Luzon is practically bisected, east and west, by the Pasig River

and a lake out of which it flows almost due west into Manila Bay,

Manila being at the mouth of the river. Under the Spaniards,

all Luzon north of the Pasig had been one military district and

all Luzon south of the Pasig another. The Eighth Army Corps always

spoke of northern Luzon as "the north line," and of southern Luzon as

"the south line." The lake above mentioned is called the Laguna de

Bay. It is nearly as big as Manila Bay, which last is called twenty

odd miles wide by thirty long. On the map, the Laguna de Bay roughly

resembles a half-moon, the man in which looks north, the western

horn being near Manila, and the eastern near the Pacific coast of

Luzon. General Otis had learned that at a place called Santa Cruz,

toward the eastern end of the Laguna de Bay, there were a lot of steam

launches and a Spanish gun-boat, which, if captured, would prove

invaluable for river fighting and transportation of supplies along

the Rio Grande de Pampanga and the other streams that watered the

great central plain through which the railroad ran and which would

have to be occupied later. So as soon as possible after General

Lawton arrived and the necessary men could be spared, he was sent

with 1500 troops to seize and bring back the boats in question. Of

course the country he should overrun would have to be overrun again,

because there were not troops enough to spare to garrison and hold

it. But for the present, the launches would help. This expedition was

successful, leaving the head of the lake nearest Manila on April 9th,

and returning April 17th. It met with some good hard fighting on the

way, sweeping everything before it of course, inflicting considerable

loss, and suffering some. General Lawton's report mentions, among

other officers whose conspicuous gallantry and efficiency in action

attracted his attention, Colonel Clarence R. Edwards, now Chief of

the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department, of whose conduct

in the capture of Santa Cruz on the morning of April 10th, he says:

"No line of battle could have been more courageously or intelligently

led." [218] The resistance was pretty real to Colonel Edwards then,

i.e., the Benevolent Assimilation was quite strenuous, and it continued

to be so until his great commander was shot through the breast in the

forefront of battle in the hour of victory in December thereafter,

and the colonel came home with the general's body. Since then the

colonel has soldiered no more, but has remained on duty at Washington,

the birthplace of the original theory that the Filipinos welcomed our

rule, charged with the duty of yearning over the erring Filipino who

thinks he can govern himself but is mistaken, and also with the still

more difficult task of trying to live up to the original theory as

far as circumstances will permit. As a matter of fact, the Filipinos

would probably have gotten along much better than the Cubans if we

had let General Lawton do there what he and General Wood were set to

work doing in Cuba shortly after Santiago fell. Public opinion is a

very dangerous thing to trifle with, and when, in September, 1899,

there was a story going the rounds of the American newspapers that

Lawton, the hero of El Caney, the man who had reflected more glory

on American arms in striking the shackles of Spain from Cuba than any

other one soldier in the army, had called the war in the Philippines

"this accursed war," the War Department got busy over the cable to

General Otis and obtained from him a denial that General Lawton had

made such a remark. But the public knew its Lawton and what he had done

in Cuba, and had a suspicion there might be some truth in the rumor. So

the War Department cabled out saying "Newspapers say Lawton's denial

insufficient," and then repeating the words attributed to him. So

General Otis sent another denial that filled the bill. [219] Of course

General Lawton made no such remark. He was too good a soldier. It would

have demoralized his whole command. But I served under him in both

hemispheres, and I will always believe that he had a certain amount

of regret at having to fight the Filipinos to keep them from having

independence, when they were a so much likelier lot, take it all in

all, than the Cubans we saw about Santiago. Moreover, I believe that

had it not been then too late to ask him, he would have subscribed

to the opinion Admiral Dewey had cabled home the previous summer:

"These people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable

of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with

both races."

After the expedition down the lake, General Lawton went on "The North

Line." So let us now turn thither also. For wherever Lawton was,

there was fighting.

In the latter half of April, General MacArthur advanced north along the

railroad, and took Calumpit, where the railroad crosses the Rio Grande,

on April 28th. This was the place where under cover of "the accurate

concentrated fire of the guns of the Utah Light Artillery commanded by

Major Young" [220] a few Kansas men with ropes tied to their bodies

swam the river in the face of a heavy fire from the enemy, fastened

the ropes to some boats on the enemy's side, and were pulled back

in the boats, by their comrades, to the side they had come from; the

Kansans then crossing the river under the lead of the gallant Funston,

and driving the enemy from his trenches. The desperate bravery of

the performance, like so many other things General Funston did in the

Philippines, was so superb that one forgets how contrary it was to all

known rules of the game of war. If it was Providence that saved Funston

and his Kansans from annihilation, certainly Providence was ably

assisted on that occasion by Major Young and his Utah Battery. [221]

Shortly after this General MacArthur entered San Fernando, the second

insurgent capital, which is forty miles or so up the railroad from

Manila.

During the month of May General Lawton kept the insurgents busy to

the east of the railroad, between it and the Pacific coast range,

taking San Isidro, whither the third insurgent capital was moved after

Malolos fell, on May 17th. Here he made his headquarters for a time,

as did General MacArthur at San Fernando.

It had been supposed that practically the whole body of the insurgent

army was concentrated in the country to the north of Manila, but this

proved a mistake. They now began to threaten Manila from the country

south of the Pasig. Says General Otis:

The enemy had become again boldly demonstrative at the South and

it became necessary to throw him back once more. [222]

General Lawton was directed to concentrate his troops in the country

about San Isidro, turn them over to the command of some one else,

and come to Manila to organize for a campaign on the south line. The

details of this expedition belong to a military history, which this

is not. The expedition left its initial point of concentration near

Manila on June 9th. Its great event was the battle of Zapote River on

June 13th. Along this river in 1896 the insurgents had gained a great

victory over the Spaniards. They had trenches on the farther side of

the river which they deemed impregnable. General Lawton attacked them

in these intrenchments June 13th. At three o'clock that afternoon

he wired General Otis at Manila giving him an idea of the battle

and stating that the enemy was fighting in strong force and with

determination. At 3:30 o'clock he wired:

We are having a beautiful battle. Hurry up ammunition; we will

need it;

and at 4 o'clock:

We have the bridge. It has cost us dearly. Battle not yet over. It

is a battle however. [223]

It was in this battle of Zapote River that Lieutenant William L. Kenly,

of the regular artillery, did what was perhaps the finest single bit

of soldier work of the whole war, [224] in recognition of which his

conduct in the battle was characterized as "magnificent" by so thorough

a soldier as General Lawton, who recommended him to be brevetted for

distinguished gallantry in the presence of the enemy, with this remark:

As General Ovenshine says, speaking of Lieutenant Kenly and

his battery, "This is probably the first time in history that a

battery has been advanced and fought without cover within thirty

yards of strongly manned trenches." [225]

For what he did on that occasion, Kenly ought to have had a medal

of honor, which, except life insurance and a good education, is the

finest legacy any government can enable a soldier to bequeath to his

children. If the war had been backed by the sentiment of the whole

country, as the Spanish War was, he would have gotten it. As it was,

the only thing he ever got for it, so far as the writer is advised,

was to have his name spelt wrong in an account of the incident in

the only book wherein there has yet been attempted a record of the

many deeds of splendid daring that marked the only war into which

this nation ever blundered. [226]

While there were divers and sundry movements of our troops hither

and thither, and much sacrifice of life, after General Lawton's

Zapote River campaign in June, no substantial progress was made in

conquering and occupying the Islands until the fall following the

Zapote River campaign above mentioned, when the twenty-five regiments

of volunteers were organized and sent out. All that was done until

then, after the capture of San Fernando, may be summed up broadly,

by saying that we protected Manila and held the railroad, as far as

we had fought our way up it. It is true that the city of Iloilo had

been occupied on February 11th, the city of Cebu shortly afterward,

the island of Negros, an oasis of comparative quiet in a great desert

of hostility, a little later; also that a small Spanish garrison at

the little port of Jolo in the Mohammedan country near Borneo had

also been relieved by a small American force on the 19th of May. But

these irresolute movements accomplished nothing except to deprive

our force at the front of about 4000 men and to awaken the Visayan

Islands to active and thorough organization against us.

Preparatory to an understanding of the fall campaign, in which

patchwork and piecemeal warfare was superseded by the real thing, it

will now be necessary to consider the political--or let us call it,

the politico-military--aspect of the first half year of the war.

General Otis's folly had led him to advise Washington as early as

November, 1898, that he could get along with 25,000 troops, [227]

and the Otis under-estimate of the resistance we would meet if we

took the Islands had undoubtedly influenced Mr. McKinley in deciding

to take them. Twenty-five thousand troops was only 5000 more than

General Otis had with him at the time he made the recommendation, and

signified that he was not expecting trouble. The Treaty of Paris was

signed on December 10, 1898, and on December 16th, President McKinley's

Secretary of War informed Congress that 25,000 troops would be enough

for the Philippines. [228] When the treaty was ratified February 6,

1899, the war in the Philippines had already broken out. On March 2,

1899, two days before the 55th Congress expired, in fact on the very

day that Congress appropriated the $20,000,000 to pay Spain for the

Islands, an act was passed authorizing the President to enlist 35,000

volunteers to put down the insurrection in the Islands. The term

of enlistment of these volunteers was to expire June 30, 1901. As

the New Thought people would say "Hold the Thought!" June 30, 1901,

is the end of our government's fiscal year. That date, the date of

expiration of the enlistment of the volunteer army raised under the

act of March 2, 1899, is a convenient key to the whole history of the

American occupation of the Philippines since the outbreak of our war

with the Filipinos, February 4, 1899, including the titanic efforts of

the McKinley Administration in the latter half of 1899 and the first

half of 1900 to retrieve the Otis blunders; the premature resumption

by Judge Taft, during and in aid of Mr. McKinley's campaign for the

Presidency in 1900, of the original McKinley Benevolent Assimilation

programme, on the theory, already wholly exploded by a long and bitter

war, that the great majority of the people welcomed American rule and

had only been coerced into opposing us; and the premature setting up

of the Civil Government on July 4, 1901. No candid mind seeking only

the truth of history can fail to see that when President McKinley

sent the Taft Commission to the Philippines in the spring of 1900,

part of their problem was to facilitate Mr. McKinley in avoiding later

on any further call for volunteers to take the place of those whose

terms would expire June 30, 1901. The amount of force that has been

needed to saddle our government firmly on the Filipino people is the

only honest test by which to examine the claim that it is unto them

as Castoria unto children. In February, 1899, the dogs of war being

already let loose, President McKinley had resumed his now wholly

impossible Benevolent Assimilation programme, by sending out the

Schurman Commission, which was the prototype of the Taft Commission,

to yearningly explain our intentions to the insurgents, and to make

clear to them how unqualifiedly benevolent those intentions were. The

scheme was like trying to put salt on a bird's tail after you have

flushed him. This commission was headed by President Schurman, of

Cornell University. It arrived in March, armed with instructions

as benevolent in their rhetoric as any the Filipinos had ever read

in the days of our predecessors in sovereignty, the Spaniards. And

the commission were of course duly astounded that their publication

had no effect. The Filipinos in Manila tore them down as soon as

they were put up. The instructions clothed the commission with

authority to yield every point in issue except the only one in

dispute--Independence. On this alone they were firm. But so were

the people who had already submitted the issue to the arbitrament

of war. Of course the Schurman Commission, therefore, accomplished

nothing. It held frequent communication with the enemy in the field

and came near an open rupture with General Otis, who was nominally a

member of it. But even that unwise man knew war when he saw it, and

knew the futility of trying to mix peace with war. War being hell,

the sooner 'tis over the better for all concerned. After Professor

Schurman had been quite optimistically explaining our intentions for

about three months, under the tragically mistaken notion Mr. McKinley

had originally derived from General Otis that the insurrection had

been brought about by "the sinister ambition of a few leaders,"

[229] General Otis wired Washington, on June 4th, "Negotiations and

conferences with insurgent leaders cost soldiers' lives and prolong our

difficulties," [230] adding with regard to the Schurman Commission:

"Ostensibly it will be supported * * * here, and to the outside

world gentle peace shall prevail," but intimating that he would be

very much gratified if the Department would allow him to handle the

enemy, and stop Dr. Schurman from having their leaders come in under

flags of truce to parley. After that Dr. Schurman's activities seem

to have been confined to the less mischievous business of gathering

statistics. His mistake was simply the one he had brought with him,

derived from President McKinley. He came back home, however, thoroughly

satisfied that the Filipinos did of a verity want the independence

they were fighting for, and quite as sure that republics should not

have colonies as General Anderson's experience had previously made

him. It has long been known throughout the length and breadth of the

United States that Dr. Schurman is in favor of Philippine independence.

On June 26th, just thirteen days after the Zapote River fight had

stopped the insurgents on the south line from threatening almost the

very gates of the city of Manila itself, General Otis had another

attack of optimism. On that date he wired Washington: "Insurgent cause

may collapse at any time." [231] Finally, the war correspondents at

Manila, wearied with the military press censorship whereby General

Otis had so long kept the situation from the people at home, with his

eternal "situation-well-in-hand" telegrams, got together, inspired no

doubt by the example of the Roosevelt round robin that had rescued the

Fifth Army Corps from Cuba after the fighting down there, and prepared

a round robin of their own--a protest against further misrepresentation

of the facts. This they of course knew General Otis would not let

them cable home. However, they asked his permission to do so, the

committee appointed to beard the lion in his den being O. K. Davis,

John T. McCutcheon, Robert Collins, and John F. Bass. General Otis

threatened to "put them off the island." This did not bother them in

the least. General Otis told the War Department afterwards that he

did not punish them because they were "courting martyrdom," or words

to that effect. As a matter of fact, they were merely determined that

the American people should know the facts. That of "putting them off

the island" was just a fussy phrase of "Mother" Otis, long familiar to

them. They were under his jurisdiction. But they were Americans, and

reputable gentlemen, and he knew he was responsible for their right

treatment. After General Otis had duly put the expected veto on the

proposed cablegram of protest, the newspaper men sent their protest

over to Hong Kong by mail, and had it cabled to the United States from

there. It was published in the newspapers of this country July 17,

1899. A copy of it may be found in any public library which keeps

the bound copies of the great magazines, in the Review of Reviews

for August, 1899, pp. 137-8. It read as follows:

The undersigned, being all staff correspondents of American

newspapers stationed in Manila, unite in the following statement:

We believe that, owing to official despatches from Manila made

public in Washington, the people of the United States have not

received a correct impression of the situation in the Philippines,

but that those despatches have presented an ultra-optimistic view

that is not shared by the general officers in the field.

We believe the despatches incorrectly represent the existing

conditions among the Filipinos in respect to internal dissension

and demoralization resulting from the American campaign and to

the brigand character of their army.

We believe the despatches err in the declaration that "the

situation is well in hand," and in the assumption that the

insurrection can be speedily ended without a greatly increased

force.

We think the tenacity of the Filipino purpose has been

under-estimated, and that the statements are unfounded that

volunteers are willing to engage in further service.

The censorship has compelled us to participate in this

misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements

of facts on the plea that "they would alarm the people at home,"

or "have the people of the United States by the ears."

The men of the pen had been so long under military rule and had seen

so much of courts-martial that their document savored of military

jurisprudence. After making the above charges, it set forth what it

called "specifications." These were:

Prohibition of hospital reports; suppression of full reports

of field operations in the event of failure; numbers of heat

prostrations in the field; systematic minimization of naval

operations; and suppression of complete reports of the situation.

The paper was signed by John T. McCutcheon and Harry Armstrong,

representing the Chicago Record; O. K. Davis and P. G. MacDonnell,

representing the New York Sun; Robert M. Collins, John P. Dunning,

and L. Jones, representing the Associated Press; John F. Bass and

William Dinwiddie, representing the New York Herald; E. D. Skeene,

representing the Scripps-McRae Association; and Richard Little,

representing the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Collins, the Associated Press

representative, wrote his people an account of this whole episode,

which was also given wide publicity. After describing the committee's

interview with the General down to a certain point, he says:

But when General Otis came down to the frank admission that it

was his purpose to keep the knowledge of conditions here from the

public at home, and when the censor had repeatedly told us, in

ruling out plain statements of undisputed facts, "My instructions

are to let nothing go that can hurt the Administration," we

concluded that protest was justifiable.

Collins had written what he considered a conservative review of

the situation in June, saying reinforcements were needed. Of the

suppression of this he says:

The censor's comment (I made a note of it) was: "Of course we all

know that we are in a terrible mess out here, but we don't want the

people to get excited about it. If you fellows will only keep quiet

now we will pull through in time [232] without any fuss at home!"

Mr. Collins's letter proceeds: "When I went to see him [Otis] he

repeated the same old story about the insurrection going to pieces."

As to the charge of suppressing the real condition of our sick in

the hospitals, Mr. Collins says that General Otis remarked that the

"hospitals were full of perfectly well men who were shirking and should

be turned out." On June 2, 1899, according to General Otis's report

(p. 121), sixty per cent. of one of the State volunteer regiments

were in hospital sick or wounded and there were in its ranks an

average of but eight men to a company fit for duty. The report of

the regimental surgeon stating this was forwarded by General Otis

to Washington with the comment that there were few cases of serious

illness; that the then "present station of these troops"--the place

where the fighting was hottest, San Fernando--"is considered by the

Filipinos as a health resort," and that "when orders to take passage

to the United States are issued, both the Montana and South Dakota

troops will recover with astonishing rapidity." [233]

This round robin of course produced a profound sensation in the United

States. It was just what the American public had long suspected was

the case. Shortly afterward Secretary of War Alger resigned. Coming

as it did on the heels of the scandal about "embalmed beef" having

been furnished to the army in Cuba, it made him too much of a load

for the Administration to carry. He was succeeded by Mr. Root,

an eminent member of the New York Bar, whose masterful mind soon

saw the essentials of the situation and proceeded to get a volunteer

army recruited, equipped, and sent to the Philippines without further

unnecessary delay.

CHAPTER XII

OTIS AND THE WAR (Continued)

And now, a man of head being at the centre of it,

the whole matter gets vital.--Carlyle's French Revolution.

There can surely be little doubt in any quarter that Mr. Root is, in

intellectual endowment and equipment at least, one of the greatest,

if he is not the greatest, of living American statesmen. Mankind will

always yield due acclaim to men who, in great emergencies, see the

essentials of a given situation, and at once proceed to get the thing

done that ought to be done. Whether the war in the Philippines was

regrettable or not, it had become, by midsummer of 1899, supremely

important, from any rational and patriotic standpoint, to end it as

soon as possible.

Mr. Root had not been in office as Secretary of War very long before

fleets of troop-ships, carrying some twenty-five well-equipped

volunteer regiments, [234] were swarming out of New York harbor

bound for Manila by way of the Suez Canal, and out of the Golden

Gate for the same destination via Honolulu. Nor was there any

confusion as in the Cuban helter-skelter. Everything went as if by

clockwork. Moreover, along with the new and ample force, went a clear,

masterly, comprehensive plan of campaign, prepared, not by General

Otis at Manila, but in the War Department at Washington, by officers

already familiar with the islands.

It was the purpose of this government at last to demonstrate

conclusively to the Filipino people that the representative of the

United States at Manila was "the boss of the show," and that Aguinaldo

was not--a demonstration then sorely needed by the exigencies of

American prestige. The purpose can readily be appreciated, but to

understand the plan of campaign, and the method of its execution,

somewhat of the geography of Luzon must now be considered. Before

we approach the shores of Luzon and the city of Manila, however,

let us consider from a distance, in a bird's-eye view, as it were,

the relation of Luzon to the rest of the archipelago, so as to know,

in a comprehensive way, what we are "going out for to see." We may as

well pause at this point, long enough to learn all we will ever need to

know, for the purposes of the scope of this narrative, concerning the

general geography of the Philippine archipelago, and the governmental

problems it presents. (See folding map at end of volume.)

It is a common saying that Paris is France. In the same sense Manila

is the Philippines. In fact, the latter expression is more accurate

than the former, for Manila, besides being the capital city of the

country, and its chief port, is a city of over 200,000 people, while

no one of the two or three cities next to it in rank in population

had more than 20,000. [235] By parity of reasoning it may be said that

Luzon was the Philippines, so far as the problem which confronted us

when we went there was concerned, relatively both to the original

conception in 1898 of the struggle for independence, its birth in

1899, its life, and its slow, lingering obstinate death in 1900-1902,

in which last year the insurrection was finally correctly stated

to be practically ended. To know just how and why this was true,

is necessary to a clear understanding of that struggle, including

not only its genesis and its exodus, but also its gospels, its acts,

its revelations, and the multitudinous subsequent commentaries thereon.

The total land area of the Philippine archipelago, according to the

American Census of 1903, is 115,000 square miles. [236] The area of

Luzon, the principal island, on which Manila is situated, is 41,000

square miles, and that of Mindanao, the only other large island, is

36,000. [237] Between these two large islands, Luzon on the north,

and Mindanao on the south, there are a number of smaller ones,

but acquaintance with only six of these is essential to a clear

understanding of the American occupation. Many Americans, too busy

to have paid much attention to the Philippine Islands, which are,

and must ever remain, a thing wholly apart from American life, have a

vague notion that there are several thousand of them. This is true, in

a way. American energy has made, for the first time in their history,

an actual count of them, "including everything which at high tide

appeared as a separate island." [238] The work was done for our Census

of 1903 by Mr. George R. Putnam, now head of the Lighthouse Board of

the United States. Mr. Putnam, counted 3141 of them. [239] Of these,

of course, many--many hundred perhaps--are merely rocks fit only for a

resting place for birds. 2775, have an area of less than a square mile

each, 262 have an area of between 1 and 10 square miles, 73 between 10

and 100 square miles, and 20 between 100 and 1000 square miles. This

accounts for, and may dismiss at once from consideration 3130--all but

11. Most of these 3130 that are large enough to demand even so much

as a single word here are poorly adapted to human habitation, being

in most instances, without good harbors or other landing places, and

usually covered either with dense jungle or inhospitable mountains, or

both. Their total area is only about 8500 square miles, of the 115,500

square miles of land in the archipelago. None of them have ever had

any political significance, either in Spain's time, or our own, and

therefore, the whole 3130 may at once be eliminated from consideration,

leaving 11 only requiring any special notice at all--the 11 largest

islands. Of these, Luzon and Mindanao have already been mentioned. The

remaining 9, with their respective areas and populations, are:

Island Area [240] Population [241]

in Square Miles

Panay 4,611 743,646

Negros 4,881 560,776

Cebu 1,762 592,247

Bohol 1,411 243,148

Samar 5,031 222,690

Leyte 2,722 [242] 357,641

Mindoro 3,851 28,361

Masbate 1,236 29,451

Paragua 4,027 [243] 10,918

------ ---------

Total 29,532 2,788,878

The political or governmental problem being now reduced from 3141

islands to eleven, the last three of the nine contained in the above

table may also be eliminated as follows: (See map at end of volume.)

Paragua, the long narrow island seen at the extreme lower left of any

map of the archipelago, extending northeast southwest at an angle

of about 45 deg., is practically worthless, being fit for nothing much

except a penal colony, for which purpose it is in fact now used.

Masbate--easily located on the map at a glance, because the twelfth

parallel of north latitude intersects the 124th meridian of longitude

east of Greenwich in its southeast corner--though noted for cattle

and other quadrupeds, is not essential to a clear understanding of

the human problem in its broader governmental aspects.

Mindoro, the large island just south of the main bulk of Luzon,

pierced by the 121st meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, is

thick with densely wooded mountains and jungle over a large part

of its area, has a reputation of being very unhealthy (malarious),

is also very sparsely settled, and does not now, nor has it ever,

cut any figure politically, as a disturbing factor. [244]

Eliminating Paragua, Masbate, and Mindoro as not essential to a

substantially correct general idea of the strategic and governmental

problems presented by the Philippine Islands, we have left, besides

Luzon and Mindanao, nothing but the half-dozen islands which appear

in large type in the above table: Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Samar,

Leyte, with a total area of 20,500 square miles. Add these to Luzon's

41,000 square miles and Mindanao's 36,000, and you have the Philippine

archipelago as we are to consider it in this book, that is to say,

two big islands with a half dozen little ones in between, the eight

having a total area of 97,500 square miles, of which the two big

islands represent nearly four-fifths.

While the great Mohammedan island of Mindanao, near Borneo, with

its 36,000 square miles [245] of area, requires that the Philippine

archipelago be described as stretching over more than 1000 miles

from north to south, still, inasmuch as Mindanao only contains

about 500,000 people all told, [246] half of them semi-civilized,

[247] the governmental problem it presents has no more to do with

the main problem of whether, if ever, we are to grant independence

to the 7,000,000 Christians of the other islands, than the questions

that have to be passed on by our Commissioner of Indian Affairs have

to do with the tariff.

Mindanao's 36,000 square miles constitute nearly a third of

the total area of the Philippine archipelago, and more than that

fraction of the 97,500 square miles of territory to a consideration

of which our attention is reduced by the process of elimination

above indicated. Turning over Mindanao to those crudely Mohammedan,

semi-civilized Moros would indeed be "like granting self-government

to an Apache reservation under some local chief," as Mr. Roosevelt,

in the campaign of 1900, ignorantly declared it would be to grant

self-government to Luzon under Aguinaldo. [248] Furthermore, the Moros,

so far as they can think, would prefer to owe allegiance to, and be

entitled to recognition as subjects of, some great nation. [249]

Again, because, the Filipinos have no moral right to control

the Moros, and could not if they would, the latter being fierce

fighters and bitterly opposed to the thought of possible ultimate

domination by the Filipinos, the most uncompromising advocate of

the consent-of-the-governed principle has not a leg to stand on

with regard to Mohammedan Mindanao. Hence I affirm that as to it,

we have a distinct and separate problem, which cannot be solved

in the lifetime of anybody now living. But it is a problem which

need not in the least delay the advent of independence for the

other fourteen-fifteenths of the inhabitants of the archipelago

[250]--all Christians living on islands north of Mindanao. It is

true that there are some Christian Filipinos on Mindanao, but in

policing the Moros, our government would of course protect them from

the Moros. If they did not like our government, they could move to

such parts of the island as we might permit to be incorporated in an

ultimate Philippine republic. Inasmuch as the 300,000 or so Moros of

the Mohammedan island of Mindanao and the adjacent islets called Jolo

(the "Sulu Archipelago," so called, "reigned over" by the Sultan of

comic opera fame) originally presented, as they will always present,

a distinct and separate problem, and never did have anything more

to do with the Philippine insurrection against us than their cousins

and co-religionists over in nearby Borneo, the task which confronted

Mr. Root in the fall of 1899, to wit, the suppression of the Philippine

insurrection, meant, practically, the subjugation of one big island,

Luzon, containing half the population and one-third the total area of

the archipelago, and six neighboring smaller ones, the Visayan Islands.

And now let us concentrate our attention upon Luzon as Mr. Root

no doubt did, with infinite pains, in the fall of 1899. Of the

7,600,000 people of the Philippines [251] almost exactly one-half,

i.e., 3,800,000, [252] live on Luzon, and these are practically all

civilized. [253] It so happens that the State of our Union which is

nearer the size of Luzon than any other is the one which furnished

the first American Civil Governor for the Philippine Islands, Governor

Taft. President Taft's native State of Ohio is 41,061 square miles in

area, and Luzon is 40,969. [254] Roughly speaking, Luzon may also be

said to be about the size of Cuba, [255] though it is about twice as

thickly populated as the latter, Cuba, having something over 2,000,000

people to Luzon's nearly 4,000,000. [256]

By all Americans in the Philippines since our occupation, the island

of Luzon is always contemplated as consisting of two parts, to wit,

northern Luzon, or that part north of Manila, and southern Luzon,

the part south of Manila. The great central plain of Luzon, lying

just north of Manila, is nearly as large as the republic of Salvador,

or the State of New Jersey, i.e., in the neighborhood of 7000 square

miles area [257]--and, like Salvador, it contains a population of

something over 1,000,000 inhabitants. The area and population of the

five provinces of this plain are, according to the Philippine Census

of 1903, as follows:

Province Area [258] (sq. m.) Population [259]

Pangasinan 1,193 397,902

Pampanga 868 223,754

Bulacan 1,173 223,742

Tarlac 1,205 135,107

Nueva Ecija 1,950 134,147

----- ---------

6,389 1,114,652

Roughly speaking, the central plain comprising the above five provinces

is bounded as follows: On the north by mountains and Lingayen Gulf, on

the east by a coast range of mountains separating it from the Pacific

Ocean, on the west by a similar range separating it from the China

Sea, and on the south by Manila Bay and mountains. The Rio Grande de

Pampanga flows obliquely across it in a southwesterly direction into

Manila Bay, and near its western edge runs the railroad from Manila

to Dagupan on Lingayen gulf. Dagupan is 120 miles from Manila. This

plain, held by a well-equipped insurgent army backed by the moral

support of the whole population, became the theatre of war as soon

as the volunteers of 1899 began to arrive at Manila, the insurgent

capital being then at Tarlac, a place about two-thirds of the way up

the railroad from Manila to Dagupan.

Of course the first essential thing to do was to break the backbone

of the insurgent army, and scatter it, and the next thing to do was

to capture Aguinaldo, the head and front of the whole business, the

incarnation of the aspirations of the Filipino people. The operations

to this end commenced in October, and involved three movements of

three separate forces:

(1) A column under General Lawton, proceeding up the Rio Grande

and along the northeastern borders of the plain, and bending around

westward along its northern boundary toward the gulf of Lingayen,

garrisoning the towns en route, and occupying the mountain passes

on the northeast which give exit over the divide into the great

valleys beyond.

(2) An expedition under General Wheaton, some 2500 in all, proceeding

by transports to the gulf of Lingayen, the chief port of which,

Dagupan, was the northern terminus of the railroad; the objective

being to land on the shore of that gulf at the northwest corner of

the plain, occupy the great coast road which runs from that point to

the northern extremity of the island, and also to proceed eastward

and effect a junction with the Lawton column.

(3) A third column under General MacArthur, proceeding up the railroad

to the capture of Tarlac, the third insurgent capital, and thence

still up the railroad to its end at Dagupan, driving the enemy's

forces before it toward the line held by the first two columns.

On October 12th, General Lawton moved up the Rio Grande from a place

called Aryat, a few miles up stream from where the railroad crosses the

river at Calumpit, driving the insurgents before him to the northward

and westward. His command was made up mainly from the 3d Cavalry and

the 22d Infantry, together with several hundred scouts, American and

Maccabebee. On the 20th San Isidro was again captured. That was the

place Lawton had evacuated in May previous. Arriving in the Islands

with Colonel E. E. Hardin's regiment, the 29th U. S. Volunteer

Infantry, on November 3, 1899, the writer was immediately detailed

to the Maccabebee scouts, to take the place of Lieutenant Boutelle,

of the regular artillery, a young West Pointer from Oregon, who had

been killed a day or two previous, and reported to Major C. G. Starr,

General Lawton's Adjutant-General in the field (whom he had known at

Santiago de Cuba the previous year) at San Isidro on or about November

8th. Major Starr said: "We took this town last spring," stating how

much our loss had been in so doing, "but, partly as a result of the

Schurman Commission parleying with the insurgents General Otis had

us fall back. We have just had to take it again." General Lawton

garrisoned San Isidro this time once for all, and pressed on north,

capturing the successive towns en route. Meantime, General Young's

cavalry, and the Maccabebee scouts under Major Batson, a lieutenant

of the regular army, and a medal-of-honor graduate of the Santiago

campaign, were operating to the west of the general line of advance,

striking insurgent detachments wherever found and driving them toward

the line of the railroad. By November 13th, Lawton's advance had

turned to the westward, according to the concerted plan of campaign

above described, garrisoning, as fast as they were taken, such of the

towns of the country over which he swept as there were troops to spare

for. We knew that Aguinaldo had been at Tarlac when the advance began,

and every officer and enlisted man of the command was on the qui vive

to catch him. By November 18th, General Lawton's forces held a line of

posts extending up the eastern side of the plain, and curving around

across the northern end to within a few miles of the gulf of Lingayen.

On November 6th, General Wheaton set sail from Manila for Lingayen

Gulf, with 2500 men of the 13th Regular and 33d Volunteer Infantry,

and a platoon of the 6th Artillery, convoyed by the ships of the

navy, and next day the expedition was successfully landed at San

Fabian, "with effective assistance from the naval convoy against

spirited resistance," says Secretary of War Root, in his annual

report for 1899. The navy's assistance on that occasion was indeed

"effective," but such passing mention hardly covers the case. In

the first place, they selected the landing point, their patrols

being already familiar with the coasts. As soon as the transports

were sighted, about eleven o'clock on the morning of November

7th, Commander Knox, the senior officer present, who commanded the

Princeton, and Commander Moore, of the Helena, went out to meet and

confer with General Wheaton. This done, the landing was effected

under protection of the navy's guns. Besides the naval vessels

above named, there were also present the Bennington under Commander

Arnold, the Manila under Lieutenant-Commander Nazro, and two captured

Spanish gun-boats small enough to get close in shore, the Callao,

and the Samar. The troops were disembarked in two columns of small

boats towed by launches. Lieutenant-Commander Tappan in charge of

the Callao, and Ensign Mustin, commanding the Samar, were especially

commended in the despatches of Admiral Watson, commander-in-chief

of the Asiatic squadron. Both bombarded the insurgent trenches

at close range during the landing, and Mustin actually steamed in

between the insurgents and the head of the column of troop-boats,

so as to intercept and receive the brunt of their fire himself, and,

selecting a point about seventy-five yards from the enemy's trenches

whence he could effectually pepper them, ran his ship aground so she

would stick, and commenced rapid firing at point blank range, driving

the enemy from his trenches, and enabling Colonel Hare of the 33d,

and those who followed, to land without being subjected to further

fire while on the water. [260]

On the 11th of November, Colonel Hare with the 33d Volunteer Infantry

and one Gatling gun under Captain Charles R. Howland of the 28th

Volunteer Infantry, a lieutenant of the regular army, and a member of

General Wheaton's staff, proceeded southeastward to San Jacinto, and

attacked and routed some 1200 to 1600 intrenched insurgents, Major John

A. Logan being among our killed. The enemy left eighty-one dead in the

trenches, and suffered a total loss estimated at three hundred. While

space does not permit dwelling on the details of engagements, it may be

remarked here, once for all, that the 33d Volunteer Infantry, Colonel

Luther R. Hare commanding, made more reputation than any other of the

twenty-five regiments of the volunteer army of 1899, except, possibly,

Colonel J. Franklin Bell's regiment, the 36th. This is no reflection on

the rest. These two were lucky enough to have more opportunities. In

meeting his opportunities, however, Colonel Hare, like Colonel Bell,

proved himself a superb soldier; his field-officers, especially Major

March, [261] were particularly indefatigable; and his men were mostly

Texans, accustomed to handling a rifle with effect. Space also forbids

following Captain Howland and his Gatling gun into the engagement of

November 11th, but from the uniformity with which General Wheaton's

official reports commend his young aide's bravery and efficiency

on numerous occasions in 1899-1900, it may be safely assumed that

those qualities were behind that Gatling gun at San Jacinto. There

was a vicious rumor started after the San Jacinto fight and given wide

circulation in the United States, that Major Logan was shot in the back

by his own men. I saw a major surgeon a few days later who had been

an eye-witness to his death. He said an insurgent sharpshooter shot

Major Logan from a tree, and that the said sharpshooter was promptly

thereafter dropped from his perch full of 33d Infantry bullets. Says

General Wheaton's despatch of November 12th: "Major Logan fell while

gallantly leading his battalion." [262]

On November 5th, General MacArthur, with a strong column, composed

mainly of the 9th, 17th, and 36th Regiments of Infantry, two troops of

the 4th Cavalry, two platoons of the 1st Artillery, and a detachment

of scouts, advanced up the railroad from Angeles, in execution of his

part of the programme. [263] Angeles is some distance up the railroad

from Calumpit, where the railroad crosses the Rio Grande. [264]

General MacArthur's column encountered and overwhelmed the enemy

at every point, entering Tarlac on November 12th, and effecting a

junction with General Wheaton at Dagupan, the northern terminus of

the Manila-Dagupan Railroad, 120 miles from Manila, on November 20th.

After General Lawton had finished his part of the round-up, he had

a final conference with General Young on November 18th at Pozorubio,

which is near the northeastern border of the plain, bade him good-bye,

and soon afterward went south to dispose of a body of insurgents who

were giving trouble near Manila. It was in this last expedition that

he lost his life at San Mateo about twelve miles out of Manila on

December 19, 1899.

The first of the two purposes of the great Wheaton-Lawton-MacArthur

northern advance, viz., the dispersion of the insurgent army of

northern Luzon had been duly accomplished. The other purpose had

failed of realization. Aguinaldo had not been captured. He escaped

through our lines.

Such is in brief the story of the destruction of the Aguinaldo

government in 1899 by General Otis, or rather by Mr. Root. But the

trouble about it was that it would not stay destroyed. It "played

possum" for a while, the honorable President retiring to permanent

headquarters in the mountains "with his government concealed about

his person," as Senator Lodge put it later in a summary of the case

for the Administration, before the Senate, in the spring of 1900. If

the distinguished and accomplished senator from Massachusetts, in

adding at that time to the gaiety of nations, had had access to a

certain diary kept by one of Aguinaldo's personal staff throughout

that period, subsequently submitted, in 1902, to the Senate Committee

of that year, he could have swelled the innocuous merriment with such

cheery entries as "Here we tightened our belts and went to bed on

the ground"--the time alluded to being midnight after a hard day's

march without food, the place, some chilly mountain top up which the

"Honorable Presidente" and party had that day been guided by the

ever-present and ever-willing paisano (fellow countryman) of the

immediate neighborhood--whatever the neighborhood--to facilitate them

in eluding General Young's hard riding cavalry and scouts. The writer

has no quarrel with Senator Lodge's witticism above quoted, having

derived on reading it, in full measure, the suggestive amusement it

was intended to afford. It is true that about all then left of the

"Honorable Presidente's" government, for the nonce, was in fact

concealed about his person. It was of a nature easily portable. It

needed neither bull trains, pack ponies, nor coolies to carry it. It

consisted solely of the loyal support of the whole people, who looked

to him as the incarnation of their aspirations. Said General MacArthur

to the Senate Committee in 1902 concerning Aguinaldo: "He was the

incarnation of the feelings of the Filipinos." "Senator Culberson:

'And represented the Filipino people?' General MacArthur: 'I think so;

yes'." [265] We of the 8th Army Corps did not know what a complete

structure the Philippine republic of 1898-9 was until, having shot

it to pieces, we had abundant leisure to examine the ruins. To admit,

in the same breath, participation in that war and profound regret that

it ever had occurred, is not an incriminating admission. In this case

as in any other where you have done another a wrong, by thrashing him

or otherwise, under a mistake of fact, the first step toward righting

the wrong is to frankly acknowledge it. As soon as Aguinaldo's flight

and wanderings terminated in the finding of permanent headquarters,

he began sending messages to his various generals all over Luzon and

the other islands, and wherever those orders were not intercepted they

were delivered and loyally obeyed. This kept up until General Funston

captured him in 1901. One traitor among all those teeming millions

might have betrayed his whereabouts, but none appeared. The obstinate

character and long continuance of the warfare in northern Luzon after

the great round-up which terminated with the final junction of the

Lawton, Wheaton, and MacArthur columns near Dagupan, as elsewhere

later throughout the archipelago, was at first very surprising to our

generals. It had been supposed that to disperse the insurgent army

would end the insurrection. As events turned out, it only made the

resistance more effective. So long as the insurgents kept together

in large bodies they could not hide. And as they were poor marksmen,

while the men behind our guns, like most other young Americans,

knew something about shooting, the ratio of their casualties to ours

was about 16 to 1. [266] When General MacArthur began his advance

on Tarlac, General Lawton his great march up the valley of the Rio

Grande, and General Wheaton his closing in from Dagupan, Aguinaldo

with his cabinet, generals, and headquarters troops abandoned Tarlac,

their capital, and went up the railroad to Bayambang. Here they held

a council of war, which General MacArthur describes in his report

for 1900 (from information obtained later on) as follows:

At a council of war held at Bayambang, Pangasinan, about November

12, 1899, which was attended by General Aguinaldo and many of the

Filipino military leaders, a resolution was adopted to the effect

that the insurgent forces were incapable of further resistance

in the field, and as a consequence it was decided to disband the

army, the generals and the men to return to their own provinces,

with a view to organizing the people for general resistance by

means of guerrilla warfare. [267]

This had been the plan from the beginning, the council of war

simply determining that the time to put the plan into effect had

arrived. Accordingly, the uniformed insurgent battalions and regiments

broke up into small bands which maintained a most persistent guerrilla

warfare for years thereafter. During those years they seldom wore

uniforms, disappearing and hiding their guns when hotly pursued,

and reappearing as non-combatant peasants interrupted in agricultural

pursuits, with invariable protestations of friendship. Hence all such

came to be known as amigos (friends), and the word amigo, or friend,

became a bitter by-word, meaning to all American soldiers throughout

the archipelago an enemy falsely claiming to be a friend. And every

Filipino was an "amigo."

Still, the volunteers had arrived in time to enable Mr. Root to make

a very nice showing to Congress, and through it to the people, in his

annual report to the President for 1899, dated November 29th. This

report is full of cheerful chirps from General Otis to the effect

that the resistance was practically ended, and the substance of the

information it conveyed duly found its way into the President's message

of December of that year and through it to the general public. One

of the Otis despatches said: "Claim to government by insurgents can

be made no longer." [268] This message went on to state that nothing

was now left but "banditti," and that the people are all friendly

to our troops. Thus misled, Mr. Root repeated to the President and

through him to Congress and the country the following nonsense:

It is gratifying to know that as our troops got away from the

immediate vicinity of Manila they found the natives of the country

exceedingly friendly * * *. This was doubtless due in some measure

to the fact that the Pampangos, who inhabit the provinces of

Pampanga and Tarlac, and the Pangasinanes, who inhabit Pangasinan,

as well as the other more northerly tribes, are unfriendly to the

Tagalogs, and had simply submitted to the military domination of

that tribe, from which they were glad to be relieved.

In characterizing this as nonsense no disrespect is intended to

Mr. Root. He did not know any better. He was relying on General

Otis. But it is sorely difficult to convey in written words what

utter nonsense those expressions about "the Pampangos" and "the

Pangasinanes" are to any one who was in that northern advance in the

fall of 1899. Imagine a British cabinet minister making a report to

Parliament in 1776 couched in the following words, to wit:

The Massachusetts-ites, who inhabit Massachusetts, and the

Virginia-ites who inhabit Virginia, as well as most of the other

inhabitants are unfriendly to the New York-ites, and have simply

submitted to the military domination of the last named,

and you have a faint idea of the accuracy of Mr. Root's report. It is

quite true that the Tagalos were the prime movers in the insurrection

against us, as they had been in all previous insurrections against

Spain. But the "Tagalo tribe" was no more alone among the Filipino

people in their wishes and views than the "unterrified" Tammany tribe

who inhabit the wilds of Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson

River, are alone in their views among our people.

On page 70 of this report, Secretary Root reproduces a telegram from

General Otis dated November 18, 1899, stating that on the road from

San Nicolas to San Manuel, a day or so previous, General Lawton was

"cordially received by the inhabitants." He announces in the same

telegram the drowning of Captain Luna, a volunteer officer from New

Mexico, who was one of General Lawton's aides, and had been a captain

in Colonel Roosevelt's regiment of Rough Riders before Santiago. The

writer happens to have been on that ride with General Lawton from San

Nicolas to San Manuel, and was within a dozen feet of Captain Luna

when the angry current of the Agno River caught him and his pony

in its grip and swept both out of sight forever, along with divers

troopers of the 4th Cavalry, horses and riders writhing to their

death in one awful, tangled, struggling mass. He can never forget

the magnificent dash back into the wide, ugly, swollen stream made

by Captain Edward L. King of General Lawton's staff, as he spurred

his horse in, followed by several troopers who had responded to his

call for mounted volunteers to accompany him in an effort to save the

lives of the men who went down. Their generous work proved futile. But

it was inspired partly by common dread of what they knew would happen

to any half-drowned soldier who might be washed ashore far away from

the column and captured. If an army was ever "in enemy's country" it

was then and there. When we reached San Manuel that night, Captains

King and Sewall, the two surviving personal aides of General Lawton's

staff, and the writer, stopped, along with the general, in a little

nipa shack on the roadside. General Lawton, was in an upper room busy

with couriers and the like, but downstairs King, Sewall, and myself

set to work to buscar [269] something to eat. I got hold of an hombre

(literally, a man; colloquially a native peasant man), who went to work

with apparent alacrity, and managed to provide three ravenously hungry

young men with a good meal of chicken, eggs, and rice. After supper,

being new in the country, the writer remarked to the general on the

alacrity of the hombre. I had brought out from the United States the

notions there current about the nature of the resistance. General

Lawton said, with a humorous twinkle in those fine eyes of his:

"Humph! If you expected to be killed the next minute if you didn't

find a chicken, you'd probably find one too." It is true that in the

course of the campaign General Young sent a telegram to General Otis

at Manila characterizing his reception at the hands of the natives as

friendly. This was prompted by our column being met as it would come

into a town by the town band. It did not take long to see through

this, and other like hypocrisy entirely justifiable in war, though

such tactics deceived us for a little while at first into thinking

the people were genuine amigos (friends). General Otis, not being near

the scene, remained under our original brief illusion. Let us return,

however, from Mr. Root's "patient and unconsenting millions dominated

by the Tagalo tribe," of 1899, to the facts, and follow the course

of events succeeding Lawton's junction with Wheaton and MacArthur

and his farewell to Young.

General Young, with his cavalry, and the Maccabebee scouts, continued

in pursuit of Aguinaldo through the passes of the mountains, the

latter having managed to run the gauntlet of our lines successfully

by a very close shave. How narrowly he escaped is illustrated by

the fact that after a fight we had at the Aringay River on November

19th, in which Major Batson was wounded while gallantly directing

the crossing of the river, we remained that night in the town of

Aringay, and at the very time we were "hustling for chow" in Aringay,

Aguinaldo was in the village of Naguilian an hour or so distant,

as was authoritatively ascertained long afterward from a captured

diary of one of his staff officers. [270]

General Young proceeded up the coast road, in hot haste, taking

one town, San Fernando de Union, after a brief engagement led by

the general in person--imagine a brigadier-general leading a charge

at the head of thirty-seven men!--but Aguinaldo had turned off to

the right and taken to the mountains. General Lawton wired General

Otis about that time, in effect, in announcing Aguinaldo's escape

through our lines and his own tireless brigade-commander's bold dash

in pursuit of him with an inadequate force of cavalry hampered by

lack of horseshoes and nails for the same, "If Young does not catch

Aguinaldo, he will at least make him very unhappy." The Young column

garrisoned the towns along the route over which it went, occupying

all the western part of Northern Luzon, hereafter described, and also

later on rescued Lieutenant Gilmore of the navy, Mr. Albert Sonnichsen,

previously an enlisted man and since a writer of some note, and other

American prisoners who had been in the hands of the insurgents for

many months. General Young finally made his headquarters at Vigan,

in the province of Ilocos Sur, a fine town in a fine country. The

Ilocanos are called "the Yankees of the Philippines," on account of

their energy and industry. Vigan is on the China sea coast of Luzon

(the west coast), about one hundred miles up the old Spanish coast

road, or "King's Highway" (Camino Real), from Lingayen Gulf (where

the hundred-and-twenty mile railroad from Manila to Dagupan ends)

and about eighty miles from the extreme northern end of the island

of Luzon. [271]

As subsequent policies and their effect on one's attitude toward

a great historic panorama do not interfere in the least with a

proper appreciation of the bravery and efficiency of the army of

one's country, it is with much regret that this narrative cannot

properly chronicle in detail what the War Department reports record

of the stirring deeds of General Young, and the officers and men

of his command, Colonels Hare and Howze, Captains Chase and Dodd,

and the rest, [272] performed during the long course of the work now

under consideration. One incident, however, is appropriate in this

connection, not only to a collection of genre pictures of the war

itself, but also to a place among the lights and shadows of the general

picture of the American occupation. On December 2, 1899, Major March

of the 33d Infantry had his famous fight at Tila pass, in which young

Gregorio del Pilar, one of the ablest and bravest of the insurgent

generals, was killed. The locality mentioned is a wild pass in the

mountains of the west coast of Luzon, that overlook the China Sea, some

4500 feet above sea level. It was strongly fortified, and was believed

by the insurgents to be impregnable. The trail winds up the mountains

in a sharp zigzag, and was commanded by stone barricades loop-holed

for infantry fire. The advance of our people was checked at first by

a heavy fire from these barricades. The approach being precipitous,

it looked for a while as if the position would indeed be impregnable,

and the idea of taking it by a frontal attack was abandoned. But a

hill to the left front of the barricade was seized by some of our

sharpshooters--those Texans of the 33d were indeed sharpshooters--and

after that, under cover of their fire, our troops managed to get in

a fire simultaneously both on the flank and rear of the occupants of

the barricades, climbing the precipitous slope up the mountain side

by means of twigs and the like, and finally killing some fifty-two of

the enemy, General Pilar among the number. After the fight was over,

Lieutenant Quinlan, heretofore mentioned, moved by certain indignities

in the nature of looting perpetrated upon the remains of General Pilar,

buried them with such military honors as could be hastily provided,

after first taking from a pocket of the dead general's uniform a

souvenir in the shape of an unfinished poem written in Spanish by

him the night before, addressed to his sweetheart; and, the burial

finished, the American officer placed on the rude headstone left to

mark the spot this generous inscription:

General Gregorio Pilar, killed at the battle of Tila Pass, December

2d, 1899, commanding Aguinaldo's rear-guard. An officer and a

gentleman. (Signed) D. P. Quinlan, 2d Lieutenant, 11th Cavalry.

The brief incident over, Quinlan hurried on, rejoined the column,

and resumed the work of Benevolent Assimilation and the war

against Home Rule with all the dauntless ardor of his impetuous

Irish nature. Whatever the ultimate analysis of the ethics of this

scene--Quinlan at the grave of Pilar--clearly the Second Lieutenant

Quinlan of 1899 would hardly have agreed with the vice-presidential

candidate of 1900, Colonel Roosevelt, that granting self-government

to the Filipinos would be like granting self-government to an Apache

reservation under some local chief.

The territory occupied and finally "pacified" by General Young,

with the effective assistance of the officers heretofore mentioned,

and many other good men and true, was ultimately organized into

a military district, which was called the First District of the

Department of Northern Luzon. As territory was fought over, occupied,

and finally reduced to submission, that territory would be organized

into a military district by the commanding general or colonel of the

invading column, under the direction of the division commander. The

military "Division of the Philippines," which was succeeded by the

Civil Government of the Philippines under Governor Taft in 1901,

of course covered all the territory ceded by the Treaty of Paris. It

was divided into four "Departments," the Department of Northern Luzon,

the Department of Southern Luzon, the Department of the Visayas, [273]

and the Department of Mindanao and Jolo. General Young commanded the

First District of the Department of Northern Luzon--which included

the three west coast provinces north of Lingayen Gulf, and the three

adjacent mountain provinces--from the time he led his brigade into

that region in pursuit of Aguinaldo until shortly before Governor

Taft's inauguration in the summer of 1901. Many were the combats,

great and small, of General Young's brigade, in compassing the task

of crushing the resistance in that part of Luzon into which he led

the first American troops in the winter of 1899-1900. The resistance

was obstinate, desperate, and long drawn out, but when he finally

reported the territory under his command "pacified," it was pacified.

A soldier's task had been performed in a soldierly manner. The work

had been done thoroughly. General Young gave the Ilocano country a

lesson it never forgot, before politics had time to interfere. We

have never had any trouble in that region from that day to this.

Before the army of occupation had had time to do in southern Luzon what

General Young did in northern Luzon and thereby secure like permanent

results in that region, a "peace-at-any-price" policy was inaugurated

to meet the exigencies of Mr. McKinley's campaign for the Presidency

in 1900. Our last martyred President clung all through that campaign

to his original assumption that Benevolent Assimilation would work,

and that the single burning need of the hour was to make clear to

the Filipinos what our intentions were--as if powder and lead did

not spell denial of independence plain enough, as if that were

not the sole issue, and as if that issue had not been submitted,

with deadly finality, to the stern arbitrament of war. However,

neither Lord Roberts in India, nor Lord Kitchener in Egypt ever more

effectively convinced the people of those countries that his flag

must be respected as an emblem of sovereignty, than General Young did

the Ilocanos. Take the month of April, 1900 for instance. Several

days after the expiration of said month (on May 5th) General Otis

was relieved and went home. During the month of April, General Young

killed five hundred insurgents in his district. [274] But this did

not prevent General Otis, arriving as he did in the United States

in the month of June, when the national political conventions meet,

from "repeating the same old story about the insurrection going to

pieces" [275]--only, not "going" now, but "gone." Nor did it, and like

sputterings of insurrection all over the place, prevent Judge Taft--the

"Mark Tapley of this Philippine business" as he humorously told the

Senate Committee of 1902 he had been called--from cabling home, during

the presidential campaign of 1900, a series of superlatively optimistic

bulletins, [276] based on the testimony of Filipinos who had abandoned

the cause of their country as soon as patriotism meant personal peril,

all such testimony being eagerly accepted, as testimony of the kind one

wants and needs badly usually is, in total disregard of information

directly to the contrary furnished by General MacArthur and other

distinguished soldiers who had been then on the ground for two years.

The area and population of the territory occupied by General Young,

the "First District of the Department of Northern Luzon," was,

according to the Census of 1903, as follows:

Province Area (sq. m.) [277] Population [278]

Ilocos Norte 1,330 178,995

Ilocos Sur 471 187,411

Union 634 137,839

Abra 1,171 51,860

Lepanto-Bontoc [279] 2,005 72,750

Benguet 822 22,745

----- -------

6,433 651,600

As this narrative purposes so to present the geography of the

Philippine Islands as to facilitate an easy remembrance of the

essentials only of the governmental problem there presented,

we will hereafter speak of the First District as containing,

roughly, 6500 square miles, and 650,000 people. Whenever, if ever,

a Philippine republic is set up, these six provinces are very likely,

for geographical and other reasons, to become one of the original

states comprising that republic, just as the states of Mexico are

made up of groups of provinces. [280]

The rest of the story of the northern campaign of 1899-1900 immediately

following Aguinaldo's escape into the mountains through General Young's

and General Lawton's lines, being a necessary part of the American

occupation of the Philippines, may also serve as a text for further

acquainting the reader with the geography of Luzon. War is the best

possible teacher of geography, and it may be well to communicate

in broken doses, as we received them, the lessons on the subject

which the 8th Army Corps learned in 1899 and the subsequent years

so thoroughly that we could all pronounce with astonishing glibness,

the most unpronounceable names imaginable.

When the great Wheaton-Lawton-MacArthur "Round-up" reached the

mountains on the northeast of the great central plain, in the

latter part of November 1899, Captain Joseph B. Batchelor, with

one battalion of the 24th (negro) Infantry, and some scouts under

Lieutenant Castner, a very intrepid and tireless officer, boldly cut

loose from the column of which he was a part, and, pressing on over the

Caranglan pass, overran the province of Nueva Vizcaya, which is part

of the watershed of north central Luzon, proceeding from Bayombong,

the capital of Nueva Vizcaya, down the valley of the Magat River,

by the same route Messrs. Wilcox and Sargent of the navy had made

their pleasant junket in the fall of 1898 as described in Chapter VI

(ante). Following this route Captain Batchelor finally came into

Isabela province, where the Magat empties into the Cagayan River,

reaching Iligan, the capital of Isabela, ninety miles northeast of

Bayombong, about December 8th. From Iligan Batchelor went on, promptly

overcoming all resistance offered, down the great Cagayan valley, some

110 miles due north, to the sea at Aparri, the northernmost town of

Luzon and of the archipelago, where he met two vessels of our navy,

the Newark and the Helena, under Captain McCalla, and found, to his

inexpressible (but partially and rather fervently expressed) chagrin,

that the insurgents who had fled before him, and also the garrison

at Aparri, had already surrendered to the navy. The territory thus

covered by Batchelor's bold, brilliant, and memorable march over two

hundred miles of hostile country from the mountains of central Luzon

down the Cagayan valley to the northern end of the island, at Aparri,

[281] consisted of the three provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, and Nueva

Vizcaya. The area and population of these three, according to the

census tables of 1903, are as follows:

Province Area (sq. m.) [282] Population [283]

Cagayan 5,052 156,239

Isabela 5,018 76,431

Nueva Vizcaya 1,950 62,541

------ -------

Total 12,020 295,211

The troops of Captain Batchelor's command were later on relieved by

the 16th Infantry, commanded by Colonel Hood, under whom the above

group of three provinces finally became the "Second District of the

Department of Northern Luzon." As part of the plan to provide the

reader with a fair general idea of Luzon conveniently portable in

memory, he is requested to note, at this point, that hereinafter the

Cagayan valley, with its three provinces, [284] will be alluded to as

a district containing 12,000 square miles and 300,000 people. As was

remarked concerning the original military district commanded by General

Young, to wit, the First District, so of Colonel Hood's district,

the Second--that is to say, as the Ilocano country may some day become

the state of Ilocos, so, for like geographical and other governmental

reasons, the three provinces of the Cagayan valley may some day become

the state of Cagayan in the possible Philippine republic of the future.

Having now followed the "far-flung battle line" of the volunteers of

'99 and their comrades in arms, the regulars, from Manila northward

across the rice paddies of central Luzon and over the mountains to the

northern extremity of the island, let us return to the central plain,

for reasons which will be stated in so doing. Between the China Sea

and the coast range which forms the western boundary of the central

plain of Luzon, there is a long strip of territory--a west wing of

the plain, as it were--about 125 miles long, with an average width

of not more than twenty miles, stretching from Manila Bay to Lingayen

Gulf. This is divided, for governmental purposes into two provinces,

Bataan on the south, whose southern extremity lay on Admiral Dewey's

port side as he entered Manila Bay the night before the naval battle

of May 1, 1898, and Zambales on the north. The area and population

of this territory are as follows:

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Bataan 537 46,787

Zambales 2,125 104,549

----- -------

2,662 151,336

Also, between the Pacific Ocean and the coast range which forms the

eastern boundary of the plain is a longer, narrower, and very sparsely

populated strip, or east wing, divided also into two provinces,

Principe on the north and Infanta on the south, each supposed to

contain about fifteen thousand people. Principe and Infanta are wholly

unimportant, except that, to avoid confusion, we must account for

all the provinces visible on the maps of Luzon. These two provinces

never gave any trouble and no one ever bothered about them. [285]

In the mountains of Zambales and Bataan, however, as in most of the

other provinces of the archipelago, the struggle was long kept up,

just as the Boers kept up their war for independence against Great

Britain about the same time, by guerrilla warfare.

The central plain with five provinces has already been fully

described. If to this plain you add its two wings, above mentioned,

you have the nine provinces of central Luzon you see on the map. And

if to them you add the six provinces of the Ilocos country and the

three of the Cagayan valley, you have clearly before you the political

make-up of northern Luzon--eighteen provinces in all. When central

Luzon was arranged by districts under the military occupation,

it was divided into three parts, the Third, Fourth, and Fifth

districts of the Department of Northern Luzon, the Third District

being under General Jacob H. Smith of Samar fame, [286] the Fourth

under General Funston, and the Fifth under General Grant. The Sixth

and last district of northern Luzon was made up of the city of Manila

and adjacent territory.

General Smith's district, the Third, comprised the provinces of

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Zambales 2,125 104,549

Pangasinan 1,193 397,902

Tarlac 1,205 135,107

----- -------

4,523 637,558

Pangasinan with its near 400,000 people is the largest, in point

of population, of the twenty-five provinces of Luzon, and the third

largest of the archipelago.

General Funston's district, the Fourth, comprised the provinces of

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Nueva Ecija 2,169 134,147

Principe [287] 331 15,853

----- -------

2,500 150,000

General Grant's district, the Fifth, comprised the provinces of

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Bataan 537 46,787

Pampanga 868 223,754

Bulacan 1,173 223,742

----- -------

2,578 494,283

2,500 150,000

===== =======

Totals, 4th and

5th Districts: 5,078 644,283

It will be seen from the foregoing that the Third District was nearly

equal in area to the Fourth and Fifth added together, and that the

same was true as to its population figure.

Just as the six provinces of the Ilocano country, first occupied by

General Young and organized as "The First District of the Department of

Northern Luzon," should some day evolve into a State of Ilocos, and the

three provinces of the Cagayan valley, occupied by Colonel Hood as the

Second District, into an ultimate State of Cagayan, so the provinces

of General Smith's old district, the Third, should finally become a

State of Pangasinan. [288] This Third District may be conveniently

recollected as accounting for, roughly speaking, 4500 square miles

of territory and 625,000 people. The total combined area of General

Funston's old district, the Fourth, [289] and the adjacent one,

the Fifth, General Grant's district, is--roughly--5000 square miles,

and its total population 650,000. No reason is apparent why these two

districts, the Fourth and Fifth, should not ultimately evolve into a

State of Pampanga. The five original military districts, [290] which

in 1900 constituted all of the Department of Northern Luzon except

the city of Manila and vicinity, might make four ultimate states,

with names, areas, and populations as follows:

State Area (sq. m.) Population

Ilocos 6,500 650,000

Cagayan 12,000 300,000

Pangasinan 4,500 625,000

Pampanga 5,000 650,000

------ ---------

28,000 2,225,000

It may surprise the reader after all the blood and thunder to which

his attention has hereinabove been subjected, apropos of northern

Luzon and the winter of 1899-1900, to know that the insurgents were

still bearding the lion in his den, i. e., General Otis in Manila,

by operating in very considerable force in the village-dotted country

within cannon-shot of the road from Manila to Cavite in January,

1900. Nevertheless such was the case.

On the 4th of January, 1900, General J. C. Bates was assigned to

the command of the First Division of the Eighth Army Corps, General

Lawton's old division, and an active campaign was commenced in southern

Luzon. The plan adopted was that General Wheaton with a strong force

should engage and hold the enemy in the neighborhood of Cavite, while

General Schwan, starting at the western horn of the half moon to which

the great lake called Laguna de Bay has already been likened, should

move rapidly down the west shore of the lake, and around its south

shore to Santa Cruz near its eastern end, or horn, garrisoning the

towns en route, as taken, instead of leaving them to be re-occupied by

the insurgents. Santa Cruz is the same place where General Lawton had

"touched second base," as it were, with a flying column in April, 1899.

This plan was duly carried out. The Schwan column started from San

Pedro Macati, the initial rendezvous, a few miles out of Manila,

on January 4, 1900, now garrisoning the towns en route, instead of

leaving them to be fought over and captured again as heretofore. The

first stiff fight we had in that campaign was at Binan, on January 6,

1900, one of the places General Lawton's expedition had taken when

he fought his way over the same country the year before. O. K. Davis

and John T. McCutcheon, who were in that fight and campaign--in fact

one of them had the ice-cold nerve to photograph the Binan fight while

it was going on, as I learned when we all went down to the creek near

the town, after we took it, to freshen up--can testify that we did not

then hear any nonsense about a "Tagal" insurrection, such as Secretary

of War Root's Report for 1899, published shortly before, is full of,

and that on the contrary the whole country was as much a unit against

us and as loyal to the Aguinaldo government as northern Luzon had

been. And inasmuch as I am doing some "testifying" along here myself,

and assuming to brush aside without the slightest hesitation, as wholly

erroneous, information conveyed to the American public at the time

in the state papers of President McKinley and Secretary of War Root,

it is only due the reader, whose attention is being seriously asked,

that "the witness" should "qualify" as to the opportunities he may

have had, if any, to know whereof he speaks, concerning the character

of the opposition. To that end, the following document, which General

Schwan was kind enough to send me afterwards, is submitted as sent:

EXTRACT COPY.

Headquarters Detachment Macabebe Scouts.

The Adjutant General, Schwan's Expeditionary Brigade:

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report of the

operations of the Detachment of Macabebe Scouts, under my command,

while forming a part of your Brigade.

The Detachment, consisting of five (5) officers and one hundred

and forty (140) men, was divided into two companies, commanded

by 1st Lt. J. Lee Hall, 33rd Inf., and 1st Lt. Blount, 29th Inf.,

left San Pedro Macati the afternoon of Jan. 4th, 1900 * * *.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I wish to invite your attention, especially, to the good work

done in the fight at Binan by Lieut. Blount, 29th Inf., who led

the line by at least twenty-five yards * * *.

Very Respectfully,

Wm. C. Geiger, 1st Lt. 14th Inf., Com'd'g Det.

I hereby certify that the above is a true copy of extracts from

the report of the operations of the Detachment of Macabebe Scouts

forming part of an Expeditionary Brigade under my command, in

the months of January and February, 1900.

Theo. Schwan,

Brig. General, U. S. Vols.

Aug. 16, 1900.

The activities of Generals Bates and Wheaton, and the Schwan Expedition

of January-February, 1900, extended the American occupation, so far

as there were troops enough immediately available to go around, over

the lake-shore portions and the principal towns of the two great

provinces of southern Luzon bordering on the Laguna de Bay, viz.,

Cavite and Laguna; and over parts of the two adjacent provinces of

Batangas and Tayabas.

Batangas bounds Cavite on the south, and is itself bounded on the

south by the sea, where a fairly good port offered a fine gateway

for smuggling arms into the interior from abroad. Tayabas province

adjoins Laguna on the southeast. Cavite province has always been,

since the opening of the Suez Canal, about 1869, and the agitations

for political reform in Spain which culminated in the Spanish republic

of 1873, quickened the thought of Spain's East Indies, the home of

insurrection, the breeding place of political agitation. Aguinaldo

himself was born within its limits in 1869. Laguna province comprehends

most of the country lying between the southern and eastern lake-shore

of the Laguna de Bay and the mountains which skirt that body of water

in the blue distance, all parts of it being thus in easy and safe

touch by water transportation by night with Cavite, the home and

headquarters of insurgency.

Just as northern Luzon had been gradually organized into military

districts as conquered, so was southern Luzon. The territory, over-run,

as above described, by Generals Bates, Wheaton, and Schwan, was divided

into two districts. [291] Colonel Hare commanded the First District,

Cavite province and vicinity. General Hall commanded the Second

District, Batangas, Laguna, and Tayabas. The area and population of

these four provinces, according to the Census of 1903, were as follows:

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Cavite 619 134,779

Batangas 1,201 257,715

Laguna 629 148,606

Tayabas 5,993 153,065

----- -------

8,442 694,165

For convenience of subsequent allusion, this group of provinces may

be treated as representing roughly 8500 square miles of territory

and 700,000 people. These four provinces group themselves together

naturally from a military standpoint. As physical force is the

final basis of all government, these four provinces constitute a

logical administrative governmental unit, as shown by the action

of our military authorities in their extension of the American

occupation. It would seem therefore that if there should ever be

a Philippine republic, they would probably constitute one of its

states--the State, let us say, of Cavite.

The rest of southern Luzon below that part above described consists of

a peninsula which, owing to its odd formation, is easy to remember. The

mainland of Luzon, that is to-say, that part of the island which our

narrative has already covered, remotely suggests, in shape, the State

of Illinois. At least it resembles Illinois more than it does any other

State of our Union, in that its length runs north and south, and its

average length and width are nearer that of Illinois than any other. At

the southeast corner of this mainland, the observer of the map will

see, jutting off to the southeast from the mainland, the peninsula in

question. It is about a hundred and fifty miles long, with an average

width of possibly thirty miles--a minimum width of, say, ten miles, and

a maximum of fifty,--and is separated from Samar by the narrow, swift,

and treacherous San Bernardino Strait, which connects the Pacific

Ocean with the China Sea. This peninsula is frequently called "the

Hemp Peninsula." The importance of controlling the hemp ports prompted

General Otis to send General Bates with an expedition to those ports on

February 15, 1900. [292] This expedition did little more than occupy

those ports. The great interior continued under insurgent control

some time afterward. The report of the Secretary of War, Mr. Root,

for 1900, goes on to describe an engagement, or two, sustained by

the Bates Expedition shortly after it landed, and concludes, with

a complacency almost Otis-like, by stating that shortly thereafter

"the normal conditions of industry and trade relations with Manila

were resumed by the inhabitants." Of course Mr. Root believed this,

and so did Mr. McKinley. More the pity, as we shall later see. General

Otis was now getting anxious to go home, and hastened to "occupy"

and organize the rest of the archipelago, on paper, at least, the

hemp peninsula becoming, on March 20, 1900, the Third District of

the Department of Southern Luzon, Brigadier-General James M. Bell

commanding. The provinces comprised in this district, with their

areas and populations as given by the Census of 1903, were as follows:

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Camarines [293] 3,279 239,405

Albay 1,783 240,326

Sorsogon 755 120,495

----- -------

5,817 600,226

For convenience of subsequent allusion, these three provinces of

the hemp peninsula which constituted the Third Military District of

the Military Department of Southern Luzon in 1900, may be regarded

as comprising, roughly, 6000 square miles of territory and 600,000

people. If the Philippine republic of the future which is the dream

of the Filipino people, prove other than an idle dream, the hemp

peninsula will probably some day constitute a state of that republic,

an appropriate and probable name for which would be the State of

Camarines.

The Fourth District of southern Luzon--there were but four--was

occupied by the 29th U. S. Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Colonel

E. E. Hardin, one of the best executive officers General Otis had in

his whole command. The Fourth District comprised a lot of islands

unnecessary to be considered at length in this bird's-eye view of

the panorama, but necessary to be mentioned in outlining the military

occupation. The 29th, like the other twenty-four volunteer regiments,

settled down with equanimity to the business of policing a hostile

country, sang with zest, like the rest of the twenty-five volunteer

regiments, that old familiar song, "Damn, Damn, Damn the Filipino,"

etc., and waited with the uniquely admirable stoicism of the American

soldier for the season of their home-going to roll round, which, under

the Act of Congress, [294] would be the spring of the following year.

In volume i., part 5, War Department Report, 1899, at pages 5 et seq.,

may be found a journal illustrating the nature of the "police" work

done by the volunteers of 1899, in 1900, and at pages 5 et seq. of

the same report for 1900 (volume i., part 4) may be found a similar

diary carried up to June 30, 1901. Throughout the period covered by

those reports, scarcely a day passed without what the military folk

coolly call "contacts" with the enemy.

The Visayan Islands were in course of time duly organized, as Luzon had

previously been, departmentally and by military districts. The Visayan

Islands became the Department of Visayas, divided into districts

commanded either by regimental commanders having a regiment or more

with them, or by general officers. For a long time no attempt to make

military occupation effective in these various islands, save in the

coast towns, was attempted. However, the indicated disposition of

troops completed, technically at least, the American occupation of

the Visayan Islands.

Pursuant to the plan followed, as we have hitherto followed the

army in our narrative, first throughout northern Luzon and later

through southern Luzon, some data are now in order concerning the

Visayan Islands.

As already made clear, there are but six of the Visayan Islands with

which any one interested in the Philippines merely as a student of

world politics or of history need bother. The area and population of

these are as follows: [295]

Island Area (sq. m.) Population

Panay 4,611 743,646

Negros 4,881 460,776

Cebu 1,762 592,247

Leyte 2,722 356,641

Samar 5,031 222,090

Bohol 1,441 243,148

Whenever, if ever, an independent republic is established in

the Philippines, the six islands above mentioned could and should

constitute self-governing commonwealths similar to the several States

of the American Union. The rest of the islands lying between Luzon

and Mindanao could easily be disposed of governmentally by being

attached to the jurisdiction of one of the said six islands.

Mindanao and the adjacent islets called Jolo were organized as

the Department of Mindanao and Jolo, under General Kobbe, with

the 31st Volunteer Infantry, Colonel Pettit's regiment, the 40th

Volunteer Infantry, Colonel Godwin's regiment, and the 23rd Regular

Infantry. Thus the archipelago was completely accounted for, for

the time being, just as all the territory of the United States was

long accounted for by our military authorities at home, with the

Department of the East, headquarters Governor's Island, New York; the

Department of the Lakes, headquarters Chicago; the Department of the

Gulf, headquarters Atlanta, etc. In this state of the case, General

Otis re-embraced his early pet delusion--if it was a delusion, which

charity and the probabilities suggest it should be called--about the

insurrection having gone to pieces; and decided to come home. Possibly,

also, he was homesick. General Otis was a very positive character,

a strong man. But even strong men get homesick after long exile. When

you hear the call of the homeland after long residence "east of Suez,"

you must answer the call, duty not forbidding. General Otis had stood

by his ink wells and the Administration with unswerving devotion

for twenty months, and was entitled to come back home and tell the

public all about the fighting in the Philippines, and how entirely

over it was, and how wholly right Mr. McKinley was in his theory

that the visible opposition to our rule and the seeming desire to

be free and independent did not represent the wishes of the Filipino

people at all, but only the "sinister ambitions of a few unscrupulous

Tagalo leaders." Accordingly on May 5, 1900, he was relieved at his

own request, and departed for the United States. He was succeeded

in command by a very different type of man, Major-General Arthur

MacArthur, upon whom now devolved the problem of holding down the

situation and of actually getting it stably "well in hand" by June

30, 1901, the date of expiration of the term of enlistment of the

twenty-five volunteer regiments organized under the Act of March

2, 1899.

CHAPTER XIII

MACARTHUR AND THE WAR

Damn, damn, damn the Filipino,

Pock-marked khakiac ladrone; [296]

Underneath the starry flag

Civilize him with a Krag,

And return us to our own beloved home.

Army Song of the Philippines under MacArthur. [297]

Some one has said, "Let me write the songs of a people and I care

not who makes their laws." Give me the campaign songs of a war, and

I will so write the history of that war that he who runs may read,

and, reading, know the truth. The volunteers of 1899 had, most of

them, been in the Spanish War of '98. That struggle had been so

brief that, to borrow a phrase of the principal beneficiary of it,

Colonel Roosevelt, there had not been "war enough to go 'round." The

Philippine insurrection had already broken out when the Spanish War

volunteers returned from Cuba in the first half of 1899. Few of them

knew exactly where the Philippines were on the map. They simply knew

that we had bought the islands, that disturbances of public order

were in progress there, and that the Government desired to suppress

them. The President had called for volunteers. That was enough. When

they reached the islands, instead of finding a lot of outlaws,

brigands, etc., such as that pestiferous, ill-conditioned outfit of

horse-thieves and cane-field burning patriots we volunteers of '98

had to comb out of the eastern end of Cuba under General Wood in the

winter of 1898-9, they found Manila, on their arrival, practically

almost a besieged city. They knew that the erroneous impression

they had brought with them was the result of misrepresentation. Who

was responsible for that misrepresentation they did not attempt to

analyze. They simply set to work with American energy to put down the

insurrection. Nobody questioned the unanimity of the opposition. There

it was, a fact--denied at home, but a fact. In the course of the fight

against the organized insurgent army they lost a great many of their

comrades, and in that way the unanimity of the resistance was quite

forcibly impressed upon them. By kindred psychologic processes equally

free from mystery, their determination to overcome the resistance

early became very set--a state of mind which boded no good to the

Filipinos. The army song given at the beginning of Chapter XI (ante),

in which General Otis is made to sing, after the fashion of some of

the characters in Pinafore, that pensive query to himself

Am I the boss, or am I a tool?

the first stanza of which closes

Now I'd like to know who's the boss of the show,

Is it me or Emilio Aguinaldo?

was a point of departure, in the matter of information, which

served to acquaint them with all that had gone before. They resented

the loss of prestige to American arms and desired to restore that

prestige. While engaged in so doing, they became aware, during the

Presidential year 1900, that the campaign of that year in the United

States was based largely upon the pretence that the majority of the

Filipinos welcomed our rule. Naturally, their experience led them to

a very general and very cordial detestation of this pretence. For one

thing, it was an unfair belittling of the actual military service

they were rendering. People hate a lie whether they are able to

trace its devious windings to its source or sources, or to analyze

all its causes, or calculate all its possible effects, or not. The

real rock-bottom falsehood, not as fully understood then as it became

later, consisted in the impression sought to be produced at home, in

order to get votes, that the great body of the Filipino people were

not really in sympathy with their country's struggle for freedom,

and would be really glad tamely to accept the alien domination so

benevolently offered by a superior people, but were being coerced into

fighting through intimidation by a few selfish leaders acting for their

own selfish ends. While our fighting generals in the field,--General

MacArthur, for instance, whose interview with a newspaper man just

after the fall of Malolos, in March, 1899, subsequently verified by

him before the Senate Committee of 1902, has already been noticed--at

first believed that it was only a faction that we had to contend with,

they soon discovered that the whole people were loyal to Aguinaldo and

the cause he represented. But, while the point as to how unanimous

the resistance was remained a disputed matter for some little time

among those of our people who did not have to "go up against it,"

the most curious fact of that whole historic situation, to my mind,

is the absolute identity of the disputed suggestion with that which

had previously been used in like cases in all ages by the powerful

against people struggling to be free, and the cotemporaneous absence

of any notation of the coincidence by any conspicuous spectator of

the drama, to say nothing of us smaller fry who bore the brunt of

the war or any portion of it.

Those men of '99 in the Philippines realized in 1900, vaguely

it may be, but actually, that they were waging a war of conquest

after the manner of the British as sung by Kipling, but under the

hypocritical pretence that they were doing missionary work to improve

the Filipino. They did not know whether the Filipinos could or could

not run a decent government if permitted. It was too early to form

any judgment. And even then there was no unanimous feeling that they

could not. Brigadier-General Charles King, the famous novelist,

who was in the fighting out there during the first half of 1899,

was quoted in the Catholic Citizen, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in June,

1899, as having said in an interview given at Milwaukee:

There is no reason in the world why the people should not have

the self-government which they so passionately desire, so far as

their ability to carry it on goes.

The real reason why the war was being waged was stated with the honesty

which heated public discussion always brings forth, by Hon. Charles

Denby, a member of the Schurman Commission of 1899, in an article

which appeared in the Forum for February, 1899, entitled "Why the

Treaty Should be Ratified:" [298]

The cold, hard, practical question alone remains: "Will the

possession of the islands benefit us as a nation?" If it will not,

set them free to-morrow.

But in the same magazine, the Forum, for June, 1900, in other words

to the very same audience, in an article whose title is a protest,

"Do we Owe the Filipinos Independence?" we find this same distinguished

diplomat sagaciously deferring to that not inconsiderable element of

the American public which is opposed to wars for conquest, with the

rank hypocrisy which must ever characterize a republic warring for

gain against the ideals that made it great, thus:

A little time ought to be conceded to the Administration to

ascertain what the wish of the people [meaning the people of the

Philippine Islands] really is; [299]

adding some of the stale but ever-welcome salve originally invented

by General Otis for use by Mr. McKinley on the public conscience

of America, about the war having been "fomented by professional

politicians," and not having the moral support of the whole people. "A

majority of the Filipinos are friendly to us," he says. Even as early

as January 4, 1900, in the New York Independent, we find Mr. Denby

abandoning all his previous honesty of 1899 about "the cold, hard,

practical question," and rubbing his hands with invisible soap to

the tune of the following hypocrisy:

Let us find out how many of the people want independence, and

how many are willing to remain loyal to our government. It is

believed a large majority [etc.]. [300]

The same article even assumed an air of injured innocence and urged

that as soon as the insurgent army laid down its arms [301] "the

intentions of our government will be made known by Congress." That

was just thirteen years ago, and "the intentions of our government"

have never yet been "made known by Congress," despite the fact

that the omission has all these years been like a buzzing insect,

lighting intermittently on the sores of race prejudice and political

difference in the Philippines, to say nothing of the circumstance

that such omission leaves everybody guessing, including ourselves. The

omission has been due to the fact that both the McKinley Administration

which committed the original blunder of taking the islands, and

the succeeding Administrations which have been the legatees of that

blunder, have always needed in their Philippine business the support

both of those whose votes are caught by the Denby honesty of 1899

and those whose votes are caught by the Denby hypocrisy of 1900.

War is a great silencer of hypocrisy. In the presence of real sorrow

and genuine anger, it slinks away and is seen no more until more

piping times. The lists of casualties had been duly bulletined to

the United States from time to time between February, 1899, and June,

1900, so that by the date last named it had become "good politics" to

throw off the mask. Hence, at the Republican National Convention held

in Philadelphia June 19-21, 1900, we find that astute past-master of

the science of government by parties, Senator Lodge, boldly throwing

off the mask thus:

We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the

Philippines solely on account of others. We believe in trade

expansion.

Now the words of a United States Senator are much listened to by an

army in the field. When a war breaks out, it is usually your Senator

who gets your commission for you originally, and has you promoted

and made captain, colonel, or general, as the case may be, if you do

anything to deserve it, or lifted from the ranks to a commission, if

you do anything to deserve it, or sees that something fitting is done

if you die in any specially decent way. An army in the field thinks

a United States Senator is about one of the biggest institutions

going--which, seriously, is not far from the truth, with all due

respect to the blase pessimists of the press gallery. Consider then how

wholly uninspiring, as a sentiment to die by and kill by, the above

senatorial utterance was to the men in the field in the Philippines,

who did not even then believe the islands would pay. The "cold, hard,

practical" fact was, if the Senator was to be believed, that we were

fighting for what is generically called "Wall Street;" that it was

primarily a Wall Street war: an expedition fitted out to kill enough

Filipinos to make the survivors good future customers--"Ultimate

Consumers"--and only incidentally a war to make people follow your

way of being happy in lieu of their own. Yet we had most of us, but

shortly previously to that, gone trooping headlong to Cuba, in the wake

of the most inspiring single personality of this age--Senator Lodge's

friend, Colonel Roosevelt--some of our American thoraxes inflated with

sentiments thus nobly expressed by the same distinguished Senator in

his speech on the resolution which declared war against Spain:

"We are there" (meaning in the then Cuban situation), Senator Lodge

had said in the Senate, in the matchless outburst of eloquence with

which he set the keynote to the war with Spain--

We are there because we represent the spirit of liberty and the

new time. * * * We have grasped no man's territory, we have taken

no man's property, we have invaded no man's rights. We do not

ask their lands. [302]

What difference, however, did it make to men under military orders,

and that far away from home, where American public opinion could not

and never can affect any given situation in time to help it, whether

they were serving God or the devil? Everything disappeared but the

primal fighting instinct. So the slaughter proceeded right merrily,

at a ratio of about sixteen to one, and many a Filipino died with the

word "Independence" on his lips, [303] while many an obscure American

life went out, fighting under the Denby-Lodge dollar-mark flag of

pseudo-trade expansion. Can you imagine a more thankless job? Do

you wonder at the song that heads the chapter? Still, war is war,

once you are in it. All through 1900 the volunteers of 1899 kept on,

cheerfully doing their country's work, not in the least hampered by

whys or wherefores, so far as the quality of their work went. They knew

that the Filipinos were not heathen, and they were not perfectly clear

that they themselves were doing the Lord's work, unless "putting the

fear of God into the heart of the insurrecto"--one of their campaign

expressions--was the Lord's work. However, if any of them gave any

special thought to the ethics of the situation, this did not in the

least affect their efficiency in action, nor their determination to

lick the Filipino into submission. When the brief organized resistance

of the insurgent armies in the field (February to November, 1899)

underwent its transition to the far more formidable guerrilla tactics,

they realized that they were "up against" a long and tedious task,

in which would be no special glamour, as there had been in Cuba,

because the war was not much more popular at home than it was with

them. The rank net hypocrisy of the whole situation, as they viewed

it, is expressed in the song which heads this chapter. It is an

answer to the Taft nonsense of 1900 about "the people long for peace

and are willing to accept government under United States." [304]

That is why the Caribao Society do not sing it to Mr. Taft when he

attends their annual banquet, notwithstanding that it is the star

song of their repertoire. [305] This statement of Judge Taft's, as

well as other like statements of his which followed it during the

presidential campaign of 1900, would have been perfectly harmless in

home politics. It was made in the same spirit of optimism in which

a Taft man will tell you to-day, "The people are willing to see the

Taft Administration endorsed." But at that time in the Philippines

there was no possible way to prove or disprove the statement to the

satisfaction of anybody at home--or elsewhere, for that matter. And,

under the circumstances, it was at once a libel on Filipino patriotism

and an ungracious belittling of the work of the American army. It was

a libel on Filipino patriotism because it denied the loyal (even if

ill-advised) unanimity of the Filipino people in their struggle for

independence, and was a statement made recklessly, without knowledge,

in aid of a presidential candidate in the United States. That it was

highly inaccurate was well known to some 70,000 American soldiers then

in the field, who were daily getting insurrecto lead pumped into them,

and also well known to their gallant commander, General MacArthur, who

told Judge Taft just that thing. That it was an ungracious belittling

of the work of the army is certainly obvious enough, and it was

so considered by the army, and its commanding general aforesaid,

who practically told Judge Taft just that thing. But Mr. Root,

then Secretary of War, was as much interested in Mr. McKinley's

re-election as Judge Taft was. So he spread the Taft cablegrams

broadcast throughout the United States during the presidential

campaign, and pigeonholed the MacArthur messages and reports on the

situation in the dusty and innocuous desuetude of the War Department

archives. Four years later at the Republican National Convention of

1904, Mr. Root told the naked truth, thus:

When the last national convention met, over 70,000 soldiers from

more than 500 stations held a still vigorous enemy in check. [306]

The foregoing is all a record made and unalterable. It is a fair sample

of the initial stages of one more of the experiments in colonization

by a republic which are scattered through history and teach but

one lesson. All the gentlemen concerned were personally men of high

type. But look at the net result of their work. The impression it

produced in the United States, at a tremendously critical period in the

country's history, when the men at the helm of state were bending every

energy to railroad the republic into a career of overseas conquest,

and using the army for that purpose, can be called by a short and ugly

word. The splendor of Mr. Root's intellect is positively alluring,

but he is a dangerous man to republican institutions. Mr. Taft's part

in that conspiracy for the suppression of the facts of the Philippine

situation in 1900 was really due to kindliness of heart, regret

at the war, and earnest hope that it would soon end. Mr. Denby's

part was that of the out-and-out imperialist who has frank doubts

in his own mind as to whether it is axiomatic, after all, that the

form of government bequeathed us by our fathers is the best form of

government yet devised. But the conspiracy was really a sin against

the progress of the world, because it deceived the American people as

to the genuineness and unanimity of the desire of the Filipino people

to imitate the example set by us in 1776, which has since served as

a beacon-light of hope to so many people in so many lands in their

several struggles to be free.

By the spring of 1900, when General MacArthur relieved General Otis,

the volunteers of 1899 had gotten thoroughly warmed up to the work

of showing the Filipinos who was in fact "the boss of the show,"

and by June, 1900, when Judge Taft arrived, they had gotten still

warmer [307]; and in General Otis's successor they had a commander

who understood his men thoroughly, and was determined to carry out

honestly, with firmness, and without playing, as his predecessor had

done, the role of political henchman, the purpose for which the army

he commanded had been sent to the Islands to accomplish. In this

state of the case, the Taft Commission came out.

This would seem rather an odd point at which to terminate a chapter on

"MacArthur and the War," seeing that General MacArthur continued to

command the American forces in the Philippines and to direct their

strenuous field operations until July, 1901, more than a year later,

when he was relieved by General Chaffee, on whom thereafter devolved

the subsequent conduct of the war. But we must follow the inexorable

thread of chronological order, and so yield the centre of the stage

from June, 1900, on, to Mr. Taft, else the resultant net confusion of

ideas about the American occupation of the Philippines might remain

as great as that which this narrative is an attempt in some degree

to correct.

All through the official correspondence of 1899 and 1900 between the

Adjutant-General of the Army, General Corbin, and General Otis at

Manila, one sees Mr. McKinley's sensitiveness to public opinion. "In

view of the impatience of the people" you will do thus and so,

is a typical sample of this feature of that correspondence. [308]

Troubled, possibly, with misgivings, as to whether, after all, in view

of the vigorous and undeniably obstinate struggle for independence

the Filipinos were putting up, it would not have been wiser to have

done with them as we had done in the case of Cuba, and troubled,

beyond the peradventure of a doubt, about the effect of the possible

Philippine situation on the fortunes of his party and himself in the

approaching campaign for the presidency, Mr. McKinley sent Mr. Taft

out, in the spring preceding the election of 1900, to help General

MacArthur run the war. We must now, therefore, turn our attention to

Mr. Taft, not forgetting General MacArthur in so doing.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TAFT COMMISSION

The papers 'id it 'andsome,

But you bet the army knows.

Kipling, Ballad of the Boer War.

The essentials of the situation which confronted the Taft Commission

on its arrival in the islands in June, 1900, and the mental attitude

in which they approached that situation, may now be briefly summarized,

with entire confidence that such summary will commend itself as fairly

accurate to the impartial judgment both of the historian of the future

and of any candid contemporary mind.

It is not necessary to "vex the dull ear" of a mighty people much

engrossed with their own affairs, by repetition of any further

details concerning the original de facto alliance between Admiral

Dewey and Aguinaldo. Suffice it to remind a people whose saving

grace is a love of fair play, that, after the battle of Manila Bay,

when Admiral Dewey brought Aguinaldo down from Hong Kong to Cavite,

both the Admiral and his Filipino allies were keenly cognizant of the

national purpose set forth in the declaration of war against Spain,

and that the Filipinos could not have been expected to make any

substantial distinction between the casual remarks of a victorious

admiral on the quarter-deck of his flagship in May, remarks concurrent

and consistent with actual treatment of the Filipinos as allies, and

the imperious commands of a general ashore in December thereafter,

acting under specific orders pursuant to the Treaty of Paris. The

one great fact of the situation, "as huge as high Olympus," they did

grasp, viz., that both were representatives of America on the ground

at the time of their respective utterances, and that one in December

in effect repudiated without a word of explanation what the other

had done from May to August. They had helped us to take the city of

Manila in August, and, to use the current phrase of the passing hour,

coined in this period of awakening of the national conscience to

a proper attitude toward double-dealing in general, they felt that

they had been "given the double cross." In other words they believed

that the American Government had been guilty of a duplicity rankly

Machiavellian. And that was the cause of the war.

We have seen in the chapters on "The Benevolent Assimilation

Proclamation" and "The Iloilo Fiasco" that, in the Philippines at

any rate, no matter how mellifluously pacific it may have sounded at

home--no matter how soothing to the troubled doubts of the national

conscience--the Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation of December 21,

1898, was recognized both by the Eighth Army Corps and by Aguinaldo's

people as a call to arms--a signal to the former to get ready for the

work of "civilizing with a Krag"; a signal to the latter to gird up

their loins for the fight to the death for government of their people,

by their people, for their people; and that the yearning benevolence

of said proclamation was calculated strikingly to remind the Filipinos

of Spain's previous traditional yearnings for the welfare of Cuba,

indignantly cut short by us--yearnings "to spare the great island

from the danger of premature independence" [309] which that decadent

monarchy could not even help repeating in the swan-song wherein

she sued to President McKinley for peace. We did not realize the

absoluteness of the analogy then. It is all clear enough now. We can

now understand how and why Mr. McKinley's programme of Annexation and

Benevolent Assimilation of 1898-9, blindly earnest as was his belief

that it would make the Filipino people at once cheerfully forego the

"legitimate aspirations" to which we ourselves had originally given

a momentum so generous that nothing but bullets could then possibly

have stopped it, was in fact received by them in a manner compared

with which Canada's response in 1911 to Speaker Champ Clark's equally

benevolent suggestion of United States willingness to accord to Canada

also, gradual Benevolent Assimilation and Ultimate Annexation, was

one great sisterly sob of sheer joy as at the finding of a long lost

brother. From the arrival of the American troops on June 30, 1898,

until the outbreak of February 4, 1899, there had been two armies

camped not far from each other, one born of the idea of independence

and bent upon it, the other at first groping in the dark without

instructions, and finally instructed to deny independence. There

was never any faltering or evasion on the part of Aguinaldo and his

people. They knew what they wanted and said so on all occasions. At

all times and in all places they made it clear, by proclamation, by

letter, by conversation, and otherwise, that independence was the one

thing to which, whether they were fit for it or not, they had pledged

"their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor."

We have seen how easily the war itself could have been averted by the

Bacon Resolution of January, 1899, or some similar resolution frankly

declaring the purpose of our government; how here was Senator Bacon

at this end of the line pleading with his colleagues to be frank,

and to make a declaration in keeping with "the high purpose" for

which we had gone to war with Spain, instead of holding on to the

Philippines on the idea that they might prove a second Klondike,

while justifying such retention by arbitrarily assuming, without any

knowledge whatever on the subject, that the Filipinos were incapable

of self-government; how, there, at the other end of the line, at

Manila, Aguinaldo's Commissioners, familiar with our Constitution

and the history and traditions of our government, were making,

substantially, though in more diplomatic language, precisely the

same plea, and imploring General Otis's Commissioners to give them

some assurance which would quiet the apprehensions of their people,

and calm the fear that the original assurance, "We are going to lick

the Spaniards and set you free," was now about to be ignored because

the islands might be profitable to the United States.

We have seen the war itself, as far as it had progressed by June,

1900, one of the bitterest wars in history, punctuated by frequent

barbarities avenged in kind, and how, if the Taft Commission had

not come out with McKinley spectacles on, they would have seen the

picture of a bleeding, prostrate, and deeply hostile people, still

bent on fighting to the last ditch, not only animated by a feeling

against annexation by us similar to that the Canadians would have

to-day if we should also try the Benevolent Assimilation game on

them--first with proclamations breathing benevolence and then with

cannon belching grape-shot--but further animated by the instinctive

as well as inherited knowledge common to all colored peoples,

whether red, yellow brown, or black, that wheresoever white men

and colored live in the same country together, there the white man

will rule. Understand, this was before Judge Taft had had a chance to

assure them, with the kindly Taft smile and the hearty Taft hand-shake,

that their benevolent new masters were going to reverse the verdict

of the ages, and treat them with a fraternal love wholly free from

race prejudice. If Judge Taft could only have arrived in January,

1899, and told them that the Bacon Resolution really represented the

spirit of the attitude of the American people toward them, then the

finely commanding bearing of Mr. Taft, and the noble genuineness of

his desire to see peace on earth and goodwill toward men, might even

have prevented the war. But this is merely what might have been. What

actually was, when he did arrive, in June, 1900, was that the milk of

human kindness had long since been spilled, and his task was to gather

it up and put it back in the pail. When I, a Southern man who have

taken part in the only two wars this nation has had in my lifetime,

reflect that in this year of grace, 1912, Mr. Underwood's otherwise

matchless availability as the candidate of his party for President is

questioned on the idea that it might be a tactical blunder, because of

"the late war," which broke out before either Mr. Underwood or myself

were born, I cannot share the Taft optimism as to the rapidity with

which the scars of "the late war" in the Philippines will heal, and

as to the affectionate gratitude toward the United States with which

the McKinley-Taft programme of Benevolent Assimilation will presently

be regarded by the people of the Philippine Islands.