:
THE BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION PROCLAMATION
Executive Mansion, Washington,
December 21, 1898.
The destruction of the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Manila
by the United States naval squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral
Dewey, followed by the reduction of the city and the surrender
of the Spanish forces, practically effected the conquest of the
Philippine Islands and the suspension of Spanish sovereignty
therein. With the signature of the treaty of peace between the
United States and Spain by their respective plenipotentiaries at
Paris on the 10th instant, and as a result of the victories of
American arms, the future control, disposition, and government
of the Philippine Islands are ceded to the United States. In
the fulfilment of the rights of sovereignty thus acquired and
the responsible obligations of government thus assumed, the
actual occupation and administration of the entire group of the
Philippine Islands becomes immediately necessary, and the military
government heretofore maintained by the United States in the city,
harbor, and bay of Manila is to be extended with all possible
despatch to the whole of the ceded territory. In performing this
duty the military commander of the United States is enjoined to
make known to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands that in
succeeding to the sovereignty of Spain, in severing the former
political relations, and in establishing a new political power, the
authority of the United States is to be exerted for the securing
of the persons and property of the people of the islands and for
the confirmation of all their private rights and relations. It
will be the duty of the commander of the forces of occupation to
announce and proclaim in the most public manner that we come not
as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives
in their homes, in their employments, and in their personal and
religious rights. All persons who, either by active aid or by
honest submission, co-operate with the Government of the United
States to give effect to these beneficent purposes will receive
the reward of its support and protection. All others will be
brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness
if need be, but without severity, so far as possible. Within the
absolute domain of military authority, which necessarily is and
must remain supreme in the ceded territory until the legislation
of the United States shall otherwise provide, the municipal laws
of the territory in respect to private rights and property and
the repression of crime are to be considered as continuing in
force, and to be administered by the ordinary tribunals, so far
as practicable. The operations of civil and municipal government
are to be performed by such officers as may accept the supremacy
of the United States by taking the oath of allegiance, or by
officers chosen, as far as practicable, from the inhabitants of
the islands. While the control of all the public property and
the revenues of the state passes with the cession, and while
the use and management of all public means of transportation
are necessarily reserved to the authority of the United States,
private property, whether belonging to individuals or corporations,
is to be respected except for cause duly established. The taxes
and duties heretofore payable by the inhabitants to the late
government become payable to the authorities of the United States
unless it be seen fit to substitute for them other reasonable rates
or modes of contribution to the expenses of government, whether
general or local. If private property be taken for military use,
it shall be paid for when possible in cash, at a fair valuation,
and when payment in cash is not practicable, receipts are to be
given. All ports and places in the Philippine Islands in the actual
possession of the land and naval forces of the United States will
be opened to the commerce of all friendly nations. All goods and
wares not prohibited for military reasons by due announcement
of the military authority will be admitted upon payment of such
duties and other charges as shall be in force at the time of their
importation. Finally, it should be the earnest wish and paramount
aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect,
and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring
them in every possible way that full measure of individual
rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and
by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of
BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION
substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary
rule. In the fulfilment of this high mission, supporting the
temperate administration of affairs for the greatest good of the
governed, there must be sedulously maintained the strong arm of
authority, to repress disturbance and to overcome all obstacles
to the bestowal of the blessings of good and stable government
upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free flag of
the United States.
William McKinley.
The words used in the foregoing proclamation which were regarded by
the Filipinos as "fighting words," i. e., as making certain the long
anticipated probability of a war for independence, are those which
appear in italics. The rest of the proclamation counted for nothing
with them. They had been used to the hollow rhetoric and flowery
promises of equally eloquent Spanish proclamations all their lives,
they and their fathers before them.
In suing to President McKinley for peace on July 22d, previous, the
Prime Minister of Spain had justified all the atrocities committed
and permitted by his government in Cuba during the thirty years'
struggle for independence there which preceded the Spanish-American
War by saying that what Spain had done had been prompted only by a
"desire to spare the great island from the dangers of premature
independence." [158]
Clearly, from the Filipino point of view, the United States was now
determined "to spare them from the dangers of premature independence,"
using such force as might be necessary for the accomplishment of that
pious purpose.
The truth is that, Prometheus-like, we stole the sacred fire from the
altar of Freedom whereupon the flames of the Spanish War were kindled,
and gave it to the Filipinos, justifying the means by the end; and
"the links of the lame Lemnian" have been festering in our flesh ever
since. The Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation was a kind of Pandora
Box, supposed to contain all the blessings of Liberty, but when the
lid was taken off, woes innumerable befell the intended beneficiaries,
and left them only the Hope of Freedom--from us. Verily there is
nothing new under the sun. It is written: "Thou shalt not steal"
anything--not even "sacred fire." There is no such thing as nimble
morality. The lesson of the old Greek poet fits our case. So also,
indeed, do those of the modern sage, Maeterlinck, for the Filipinos
could have found their own Bluebird for happiness. The record of
our experience in the Philippines is full of reminders, which will
multiply as the years go by, that, after all, every people have an
"unalienable right" to pursue happiness in their own way as opposed to
somebody else's way. That is the law of God, as God gives me to see the
right. Conceived during the Christmas holiday season and in the spirit
of that blessed season and presented to the Filipino people on New
Year's Day, received by them practically as a declaration of war and
baptized in the blood of thousands of them in the battle of February
4th thereafter, the manner of the reception of this famous document,
the initial reversal and subsequent evolution of its policies, and
all the lights and shadows of Benevolent Assimilation will be traced
in the chapters which follow.
CHAPTER IX
THE ILOILO FIASCO
The King of France with forty thousand men
Marched up the hill and then marched down again.
Old English Ballad.
We have already seen how busily Aguinaldo occupied himself during
the protracted peace negotiations at Paris in getting his government
and people ready for the struggle for independence which he early and
shrewdly guessed would be ultimately forthcoming. General Otis was in
no position to preserve the status quo. The status quo was a worm in
hot ashes that would not stay still. The revolution was a snow-ball
that would roll. The day after Christmas, General Otis at last sent
an expedition under General Marcus P. Miller to the relief of Iloilo,
but when it arrived, December 28th, the Spaniards had already turned
the town over to the insurgent authorities, and sailed away. When
General Miller arrived, being under imperative orders from Washington
to be conciliatory, and under no circumstances to have a clash with
the insurgents, the Administration's most earnest solicitude being
to avoid a clash, at least until the treaty of peace with Spain
should be ratified by the United States Senate, he courteously asked
permission to land, several times, being refused each time. With
a request of this sort sent ashore January 1, 1899, he transmitted
a copy of the proclamation set forth in the preceding chapter. The
insurgent reply defiantly forbade him to land. Therefore he did not
land--because Washington was pulling the strings--until after the
treaty was ratified. "So here we are at Iloilo, an exploded bluff,"
wrote war correspondent J. F. Bass to his paper, Harper's Weekly.
By the time the treaty was ratified the battle of Manila of February
4th had occurred, and the pusillanimity of self-doubting diplomacy
had given way to the red honesty of war. [159]
As was noticed in the chapter preceding this, by the end of December,
1898, all military stations outside Luzon, with the exception of
Zamboanga, in the extreme south of the great Mohammedan island of
Mindanao near Borneo, had been turned over by the Spaniards to the
insurgents. When General Miller, commanding the expedition to Iloilo,
arrived in the harbor of that city with his teeming troop-ships and
naval escorts on December 28th, an aide of the Filipino commanding
general came aboard the boat he was on and "desired to know," says
General Miller's report, [160] "if we had anything against them--were
we going to interfere with them." General Miller then sent some of
his own aides ashore with a letter to the insurgent authorities,
explaining the peaceful nature of his errand. They at once asked if
our people had brought down any instructions from Aguinaldo. Answering
in the negative, General Miller's aides handed them his olive-branch
letter. They read it and said they could do nothing without orders
from Aguinaldo "in cases affecting their Federal Government." The grim
veteran commanding the American troops smoked on this for a day or
so, and then asked a delegation of insurgents that were visiting his
ship by his invitation--they would not let him land, you see--whether
if he landed they would meet him with armed resistance. The Malay
reverence for the relation of host and guest resulted in an evasive
reply. They could not answer. But after they went back to the city
they did answer. And this is what they wrote:
Upon the return of your commissioners last night, we * * *
discussed the situation and attitude of this region of Bisayas in
regard to its relations and dependence upon the central government
of Luzon (the Aguinaldo government, of course); and * * * I have
the honor to notify you that, in conjunction with the people,
the army, and the committee, we insist upon our pretension not
to consent * * * to any foreign interference without express
orders from the central government of Luzon * * * with which we
are one in ideas, as we have been until now in sacrifices. * * *
If you insist * * * upon disembarking your forces, this is our
final attitude. May God forgive you, etc."
Iloilo, December 30, 1898. [161]
This letter is recited in General Miller's report to be from "President
Lopez, of the Federal Government of Visayas." General Miller then
wrote Otis begging permission to attack on the ground that upon the
success of the expedition he was in charge of "depends the future
speedy yielding of insurrectionary movements in the islands." War
correspondent Bass, who was on the ground at the time, also wrote
his paper: "The effect on the natives will be incalculable all over
the islands." But General Otis was trying to help Mr. McKinley nurse
the treaty through the Senate on the idea that there weren't going to
be any "insurrectionary movements in the islands," that all dark and
misguided conspiracies of selfishly ambitious leaders looking to such
impious ends would fade before the sunlight of Benevolent Assimilation.
Cautioning Otis against any clash at Iloilo, Mr. McKinley wired January
9th: "Conflict would be most unfortunate, considering the present.
* * * Time given the insurgents cannot injure us, and must weaken and
discourage them. They will see our benevolent purpose, etc." [162]
The Iloilo fiasco did indeed furnish to the insurgent cause aid and
comfort at the psychologic moment when it most needed encouragement to
bring things to a head. It presented a spectacle of vacillation and
seeming cowardice which heartened the timid among the insurgents and
started among them a general eagerness for war which had been lacking
before. In one of his bulletins [163] to Otis, General Miller tells of
two boats' crews of the 51st Iowa landing on January 5th, and being met
by a force of armed natives who "asked them their business and warned
them off," whereupon they heeded the warning and returned to their
transport. This regiment had then been cooped up on their transport
continuously since leaving San Francisco November 3d, previous,
sixty-three days. They were kept lying off Iloilo until January 29th,
and then brought back to Manila and landed, after eighty-nine days
aboard ship, all idea of taking Iloilo before the Senate should act
having been abandoned.
The Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation was received by cable in
cipher, at Manila, December 29th, and as soon as it had been written
out in long hand General Otis hurried a copy down to General Miller
at Iloilo by a ship sailing that day, so that General Miller might
"understand the position and policy of our government." But he
forgot to tell Miller to conceal the policy for the present. [164]
So the latter, on January 1st, not only sent a copy of it to the
"President of the Federal Government of Visayas," Mr. Lopez, [165]
but in the note of transmittal he "asked," says his report, "that they
permit the entry of my troops." [166] What a fatal mistake! Here was
a proclamation representing all the "majesty, dominion, and power" of
the American Government, signed by the President of the United States,
in terms asserting immediate, absolute, and supreme authority, and the
natives were "asked" if they would "permit" its enforcement. General
Miller's report says that he also had the proclamation "translated
into Spanish and distributed to the people." [167] "The people laugh
at it," he says. "The insurgents call us cowards and are fortifying
at the point of the peninsula, and are mounting old smooth-bore
guns left by the Spaniards. They are intrenching everywhere,
are bent on having one fight, and are confident of victory. The
longer we wait before the attack the harder it will be to put down
the insurrection." This is especially interesting in the light of
President McKinley's justification of the wisdom of temporizing--on
the idea that delay would weaken the insurgents and could not hurt
us. "Let no one convince you," writes Miller to Otis on January 5th,
"that peaceful means can settle the difficulty here."
The appeal to Otis to permit commencement of operations was without
avail. Otis was the Manila agent of the Aldrich Old Guard in the
Senate, in charge of the pending treaty. He would simply send the
disgusted Miller messages not to be hasty, assuring him that the
firing of a shot at Iloilo would mean the precipitation of general
conflict about Manila and all over the place, and that this would
be "most disappointing to the President of the United States, who
continually urges extreme caution and no conflict." [168]
The Administration was counting senatorial noses at the time, and
that its anxiety was justified is apparent from the fact already
noted, that on the final vote whereby the treaty was ratified it had
but one vote to spare. So General Miller sat sunning himself on the
deck of his transport, and watching the insurgents working like ants
at their fortifications, and vainly wishing his 2500 men could get
ashore at least long enough to stretch themselves a bit. John F. Bass,
correspondent for Harper's Weekly, left Iloilo, returned to Manila,
and wrote his paper on January 23d: "I returned to Manila well knowing
that there was nothing more to be done in Iloilo until the Senate
voted on the Treaty of Peace."
On the eighth day after General Miller had asked permission of the
Iloilo village Hampdens to enforce the orders of the President of
the United States, the "Federal Government of the Visayas," through
its President, Senor Lopez, finally deigned to notice Mr. McKinley's
proclamation. It said under date of January 9th:
General: We have the high honor of having received your message,
dated January 1st, of this year, enclosing letter of President
McKinley. You say in one clause of your message: "As indicated in
the President's cablegram, under these conditions the inhabitants
of the island of Panay ought to obey the political authority of the
United States, and they will incur a grave responsibility if, after
deliberating, they decide to resist said authority." So the council
of state of this region of Visayas are, at this present moment,
between the authority of the United States, that you try to impose
on us, and the authority of the central government of Malolos.
Then follows this remarkable statement of the case for the Filipinos:
The supposed authority of the United States began with the
Treaty of Paris, on the 10th of December, 1898. The authority of
the Central Government of Malolos is founded in the sacred and
natural bonds of blood, language, uses, customs, ideas, (and)
sacrifices. [169]
General Otis was fond of throwing cold water on any particularly
eloquent Filipino insurrecto document he had occasion to put in
his reports by saying that Mabini was "the brains of" the Malolos
Government--meaning the only brains it had [170]--and that he probably
wrote such document, whatever it might be. But here is a piece of
real eloquence, originating away down in the Visayan Islands, as
far away from Malolos as Colonel Stark and his "Green Mountain Boys"
were from Washington and Hamilton in 1776 and after. What then is the
explanation of composition so forceful in its impassioned simplicity,
and in the light of subsequent events, so pathetic? There is but
one explanation. It came from the heart. It was the cry of the Soul
of Humanity seeking its natural affiliations. It was the language
of what Aguinaldo's early state papers always used to call the
"legitimate aspirations of" his people--legitimate aspirations which
we later strangled. The reason of the writer's earnestness is that a
few months later he helped do some of the strangling. Thirteen years
afterwards, a thorough acquaintance with the Filipino side of the
matter, derived from an examination of the information which has been
gradually accumulated and published by our government during that time,
causes him to say, "Father forgive me, for I knew not what I did." The
35,000 volunteers of 1899 knew nothing about the Filipinos or their
side of the case. We were like the deputy sheriff who goes out with
a warrant duly issued to arrest a man charged with unlawful breach
of the peace. It is not his business to inquire whether the man is
guilty or not. If the man resists arrest, he takes the consequences.
On the second day after the above defiance of the President of the
United States was served up to General Miller, that gallant officer
having dutifully swallowed it, sent an officer ashore on a diplomatic
mission. The name and rank of this military ambassador were Acting
Assistant Surgeon Henry DuR. Phelan, who clearly appears to have been
a man of keen insight and considerable ability. His written report
to General Miller of what transpired is a document of permanent
interest and importance to the annals of men's struggles for free
institutions. [171] It states that at the meeting the spokesman
of the Filipinos, Attorney Raimundo Melliza, began by saying that
"all the Americans owned was Manila." That was unquestionably true,
so our ambassador, it seems, did not gainsay it. Dr. Phelan suggested
that the Americans had sacrificed lives and money in destroying the
power of Spain. The spokesman, Attorney Melliza, replied that "they
also had made great sacrifice in lives, and that they had a right to
their country which they had fought for, and that we are here now to
take from them what they had won by fighting; that they had been our
allies, and we had used them as such." Dr. Phelan's report goes on to
say: "I replied that military occupation was a necessity for a time,
* * * and that as soon as order was assured it would be withdrawn
* * *. They smiled at this." Well they might. Fourteen years have
elapsed since then, and the law-making power of the United States has
never yet declared whether the American occupation of the Philippine
Islands is to be temporary, like our occupation of Cuba was, or
permanent, like the British occupation of Egypt is. True, Dr. Phelan
said "military" occupation, but the smile was provoked by the
suggestion of temporariness. After the committee smiled, they remarked:
We have fought for independence and feel that we have the power
of governing and need no assistance. We are showing it now. You
might inquire of the foreigners if it is not so.
Dr. Phelan's report proceeds:
They stated that their orders were not to allow us to disembark,
and that they were powerless to allow us to come in without
express orders from their government.
In regard to the Treaty of Paris, the spokesman, Lawyer Melliza, said:
International law forbids a nation to make a contract in regard
to taking the liberties of its colonies.
Lawyer Melliza was wrong. If he had said "the law of righteousness,"
instead of "international law," his proposition, thus amended, would
have been incontrovertible. On September 19, 1911, one of the great
newspapers of this country, the Denver Post, sent out to the members
of the Congress of the United States, and to "The Fourth Estate" also,
the newspaper editors, a circular letter proposing that we sell the
Philippine Islands to Japan. A member of the United States Senate
sent this answer:
I do not favor your proposition. Selling the Islands means selling
the inhabitants. The question of traffic in human beings, whether
by wholesale or retail, was forever settled by the Civil War.
About the same time a leading daily paper of Georgia had an editorial
on the Denver Post's proposition, the most conspicuous feature of
which was that Japan was too poor to pay us well, should we contemplate
selling the Filipinos to her, so it was no use to discuss the matter
at length.
No; Lawyer Melliza's proposition has no standing in international
law yet. But it has with what Mr. Lincoln's First Inaugural called
"the better angels of our nature," if we stop to reflect.
Another interesting feature of the Phelan report to General Miller
is the following:
I asked Lawyer Melliza if Aguinaldo said we could occupy the
city would they agree to it. He replied most emphatically that
they would.
At that time, in January, 1899, while the debate on the treaty was
in progress in the United States Senate, there was hardly a province
in that archipelago where you would not have encountered the same
inflexible adherence to the Aguinaldo government.
Dr. Phelan's report closes thus:
At the conclusion of the meeting it was said that as this question
involved the integrity of the entire republic, it could not
be further discussed here, but must be referred to the Malolos
Government.
There is one other statement made by the spokesman of the Filipinos,
at their meeting with Dr. Phelan, which arrested and gripped my
attention. That it may interest the reader as it did me, it will need
but a word or so as preface. In the fall of that same year, 1899,
when my regiment, the 29th Infantry, U. S. Volunteers, reached the
Islands, it was supposed that the insurrection had about played out,
i.e., that it had been "beaten to a frazzle," because the Filipinos no
longer offered to do battle in force in the open. Yet all that fall,
and all through 1900 and after, a most obstinate guerrilla warfare
was kept up. Anywhere in the archipelago you were liable to be fired
on from ambush. At first we could not understand this. Later we found
out it was the result of an order of Aguinaldo's, faithfully carried
out, not to assemble in large commands, but to conduct a systematic
guerrilla warfare indefinitely. We learned this by capturing a copy
of the order, which was quite elaborate. Dr. Phelan's report says:
I told him [Melliza] that the city was in our power, and that we
could destroy it at any time * * *. Lawyer Melliza replied that
he cared nothing about the city; that we could destroy it if we
wished * * *. "We will withdraw to the mountains and repeat the
North American Indian warfare. You must not forget that."
Later, they did.
On January 15th, General Otis wrote General Miller [172] again
cautioning him against any clash at Iloilo, and saying of conditions
at Manila and Malolos: "The revolutionary government is very anxious
for peaceful relations."
Three days later Senator Bacon saw the situation with clearer vision
from the other side of the world than General Otis could see it
under his nose, and said on the floor of the Senate on January 18th
concerning the conditions at Manila and Malolos:
While there is no declaration of war, while there is no avowal
of hostile intent, with two such armies fronting each other with
such divers intents and resolves, it will take but a spark to
ignite the magazines which is to explode. [173]
The spark was ignited on February 4, 1899, by a sentinel of the
Nebraska regiment firing on some Filipino soldiers who disregarded
his challenge to halt, and killing one of them. War once on, General
Miller was directed on February 10th, after he had lain in Iloilo
harbor for forty-four days, to take the city. So at last he gave
written notice to the insurgents in Iloilo demanding the surrender
of the city and garrison "before sunset Saturday, the 11th instant"
and requesting them to give warning to all non-combatants. [174]
Thereupon the insurgents set fire to the city and departed.
CHAPTER X
OTIS AND AGUINALDO (Continued)
A word spoken in due season, how good is it!
Proverbs xv., 23.
In the last chapter we saw the debut of the Benevolent Assimilation
programme at Iloilo. We are now to observe it at Manila. General Otis
says in his report for 1899 [175]:
After fully considering the President's proclamation and the
temper of the Tagalos with whom I was daily discussing political
problems and the friendly intentions of the United States
Government toward them, I concluded that there were certain
words and expressions therein, such as "sovereignty," "right of
cession," and those which directed immediate occupation, etc.,
* * * which might be advantageously used by the Tagalo war party to
incite widespread hostilities among the natives. * * * It was my
opinion, therefore, that I would be justified in so amending the
paper that the beneficent object of the United States Government
would be clearly brought within the comprehension of the people.
Accordingly, he published a proclamation as indicated, on January 4th,
at Manila. In a less formal communication concerning this proclamation,
viz., a letter to General Miller at Iloilo, General Otis comes to
the point more quickly thus:
After some deliberation we put out one of our own which it was
believed would suit the temper of the people. [176]
The only thing in the Otis proclamation specifically directed toward
soothing "the temper of the people" was a hint that the United
States would, under the government it was going to impose, "appoint
the representative men now forming the controlling element of the
Filipinos to civil positions of responsibility and trust" (p. 69). And
this, far from soothing Filipino temper, was interpreted as an offer
of a bribe if they would desert the cause of their country. The bona
fides of the offer they did not doubt for a moment. In fact it caught
a number of the more timid prominent men, especially the elderly ones
of the ultraconservative element preferring submission to strife. But
the younger and bolder spirits were faithful, many of them unto death,
and all of them unto many battles and much "hiking." [177]
General Otis's report goes on to tell how, about the middle of January,
after he had published his sugar-coated edition of the presidential
proclamation at Manila, it then at last occurred to him that General
Miller might have published the original text of it in full at Iloilo,
and, "fearing that," says he, "I again despatched Lieut. Col. Potter to
Iloilo"--evidently post-haste. But it appears that when the breathless
Potter arrived, the lid was already off. The horse had left the stable
and the door was open, as we saw in the preceding chapter. However,
as the Otis report indicates in this connection (p. 67), copies of
the original McKinley proclamation, as published in full at Iloilo by
General Miller, were of course promptly forwarded by the insurgents at
Iloilo to the insurgent government at Malolos. So all that General Otis
got for his pains was detection in the attempt to conceal the crucial
words asserting American sovereignty in plain English. He tells us
himself that as soon as the Malolos people discovered the trick, "it
[the proclamation] became"--in the light of the Otis doctoring--"the
object of venomous attack." His report was of course written long after
all these matters occurred, but its language shows a total failure
on the part of its author, even then, to understand the cause of the
bitterness he denominates "venom." This bitterness grew naturally
out of what seemed to the Filipinos an evident purpose of the United
States to take and keep the Islands and an accompanying unwillingness
to acknowledge that purpose, as shown by the conspicuous discrepancies
between the original text of the proclamation as published at Iloilo
by General Miller, on January 1st, and the modified version of it
given out by General Otis at Manila on January 4th. "The ablest of
the insurgent newspapers," says he (p. 69), "which was now issued
at Malolos and edited by the uncompromising Luna * * * attacked the
policy * * * as declared in the proclamation, and its assumption of
sovereignty * * * with all the vigor of which he was capable." The
nature of Editor Luna's philippics is not described by General Otis
in detail, the only specific notion we get of them being from General
Otis's echo of their tone, which, he tells us, was to the effect that
"everything tended simply to a change of masters." But in another part
of the Otis Report (p. 163) we find an epistle written about that
time by one partisan of the revolution to another, whose key-note,
given in the following extracts, was doubtless in harmony with the
Luna editorials:
We shall not have them (Filipinos enough to conduct a decent
government) in 10, 20, or a 100 years, because the Yankees
will never acknowledge the aptitude of an "inferior" race to
govern the country. Do not dream that when American sovereignty
is implanted in the country the American office-holders will
give up. Never! If * * * it depends upon them to say whether the
Filipinos have sufficient men for the government of the country
* * * they will never say it."
Is not the American who pretends that he would have done anything but
just what the Filipinos did, had he been in their place, i.e., fought
to the last ditch for the independence of his country, the rankest
sort of a hypocrite? General Otis was a soldier, and his views may
have been honestly colored by his environment. But how at this late
date can any fair-minded man read the above extracts illustrative
of the temper in which the Filipinos went to war with us without
acknowledging the righteousness of the motives which impelled them?
Aguinaldo promptly met General Otis's proclamation of January 4th
by a counter-proclamation put out the very next day, in which he
indignantly protested against the United States assuming sovereignty
over the Islands. "Even the women," says General Otis (p. 70), "in a
document numerously signed by them, gave me to understand that after
the men were all killed off they were prepared to shed their patriotic
blood for the liberty and independence of their country." General
Otis actually intended this last as a sly touch of humor. But when
we recollect Mr. Millet's description (Chapter IV. ante) of the women
coming to the trenches and cooking rice for the men while the Filipinos
were slowly drawing their cordon ever closer about the doomed Spanish
garrison of Manila in July and August previous, fighting their way over
the ground between them and the besieged main body of their ancient
enemies inch by inch, while Admiral Dewey blockaded them by sea,
General Otis's sly touch of humor loses some of its slyness. "The
insurgent army also," he says (p. 70), "was especially affected * * *
and only awaited an opportunity to demonstrate its invincibility
in war with the United States troops * * * whom it had commenced to
insult and charge with cowardice."
The benighted condition of the insurgents in this regard was directly
traceable to the Iloilo fiasco. It was that, principally, which made
the insurgents so foolishly over-confident and the subsequent slaughter
of them so tremendous. Further on in his report General Otis says, with
perceptible petulance, in summing up his case against the Filipinos:
The pretext that the United States was about to substitute itself
for Spain * * * was resorted to and had its effect on the ignorant
masses.
Speaking of his own modified version of the Benevolent Assimilation
Proclamation, General Otis says (p. 76):
No sooner was it published than it brought out a virtual
declaration of war from, in this instance at least, the wretchedly
advised President Aguinaldo, who, on January 5th, issued the
following
--giving the reply proclamation in full. No man can read the Otis
report itself without feeling that if he, the reader, had been playing
Aguinaldo's hand he would have played it exactly as Aguinaldo did. To
General Otis the government at Malolos--"their Malolos arrangement," he
used to call it--seemed quite an impudent little opera-bouffe affair,
"a tin-horn government," as Senator Spooner suggested in the same
debate on the treaty, in which he called his rugged and fiery friend
from South Carolina, Senator Tillman, "the Senator from Aguinaldo,"
and immediately thereafter, with that engaging frankness that always so
endeared him to his colleagues on both sides of the Chamber, removed
the sting from the jest by admitting that neither he (Spooner),
nor Tillman, nor anybody else in the United States, knew anything
about Aguinaldo or his government. But in the calmer retrospect of
many years after, we have seen, through the official documents which
have become available in the interval, that said government was in
complete and effective control of practically the whole archipelago,
and had the moral support of the whole population at a time when our
troops controlled absolutely nothing but the two towns of Manila and
Cavite. Therefore, when we read in the Aguinaldo proclamation such
phrases as, "In view of this, I summoned a council of my generals and
asked the advice of my cabinet, and in conformity with the opinion of
both bodies I" did so and so; "My government cannot remain indifferent
to" this or that act of the Americans assuming sovereignty over the
islands; "Thus it is that my government is disposed to open hostilities
if" etc.; they do not sound to us so irritatingly bombastic as they
did to General Otis, distributed under his nose as the proclamation
containing them at once was, by thousands, throughout a city of which
he was nominally in possession, but nine-tenths of whose 300,000
inhabitants he was obliged to believe in sympathy with the insurgents.
"My government," says the Aguinaldo proclamation, "rules the whole
of Luzon, the Visayan Islands, and a part of Mindanao." Except as to
Mindanao, which cut absolutely no figure in the insurrection until well
toward the end of the guerrilla part of it, we have already examined
this claim and found by careful analysis that it was absolutely true
by the end of December, 1898.
After a rapid review of how he had been aided and encouraged in
starting the revolution against the Spaniards by Admiral Dewey, and
then given the cold shoulder by the army when it came, Aguinaldo's
manifesto says:
It was also taken for granted that the American forces would
necessarily sympathize with the revolution which they had managed
to encourage, and which had saved them much blood and great
hardships; and, above all, we entertained absolute confidence
in the history and traditions of a people which fought for its
independence and for the abolition of slavery, and which posed as
the champion and liberator of oppressed peoples. We felt ourselves
under the safeguard of a free people.
That this statement also was authorized by the facts is evident from
the minutes of the Hong Kong meeting of May 4th, already noticed,
presided over by Aguinaldo, and called to formulate the programme
for the insurrection he was about to sail for the Philippines to
inaugurate, in which, after much discussion among the revolutionary
leaders it was agreed that while they must be prepared for all possible
contingencies, yet,
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 Filipinos or annex them. [178]
In short, the Aguinaldo proclamation of January 5th suggests with
a briefness which Filipino familiarity with the great mass of
facts already laid before the reader in the preceding chapters made
appropriate, all the causes for which the Malolos Government was ready,
if need be, to declare war, and winds up by boldly serving General
Otis with notice that if the Americans try to take Iloilo and the
Visayan Islands "my government is disposed to open hostilities."
On January 9th President McKinley cabled out to General Otis asking
if it would help matters to send a commission out to explain to
the Filipinos our benevolent intentions. This idea thus suggested
materialized, a few weeks later, in the Schurman Commission, of which
more anon. The next day, January 10th, General Otis answered endorsing
the sending of "commissioners of tact and discretion," and adding: [178]
Great difficulty is that leaders cannot control ignorant
classes. [179]
As a matter of fact the leaders were leading. They were not arguing
with the tide. They were merely riding the crest of it. Actually,
General Otis would have stopped "The Six Hundred Marseillaise Who
Knew How to Die"--the ones whose march to Paris, according to Thomas
Carlyle, inspired the composition of the French national air, "The
Marseillaise"--and tried to parley with the head of the column on the
idea of getting them to abandon their enterprise and disperse to their
several homes. He also says, in the cablegram under consideration:
If peace kept for several days more immediate danger will have
passed.
In other words, he was holding off the calf as best he could pending
the ratification of the treaty. From the text itself, however, of
General Otis's report, it is clear enough, that even he was getting
anxious to give the Filipinos a drubbing as soon as the treaty should
be safely passed. Referring to a message from the President enjoining
avoidance of a clash with the Filipinos he says (p. 80):
The injunction of his Excellency the President of the United
States to exert ourselves to preserve the peace had an excellent
effect upon the command. Officers and men * * * were restless
under the restraints * * * imposed, and * * * eager to avenge the
insults received. Now they submit very quietly to the taunts and
aggressive demonstrations of the insurgent army who continue to
throng the streets of the business portion of the city.
See the lamb kick the lion viciously in the face, and observe the
lion as he first lifts his eyes heavenward and says meekly: "Thy
will be done. This is Benevolent Assimilation"; and then turns them
Senate-ward and murmurs: "I cannot stand this much longer, kind
sirs. Say when!" The way war correspondent John F. Bass puts the
situation about this time in a letter to his paper, Harper's Weekly,
was this:
Jimmie Green [180] bites his lip, hangs on to himself, and finds
comfort in the idea that his time will come.
After Aguinaldo's ultimatum of January 5th about fighting if we took
Iloilo, General Otis refrained from taking Iloilo, and continued to
communicate with the insurgent chieftain, appointing commissioners
to meet commissioners appointed by him. These held divers and sundry
sessions, whose only result was to kill time, or at least to mark
time, while the Administration was getting the treaty through the
Senate. The object of these meetings is thus set forth in the military
order of January 9, 1899, appointing the Otis portion of the Joint
High Parleying Board:
To meet a commission of like number appointed by General Aguinaldo,
and to confer with regard to the situation of affairs and to arrive
at a mutual understanding of the intent, purposes, aim, and desires
of the Filipino people and the people of the United States, that
peace and harmonious relations between these respective peoples
may be continued. [181]
The minutes of the first meeting of this board, prepared by the
Spanish-speaking clerk or recorder, recite the above declared
purpose verbatim, in all its verbosity, and then go on to say that
our side asked
That the commissioners appointed by General Aguinaldo give
their opinion as to what were the purposes, aspirations, aims,
and desires of the people of the archipelago.
The next paragraph is almost Pickwickian in its unconscious terseness:
To this request the commissioners appointed by General Aguinaldo
made response that in their opinion the aspirations, purposes,
and desires of the Philippine people might be summed up in two
words "Absolute Independence."
Of course even General Otis does not reproduce this laconic answer
as part of his petulant summing up of how little the Filipinos knew,
before the outbreak of February 4th, as to what they really wanted. He
merely alludes to it as being of record elsewhere. It is one oL
the various pieces of jetsam and flotsam that have floated from the
sea of those great events to the shores of government publications
since. The minutes of these meetings may be found among the hearings
before the Senate Committee of 1902. [182]
General Otis's report complains that Aguinaldo's commissioners did not
know what they wanted, "could not give any satisfactory explanation"
of the "measure of protection" they wanted, they having declared
that they would greatly prefer the United States to establish a
protectorate over them to keep them from being annexed by some other
power. But he fails to state, which is a fact shown by the minutes of
the meeting of January 14 (p. 2721), that the Filipino commissioners
did say that this was a question which would only be reached between
their government and ours when the latter should agree to officially
recognize the former. To quote their exact language, which is rather
clumsily translated, they said: "The aspiration of the Filipino
people is the independence with the restrictions resulting from the
conditions which its government may agree with the American, when
the latter agree to officially recognize the former."
It is perfectly clear from the voluminous minutes of the proceedings
that the Filipinos were only seeking some declaration of the purpose
of our government which would satisfy their people that the programme
was something more than a mere change of masters. "They begged,"
says General Otis (p. 82), "for some tangible concession from the
United States Government--one which they could present to the people
and which might serve to allay excitement." General Otis of course had
no authority to bind the government and so could make no promise. But
the day this Otis-Aguinaldo parleying board had its second meeting,
January 11th, and probably with no more knowledge of its existence
than the reader has of what is going on in the Fiji Islands at the
moment he reads these lines, Senator Bacon introduced in the United
States Senate some resolutions which were precisely the medicine the
case required and precisely the thing the Filipinos were pleading
for. These resolutions concluded thus:
That the United States hereby disclaim any disposition or
intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over
said islands except for the pacification thereof, and assert their
determination when an independent government shall have been duly
erected therein entitled to recognition as such, to transfer to
said government, upon terms which shall be reasonable and just,
all rights secured under the cession by Spain, and to thereupon
leave the government and control of the islands to their people.
They were a twin brother to the Teller Cuban resolution which was
incorporated into the resolution declaring war against Spain, being
verbatim the same, except with the necessary changes of name, of
"islands" for "island," etc.
On January 18th, while the futile parleying board aforesaid was still
futilely parleying at Manila, Senator Bacon made an argument in the
Senate in support of his resolution, whose far-sighted statesmanship,
considered in relation to the analogies of its historic setting,
most strikingly reminds us of Burke's great speech on conciliation
with America delivered under similar circumstances nearly a century
and a quarter earlier. After alluding to the naturalness of the
apprehension of the Filipinos "that it is the purpose of the United
States Government to maintain permanent dominion over them," [183]
Senator Bacon urged:
The fundamental requirement in these resolutions is that the
Government of the United States will not undertake to exercise
permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands. The resolutions
are intentionally made broad, so that those who agree on that
fundamental proposition may stand upon them even though they
may differ materially as to a great many other things relative
to the future course of the government in connection with the
Philippine Islands.
Senator Bacon then quoted the following from some remarks Senator
Foraker had previously made in the course of the great debate on
the treaty:
I do not understand anybody to be proposing to take the Philippine
Islands with the idea and view of permanently holding them.
* * * The President of the United States does not, I know, and no
Senator in this chamber has made any such statement;
and added:
If the views expressed by the learned Senator from Ohio in
his speech * * * are those upon which we are to act, there is
very little difference between us; and there will be no future
contention between us * * * if we can have an authoritative
expression from The Law-Making Power of the United States in a
joint resolution that such is the purpose of the future. [184]
Says the Holy Scripture: "A word spoken in season, how good is it!"
Had the Bacon resolutions passed the United States Senate in January,
1899, we never would have had any war with the Filipinos. [185]
They would have presented at the psychologic moment the very thing
the best and bravest of the Filipino leaders were then pleading
with General Otis for, something "tangible," something "which they
could present to their people and which would allay excitement,"
by allaying the universal fear that we were going to do with them
exactly as all other white men they had ever heard of had done with
all other brown men they had ever heard of under like circumstances,
viz., keep them under permanent dominion with a view of profit.
In his letter accepting the nomination for the Presidency in 1900,
Mr. McKinley sought to show the Filipinos to have been the aggressors
in the war by a reference to the fact that the outbreak occurred
while the Bacon resolution was under discussion in the Senate. This
hardly came with good grace from an Administration whose friends in
the Senate had all along opposed not only the Bacon resolution but
also all other resolutions frankly declaratory of the purpose of our
government. The supreme need of the hour then was, and the supreme
need of every hour of every day we have been in the Philippines since
has been, "an authoritative expression from the law-making power of
the United States"--not mere surmises of a President, confessedly
devoid of binding force, but an authoritative expression from the
law-making power, declaratory of the purpose of our government with
regard to the Philippine Islands. Secretary of War Taft visited Manila
in 1907 to be present at the opening of the Philippine Assembly. In
view of the universal longing which he knew existed for some definite
authoritative declaration as to whether our government intends to
keep the Islands permanently or not, he said:
I cannot speak with authority * * *. The policy to be pursued
with respect to them is, therefore, ultimately for Congress to
determine. * * * I have no authority to speak for Congress in
respect to the ultimate disposition of the Islands. [186]
This bitter disappointment of the public expectation and hope
of something definite, certainly did not lessen the belief of
the Filipinos that we have no notion of ever giving them their
independence. Had the Senate known what the Filipino commissioners
were so earnestly asking of the Otis commissioners in January,
1899, the Bacon resolution would probably have passed. In fact it
is demonstrable almost mathematically that, had the Administration's
friends in the Senate allowed that resolution to come to a vote before
the outbreak of February 4th, instead of filibustering against it until
after that event, it would have passed. As stated in the foot-note, the
roll-call on the final vote on it, which was not taken until February
14th, showed a tie--29 to 29, the Vice-President of the United States
casting the deciding vote which defeated it. Much dealing with real
life and real death has blunted my artistic sensibilities to thrills
from the mere pantomime of the stage. But as here was a vote where,
had a single Senator who voted No voted Aye, some 300,000,000 of
dollars, over a thousand lives of American soldiers killed in battle,
some 16,000 lives of Filipino soldiers killed in battle, and possibly
100,000 Filipino lives snuffed out through famine, pestilence, and
other ills consequent on the war, would have been saved, I can not
refrain from reproducing the vote--perhaps the most uniquely momentous
single roll-call in the parliamentary history of Christendom [187]:
Ayes
Bacon Jones of Nevada
Bate Lindsay
Berry McLaurin
Caffery Martin
Chilton Money
Clay Murphy
Cockrell Perkins
Faulkner Pettigrew
Gorman Pettus
Gray Quay
Hale Rawlins
Harris Smith
Heitfield Tillman
Hoar Turner
Jones of Arkansas
Nays
Allison Mantle
Burrows Morgan
Carter Nelson
Chandler Penrose
Deboe Platt of Connecticut
Fairbanks Platt of New York
Frye Pritchard
Gear Ross
Hanna Shoup
Hawley Simon
Kyle Stewart
Lodge Teller
McBride Warren
McEnery Wolcott
McMillan
In January, 1899, the out-and-out land-grabbers had not yet made bold
to show their hand, the friends of the treaty confining themselves
to the alleged shame of doing as we had done with Cuba, on account
of the supposed semi-barbarous condition of "the various tribes out
there," leaving the possibility of profit to quietly suggest itself
amid the noisy exhortations of altruism. It was not until after the
milk of human kindness had been spilled in war that Senator Lodge
said at the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900:
We make no hypocritical pretence of being interested in the
Philippines solely on account of others. We believe in Trade
Expansion.
Speaking (p. 82) of the meetings of what for lack of a better term
I have above called the Otis-Aguinaldo Joint High Parleying Board,
General Otis says in his report:
Finally, the conferences became the object of insurgent suspicion,
* * * and * * * amusement.
The Filipino newspapers called attention to the fact that large
reinforcements of American troops were on the way to Manila, and very
plausibly inferred that the parleying was for delay only. By January
26th the politeness of both the American and the Filipino commissioners
had been worn to a frazzle, and they adjourned, each recognizing that
the differences between them could ultimately be settled only on the
field of battle, in the event of the ratification of the treaty.
January 27th, General Otis cabled to Washington a letter from
Aguinaldo, of which he says in his report: "I was surprised * * *
because of the boldness with which he therein indicated his purpose
to continue his assumptions and establish their correctness by the
arbitrament of war" (p. 84). General Otis was "surprised" to the
last. Aguinaldo's letter is not at all surprising, though extremely
interesting. It sends General Otis a proclamation issued January 21st,
announcing the publication of a constitution modelled substantially
after that of the United States, even beginning with the familiar
words about "securing the blessings of liberty, promoting the general
welfare," etc., and concludes with an expression of confident hope that
the United States will recognize his government, and a bold implication
of determination to fight if it does not. On the evening of February
4th an insurgent soldier approaching an American picket failed to
halt or answer when challenged, and was shot and killed. Nearly
six months of nervous tension thereupon pressed for liberation in
a general engagement which continued throughout the night and until
toward sundown of the next day, thus finally unleashing the dogs of
war. In the Washington Post of February 6, 1899, Senator Bacon is
quoted as saying:
I will cheerfully vote all the money that may be necessary to
carry on the war in the Philippines, but I still maintain that we
could have avoided a conflict with those people had the Senate
adopted my resolution, or a similar resolution announcing our
honest intentions with regard to the Philippines.
Said the New York Criterion of February 11, 1899:
Whether we like it or not, we must go on slaughtering the natives
in the English fashion, and taking what muddy glory lies in this
wholesale killing until they have learned to respect our arms. The
more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions
will follow.
The Washington Post of February 6, 1899, may not have quoted Senator
Bacon with exactitude. But what the Senator did say on the floor of
the Senate is important, historically. Under date of February 22,
1912, Senator Bacon writes me, in answer to an inquiry:
I enclose a speech made by me upon the subject in the Senate
February 27, 1899, and upon pages 6, 7, and 8 of which you will
find a statement of my position, and the reasons given by me
therefor. Of course you cannot go at length into that question
in your narration of the events of that day, but my position was
that, while I did not approve of the war, and did not approve
of the enslavement of the Filipinos, and while if I had my way I
would immediately set them free, at the same time, as war was then
flagrant, and there were then some twenty odd thousand American
troops in the Philippine Islands, we must either support them or
leave them to defeat and death. I do not know how far you can use
anything then said by me, but if you make allusion to the fact
that I was willing to supply money and troops to carry on the war
in the Philippines, I would be glad for it to be accompanied by a
very brief statement of the ground upon which I based such action.
The above makes it unnecessary to quote at length from the speech
referred to, which may be found at pp. 2456 et seq of the Congressional
Record for February 27, 1899. However, there is one passage in the
speech to which I especially say Amen, and invite all whose creed of
patriotism is not too sublimated for such a common feeling to join
me in so doing. Senator Bacon will now state the creed:
The oft-repeated expression "our country, right or wrong" has a
vital principle in it, and upon that principle I stand.
The Senator immediately follows his creed with these commentaries:
In this annexation of the Philippine Islands through the
ratification of the treaty, and in waging war to subjugate the
Filipinos, I think the country, acting through constitutional
authorities, is wrong. But it is not for me to say because the
country has been committed to a policy that I do not favor and
have opposed, in consequence of which there is war, that I will
not support the government.
Under the civilizing influence of Krag-Jorgensen rifles and the moral
uplift of high explosive projectiles, what our soldiers used to call,
with questionable piety, "the fear of God," was finally put into the
hearts of the Filipinos, after much carnage by wholesale in battle
formation and later by retail in a species of guerrilla warfare as
irritating as it was obstinate. But they have never yet learned to
respect our intentions, because under the guidance of three successive
Presidents we have studiously refrained from any authoritative
declaration as to what those intentions are. We are loth to hark back
to the only right course, a course similar to our action in Cuba,
because of the expense we have been to in the Philippines. But we also
know that the islands are and are likely to continue, a costly burden,
a nuisance, and a distinct strategic disadvantage in the event of war;
and that Mr. Cleveland was right when he said:
The government of remote and alien people should have no permanent
place in the purposes of our national life.
The mistaken policy which involved us in a war to subjugate the
Filipinos, following our war to free the Cubans, will never stand
atoned for before the bar of history, nor can the Filipinos ever in
reason be expected to respect our intentions, until the law-making
power of the government shall have authoritatively declared what
those intentions are--i. e., what we intend ultimately to do with the
islands. Senator Bacon's resolutions of 1899 were, are, and always
will be the last word on the first act needed to rectify the original
Philippine blunder, "announcing" as they would, to use the language
attributed to their distinguished author by the Washington Post of
February 6, 1899, above-quoted, "our honest intentions with regard to
the Philippines." So eager is the exploiter to exploit the islands,
and so apprehensive is the Filipino that the exploiter will have more
influence at Washington than himself and therefore be able ultimately
to bring about a practical industrial slavery, that common honesty
demands such a declaration. To doctor present Filipino discontent
with Benevolent Uncertainty is a mere makeshift. The remedy the
situation needs is simple, but as yet untried--Frankness. The chief
of the causes of the present discontent among the Filipinos with
American rule is precisely the same old serpent that precipitated
the war thirteen years ago, to wit, lack of a frank and honest
declaration of our purpose. The trouble then lay, and still lies,
and, in the absence of some such declaration as that proposed by
the Bacon resolution, will always lie in what seemed then, and still
seems, to the Filipinos "an evident purpose to keep the islands and
an accompanying unwillingness to acknowledge that purpose." Some
may object that one Congress cannot bind another. The same argument
would have killed the Teller amendment to the declaration of war with
Spain avowing our purpose as to Cuba. Such an argument assumes that
this nation has no sense of honor, and that it should cling for a
while longer to the stale Micawberism that the Islands may yet pay,
before it decides whether it will do right or not, and signalizes
such decision by formal announcement through Congress. To men capable
of such an assumption as the one just indicated, this book is not
addressed. Three successive Presidents, Messrs. McKinley, Roosevelt,
and Taft, have with earnest asseveration of benevolent intention tried
without success all these years to win the affections of the Filipino
people, and to make them feel that "our flag had not lost its gift of
benediction in its world-wide journey to their shores," as Mr. McKinley
used to say. But the corner-stone of the policy was laid before we
knew anything about how the land lay, and on the assumption, made
practically without any knowledge whatever on the subject, that the
Filipino people were incapable of self-government. The corner-stone
of our Philippine policy has been from the beginning precisely that
urged by Spain for not freeing Cuba, viz., "to spare the people from
the dangers of premature independence." The three Presidents named
above have always been willing to imply independence, but never to
promise it. And the unwillingness to declare a purpose ultimately to
give the Filipinos their independence has always been due to the desire
to catch the vote of those who are determined they shall never have
it. In this inexorable and unchangeable political necessity lies the
essential contemptibleness of republican imperialism, and the secret
of why the Filipinos, notwithstanding our good intentions, do not like
us, and never will under the present policy. How can you blame them?
Yet the more you know of the Filipinos, the better you like
them. Self-sacrificing, brave, and faithful unto death in war, they
are gentle, generous, and tractable in peace. Moreover, respect
for constituted authority, as such, is innate in practically every
Filipino, which I am not sure can be predicated concerning each and
every citizen of my beloved native land. And we can win the grateful
and lasting affection of the whole seven or eight millions of them any
day we wish to. How? Have done with vague, vote-catching Presidential
obiter, and through your Congress declare your purpose!
CHAPTER XI
OTIS AND THE WAR
Am I the boss, or am I a tool,
Am I Governor-General or a hobo--hobo;
Now I'd like to know who's the boss of the show,
Is it me, or Emilio Aguinaldo?
Army Song of the Philippines under Otis.
"The thing is on," said General Hughes, Provost Marshal of Manila, to
General Otis, at Malacanan palace, on the night of February 4, 1899,
about half past eight o'clock, as soon as the firing started. [188]
He was talking about something which every American in Manila except
General Otis had for months frankly recognized as inevitable--the war.
On the day of the outbreak of February 4th, General Otis had under
his command 838 officers and 20,032 enlisted men, say in round numbers
a total of 21,000. Of these some 15,500 were State volunteers mostly
from the Western States, and the rest were regulars. All the volunteers
and 1650 of the regulars were, or were about to become, entitled to
their discharge, and their right was perfected by the exchange of
ratifications of the treaty of peace with Spain on April 11, 1899. The
total force which he was thus entitled to command for any considerable
period consisted of less than 4000. Of the 21,000 men on hand as
aforesaid, on February 4th, deducting those at Cavite and Iloilo,
the sick and wounded, those serving in civil departments, and in the
staff organizations, the effective fighting force was 14,000, and of
these 3000 constituted the Provost Guard in the great and hostile
city of Manila. [189] Thus there were only 11,000 men, including
those entitled to discharge, available to engage the insurgent army,
"which," says Secretary of War Root, "was two or three times that
number, well armed and equipped, and included many of the native
troops formerly comprised in the Spanish army."
Such was the predicament into which General Otis's supremely zealous
efforts to help the Administration get the treaty through the Senate
by withholding from the American people the knowledge of facts which
might have put them on notice that they were paying $20,000,000 for
a $200,000,000 insurrection, had brought us. This is not a tale of
woe. It is a tale of the disgust--good-humored, because stoical--which
finally found expression at the time in the army song that heads this
chapter, disgust at unnecessary sacrifice of American life which could
so easily have been prevented had General Otis only revealed the real
situation in time to have had plenty of troops on hand. It is a requiem
over those brave men of the Eighth Army Corps from Pennsylvania,
Tennessee, and the Western States that bore the brunt of the early
fighting, whose lives were needlessly sacrificed in 1899 as the
result of an unpreparedness for war due to anxiety not to embarrass
Mr. McKinley in his efforts to get the treaty through the Senate,
an unpreparedness which remained long unremedied thereafter in order
to conceal from the people of the United States the unanimity of the
desire of the Filipinos for Independence.
It is quite true that none of our people then in the Islands realized
this unanimity in all its pathos at the outset, but it soon became
clear to everybody except the commanding general. It naturally dawned
on him last of all, because he did not visit the most reliable sources
of information, to wit, the battlefields during the fighting, and
therefore did not see how tenaciously the Filipinos fought for the
independence of their country. Moreover, General Otis tried to think
till the last along lines in harmony with the original theory of
Benevolent Assimilation. Hence Mr. Root's nonsense of 1899 and 1900
about "the patient and unconsenting millions" dominated by "the Tagalo
tribe," which nonsense was immensely serviceable in a campaign for the
presidency wherein antidotes for sympathy with a people struggling
to be free were of supreme practical political value. General Otis
actually had Mr. McKinley believing as late as December, 1899, at
least, that the opposition to a change of masters in lieu of Freedom
was confined to a little coterie of self-seeking politicians who were
in the business for what they could get out of it, and that the great
majority would prefer him, Otis, to Aguinaldo, as governor-general. It
is difficult on first blush to accept this statement as dispassionately
correct, but there is no escape from the record. Mr. McKinley said
in his annual message to Congress in December, 1899, in reviewing
the direction he gave to the Paris peace negotiations which ended
in the purchase of the islands, and the war with the Filipinos which
had followed, and had then been raging since February 4th previous,
"I had every reason to believe, and still believe that the transfer
of sovereignty was in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of
the great mass of the Filipino people."
Yet every American soldier who served in the Philippines at the time
knows that Aguinaldo held the whole people in the hollow of his hand,
because he was their recognized leader, the incarnation of their
aspirations. [190]
During the presidential campaign of 1900, while the war with the
Filipinos was still raging, partisan rancour bitterly called in
question the sincerity of President McKinley's statement in his annual
message to Congress of December, 1899, that he then still believed "the
transfer of sovereignty was in accord with the wishes and aspirations
of the great mass of the Filipino people," on the ground that he must
by the time he made that statement have understood how grossly--however
honestly--General Otis had misled him as to the unanimity and tenacity
of the Filipino purpose. But it is only necessary to read Admiral
Dewey's testimony before the Senate Committee of 1902 to understand
Mr. McKinley's allusion in this same message to Congress of 1899 to
"the sinister ambition of a few leaders," and this, once understood,
explains the other statement of the message. Admiral Dewey came
home in the fall of 1899 and undoubtedly filled Mr. McKinley with
the estimate of Aguinaldo which makes such painful reading in the
Admiral's testimony of 1902 before the Senate Committee, where he
abused Aguinaldo like a pick-pocket, so to speak, saying his original
motive was principally loot. [191] In the fall of 1899 Aguinaldo had
issued a proclamation claiming that Admiral Dewey originally promised
him independence, and Admiral Dewey had bitterly denounced this as a
falsehood, so that the Admiral always cherished a very real resentment
against the insurgent chief thereafter. His estimate of the Filipino
leader as being in the insurrection merely for what he could get out
of it was wholly erroneous, and has long since been exploded, all our
generals of the early fighting and all Americans who have known him
since being unanimous that Aguinaldo was and is a sincere patriot;
but it undoubtedly explains Mr. McKinley's still clinging, in 1899,
to the notion derived from General Otis that the insurrection did not
have the moral and material backing of the whole Filipino people. The
Filipino leaders were familiar with the spirit of our institutions. The
men who controlled their counsels were high-minded, educated, patriotic
men. "For myself and the officers and men under my command," wrote
General Merritt to Aguinaldo in August, 1898, just after the fall
of Manila, "I can say that we have conceived a high respect for the
abilities and qualities of the Filipinos, and if called upon by the
Government to express an opinion, it will be to that effect." [192]
The leaders believed that the American people did not fully understand
the identity of the Philippine situation with that in Cuba, and that
if they had, the treaty would not have been ratified. They also knew
the supreme futility of trying to get the facts before the American
people by peaceful means. And it was really with the abandon of genuine
patriotism that they plunged their country into war. We did not know
it then, but we do know it now. It would be simply wooden-headed to
affirm that they ever expected to succeed in a war with us. Of course
some of the jeunesse doree, as General Bell calls them in one of his
early reports, [193] grew very aggressive and insulting toward the
last. But the thinking men went into the war for independence in a
spirit of "decent respect to the opinions of mankind," to correct the
impression General Otis had communicated to Mr. McKinley, and through
him to our people, in the hope that the more lives they sacrificed
in such a war (they risked--and many of them lost--their own also),
the nearer they would come to refuting the idea that they did not
know what they wanted. It was the only way they had to appeal to
Caesar, i.e., to the great heart of the American people. As the war
grew more and more unpopular in the United States, the impression
was more and more nursed here at home that the people did not really
want independence, but were being coerced; and that they were like
dumb driven cattle. The striking similarity of these suggestions
to those by which tyranny has always met the struggles of men to
be free, did not seem to occur to the American public. They were
accepted as authoritative, being convenient also as an antidote to
sympathy. General Otis had suppressed such words as "sovereignty,"
"protection," and the like from his original sugar-coated edition
of the Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, offering an elaborate
cock-and-bull explanation of why he did so. The Filipino answer to
this took the form of a very clever newspaper cartoon, representing an
American in a carromata--a kind of two-wheeled buggy--with a Filipino
between the shafts pulling it; which cartoon of course, never reached
the United States. The Filipinos had never heard the story on General
Mahone about "tie yoh hoss an' come in," [194] but they had heard of
the jinrickshaws of Japan, and they had read in Holy Writ and elsewhere
of conquered people becoming hewers of wood and drawers of water to
invading conquerors. And they are not without a sense of humor. It is
a common mistake with many Americans--for quite a few among us suffer
intellectually from over-sophistication--to suppose we monopolize all
the sense of humor there is, and that that alone is proof of a due
sense of proportion. At any rate, the Filipinos, with all due respect
to General Otis's good intentions, understood that "sovereignty" and
"protection" meant alien domination, so there was nothing in the Otis
notion that for them those words had a "peculiar meaning which might
be advantageously used by the Tagalo war party to incite," etc. [195]
Having now gotten into a war on the theory that only a small fraction
of the Filipino people were opposed to a new and unknown yoke in
lieu of the old one, General Otis still continued to try to square
his theory with the facts. For many months he sat at his desk in
Manila cheerily waging war with an inadequate force, and retaining in
the service and on the firing line after their terms of enlistment
expired, under pretence that they consented to it willingly, a lot
of fellows from Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and the Western States, who
had volunteered for the war with Spain, with intent to kill Spaniards
in order to free Cubans, and not with intent to kill Filipinos for
also wanting to be free. Seeing nothing of the fighting himself,
he of course failed to get a correct estimate of the tenacity of
the Filipino purpose. No purpose is here entertained to suggest
that any of those early volunteers went around preaching mutiny,
or feeling mutinous. They did not originally like the Filipinos
especially; furthermore, they liked the Philippines less than they
did the Filipinos, and they had a vague notion that some one had
blundered. But it was not theirs to ask the reason why. Besides,
the orders from Washington being not to clash with the Filipinos
at least until the treaty was ratified, the Filipino soldiers and
subaltern officers had been calling them cowards for some time with
impunity. So that as soon as the treaty was safely "put over," they
were very glad to let off steam by killing a few hundred of them. But
their hearts were not in the fight, in the sense of clear and profound
conviction of the righteousness of the war. However, war is war, and
they were soldiers, and "orders is orders," as Tommy Atkins says. So
let us turn to an honester, if grimmer, side of the picture.
The first battle of the war began about 8:30 o'clock on the night
of February 4th, and lasted all through that night and until about
5 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. Our casualties numbered
about 250 killed and wounded. The insurgent loss was estimated at
3000. "Those of the insurgents will never be known," says General
Otis. [196] "We buried 700 of them." [197] There was fighting pretty
much all around Manila, for the insurgents had the city almost hemmed
in. An arc of a circle, broken in places possibly, but several miles
long, drawn about the city, would probably suggest the general idea
of the enemy's lines. They had been allowed to dig trenches without
interference while the debate in the Senate on the treaty was in
progress, pursuant to the temporary "peace-at-any-price" programme. The
arc was broken into smithereens by 5 P.M. of February 5th. When the
morning of February 6th came Col. James F. Smith, commanding the First
Californias, was non est inventus, and so was a large part of his
regiment. "No one seemed to know definitely his location," says the
Otis Report. [198] As a matter of fact he had taken two battalions of
his regiment and waded clean through the enemy's lines, and had to be
sent for to come back to form again with the line of battle needed to
protect the city. So the Californias probably carried off the pick of
the laurels of the first day's fighting. General Anderson, commanding
the First Division of the Eighth Corps, threw them some very handsome
well earned bouquets in his report, stating also that their colonel
had shown "the very best qualities of a volunteer officer"--why he
limited it to "volunteer" does not appear, but is inferable from the
well-known disposition of all regulars to consider all volunteers
"rookies" [199]--and recommended that he be made a brigadier general,
which shortly afterward was done. [200]
It would be invidious to follow the various phases of the subsequent
early fighting, and single out one or more States [201] and tell of the
hard earned and well deserved honors they won, because space forbids
a proper tribute to the heroism of all of them. As for the regulars,
[202] they were the same they were at Santiago de Cuba, the same
they always are anywhere you put them. When a newspaper man would
come around a regular regiment during the fighting before Santiago
he would be told that they had no news to give him, "We ain't heroes,
we're regulars," they would say. After the outbreak of February 4th,
all our people did well, acted nobly, "Angels could no more." Neither
could devils, as shown by the losses inflicted on the enemy.
There was more fighting outside Manila during the next two or three
days, and when that was done the somewhat shattered insurgent legions
had recoiled to the distantly visible foot-hills, convinced that
their notion they could take Manila was very foolish and very rash.
At the town of Caloocan, some three or four miles out to the north
of Manila, were located the shops and round houses of the Manila and
Dagupan Railway, which runs from Manila in a northwesterly direction
about 120 miles to Dagupan, and was then the only railroad in the
archipelago. It was fed by a vast rich farming country, the great
plain of central Luzon. Naturally, the central plain which fed the
railroad that traversed it and kept its teeming myriads of small
farmers in touch with the great outside world was to be sooner or
later, the theatre of war. To seize transportation is instinctively
the first tactical move of a military man. Lieutenant-General Luna,
commander-in-chief, next to Aguinaldo, of the revolutionary forces, the
man whom later Aguinaldo had shot, was just then at Caloocan with 4000
men. So it fell to General MacArthur, commanding the Second Division of
the Eighth Corps, to move on Caloocan, which he did on February 10th.
John F. Bass, correspondent for Harper's Weekly, writing from Manila
a short time after this, describes this movement. It was our first
move away from the city of Manila. With a few masterly strokes of the
pen, which I regret there is not space to reproduce here in full,
Mr. Bass gives a vivid picture of the various engagements, and of
"a background of burning villages, smoke, fire, shot, and shell, the
ceaseless tramp of tired and often bleeding feet," etc. "Heroism,"
he says, "became a matter of course and death an incident." Finally
his story pauses for a moment thus: "The natural comment is that
all this is merely war--the business of the soldier. True, nor do
I think Jimmie Green [Mr. Bass's name for our "Tommy Atkins"] is
troubled with heroics. He accepts the situation without excitement
or hysterics. He has little feeling in this matter for his heart is
not in this fight." Here brother Bass's moralizing ceases abruptly,
and the contagious excitement of the hour catches him, just as it
always does the average man under such circumstances:
From La Loma church you may get the full view of our long line
crossing the open field, evenly, steadily, irresistibly, like an
inrolling wave on the beach * * *. Watch the regiments go forward,
and form under fire, and move on and on, and you will exclaim:
"Magnificent," and you will gulp a little and feel proud without
exactly knowing why. Then gradually the power of that line will
force itself upon you, and you will feel that you must follow,
that wherever that line goes you must go also. By and by you will
be sorry, but for the present the might of an American regiment
has got possession of you.
Anybody who has ever been with an American regiment in action knows
exactly how the man who wrote that felt. The American who has never
had the experience Mr. Bass describes above has missed one way of
realizing the majesty of the power of the republic whereof he is
privileged to be a citizen. For if there is one national trait which
more than any other explains the greatness of our country, it is the
instinct for organization, the fondness for self-multiplication to
the nth power by intelligent co-operation with one's fellows to a
common end. Especially is the experience in question inspiring where
the example of the field officers is particularly appropriate to the
occasion. Take for instance the following, concerning the conduct of
Major J. Franklin Bell in this advance on Caloocan, from the report
of Major Kobbe, Commanding the Artillery:
As the right cleared the head of the ravine, I could see
Maj. J. F. Bell * * * leading a company of Montana troops in front
of the right * * * advancing, firing, toward intrenchments * * *.
He was on a black horse to the last * * * leading and cheering
the men. His work was most gallant and * * * especially cheering
to me. [203]
No mere scribe can magnify General Bell's matchless efficiency in
action, but it is certainly inspiring to contemplate. There are no
"fuss and feathers" about him. Yet his power, proven on many a field
in the Philippines, to kindle martial ardor by example, suggests the
ubiquitous "Helmet of Navarre" of Lord Macaulay's poem.
A little later correspondent Bass develops what he meant by "by
and by you will be sorry." You see it is not comfortable business,
this of hustling about among the dead and dying. In the excitement,
you are so liable to step on the face of some poor devil you knew
well, maybe a once warm friend. In this connection Mr. Bass says:
"There is this difference between the manner in which American and
Filipino soldiers die. The American falls in a heap and dies hard;
the Filipino stretches himself out, and when dead is always found in
some easy attitude, generally with his head on his arms. They die
the way a wild animal dies--in just such a position as one finds a
deer or an antelope which one has shot in the woods."
So far as the writer is advised and believes, nobody who knows
John F. Bass ever suspected him of being a quitter. He must have
been reading the London Standard, which said about that time:
"It is a little startling to find the liberators of Cuba engaged
in suppressing a youthful republic which claims the sacred right of
self-government." Bass had written his newspaper in August previous,
after observing how pluckily the Filipinos had fought and licked
the Spaniards: "Give them their independence and guarantee it to
them." The overwhelming sentiment of the Eighth Army Corps when we
took the Philippines was against taking them; and those who had kept
informed knew that the Senate had ratified the treaty by a majority
only one more than enough to squeeze it through, the vote having been
57 to 27, at least 56 being thus indispensable to make the necessary
constitutional two-thirds of the 84 votes cast; and that Wall Street
and the White Man's Burden or land-grabbing contingent--"Philanthropy
and Five per cent," as Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage put
it at the time--were responsible for these shambles Mr. Bass describes.
At this juncture some soft-headed gentleman asks: "What is this
man who writes this book driving at? Is he trying to show that the
American soldiers in the Philippines in February, 1899, all wanted
to quit as soon as the war broke out?" Not at all. In the first
place it hardly lay in American soldier nature to want to quit when
Aguinaldo was telling us "if you don't take your flag down and out of
these islands at once and promptly get out yourselves along with it,
I will proceed to kick you out and throw it out." And in the next
place, in the war with the Filipinos, as in all other wars, fuel was
added to the flame as soon as the war broke out. Among the Americans,
charges soon came into general circulation and acceptance that the
Filipinos had planned (but been frustrated in) a plot looking to a
general massacre of all foreigners in Manila. This alleged plot was
supposed to have been scheduled to be carried out on a certain night
shortly after February 15, 1899. Among the Filipinos, on the other
hand, counter-charges soon followed, and met with general credence,
that the Americans made a practise of killing prisoners taken in
battle, including the wounded. Neither charge was ever proven, but
both served the purpose, at the psychologic moment, of possessing
each side with the desire to kill, which is the business of war. Let
us glance briefly at these recriminations.
Between pages 1916 and 1917 of Senate Document 331, part 2 [204] may
be found a photo-lithograph of the celebrated alleged order of the
Filipino Revolutionary Government of February 15, 1899, to massacre
all foreign residents of Manila. In his report for 1899 [205] General
Otis himself describes this order as one "which for barbarous intent
is unequalled in these modern times in civilized warfare," and speaks
of it as "issued by the Malolos Government through the responsible
officer who had raised and organized the hostile inhabitants within
the city." After Aguinaldo was captured in 1901, according to an
account given by General MacArthur to the Senate Committee in 1902, of
a conversation with the insurgent leader, the latter was shown a copy
of this document purporting to have been signed by General Luna, one of
his generals. He disclaimed having in any way sanctioned it, in fact
disclaimed any prior knowledge of it whatsoever, [206] a disclaimer
which General MacArthur appears to have accepted as true, frankly and
entirely. At page 1890 of the same volume, Captain J. R. M. Taylor,
14th U. S. Infantry, a gallant soldier and an accomplished scholar,
who was in charge in 1901 of the captured insurgent records at Manila,
states that he was "informed" that the document was originally "signed
by Sandico, then Secretary of the Interior" of the revolutionary
government. Captain Taylor made an attempt to run the matter down,
but obtained no evidence convincing to him. A like investigation by
General MacArthur in 1901 had a like result. [207]
On the other hand, Major Wm. H. Bishop, of the 20th Kansas, was
credited in a soldier's letter written home, which first came to light
in this country, with killing unarmed prisoners during the advance on
Caloocan. The charges originated with a private of that regiment. Major
Bishop denied the charges. [208] An investigation followed, in the
course of which somebody made an innuendo, or charge--it is not
important which--that other officers used their influence to prevent
a full ventilation of the matter, specifically, General Funston,
then Colonel of the 20th Kansas, and Major Metcalf, of the same
regiment. These last two also made a most vigorous general denial,
and nothing whatever was established against them. The whole matter
was finally disposed of by being forwarded to the War Department at
Washington by General Otis on July 13, 1899, some six months after the
occurrences alleged, with the remark that he (General Otis) "doubted
the wisdom of a court-martial" of the soldier who had made the charge
against Major Bishop, "as it would give the insurgent authorities a
knowledge of what was taking place, and they would assert positively
that our troops practised inhumanities, whether the charges could
be proven or not" and that they would use the incident "as an excuse
to defend their own barbarities." [209] The last endorsement on the
papers preceding General Otis's final endorsement was one by Colonel
Crowder, now (1912) Judge Advocate General of the United States Army,
in which he said: "I am not convinced from a careful reading of this
report, that Private Brenner has made a false charge against Captain
Bishop"; adding that "considerations of public policy, sufficiently
grave to silence every other demand, require that no further action
be taken in this case." [210] The "considerations of public policy"
were of course those indicated in General Otis's final endorsement on
the papers, already quoted. They were compellingly controlling, in my
judgment, independently of the merits. Washing one's soiled linen in
public is never advisable, and placing a weapon in your enemy's hand
in time of war is at least equally unwise. Some shreds of this once
much mooted matter doubtless still linger in the public memory. It
has been thus briefly ventilated here solely to trace the genesis of
the bitterness of that war, and of numerous later barbarities avenged
in kind. The bitterness thus early begun grew as the war went on,
until every time a hapless Filipino peasant soldier speaking only
two or three words of Spanish would falsely explain, when captured,
that he was a non-combatant, an amigo (friend), it usually at once
filled the captor with vivid recollections of slain comrades, and of
rumored or sometimes proven mutilation of their bodies after death,
and these reflections would at once fill him with a yearning desire
to blow the top of the amigo's head off, whether he yielded to the
desire or not. Of no instance where he did so yield am I aware. But
I do know that the invariable statement of all Filipinos unarmed and
un-uniformed when captured, to the effect that they were amigos, became
to the American soldier not remotely dissimilar to the waving of a red
rag at a bull. Of course this was also due, largely, to the guerrilla
practice of hiding guns when hard-pressed and actually plunging at
once into some make-believe agricultural pursuit. As for Major Bishop,
it is inconceivable to me that he gave any order to kill unarmed
prisoners. Even admitting for the sake of the argument that he is a
fiend, he is not a fool. As a matter of fact, he was a brave soldier,
as all the reports show, and is a reputable lawyer, having many warm
friends whose opinion of any man would command respect anywhere. The
truth of the whole matter probably is that just before going into
battle, when our troops were in an ugly temper by reason of the
rumors of barbarities alleged to have been perpetrated by the enemy,
or contemplated by him, the word was passed along the line to "Take no
more prisoners than we have to," and that that thought originated with
some irresponsible private soldier of the line inflamed by stories
of mutilation of our dead or of maltreatment of our wounded. Such a
"word," so passed from man to man, can, in the heat of conflict,
very soon evolve into something having for practical purposes all
the force and effect of an order.
Through the foregoing, and like causes, including the "water cure,"
later invented to persuade amigos to discover the whereabouts of hidden
insurgent guns or give information as to the movements of the enemy,
[211] our war with the Filipinos became, before it was over, a rather
"dark and bloody" affair, accentuated as it was, from time to time,
by occasional Filipino success in surprising detachments from ambush,
or by taking them unawares and off their guard in their quarters,
and eliminating them, the most notable instance of the first being
the crumpling of a large command of the 15th Infantry by General Juan
Cailles, in southern Luzon, and the most indelibly remembered and
important example of the second being the massacre of the 9th Infantry
people at Balangiga, in Samar, in the fall of 1901. Certainly more
than one American in that long-drawn-out war did things unworthy of
any civilized man, things he would have believed it impossible, before
he went out there, ever to come to. Personally, I have heard, so far
as I now recollect, of comparatively few barbarities perpetrated
by Filipinos on captured American soldiers. Barbarities on their
side seemed to have been reserved for those of their own race whom
they found disloyal to the cause of their country. Personally I
have never seen the water-cure administered. But I once went on
a confidential mission by direction of General MacArthur, in the
course of which I reported first, on arriving in the neighborhood
of the contemplated destination, to a general officer of the regular
army who is still such to-day. [212] That night the general was good
enough to extend the usual courtesy of a cot to sleep on, in the
headquarters building. Toward dusk I went to dine with a certain
lieutenant, also of the regular army. [213] As we approached the
lieutenant's quarters a sergeant came up with a prisoner, and asked
instructions as to what to do with him. The lieutenant said: "Take
him out and find out what he knows. Do you understand, Sergeant?" The
sergeant saluted, answered in the affirmative, and moved away with
his prisoner. We went in to the lieutenant's quarters, and while at
dinner heard groans outside. I said "What is that, Jones?" [214]
Jones said: "That's the water-cure he's giving that hombre. [215]
Want to see it?" I replied that I certainly did not. Returning that
night to the general's headquarters, after breakfast the next morning
I met my friend Jones coming out of the general's office. I said:
"What's the matter, what are you doing here," he having mentioned
the evening before an expedition planned for the morrow. He said:
"Well, I've just had a talk with the general to see if I could get my
resignation from the army accepted?" "Why?" said I. "Well," was the
reply, "that ----" (designating the prisoner of the night before by a
double barrelled epithet) "died on me last night." Just how the matter
was hushed up I have never known, but Jones was never punished. More
than one general officer of the United States Army in the Philippines
during our war with the Filipinos at least winked at the water-cure
as a means of getting information, and quite a number of subalterns
made a custom of applying it for that purpose. It was practically
the only way you could get them to betray their countrymen. Did
I report the incident to General MacArthur? Certainly not. It was
the business of the general commanding the district. The water-cure,
though very painful, was seldom fatal, and when not fatal was almost
never permanently damaging, and it was about the only way to shake
the loyalty of the average Filipino and make him give information
as to hidden insurgent guns, guerrilla bands, etc. It was a part of
Benevolent Assimilation.
Let us now return to the early battlefields about Manila which we
left, initially, to analyze the extreme bitterness of the feeling
between the combatants that very early began to develop.
We left war correspondent John F. Bass among the dead and dying on
one of these fields, supposedly musing on the White Man's Burden,
or Land-Grabbing, or Trust-for-Civilization theory, or whatever it
was that moved the fifty-seven senators whose votes had ratified
the treaty by a majority of just one more than the constitutionally
necessary two-thirds.
The reason the writer lays so much stress on Mr. Bass's letters to
Harper's Weekly on the early fighting in the Philippines, is because
his remarks come direct from the battlefield, and are, as it were,
res gestae. They were made dum fervet opus, to use a law Latin phrase
which in plain English means "while the iron is hot." They reflect
more or less accurately the feelings of the men whose deeds he was
recording. He, and O. K. Davis, now Washington correspondent of the
New York Times, and John T. McCutcheon, of Chicago, the now famous
cartoonist (who was with Dewey in the battle of Manila Bay), and
Robert Collins, now London correspondent of the Associated Press, and
"Dick" Little of the Chicago Tribune,--a little man about six feet
three,--and lots of other good men and true, were all through that
fighting, and we will later come to an issue of personal veracity
between them and General Otis which culminated in the retirement from
office of Secretary of War Alger, and ought to have resulted in the
recall of General Otis, but did not, because to have acknowledged
what a blunderer General Otis had been and to have relieved him from
command, as he should have been relieved, would have been to "swap
horses crossing a stream," as Mr. Lincoln used to put it in declining
to change generals during a given campaign. The object here is to
bring out the truth of history as to how the men who bore the brunt of
the early fighting felt about it. Testimony as to what the officers
and men of the army said would be of no value, because a complaining
soldier's complaints are too often only a proof of "cold feet." [216]
These newspaper men, not under military orders, were daily risking
their lives voluntarily, just to keep the American public informed,
and the American public were kept in darkness and only vouchsafed
bulletins giving them the progressive lists of their dead and wounded,
and this last only on demand made upon Secretary Alger by the people
of Minnesota, the Dakotas, etc., through their senators. The War
Department did not want the people to know, did not want to admit
itself, how plucky, vigorous, and patriotic the resistance was. The
period of the fighting done by the State Volunteers from February
until fall, when public opinion finally forced the Administration
to send General Otis an adequate force, is slurred by Secretary of
War Root in his report for 1899. I do not mean that it was slurred
intentionally. But the Philippines were a long way off, and Mr. Root
and Mr. McKinley naturally relied for their information on their
commanding general on the spot. There were gallant deeds done in the
Philippines by those Western fellows of the State regiments which
volunteered for the war with Spain, that would have made the little
fighting around Santiago look like--well, to borrow from "Chimmie"
Fadden's fertile vocabulary, "like 30 cents." But General Otis was
not in a position to get the thrill of such things from his office
window, so very few of them were given much prominence by him in his
despatches to the Adjutant-General of the army. This was wise enough
from a political standpoint, seeing that a presidential campaign
was to ensue in 1900 predicated on the proposition that American
sovereignty was "in accord with the wishes and aspirations of the
great mass of the Filipinos," to use the words of the President's
message to Congress of December, 1899.
Caloocan was taken by General MacArthur on February 10th. The natural
line of advance thereafter was of course up the railroad, because
the insurgents held it, and needed it as much as we would. Throughout
February there were engagements too numerous to mention. The navy also
entertained the enemy whenever he came too near the shores of Manila
Bay. One incident in particular is worthy of note, and worthy of
the best traditions of the navy. I refer to the conduct of Assistant
Engineer Emory Winship off Malabon, March 4, 1899. Malabon is five
miles north of Manila, on the bay, not far from Caloocan. On the day
named, a landing party of 125 men from the U. S. S. Bennington went
ashore near Malabon to make photographs, in aid of navy gunnery, of
certain entrenchments and buildings that had been struck by shells
from the Monadnock. They foolishly failed to throw out scouts ahead
of their column, and were suddenly greeted with a withering fire from
a whole regiment of insurgents who had seen them first and lain in
wait for them. They retired with considerably more haste than they
had gone forth. The insurgents advanced, firing, at double quick,
toward the comparative handful of Americans, and would undoubtedly
have killed the last man jack of them, but Engineer Winship, who
had been left in charge of the tug that brought the landing party
shoreward, to keep up steam, saw the situation and promptly met it. He
unlimbered a 37mm. Hotchkiss revolving machine gun which stood in
the bow of the tug, and opened up with accurate aim on the advancing
regiment of Filipinos. Naturally he at once became a more important
target than the retreating body. Nevertheless, he kept pumping lead
into that long howling murderous advancing brown line until, when
within two hundred yards of where the tug lay, the line recoiled and
retreated, and the landing party got safely back to the ship. It was,
literally, a case of saving the lives of more than a hundred men,
by fearless promptness and dogged tenacity in the intelligent and
skilful performance of duty. The awnings of the tug were torn in
shreds by the enemy's rain of bullets, and her woodwork was much
peppered. Winship was hit five times, and still carries the bullets
in his body, having been retired on account of disability resulting
therefrom, after being promoted in recognition of his work.
Soon after March 25th, General MacArthur, commanding the Second
Division of the Eighth Army Corps, advanced from Caloocan up the
railroad to Malolos, the insurgent capital, some twenty miles
away. Malolos was taken March 31st. Our February killed were six
officers and seventy-one enlisted men, total seventy-seven, and a total
of 378 wounded. By the end of March the list swelled to twelve officers
and 127 enlisted men killed, total 139, and a total of 881 wounded,
making our total casualties, as reported April 1st, 1020. Also 15%
of the command, or about 2500, were on sick report on that date from
heat prostrations and the like. [217] For these and other reasons,
farther advance up the railroad was halted for a while.
Meantime, General Lawton, with his staff, consisting of Colonel
Edwards, Major Starr, and Captains King and Sewall, "the big four" they
were called, had come out from New York City by way of the Suez Canal,
bringing most welcome reinforcements, the 4th and 17th Infantry. These
people arrived between the 10th and the 22d of March. What happened
soon after, as a result of their arrival, must now become for a brief
moment, a part of the panorama, the lay of the land General Lawton
first swept over being first indicated.