We have seen the futile efforts of the Schurman Commission of 1899,

sent out that spring, in deference to American public opinion,

with definite instructions to try and patch up a peace, by talking

to the leading spirits of a war for independence, now in full swing,

about the desirability of benevolent leading-strings. "They [meaning

the Schurman Commission] had come," says Mr. McKinley, in his annual

message to Congress of December 5, 1899, [310] "with the hope of

co-operating with Admiral Dewey and General Otis in establishing

peace and order." They came, they saw, they went, recognizing the

futility of the errand on which they had been sent. And now came the

Taft Commission a year later, on precisely the same errand, after the

Filipinos had sunk all their original petty differences and jealousies

in a very reasonable instinctive common fear of economic exploitation,

and a very unreasonable but, to them, very real common fear of race

elimination, amounting to terror, and been welded into absolute

oneness--if that were somewhat lacking before--in the fierce crucible

of sixteen months of bloody fighting against a foreign foe for the

independence of their common country. President McKinley's message to

Congress of December, 1899, is full of the old insufferable drivel,

so grossly, though unwittingly, ungenerous to our army then in the

field in the Philippines, about the triviality of the resistance

we were "up against." The message in one place blandly speaks of

"the peaceable and loyal majority who ask nothing better than to

accept our authority," in another of "the sinister ambitions of a

few selfish Filipinos." Thus was outlined, in the message announcing

the purpose to send out the Taft Commission, the view that no real

fundamental resistance existed in the islands. Basing contemplated

action on this sort of stuff, the presidential message outlines the

presidential purpose as follows--this in December, 1899, mind you:

There is no reason why steps should not be taken from time to

time to inaugurate governments essentially popular in their form

as fast as territory is held and controlled by our troops.

Then follows the genesis of the idea which resulted in the Taft

Commission:

To this end I am considering the advisability of the return

[to the islands] of the commission [the Schurman Commission]

or such of the members thereof as can be secured.

In Cuba, General Wood began the work of reconstruction at Havana with

a central government and the best men he could get hold of, and acted

through them, letting his plans and purposes percolate downward to

the masses of the people. Not so in the Philippines. Reconstruction

there was to begin by establishing municipal governments, to be

later followed by provincial governments, and finally by a central

one; in other words, by placing the waters of self-government at

the bottom of the social fabric among the most ignorant people,

and letting them percolate up, according to some mysterious law of

gravitation apparently deemed applicable to political physics. Of

course, these poor people simply always took their cue from their

leaders, knowing nothing themselves that could affect the success of

this project except that we were their enemies and that they might get

knocked in the head if they did not play the game. "I have believed,"

says Mr. McKinley, in his message to Congress of December, 1899,

"that reconstruction should not begin by the establishment of one

central civil government for all the islands, with its seat at Manila,

but rather that the work should be commenced by building up from the

bottom." Whereat, the young giant America bowed, in puzzled hope,

and worldly-wise old Europe smiled, in silent but amused contempt.

If at the time he formulated this scheme for their government

Mr. McKinley had known anything about the Philippines, or the

Filipinos, he would have known that what he so suavely called "building

from the bottom" was like trying to make water run up hill, i.e.,

like starting out to have ideas percolate upward, so that through "the

masses" the more intelligent people might be redeemed. The "nigger

in the woodpile" lay in the words "essentially popular in form." Of

course no government by us "essentially popular" was possible at the

time. But a government "popular in form" would sound well to the

American people, and, if they could be kept quiet until after the

presidential election of 1900, maybe the supposed misunderstanding

on the part of the Filipinos of the benevolence of our intentions

might be corrected by kindness. Accordingly, the following spring,

cotemporaneously with General Otis's final departure from Manila to

the United States, in which free country he might say the war was over

as much as he pleased without being molested with round-robins by Bob

Collins, O. K. Davis, John McCutcheon, and the rest of those banes of

his insular career, who so pestiferously insisted that the American

public ought to know the facts, the Taft Commission was sent out,

to "aid" General MacArthur, as the Schurman Commission had "aided"

General Otis. [311]

It would seem fairly beyond any reasonable doubt that the official

information the Taft Commission were given by President McKinley

concerning the state of public order they would find in the islands

on arrival was in keeping with the information solemnly imparted

to Congress by him in December thereafter, which was as follows:

"By the spring of this year (1900) the effective opposition of the

dissatisfied Tagals"--always the same minimization of the task of the

army as a sop to the American conscience--"was virtually ended." Then

follows a glowing picture of how the Filipinos are going to love us

after we rescue them from the hated Tagal, but with this circumspect

reservation: "He would be rash who, with the teachings of contemporary

history, would fix a limit" as to how long it will take to produce

such a state of affairs. Looking at that mighty panorama of events

from the dispassionate standpoint now possible, it seems to me that

Mr. McKinley's whole Philippine policy of 1899-1900 was animated by

the belief that the more the Philippine situation should resemble the

really identical Cuban one in the estimation of the American people,

the more likely his Philippine policy was to be repudiated at the

polls in the fall of 1900. The Taft Commission left Washington for

Manila in the spring of 1900, after their final conference with the

President who had appointed them and was a candidate for re-election in

the coming fall, as completely committed as circumstances can commit

any man or set of men to the programme of occupation which was to

follow the subjugation of the inhabitants, and to the proposition

of present incapacity for self-government, its corner-stone;

to say nothing of the embarrassment felt at Washington by reason

of having stumbled into a bloody war with people whom we honestly

wanted to help, had never seen, and had nothing but the kindliest

feelings for. While the serene and capacious intellect of William

H. Taft was still pursuing the even tenor of its way in the halls of

justice (as United States Circuit Judge for the 8th Circuit), the

Philippine programme was formulated at Washington. Judge Taft went

to Manila to make the best of a situation which he had not created,

to write the lines of the Deus ex machina for a Tragedy of Errors

up to that point composed wholly by others. It has been frequently

stated and generally believed that when Mr. McKinley sent for him and

proposed the Philippine mission, Judge Taft replied, substantially:

"Mr. President, I am not the man for the place. I don't want the

Philippines." To which Mr. McKinley is supposed to have replied:

"You are the man for the place, Judge. I had rather have a man out

there who doesn't want them." The point of the original story lay in

what Mr. McKinley said. The point of the repetition of it here lies

in what Mr. Taft said, the inference therefrom being that he did not

think the true interests of his country "wanted" them, and that had

he been called into President McKinley's council sooner he would have

so advised; an inference warranted by his subsequent admission that

"we blundered into colonization." [312]

It is utterly fatal to clear thinking on this great subject, which

concerns the liberties of a whole people, to treat Judge Taft's reports

as Commissioner to, and later Governor of, the Philippines as in the

nature of a judicial decision on the capacity of the Filipinos for

self-government. When he consented to go out there, he went, not to

review the findings of the Paris Peace Commission, but at the urgent

solicitation of an Administration whose fortunes were irrevocably

committed to those findings, including the express finding that they

were unfit for self-government, and the implied one that we must remain

to improve the condition of the inhabitants. He was thus not a judge

come out to decide on the fitness of the people for self-government,

but an advocate to make the best possible case for their unfitness, and

its corollary, the necessity to remain indefinitely, just as England

has remained in Egypt. The war itself convinced the whole army of the

United States that Aguinaldo would have been the "Boss of the Show"

had Dewey sailed away from Manila after sinking the Spanish fleet. The

war satisfied us all that Aguinaldo would have been a small edition

of Porfirio Diaz, and that the Filipino republic-that-might-have-been

would have been, very decidedly, "a going concern," although Aguinaldo

probably would have been able to say with a degree of accuracy, as

Diaz might have said in Mexico for so many years, "The Republic? I

am the Republic." The war demonstrated to the army, to a Q. E. D.,

that the Filipinos are "capable of self-government," unless the kind

which happens to suit the genius of the American people is the only

kind of government on earth that is respectable, and the one panacea

for all the ills of government among men without regard to their

temperament or historical antecedents. The educated patriotic Filipinos

can control the masses of the people in their several districts as

completely as a captain ever controlled a company. [313] While the

municipal officials of the McKinley-Taft municipal kindergarten were

stumbling along with the strange new town government system imported

from America, and atoning to their benignant masters for mistakes by

writing them letters about how benignant they--the teachers--were,

they--the pupils,--according to the contemporaneous description by the

commanding general of the United States forces in the islands, were

running a superbly efficient municipal system throughout the whole

archipelago, "simultaneously and in the same sphere as the American

governments, and in many instances through the same personnel,"

[314] in aid of the insurrection. General MacArthur humorously adds

that the town officials "acted openly in behalf of the Americans

and secretly in behalf of the insurgents, and, with considerable

apparent solicitude for the interest of both." In short, the war

at once demonstrated their "capacity for self-government" and made

granting it to them for the time being unthinkable. For the war was

fought not on the issue of the capacity, but on the issue of the

granting. The Treaty of Paris settled the "capacity" part. The army

in 1898, 1899, and 1900 can hardly be said to have had any much more

decided opinion on the capacity branch of the subject, than Perry did

about the Japanese in 1854. The Paris Peace Commission having solemnly

decided the "capacity part" adversely to the Filipinos and the war

having followed, thereafter Mr. Taft went out to make out the best case

possible in support of the action of the Peace Commission and, ex vi

termini, in support of everything made necessary by the fact of the

purchase. Unless some one goes out to present to the American people

the other side of the case, they will never arrive at a just verdict.

Committed, a priori, to the task of squaring the McKinley

Administration with its course as to Cuba, the only course possible

for the Taft Commission was to set up a benevolent government based

upon the incompetency of the governed, which, being a standing affront

to the intelligence of the people, earns their hatred, however it may

crave their love. By the very bitterness of the opposition it permits

yet disregards, it binds itself ever more irrevocably to remain a

benevolent engenderer of malevolence. Government and governed thus get

wider apart as the years go by, and, the raison d'etre of the former

being the mental deficiencies of the latter, it must, in self-defence,

assert those deficiencies the more offensively, the more vehemently

they are denied. What hope therefore can there be that the light

that shone upon Saul on the road to Damascus will ever break upon

the President? What hope that he will ever re-attune his ears to the

voice of the Declaration of Independence, calling down from where

the Signers (we hope without untoward exception) have gone, crying:

"William, William, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to

kick against the right of a people to pursue happiness in their own

way"? The difference between the President and the writer is that

both went out to scoff and the latter remained--much longer--to pray.

The Taft Commission arrived at Manila on June 3, 1900, loaded to the

guards with kindly belief in the stale falsehood wherewith General

Otis, ably assisted by his press censor, had been systematically

soothing Mr. McKinley's and the general American conscience during

the whole twenty months he had commanded the Eighth Army Corps, [315]

viz., that the insurrection was due solely to "the sinister ambitions

of a few selfish leaders," and did not represent the wishes of the

whole people. It is true that the insurrection originally started

under Admiral Dewey's auspices and under the initial protection of

his puissant guns was headed by a group of men most of whom, including

Aguinaldo, were Tagalos. But all Filipinos look alike, the whole seven

or eight millions of them. They differ from one another not one whit

more than one Japanese differs from another. And they all feel alike on

most things, [316] because they all have the same customs, tastes, and

habits of thought. Said Governor Taft to the Senate Committee in 1902:

While it is true that there are a number of Christian "tribes,"

so-called,--I do not know the number, possibly eight or ten, or

twelve,--that speak different languages, there is a homogeneity

in the people in appearance, in habits, and in many avenues of

thought. To begin with, they are Catholics." [317]

Certainly this should forever crucify the stale slander, still

ignorantly repeated in the United States at intervals, which seeks

to make the American people think the great body of the Filipino

people are still in a tribal state, ethnologically. [318] A Tagalo

leader is about as much a "tribal" leader as is a Tammany "brave"

of Irish antecedents. In fact there is much in common between the

two. Both are clannish. Both have a genius for organization that

is simply superb. Both are irrepressible about Home Rule. Countless

generations ago the Filipinos were lifted by the Spanish priests out

of the tribal state, and the educated people all speak Spanish. But

the original tribal dialects, which the Spanish priests patiently

mastered and finally reduced for them to a written language, still

survive in the several localities of their origin. So that every

Filipino of a well-to-do family is brought up speaking two languages,

Spanish, and the local dialect of his native place, which is the only

language known to the poorer natives of the same neighborhood. Surely

even the valor of ignorance can see that we are presumptuously

seeking to reverse the order of God and nature in assuming that

an alien race can lead a people out of the wilderness better than

could a government by the leading men of their own race to whom the

less favored look with an ardent pride that would be a guarantee of

loyal and inspiring co-operation. You can beat a balking horse to

death but you cannot make him wag his tail, or otherwise indicate

contentment or a disposition to cordial co-operation which will

make for progress. Mr. Bryan has visited the Philippines, and his

evidence is simply cumulative of mine, as mine, based on six years'

acquaintance with the Filipinos, is simply cumulative of Admiral

Dewey's testimony of 1898, so often cited hereinbefore, and of the

opinion of Hon. George Curry, a Republican member of Congress from

New Mexico who served eight years in the Philippines, and believes

they can safely be given their independence by 1921. Mr. Bryan says:

So far as their own internal affairs are concerned, they do not

need to be subject to any alien government.

He further says:

There is a wide difference, it is true, between the general

intelligence of the educated Filipino and the laborer on

the street and in the field, but this is not a barrier to

self-government. Intelligence controls in every government,

except where it is suppressed by military force. Nine tenths of

the Japanese have no part in the law-making. In Mexico, the gap

between the educated classes and the peons is fully as great as,

if not greater than, the gap between the extremes of Filipino

society. Those who question the capacity of the Filipinos for

self-government forget that patriotism raises up persons fitted

for the work that needs to be done." [319]

It is because I believe that in the Philippines we are doing ourselves

an injustice and keeping back the progress of the world by depreciating

and scoffing at the value of patriotism as a factor in self-government

and in the maintenance of free institutions, that I have written this

book. There is no more patriotic people in the world than the Filipino

people. I base this opinion upon an intimate knowledge of them, and

in the light of considerable observation throughout most of Europe,

and in Asia from the Golden Horn to the mouth of the Yang-tse. Woe

to the nonsense, sometimes ignorant, sometimes vicious, wherewith

we are regaled from time to time by Americans who go to Manila,

smoke a cigar or two in some American club there, and then come back

home and depreciate the Filipino people without at least correcting

Col. Roosevelt's wholly uninformed and cruel random assertions of

1900 about the Filipinos being a "jumble of savage tribes," and about

Aguinaldo being "the Osceola of the Filipinos," or their "Sitting

Bull!" It is wonderfully inspiring to turn from such stale slander to

Mr. Bryan's above statement of the case for our Oriental subjects,

a statement framed in his own infinitely sympathetic and inimitable

way, which says for me just what I had long wanted to express, but

could not, so well. And in the midst of the recurring slander that the

Filipino people are "a heterogeneous lot," it is refreshing to find in

a preface to the American Census of the Philippines of 1903, by the

Director thereof, a passage where, in comparing the tables of that

census with those of the Twelfth Census of the United States, he says:

"Those of the Philippine Census are somewhat simpler, the

differences being due mainly to the more homogeneous character

of the population of the Philippine Islands." [320]

When we consider the above in the light of the past and present

operation of our own immigration laws, it is not flattering, but it

may and should tend to awaken some realization of the manifold nature

and blinding effects of current misapprehensions in the United States

concerning the inhabitants of the Philippines. One Filipino does not

differ from another any more than one American does from another

American--in fact they differ less, considering immigration. The

Filipino people are not rendered a heterogeneous lot by having three

different languages, Ilocano, Tagalo, and Visayan, [321] which are

respectively the languages spoken in the northern, the central,

and the southern part of their country, any more than the people

of Switzerland are rendered heterogeneous by the circumstance that

in northern Switzerland you find German spoken for the most part,

while farther south you find French, and near the southernmost

extremities some Italian. At this late date no credible person

acquainted with the facts will be so poor in spirit as to deny that

the motives of the men who originally started the insurrection were

patriotic. Nor will any one who served under General Otis's command

in the Philippines deny that that eminent desk soldier continued to

cling to his early theory that it was a purely Tagalo insurrection

long after the deadly unanimity of the opposition had seeped, with

all-pervading thoroughness, into the general mind of the army of

occupation. The white flag or rag of truce, alias treachery, used

to be hoisted to put us off our guard in pretence of welcome to our

columns approaching their towns and barrios. Such use of such a flag,

followed by treachery, the ultimate weapon of the weak, had been in

turn followed, with relentless impartiality in countless instances,

by due unloosening of the vials of American wrath, until every nipa

shack [322] in the Philippine Islands that remained unburned had

had its lesson, written in the blood of its occupants or their kin,

to the tune of the Krag-Jorgensen or the Gatling. Yet General Otis's

reports are always bland, and always convey the idea of an insurrection

exclusively Tagalo.

In the summer of 1900, the newly arrived civilians, the Taft

Commission, had no special interest in the soldiers who, for better,

for worse, were "doing their country's work," as Kipling calls his

own country's countless wars against its refractory subjects in the

far East; and no especial sympathy with that work. Two years later we

find President Roosevelt, in connection with the general amnesty of

July 4, 1902, congratulating his "bowld lads," as Mr. Dooley would

call them--meaning General Chaffee and the Eighth Army Corps--on a

total of "two thousand combats, great and small" up to that time,

but you never find in any of Governor Taft's Philippine state

papers any more affirmative recognition of continued resistance to

American rule than some mild allusion to "small but hard knocks"

being administered here and there by the army. From the beginning

there was a systematic belittling, on the part of the Taft Commission,

of the work of the army, incidentally to belittling the reality and

unanimity of the opposition which was daily calling it forth. [323]

This was not vicious. It was essentially benevolent. It was part of

the initial fermentation of their preconceived theory. But the trouble

about their theory was that it was only a theory. It would not square

with the facts. They were trying to square the subjugation of the

Philippines with the freeing of Cuba, a task quite as soluble as the

squaring of a circle. They hoped, with all the kindly benevolence

of Mr. McKinley himself, that the opposition to our rule was not

as great as some people seemed to think. They had come out to the

islands earnestly wishing to find conditions not as bad as they

had been asserted to be. And the wish became father to the thought

and the thought soon found expression in words--cablegrams to the

United States presenting an optimistic view as to the prospects of

necessity for further shedding of blood in the interest of Benevolent

Assimilation, alias Trade Expansion. Some flippant person will say,

"That is a polite way of charging insincerity." This book is not

addressed to flippant persons. It is a serious attempt to deal with

a problem involving the liberties of a whole people, and will be,

as far as the writer can make it, straightforward, dignified, and

candid. Judge Taft's fearful mistake of 1900-1901 in the matter of his

premature planting of the civil government--a mistake because based

on the idea that "the great majority of the people" welcomed American

rule, and a fearful mistake because fraught with so much subsequent

sacrifice of life due to too early withdrawal of the police protection

of the army--was not the first instance in American history where an

ordinarily level-headed public man has, with egregious folly, mistaken

the mood and temper of a whole people. The key to his mistake lay in

the fact that, coming into a strange country in the midst of a war,

he ignored the advice of the commanding general of the army of his

country concerning the military situation, and took the advice of a

few native Tories, or Copperheads, of wealth, who had never really

been in sympathy with the insurrection and who, flocking about him

as soon as he arrived, told him what he so longed to be told, viz.,

that the war did not represent the wishes of the people but was kept

up by "a conspiracy of assassination" of all who did not contribute

to it either in service or money. He thereupon decided that the men

who told him this really represented the voice of the people, and

that the men in the field who had then been keeping up the struggle

for independence for sixteen months, in season and out of season,

were simply "a Mafia on a very large scale." Consequently the Taft

Commission had been in the islands less than three months when

Secretary of War Root at Washington was giving the widest possible

publicity to cablegrams from them, such as that dated August 21,

1900, mentioned in the preceding chapter, conveying the glad tidings

that "large number of people long for peace and are willing to accept

government under United States" [324]; and by November next thereafter,

the "large number" had grown to "a great majority," and the "willing"

to "entirely willing." The November statement was:

A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely

willing to accept the establishment of a government under the

supremacy of the United States. [325]

Yet, as we saw in the preceding chapter, the real situation in the

Philippines at this very time was described four years later at the

Republican National Convention of 1904 by Mr. Root thus:

When the last national convention met, over 70,000 American

soldiers from more than 500 stations held a still vigorous enemy

in check.

Between the date of their arrival in the Islands on June 3d, and the

date of this August 21st telegram, the Taft Commission did little

junketing, but remained in Manila imbibing the welcome views of the

"Tories" or "Copperheads," and seeking very little information from

the army. But it so happens that the Adjutant-General at Manila used

to keep a record of the daily engagements during that period, which

record was later published in the annual War Department Report, [326]

and it shows a total of about five hundred killings (of Filipinos)

between June 3d, and August 21st, to say nothing of probably many times

that number hit but not killed, and therefore able to get away. (You

could not include any Filipino in your returns of your killings except

dead you had actually counted.) It also happens that on June 4th,

the day after Judge Taft's arrival, General MacArthur, in response to

an order from Washington sent some time previous at the instance of

Congress, had all the Filipino casualties our military records showed

up to that time (i. e., during the sixteen months from the day of the

outbreak, February 4, 1899, to June 3, 1900), tabulated and totalled,

and the total Filipino killed accordingly reported by cablegram to

the War Department on June 4, 1900, was 10,780. [327]

Ten thousand in sixteen months is 625 per month. So that by the

time Judge Taft arrived, the Filipinos had been sufficiently

beaten into submission to decrease the death-rate due to the

Independence Bug from something over six hundred per month to about

two hundred per month. Judge Taft called this enthusiasm. I call it

exhaustion. Whereupon, exclaims a Boston Anti-Imperialist, "Why don't

you issue Mr. Taft a certificate as a member of the Ananias Club at

once, and be done with it?" My answer is that I do not believe the

Taft Commission in 1900 either knew these figures or wanted to know

them. They came out preaching a Gospel of Hope to the exclusion of

all else, a species of mental healing. They said, soothingly to Dame

Filipina, "Be not afraid; you are well; you are well"--of the desire

for independence she had conceived, when what that lady needed was the

surgical operation indispensable for the removal of a still-born child.

The will of the American people is ascertainable, and quadrennially

announced, through certain prescribed methods. And (nearly)

everybody takes the result good-humoredly, God bless our country,

whatever the result. But just how Mr. Taft and his colleagues could

assume to speak for the "great majority" of the Filipino people at

the tremendous juncture in their destinies now under consideration

during the Presidential election of 1900, does not clearly appear,

except that in their first report they say:

Many witnesses were examined as to the form of government best

adapted to these islands and satisfactory to the people, [328]

a statement which obviously takes for granted the only point

involved in the war, viz., whether any kind of alien government

would be "satisfactory to the people." And in their various other

communications to Washington they describe themselves, with no small

degree of benevolent satisfaction, as enthusiastically received by

natives not under arms at the moment of such reception. As a matter of

fact, a carpet-bag governor of Georgia might just as well have reported

to Andrew Johnson an enthusiastic reception at the hands of the people

whose homes had lately been put to the torch, and their kith and kin to

the sword, while the whole fair face of nature from Atlanta to the sea

lay bruised and bleeding under the iron heel of Sherman's army. Let no

advocate of Indefinite Tutelage whet his scalping-knife for me because

of the use of that word "carpet-bag." It was as free from ill-will

as the explosion incident to flash-light photography. We are trying

to develop a picture of those times. Two at least of the Commission,

Messrs. Taft and Wright, were the kind of men who in all the personal

relations of life, meet the ultimate test of human confidence and

friendship--you would make either, if he would consent to act,

executor of your will, or testamentary guardian of your child. But

they came out with the preconceived notion that kindness would win

the people over, whereas what those people wanted was not foreign

kindness but home rule, not silken political swaddling clothes,

but freedom. And as the acquisition of the Philippines has placed

us under the necessity of getting up a new definition of freedom,

one consistent with tariff taxation without representation--through

legislation by a Congress on the other side of the world in which

"our new possessions" have no vote--it should be added that one of

the things Freedom meant with us before 1898, was freedom to frame

the laws--tariff and other--which largely determine the selling

price of crops and the purchase price of the necessities of life,

freedom to see the intelligent and educated men of your own race in

charge of your common destiny, freedom to have a flag as an emblem

of your common interests, in a word, just Freedom. And that was what

the war was about. They wanted to be free and independent. Whether

they were fit for such freedom is wholly foreign to the reality and

unanimity of their desire for it. General Otis used to be very fond

of taking the wind out of the sails of their commissioners and other

officials before the outbreak by saying that their people had not

the slightest notion of what the word independence meant. It is true

that they knew nothing about it by experience, but equally true that

whatever it was, they wanted it. Of the ten thousand men we had already

killed when Judge Taft arrived, there can be no question, as already

heretofore suggested, that many of them may have been hit just as

they were hurrahing for independence, in other words, died with the

word "Independence" on their lips. When men have been thus fighting

against overwhelming odds for some sixteen months for government of

their people by their people for their people--however inarticulate

the emotions of the rank and file on going into battle--it is idle

to claim that they do not know what they want, whether the great

majority of the rank and file can read and write or not. But pursuant

to the idea that kindness would cure the desire for independence,

Judge Taft ignored, in the outset, all advice from the military

department, because that was not the kindness department, accepting

as truly representative of the temper of the whole people the views

of a few ultra-conservatives of large means who had always been part

and parcel of the Spanish Administration.

On the other hand, General MacArthur and the whole Eighth Army Corps

had seen a great insurrection drag on from month to month and from one

year to another, under General Otis, when short shrift would have been

made of it in the outset, and far less life sacrificed, if Mr. McKinley

had not needed, in aid of his Philippine policy, the support of both

of those who believed it was right and of those who believed it would

pay. The one central thought which had seemed to animate General

Otis from the beginning, a thought which we have already traced

through all its humiliating manifestations, was that he must neither

do or permit anything that might hurt the Administration. When the

"impatience of the people" at home, which figures so prominently in

the correspondence already cited between the Adjutant General of the

army, General Corbin, and General Otis at Manila, had begun to cast its

shadows on the presidential year, 1900, the master mind of Mr. Root had

interrupted the fatal Otis treatment of the insurrection, indicated by

General Otis's long failure to call for volunteers, his stupid stream

of "situation well in hand" and "insurrection about to collapse"

telegrams, and his utterly unpardonable persistence in calling it a

purely "Tagalo insurrection," by sending him a competent force, and

a plan of campaign, and directing him to carry out the plan. General

Otis did this, because he was told to, and then began again to sing

the same old song. MacArthur, Wheaton, Lawton, Bates, Young, Funston,

and the rest of the fighting generals, had submitted to all the Otis

follies without a murmur, because insubordination degrades an army

into a rabble. But they [329] believed the army was there to put down

that insurrection, not to have a symposium with its leaders on the

rights of man. They had taken up "The White Man's Burden," after the

manner of Lords Kitchener and Roberts, and they had no qualms. Above

all, they wanted peace, no matter how much fighting it took to get

it. Mindful of the attempts of the Schurman Commission of the year

before to mix peace with war, and of the immense encouragement thus

given the insurgents, they had not looked forward with enthusiasm to

the coming of the Taft Commission, and to the highly probable renewal

of negotiations with the insurgent leaders in the field, pursuant to

a presidential policy of patching up a peace at any price, suggested

by the exigencies of political expediency, to give the government a

semblance of having more or less of the consent of the governed. That

the anticipations of the military authorities in this regard did not

receive a pleasant disappointment, has already been suggested by the

nature of the views adopted by the commission soon after its arrival.

The military view of the situation, as it stood when Judge Taft and his

colleagues arrived at Manila in June, 1900, is set forth in the annual

report of the commanding general, General MacArthur, rendered shortly

thereafter; rendered, not in aid of any political candidate at home,

nor of a sudden, but at the usual and customary annual season for the

making of such reports; and rendered by a soldier of no mean experience

and ability, who was a man of great kindliness of heart as well, to

the war department of his government, to acquaint it with the facts

of a military situation he had been dealing with for two years prior

to the arrival of the Taft Commission. General MacArthur's views,

as expressed in his report, must now be contrasted with the Taft

view, not to show that MacArthur is a bigger man than Taft, nor for

any other idle or petty purpose, but because, if, in 1900, General

MacArthur was right, and Judge Taft was wrong, about the unanimity

of the whole Filipino people against us, then the institution of the

Civil Government of the Philippines on July 4, 1901, was premature;

and, therefore, by reason of the withdrawal of the strong arm of the

military at a critical period of public order, it was not calculated

to give adequate protection to the lives and property of those who

were willing to abandon the struggle for independence and submit

to our rule. And if, as we shall see later, it did in fact grossly

fail to afford such adequate protection for life and property, it was

derelict in the most sacred duty enjoined upon it by Mr. McKinley's

instructions to the Taft Commission. But first let me introduce you

to General MacArthur.

General MacArthur is not only a soldier of a high order of

ability, but a statesman as well. Moreover, he was a thoroughgoing

"expansionist." He believed in keeping the Philippines permanently,

just as England does her colonies. But he was perfectly honest about

it. He recognized the fact that they were against our rule. But

he did not attach any more weight to that circumstance than Lord

Kitchener would have done. Also, he had come out to the islands with

the first expedition, in 1898, had been in the field continuously

for fifteen months prior to assuming supreme military command, and

knew the Filipinos thoroughly. As soon as he took command, on May 5,

1900, of the 70,000 troops then in the Islands, he set himself with

patience and firmness to the great task of ending the insurrection,

which at that time promised to continue indefinitely, the far more

formidable guerrilla warfare that had followed the brief period of

serried resistance having now settled down to a chronic stage, aided

and abetted by the whole population. I have said General MacArthur was

a "thoroughgoing" expansionist. This needs a slight qualification. At

first he appears to have had a few qualms. Shortly after the outbreak

of the war with the Filipinos, when he took the first insurgent capital

Malolos, in March, 1899, he had said at Malolos, as we have seen,

to a newspaper man who accompanied the expedition:

When I first started in against these rebels, I believed that

Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not believe

that the whole population of Luzon was opposed to us; but I have

been reluctantly compelled to believe that the Filipinos are

loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he represents. [330]

General MacArthur's reports concerning the war in the Philippines

during the period of his command are succinct and luminous. He

makes it perfectly clear that the original resistance offered by the

insurgent armies in the field after the arrival of the overwhelmingly

ample reinforcements sent out from this country in the fall of 1899,

was little more than a mere flash in the pan, compared with the

well-planned scheme of resistance which followed the dispersion of

those armies to the several provinces which had furnished them to

the cause, and Aguinaldo's simultaneous flight into the mountains

"with his government concealed about his person," as Senator Lodge

exultantly described that incident in his speech of April, 1900,

in defence of the Administration's Philippine policy. Speaking of

this period, General MacArthur says:

It has since been ascertained that the expediency of adopting

guerrilla warfare from the inception of hostilities was seriously

discussed by the native leaders, and advocated with much emphasis

as the system best adapted to the peculiar conditions of the

struggle. It was finally determined, however, that a concentrated

field army, conducting regular operations, would, in the event

of success, attract the favorable attention of the world, and be

accepted as a practical demonstration of capacity for organization

and self-government. The disbandment of the field army, therefore,

having been a subject of contemplation from the start, the actual

event, in pursuance of the deliberate action of the council of

war in Bayambang about November 12, 1899 (already hereinbefore

noticed), was not regarded by Filipinos in the light of a calamity,

but simply as a transition from one form of action to another;

a change which by many was regarded as a positive advantage,

and was relied upon to accomplish more effectively the end in

view. The Filipino idea behind the dissolution of their field

army was not at the time of the occurrence well understood in

the American camp. As a consequence, misleading conclusions

were reached to the effect that the insurrection itself had been

destroyed, and that it only remained to sweep up the fag ends of

the rebel army by a system of police administration not likely

to be either onerous or dangerous. [331]

In his report covering the period from May 5th, to October 1, 1900,

General MacArthur says of the policy of resistance above outlined:

The country affords great advantages for the practical

development of such a policy. The practice of discarding the

uniform enables the insurgents to appear and disappear almost at

their convenience. At one time they are in the ranks as soldiers,

and immediately thereafter are within the American lines in

the attitude of peaceful natives, absorbed in a dense mass of

sympathetic people. [332]

In this same connection the report includes a copy of the original

order of the insurgent government which was the corner stone of the

guerrilla policy, and states that "systemized regulations" for its

effective prosecution throughout the archipelago had been compiled

and published by the Filipino junta, or revolutionary committee at

Madrid, and distributed among the insurgent forces. The report also

appends a copy of the "Army Regulations" under which the insurgent

forces were to conduct the guerrilla warfare. It also describes in

detail the system of warfare prescribed under these regulations, and

states that as a result of the measures which he, General MacArthur,

took to combat that warfare "the 53 stations of American troops

occupied in the archipelago on November 1, 1899, had on September 1,

1900, expanded to 413," and that during this period, the casualties

to our troops were 268 killed, 750 wounded, 55 captured, and to the

insurgents, so far as our records showed, 3227 killed, 694 wounded,

and 2864 captured. Says he:

The extensive distribution of troops has strained the soldiers

of the army to the full limit of endurance. Each little command

has had to provide its own service of security and information

by never ceasing patrols, explorations, escorts, outposts, and

regular guards. An idea seems to have been established in the

public mind [he meant the public mind at home, of course] that the

field work of the army is in the nature of police, in regulating a

few bands of guerrillas, and involving none of the vicissitudes of

war. [Here he is meeting the Otis theory, then being industriously

circulated in the United States.] Such a narrow statement of the

case is unfair to the service. In all things requiring endurance,

fortitude, and patient diligence, the guerrilla period has been

pre-eminent. It is difficult for the non-professional observer

[he means Judge Taft] to understand that apparently desultory

work, such as has prevailed in the Philippines during the past

ten months, [333] has demanded more of discipline and as much

of valor as was required during the period of regular operations

against the concentrated field forces of the insurrection. It is,

therefore, a great privilege to speak warmly in respect of the

importance of the service rendered day by day, with unremitting

vigilance, by the splendid men who," etc. [334]

It was not until July 4, 1902, that President Roosevelt officially

declared, by his amnesty proclamation of that date that the

insurrection in the Philippines was at last ended. It was by no

means beaten to a frazzle, as we shall later see. But of course,

knowing the impatience of a large portion of the American people with a

situation about which there was a wide-spread notion that much remained

undisclosed, Mr. Roosevelt would have issued such a proclamation

earlier, had the facts seemed to him to so authorize. General

MacArthur's relentless "never ceasing patrols, explorations," etc.,

continued straight on through the presidential campaign of 1900 side

by side in point of time with the roseate Taft cablegrams of the same

period, and long thereafter--how long will be later indicated. Says

General MacArthur, in his report for 1901:

It had been suggested that some of the Filipino leaders were

willing to submit the issue to the judgment of the American people,

which was soon to be expressed at the polls, and to abide by

the result of the presidential election of November, 1900. [335]

But subsequent events demonstrated that the hope of ending the

war without further effusion of blood was not well founded,

and that as a matter of fact the Filipinos were organizing for

further desperate resistance by means of a general banding of

the people in support of the guerrillas in the field. [336]

General MacArthur then goes on to tell how, as part of this programme,

the insurgent authorities,

announced a primal and inflexible principle, to the effect that

every native, without any exception, residing within the limits

of the archipelago, owed active allegiance to the insurgent

cause. This jurisdiction was enjoined under severe penalties,

which were systematically enforced.

This is what Judge Taft afterwards described as "a conspiracy of

murder, a Mafia on a very large scale", [337] the characterization

being made in support of his theory that "the great majority of the

people" with whom we were then at war would welcome our rule if allowed

to follow their real preferences, and that they were being cruelly

coerced to fight for the independence of their country. General

MacArthur's view, however, did not support this theory. His report

deals with this branch of the subject thus:

The cohesion of Filipino society in behalf of insurgent

interests is most emphatically illustrated by the fact that

assassination, which was extensively employed, was generally

accepted as a legitimate expression of insurgent governmental

authority. The individuals marked for death would not appeal to

American protection, although condemned exclusively on account

of supposed pro-Americanism.

Later on, when we came to understand the Filipinos better, this

summary method of dealing with the faint-hearted lost much of its

initial horrifying force, and the failure of such to appeal to us for

protection lost much of its strangeness. In the first place, nobody

loves a traitor. Even those to whom he claims to have betrayed his

countrymen do not trust him implicitly. Again, Latin countries never

assume that before a man is punished for alleged crime he has been

confronted with the witnesses against him. Such testimony is, under

their jurisprudence, frequently received in his absence. The legal

department of General MacArthur's office once got hold of a captured

insurgent paper subscribed with the autograph of Juan Cailles, one

of their best generals. It directed that a named Filipino residing

in a certain town garrisoned by American troops be executed--we

of course, would call it "assassinated"--at a certain hour on a

certain day in a public street of the town, and that the soldier or

soldiers performing the "execution" should declare to the bystanders,

if any, in so doing, that it was done because the man was a traitor,

a friend of the Americans. We kept this paper, intending to hang Juan

whenever he should be captured. He held out a long time, and finally

surrendered unconditionally--but he proved such an elegant fellow,

game as a pebble, courteous as Chesterfield, and immensely popular

with his people, that it was decided he could be of more service

as a live governor of a province than he could as a dead general,

[338] so he was appointed a provincial governor by Governor Taft,

and made a splendid official.

Another reason why Filipinos suspected, during the insurrection, by

the more obstinate and stout-hearted of their compatriots who held

out longer in the struggle for independence, of weakening toward the

cause of their country, in other words, suspected of what might be

called "Copperhead" or "Tory" tendencies, would not appeal to us for

protection, is strikingly presented in General MacArthur's report for

1901. He says they naturally had "grave doubt as to the wisdom" of

siding with us, "as the United States had made no formal announcement

of an inflexible purpose to hold the archipelago and afford protection

to pro-Americans." [339]

The one great thing that has crippled progress in the Philippines

from the beginning of the American occupation down to date is the

uncertainty as to what our policy for the future is to be, the lack of

some, "formal announcement of an inflexible purpose." And of course

I mean, as General MacArthur meant, by "formal" announcement, an

authoritative declaration by the law-making power of the government. If

Congress should formally declare that it is the purpose of this

government to hold the Philippines permanently, American and other

capital would at once go there in abundance and the place would

"blossom like a rose." If, on the other hand, Congress should formally

declare that it is the purpose of this government to give the Filipinos

their independence as soon as a stable native government can be set up,

thus holding out to the present generation the prospect of living to

see the independence of their country, the place would also quickly

blossom as aforesaid, through the generous ardor of native love of

country. In either event, everybody out there would know where he is

"at." At present all is uncertainty, both with the resident members

of the dominant alien race, and with those over whom we are ruling.

It took over 120,000 American troops, first and last, to put down

the struggle of the Filipinos for independence. [340] The war began

February 4, 1899, and the last public official announcement that it

was ended was on July 4, 1902. [341] Of course this does not imply

that every province was at all times during that period a theatre

of actual war. Putting down the insurrection was something like

putting out a fire in a field of dry grass. At first the trouble was

general. Gradually it diminished toward the end. But for a while,

no sooner was it quenched in one province than it would break out

in another. How the Filipinos were able to prolong the struggle

as long as they did against such apparently overwhelming odds is

most interestingly explained by General MacArthur in his report

for 1900. After describing the method he followed of establishing

native municipal governments in territory as conquered, he says,

with a patient stateliness that is almost humorous:

The institution of municipal government under American auspices,

of course, carried the idea of exclusive fidelity to the sovereign

power of the United States. All the necessary moral obligations

to that end were readily assumed by municipal bodies, and all

outward forms of loyalty and decorum carefully preserved. But

precisely at this point the psychologic conditions referred to

above [meaning the unity against us], [342] began to work with

great energy, in assistance of insurgent field operations. For this

purpose most of the towns secretly organized complete insurgent

municipal governments, to proceed simultaneously and in the

same sphere as the American governments and in many instances

through the same personnel--that is to say, the presidentes

and town officials acted openly in behalf of the Americans and

secretly in behalf of the insurgents, and, paradoxical as it may

seem, with considerable apparent solicitude for the interests

of both. In all matters touching the peace of the town, the

regulation of markets, the primitive work possible on roads,

streets, and bridges, and the institution of schools, their open

activity was commendable; at the same time they were exacting and

collecting contributions and supplies and recruiting men for the

Filipino forces, and sending all obtainable military information

to the Filipino leaders. Wherever, throughout the archipelago,

there is a group of the insurgent army, it is a fact beyond

dispute, that all contiguous towns contribute to the maintenance

thereof. In other words, the towns, regardless of the fact of

American occupation and town organization, are the actual bases

for all insurgent military activities; and not only so in the

sense of furnishing supplies for the so-called flying columns of

guerrillas, but as affording secure places of refuge. Indeed, it

is now the most important maxim of Filipino tactics to disband

when closely pressed and seek safety in the nearest barrio;

a manoeuvre quickly accomplished by reason of the assistance

of the people and the ease with which the Filipino soldier is

transformed into the appearance of a peaceful native. [343]

To contrast a cold, hard military fact involving the lives of American

soldiers with a lot of political nonsense intended for consumption in

the United States during a presidential election, the next paragraph is

particularly interesting in the light of the cotemporaneous Taft view:

[344]

The success of this unique system of war depends upon almost

complete unity of action of the entire native population. That such

unity is a fact is too obvious to admit of discussion. Intimidation

has undoubtedly accomplished much to this end, but fear as the

only motive is hardly sufficient to account for the united and

apparently spontaneous action of several millions of people. [345]

One traitor in each town would effectually destroy such a complex

organization.

Then follows this bit of grim humor:

It is more probable that the adhesive principle comes from

ethnological homogeneity which induces men to respond for a time

to the appeals of consanguineous leadership--

in other words, to stick to their own kith and kin. He had in a

previous paragraph used that very expression thus: "The people seem to

be actuated by the idea that in politics or war men are never nearer

right then when going with their own kith and kin."

In all the foregoing, General MacArthur was not simply trying to score

a point against Judge Taft, though his resentment of the effort of the

Taft Commission of 1900 to mix politics with war in the presidential

year was quite as decided, and quite as well known in the islands at

the time, as was General Otis's similar attitude toward the Schurman

Commission of the previous year. [346] He is simply laying before

the War Department, as a soldier, the familiar facts of a situation

which he had been dealing with for two years past, as well known to

the 70,000 officers and men under his command as to himself. And as

the details into which he goes are simply prefatory to an account of

the remedy he applied to the situation, that remedy must now claim

our attention. The remedy General MacArthur finally applied was

a proclamation, explaining to the Filipino people--"to all classes

throughout the archipelago," it read, and especially to the leaders in

the field, many of whose captured comrades-in-arms he had now become

thoroughly acquainted with--the severities sanctioned by the laws of

civilized nations under such circumstances, and the reasons therefor;

and, further, serving them with notice that thenceforward he proposed

to enforce those laws with full rigor. [347]

The eminent lawyers of the Taft Commission were too busy about that

time acquainting themselves with the situation through natives not in

arms, to attach much importance to General MacArthur's proclamation,

but the Eighth Army Corps always believed that that proclamation,

and the army's work under it, was the main factor in making the

civil government at all possible by the date it was set up, July 4,

1901. The issuance of this document was not only a wise military move,

but a subtle stroke of statesmanship as well. It assumed that the

Filipino people were a civilized people, an assumption never indulged

by Spain during the whole of her rule, but always freely admitted by

General MacArthur in all his dealings with their leading men to be a

fact. It therefore appealed to their amour propre, and to the noblesse

oblige of many of the most obstinate and trusted fighting leaders. The

writer was, at the date of the proclamation under consideration,

on duty at General MacArthur's headquarters, as assistant to Colonel

Crowder, his judge advocate, now Judge Advocate General of the United

States Army, and prepared the first rough, tentative suggestions

for the final draft of it, accompanying such suggestions with a

memorandum showing the course taken by Wellington in France in 1815,

and by Bismarck's generals at the close of the Franco-Prussian War,

as well as that followed under General Order No. 100, 1863, for the

government of the armies of the United States in the field. Having then

entertained the opinion that that proclamation, though drastic, was

wise and right under the facts of the situation which confronted us,

and having nowise changed that opinion since, it may be well for the

writer of this book to explain his reasons for that opinion. This must

be done wholly without reference to "the authorities," for neither at

the bar of public opinion, nor at the bar of final judgment, do "the

authorities" count for much. In so doing, however, we must start with

the assumption that it was a case of American military occupation of

hostile territory, notwithstanding that Judge Taft began soon after

his arrival in the islands in the June previous to the December now

referred to, to cable home impressions which, if correct, amounted

to a denial that the great body of the people were hostile. Military

occupation is a fact which admits of no debate, and the necessity

of making your country's flag respected is always fully and keenly

recognized as the one supreme consideration by every good American

except one who, obsessed with the idea that kindness will cure the

desire of a people for independence, proceeds to act on that idea in

the midst of a war for independence.

Under the laws of war the commanding general of the occupying force

owes protection, both of life and property, to all persons residing

within the territory occupied. The object of General MacArthur's

proclamation was to put a stop to such "executions," or assassinations,

as that perpetrated by Juan Cailles, mentioned above, and to separate

the insurgents in the field from their main reliance, the towns. The

latter end of a bloody war is no time for a discussion of the causes

of the war between victor and vanquished. Nor is it any time to

believe the representative of the enemy who tells you that most of

him is really in sympathy with you and merely coerced. Your duty is to

stop the war. You and your enemy having had a difference, and having

referred it to the arbitrament of war, which is, unfortunately, at

present the only human jurisdiction having power to enforce decisions

concerning such differences, if you win, and your enemy refuses to

abide the decision, he is simply, as it were in contempt of court, and,

in the scheme of things, as at present ordered, deserves punishment

as an enemy to the general peace. To state the ethics of the matter

juridically, "there should be an end of litigation"--somewhere.

I do not believe in the doctrine that might makes right, and I cherish

the high hope that this human family of ours will survive to see war

superseded, as the ultimate arbiter, by something more like heaven and

less like hell. But in the Philippines in 1900 it was a situation,

not a theory, that confronted us, and, as far as my consciously

fallible thinking apparatus lights the way which then lay before us,

that way led to a shrine whereon was written "A life for a life." This

is no mere academic discussion. With me it is a tremendously practical

one. In the gravest possible acceptation of the term it is awe-fully

so. If I am wrong, every execution I approved by memorandum review

furnished Colonel Crowder and General MacArthur, of military commission

findings out there was wrong, and so were a number of the executions I

ordered as a judge appointed by Governor Taft under a government which,

though nominally a civil government, was no more "civil" in so far as

that term implies absence of necessity for the presence of military

force, than other governments immediately following conquest usually

are. The propriety of the imposition of capital punishment by the

constituted authorities of a nation as part of a set policy to make its

sovereignty respected, is wholly independent of whether you call your

colonial government a civil or a military one. So that in justifying

General MacArthur I am also justifying Governor Taft, and as it was

on the recommendation of the former that the latter appointed me to

the Bench, we are certainly all three in the same boat in the matter

of the capital punishments under consideration. And while the company

you were in on earth in a given transaction, however distinguished

that company, is not going to help you with the Recording Angel,

[348] still, it is some comfort to know that wiser and abler men than

yourself approved a course of imposing capital punishments to which

you were a party, such punishments having been inflicted as part of a

policy whose subsequent evolution revealed it to you as fundamentally

wrong. And this reflection is quite relevant in the present connection

to the question whether the government of Benevolent Assimilation we

have maintained over the Filipinos for the last fourteen years is one

which was originally imposed by force against their will, or whether

it was ever welcomed by them or any considerable fraction of them.

That the MacArthur proclamation of December 20, 1900, concerning the

laws of war, was at the time a military necessity, is as perfectly

clear to me now as it was then. And yet it may well give the thoughtful

and patriotic American pause. It is sometimes difficult to understand

why men are so often entirely willing to go on fighting and dying in

a cause they must know to be hopeless. The famous passage of Edmund

Burke's speech on "Conciliation with America,"

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, so long as foreign

troops remained on my native soil, I never would lay down my arms,

no, never, never, never!

sounds well to us, but from the standpoint of a conqueror, there is

a good deal of wind-jamming to it, after all. It was the language of

a man who knew nothing of the horrors of war by actual experience,

or of what hell it slowly becomes to everybody concerned after most

of the high officials of the vanquished government have been captured

and are sleeping on dry, warm beds, eating good wholesome food, and

smoking good cigars, in comfortable custody, while the vanquished

army, no longer strong enough to come out in the open and fight, is

relegated to ambuscades and other tactics equally akin to the methods

of the assassin. The law of nations in this regard is an expression

of the views of successive generations of civilized and enlightened

men of all nations whose profession was war--men familiar with the

horrors inevitably incident to it and anxious to mitigate them as far

as possible. That law represents the common consensus of Christendom

resulting from that experience. It recognizes that after resistance

becomes utterly hopeless, it becomes a crime against society and

the general peace, and this is wholly independent of the merits

or demerits of the questions involved in the war. In other words,

the greatest good of the greatest number cries aloud that the war

must stop. The cold, hard fact is that the great majority of the men

who hold out longest are, usually, either single men having no one

dependent on them, or nothing to lose, or both, or else they are men

more or less indifferent to the ties of family affection, and callous

to the suffering fruitlessly entailed upon innocent noncombatants

by the various and sundry horrors of war, such as decimation of

the plough animals of the country due to their running at large

without caretakers or forage; resultant untilled fields and scant

food; pestilence and famine consequent upon insufficient nourishment;

arson, robbery, rape, and murder inevitably committed in such times

by sorry scamps and ruffians claiming to be patriots but yielding no

allegiance to any responsible head; and so on, ad infinitum.

General MacArthur's proclamation of December 20, 1900, served

notice on the leaders of a hopeless cause that assassinations, such

as that ordered by Juan Cailles, above mentioned, must stop; that

the universal practice of the townfolk, of sending money, supplies,

and information concerning our movements to the enemy in the field,

must stop; that participating in hostilities intermittently, in

citizen garb, followed by return to home and avocation when too

hard pressed, must stop; in short that the war must stop. Yet the

proclamation explained in so firm and kindly a way why the penalties

it promised were only reasonable under the circumstances, that "as an

educational document the effect was immediate and far-reaching," [349]

to quote from an opinion expressed by its author in the body of it,

an opinion entirely consistent with modesty and fully justified by

the facts. General MacArthur also goes on to say of his unrelenting

and rigid enforcement of the terms of this proclamation that the

results "preclude all possibility of doubt * * * that the effective

pacification of the archipelago commenced December 20, 1900"--its

date. It is a part of the history of those times, familiar to all who

are familiar with them, that the Taft Civil Commission thought its

assurances of the benevolent intentions of our government were what

made the civil government possible by midsummer, 1901. But whatever

the Filipinos may think of us at present, now that they understand us

better, certainly in 1900-01, in view of the events of the preceding

two or three years, which formed the basis of the only acquaintance

they then had with us, and in view of the fact that their experience

for the preceding two or three hundred years had made force the only

effective governmental argument with them, and governmental promises a

mere mockery, and in view of the fact that the "never-ceasing patrols,

explorations, escorts, outposts," etc., of General MacArthur's 70,000

men were relentlessly kept up during the six months immediately

following the proclamation and in aid of it, it at once becomes

obvious how infinitesimal a fraction of the final partial pacification

which made the civil government possible, the Taft assurances to the

Filipinos as to our intentions must have been. These matters are of

prime importance to any honest effort toward a clear understanding of

present conditions, because far and away the greatest wrong which we,

in our genuinely benevolent misinformation, have done the Filipinos,

not even excepting the tariff legislation perpetrated upon them by

Congress, lies in the insufferably hypocritical pretence that they

ever consented to our rule, or that they consent to it now--a pretence

conceived in 1898 by Trade Expansion, to beguile a nation the breath of

whose own life is political liberty based on consent of the governed,

into a career of conquest, but not even countenanced since by those

who believe the Government should go into the politico-missionary

business, after the manner of Spain in the sixteenth century.

Having now exhaustively examined the differences of opinion between

Judge Taft and General MacArthur, when the former set to work,

in the summer of 1900, to get a civil government started by the

date of expiration of the term of enlistment of the volunteer army

(June 30, 1901), let us follow the facts of the situation up to the

date last named, or, which is practically the same thing, up to the

inauguration of Judge Taft as Civil Governor of the islands on July 4,

1901, pausing, in passing, for such reflections as may force themselves

upon us as pertinent to the Philippine problem of to-day.

On September 19, 1900, General MacArthur wired Secretary of War

Root--General Corbin, the Adjutant-General of the Army, to be exact,

but it is the same thing--describing what he calls "considerable

activity" throughout Luzon, ominously stating that General Young (up

in the Ilocano country, into which we followed him and his cavalry

in Chapter XII, ante) "has called so emphatically for more force,"

that he, MacArthur, feels grave concern; adding that Luzon north of

the Pasig is "very much disturbed," and that south of the Pasig the

same conditions prevail. [350]

October 26th, General MacArthur cables outlining a plan for a great

campaign on comprehensive lines, stating that "Full development of this

scheme requires about four months and all troops now in the islands,"

and deprecating any move on Mr. Root's part to reduce his force of

70,000 men by starting any of the volunteers homeward before it should

be absolutely necessary. [351] October 28th, General MacArthur wires,

"Shall push everything with great vigor," adding "Expect to have

everything in full operation November 15th." [352] November 5th, as

if to reassure General MacArthur that he and the General understand

each other and that the Taft cotemporaneous nonsense is not going to

be allowed to interfere with more serious business, Secretary Root,

through the Adjutant-General, sends this cable message:

Secretary of War directs no instructions from here be allowed

interfere or impede progress your military operations which he

expects you force to successful conclusion. [353]

So that while the American people were being pacified with the Taft

cablegrams to Secretary Root that the Filipino people wanted peace,

General MacArthur, under Mr. Root's direction, was simultaneously

proceeding to make them want it with the customary argument used

to settle irreconcilable differences between nations--powder and

lead. Mr. Root was all the time in constant communication with both,

but he gave out only the Taft optimism to the public, and withheld the

actual facts within his knowledge. December 25th, General MacArthur

wires Secretary Root, "Expectations based on result of election have

not been realized." "Progress," he says, is "very slow." [354]

And now I come to one of the most important things that all my

researches into the official records of our government concerning

the Philippine Islands have developed. On December 28, 1900, General

MacArthur reports by cable the contents of some important insurgent

papers captured in Cavite Province about that time. The Filipinos have

a great way of reducing to writing, or making minutes of, whatever

occurs at any important conference. This habit they did not abandon

in the field. The papers in question belonged to General Trias, the

Lieutenant-General commanding all the insurgent armies in the field,

and, next to Aguinaldo, the highest official connected with the

revolutionary government. One of these papers, according to General

MacArthur's despatch of December 28th, purported to be the minutes of

a certain meeting had October 11th previous, between General Trias

and the Japanese Consul at Manila. As to whether or not the paper

was really authentic, General MacArthur says: "I accept it as such

without hesitation." Communicating the contents of the paper he says:

Consul advised that Trias visit Japan. Filipinos represented that

concessions which they might be forced to make to Washington would

be more agreeable if made to Japan, which as a nation of kindred

blood would not be likely to assert superiority. Consul said Japan

desired coaling station, freedom to trade and build railways. [355]

I consider these negotiations of the Japanese Government with the

Philippine insurgents important to be related here because they have

never been generally known, for the good reason, of course, that

the President of the United States cannot take the public into his

confidence about such grave and delicate matters when they occur. The

incident is not "ancient history" relatively to present-day problems,

for the following reasons:

(1) Because it is credibly reported and currently believed in the

United States that in Japan, during the cruise of our battleship

fleet around the world in 1907, one of the reception committee of

Japanese officers who welcomed our officers was recognized by one of

the latter as having been, not a great while before that, a servant

aboard an American battleship.

(2) Because of the following incident, related to me, in 1911,

without the slightest injunction of secrecy, by the Director of

Public Health of the Philippine Islands, then on a visit to the United

States. Shortly before the Director's said visit home, while he was out

in one of the provinces, there was brought to his attention a Filipino

with a broken arm. There was a Japanese doctor in the town, at least

a Japanese who had a sign out as a doctor. The Director carried the

sufferer to the "doctor," not being a surgeon himself. The "doctor"

turned out to be a civil engineer, who had been making maps and plans

of fortifications. The plans were found in his possession.

(3) Because from one of the islands through which the northern line of

the Treaty of Paris runs, situated only a pleasant morning's journey

in a launch due north of Aparri, the northernmost town of Luzon, you

can see, on a clear day, with a good field-glass, the southern end of

Formosa, some 60 or 70 miles away. Japan can land an army on American

soil at Aparri any time she wants to, overnight--an army several

times that of the total American force now in the Philippines, [356]

or likely ever to be there. From Aparri it is 70 miles up the river to

Tueguegarao, 40 more to Iligan, and 90 more, all fairly good marching,

to Bayombong, in Nueva Viscaya (total distance, Aparri to Bayombong,

200 miles) the province which lies in the heart of the watershed of

Central Luzon. I know what I am talking about, because that region

was the first judicial district I presided over, and many a hard

journey I have had over it, circuit riding, on a scrubby pony. Part

of it I have been through in the company of President Taft. It thus

appears that from Aparri to Bayombong there would be but a week or

ten days of unresisted marching to reach the watershed region, Nueva

Viscaya. The Japanese soldier's ration is mainly rice, so that he can

carry more days' travel rations than almost any other soldier in the

world. Never fear about their making the journey inside of a week or

ten days, once they start. To descend from the watershed aforesaid,

over the Caranglan Pass, and down the valley of the Rio Grande de

Pampanga to Manila, another three or four days would be all that would

be needed. It would be a Japanese picnic. Fortifying Corregidor Island,

at the entrance to Manila Bay, which is about all the serious scheme

of defence against a foreign foe we have out there, is quite like

the reliance of the Spaniards on Morro Castle, at the mouth of the

harbor of Santiago de Cuba, against our landing at Guantanamo. Our

garrison in the Philippines, all told, is but a handful. Aparri is an

absolutely unfortified seaport, at which the Japanese could land an

army overnight from the southern end of Formosa. There are no military

fortifications whatsoever to stay the advance of an invading army

from Aparri down the Cagayan Valley, and thence over the watershed

of Nueva Viscaya Province, through the Caranglan Pass, and down the

valley of the Pampanga River to Manila. So that to-day Japan can

take Manila inside of two weeks any time she wants to. That is why

I object to the President's "jollying" the situation along as best

he can, without taking the American people into his confidence. Any

army officer at our War College will inform any member of the House

or Senate on inquiry, that Japan can take the Philippines any time

she wants to. President Taft and the Mikado may keep on exchanging the

most cordial cablegrams imaginable, but the map-making goes on just the

same. And, earnest and sincere as both the President and the Emperor

undoubtedly are in their desire to preserve the general peace, who

is going to restrain Hobson and Hearst, and several of Japan's public

men equally distinguished and equally inflammatory? Heads of nations

cannot restrain gusts of popular passion. The Pacific Coast is not so

friendly to Japan as the rest of our country, and as between Japan and

the Pacific Coast, we are pretty apt to stand by the latter without

inquiring with meticulous nicety into any differences that may arise.

The reason I said in the chapter before this one that Mr. Root is

a dangerous man to Republican institutions was because he is of the

type who are constantly finding situations which they consider it best

for the people not to know about. After the McKinley election of 1900

was safely "put over," Mr. Root, as Secretary of War, let Judge Taft

go ahead and ride his dove-of-peace hobby-horse in the Philippines,

duly repeating to the American people all the cheery Taft cluckings

to said horse, at a time when the real situation is indicated by such

grim correspondence as the following cablegram dated January 29, 1901:

Wood, Havana: Secretary of War is desirous to know if you can

give your consent to the immediate withdrawal Tenth Infantry

from Cuba. Imperative that we have immediate use of every

available company we can lay our hands on for service in the

Philippines. (Signed) Corbin. [357]

But let us turn from this sorry spectacle of Mr. Root pulling the wool

over the eyes of his countrymen to make them believe the Filipinos

were not quite so unconsenting as they seemed to be, and again look

at the sheer splendor of American military ability to get anything

done the Government wants done. I refer to the capture of Aguinaldo.

One of the most eminent lawyers in this country once said to me, "I

would not let that man Funston enter my house." I tried to enlighten

him, but as I happened to be a guest in his house at the time,

which entitled him to exemption from light if he insisted--which he

did--General Funston and he have continued to miss what might have been

a real pleasure to them both. The following is, as briefly as I can

dispose of it, the story of the capture of Aguinaldo on March 23, 1901.

Ever since Aguinaldo had escaped through our lines in November,

1899, his capture had been the one great consummation most devoutly

wished. It has already been shown how busy with the war the army

was all the time Judge Taft was gayly jogging away astride of his

peace hobby about the insurrection being really quite regretted

and over. However, in the favorite remark with which he used to

wave the insurrection into thin air, to the effect that it was

now merely "a Mafia on a large scale," there was one element

of truth. The general feeling of the people, both educated and

uneducated, was such as to countenance the attitude of the leaders

that pro-American tendencies were treason. Any leader who surrendered

of course was thereafter an object of at least some suspicion to his

fellow-countrymen, however assiduous his subsequent double-dealing. As

long as Aguinaldo remained out, this state of affairs was sure to

continue indefinitely, possibly for years to come. If captured, he

would probably himself give up the struggle, and use his influence

with the rest to do likewise. Therefore, in the spring of 1901,

each and every one of General MacArthur's 70,000 men was, and had

been since 1899, on the qui vive to make his own personal fortunes

secure for life, and gain lasting military distinction, by taking

any sort of chances to capture Aguinaldo. On February 8, 1901, an

officer of General Funston's district, the Fourth, in central Luzon,

intercepted a messenger bearing despatches from Aguinaldo to one of

his generals of that region, directing the general (Lacuna) to send

some reinforcements to him, Aguinaldo. General Funston's headquarters

were then at San Fernando, in the province of Pampanga--organized as a

"civil" government province by act of the Taft Commission just five

days later. [358] Through these despatches and their bearer, General

Funston ascertained the hiding-place of the insurgent chieftain to

be at a place called Palanan, in the mountains of Isabela Province,

in northeastern Luzon, near the Pacific Coast. Early in the war we had

availed ourselves of a certain tribe, or clan, known as the Maccabebes,

who look nowise different from all other Filipinos, but who had, under

the Spanish government, by reason of long-standing feuds with their

more rebellious neighbors, come to be absolutely loyal to the Spanish

authorities. When we came they had transferred that loyalty to us, and

had now become a recognized and valuable part of our military force. So

it occurred to General Funston; "Why not personate the reinforcements

called for, the American officers to command the expedition assuming

the role of captured American prisoners?" The plan was submitted to

General MacArthur and adopted. A picked company of Maccabebes was

selected, consisting of about eighty men, and General Funston decided

to go himself, taking with him on the perilous expedition four young

officers of proven mettle: Captain Harry W. Newton, 34th Infantry,

U. S. Volunteers, now a captain of the Coast Artillery; Captain

R. T. Hazzard, 11th Volunteer Cavalry; Lieutenant O. P. M. Hazzard,

his brother, of the same regiment, the latter now an officer of

the regular army, and Lieutenant Mitchell, "my efficient aid." [359]

March 6, 1901, the U.S.S. Vicksburg slipped quietly out of Manila Bay,

bearing the participants in the desperate enterprise--as desperate

an undertaking as the heart and brain of a soldier ever carried to a

successful conclusion. General Thomas H. Barry wrote Secretary of War

Root, after they left, telling of their departure, and stating that

he did not much expect ever to see them again. The chances were ten

to one that the eighty men would meet five or ten times their number,

and, as they were to masquerade as troops of the enemy, they could

not complain, under the recognized laws of war as to spies, at being

summarily shot if captured alive. And the whole Filipino people were a

secret service ready to warn Aguinaldo, should the carefully concocted

ruse be discovered anywhere along the journey. They went down to the

southern end of Luzon, and through the San Bernardino Straits into

the Pacific Ocean, and thence up the east coast of Luzon to Casiguran

Bay, about 100 miles south of Palanan, landing at Casiguran Bay, March

14th. The "little Macks," as General Funston calls the Maccabebes, were

made to discard their dapper American uniforms after they got aboard

the ship, and don instead a lot of nondescript clothing gathered by

the military authorities at Manila before the Vicksburg sailed, so

as to resemble the average insurgent command. Not a man of them had

been told of the nature of the expedition before sailing. This was

not for fear of treachery, but lest some one of the faithful "Macks"

should get his tongue loosed by hospitality before departing. Also,

their Krag-Jorgensen regulation rifles were taken from them, and a

miscellaneous assortment of old Springfields, Mausers, etc., given them

instead, to complete the deception. An ex-insurgent officer, well known

to Aguinaldo, but now in General Funston's employ, was to play the

role of commanding officer of the "reinforcements." To read General

Funston's account of this expedition is a more convincing rebuttal

of the contemporaneous Taft denials of Filipino hostility and of the

unanimity of the feeling of the people against us, than a thousand

quotations from official documents could ever be. It was necessary

to land more than 100 miles south of Aguinaldo's hiding-place, lest

the smoke of the approaching vessel should be sighted from a distance,

and some peasant or lookout give the alarm. Accordingly, they landed at

Casiguran Bay by night, with the ship's lights screened, the Vicksburg

at once departing out of sight of land, and agreeing to meet them off

Palanan, their destination, on March 25th, eleven days later. From the

beginning they vigilantly and consummately played the role planned,

the "Macks" having been drilled on the way up, each and all, in the

story they were to tell at the first village near Casiguran Bay, and

everywhere thereafter, to the effect that they had come across country,

and en route had met ten American soldiers out map-making, and had

killed two, wounded three, and captured five. They were to point to

General Funston and the four other Americans in corroboration of their

story. Speaking of himself and his four fellow "prisoners," General

Funston says, "We were a pretty scrubby looking lot of privates." The

villagers received the patriot forces, thus flushed with triumph,

in an appropriate manner, and supplied them with rations and guides

for the rest of their 100-mile journey to the headquarters of the

"dictator." General Funston is even at pains to say for the village

officials that they were very humane and courteous to himself and

the other four American "prisoners." They reached Palanan Bay,

eight miles from Palanan, on March 22d. Here Hilario Tal Placido,

the ex-insurgent officer whose role in the present thrilling drama

was that of "commanding officer" of the expedition, sent a note to

Aguinaldo, stating that he had halted his command for a rest at the

beach preparatory to marching inland and reporting to the Honorable

Presidente, that they were very much exhausted, and much in need of

food, and please to send him some. Of course that was the natural card

to play to put Aguinaldo off his guard. The food came, and the bearers

returned and casually reported to the Honorable Presidente that his

honorable reinforcements would soon be along, much to the honorable

joy--to make the thing a little Japanesque--of the president of the

honorable republic. This incident has been since made the occasion of

some criticism--that it was contrary to decency to accept Aguinaldo's

food and then attack him afterwards. General Funston very properly

replies in effect that the case would have been very different had he

thrown himself on Aguinaldo's mercy, taken his food, and used treachery

afterwards, but that his conduct was entirely correct, under the code

of war, for the reason that should he and his command be captured

while personating enemy's forces, Aguinaldo would have had a perfect

right, under the rules of the game, to shoot them all as spies. He

adds rather savagely, concerning "certain ladylike persons in the

United States" who have censured his course in the matter, that he

"would be very much interested in seeing the results of a surgical

operation performed on the skull of a man who cannot readily see the

radical difference between the two propositions," and that he doubts

if a good quality of calf brains would be revealed by the operation.

At all events, the expedition was very much refreshed by the food

and highly delighted at the proof, contained in the sending of it,

that Aguinaldo did not suspect a ruse. But now came one of the many

emergencies which had to be met by quick wit in the course of that

memorable adventure. Aguinaldo sent word to leave the "prisoners"

under a guard in one of the huts by the sea-shore, where there was one

of the Aguinaldo retainers in charge, an old Tagalo. After a hurried,

whispered conversation, "prisoner" Funston instructed "Commanding

Officer" Placido to go ahead with his main column and then a little

later send back a forged written order purporting to be from Aguinaldo,

for the "prisoners" to come on also. This was shown to the old Tagalo,

thus disarming suspicion on his part. But now came the "closest shave"

they had. The column met a detachment from Aguinaldo's headquarters

sent down with instructions to relieve the necessarily worn-out

guard of the newly arrived "re-inforcements" that were supposed to

be guarding the five prisoners at the beach, and let said guard come

on up to headquarters with the rest of the "re-inforcements," the

idea being to still leave the prisoners at the beach so they would

not learn definitely as to the Aguinaldo whereabouts. Detaining the

officer commanding this detachment for a moment or so on some pretext,

the "Commanding Officer" of the "re-inforcements" whispered to a

Maccabebe corporal to run back and tell General Funston and the rest

of the "prisoners" to jump in the bushes and hide. This they did,

lying within thirty feet of the detachment, as it passed them en

route for the beach. Of course a fight would have meant considerable

firing, and the quarry might hear it, take fright, and escape. Finally

they reached Palanan, the "prisoners" quite far in the rear. Placido

got safely into Aguinaldo's presence, followed at a short distance

by the main body of his Maccabebes. Aguinaldo's life-guard of some

fifty men, neatly uniformed, presented arms as Placido entered the

insurgent headquarters building, and thereafter waited at attention

outside. Then the worthy Placido entertained the honorable Presidente

with a few cock-and-bull stories about the march across country,

etc., made obediently to the President's order, keeping a weather

eye out of the window all the time. As soon as the Maccabebes had

come up and formed facing the Aguinaldo life-guard, Placido went to

the window and ordered them to open fire. This they did, killing

two of the insurgents and wounding their commanding officer. The

rest fled, panic-stricken, by reason of the surprise. Then Placido,

a very stout individual, grabbed Aguinaldo, who only weighs about

115 pounds, threw him down, and sat on him, until General Funston,

the Hazzards, Mitchell, and Newton arrived. The orders were iron-clad

that under no circumstances, if it could be avoided, was Aguinaldo

to be killed. His signature to proclamations telling the people to

quit the war was going to be needed too much. The party rested two

days and then set out for the coast again, on March 25th, the day the

Vicksburg had agreed to meet them. "At noon" says General Funston,

"we again saw the Pacific, and far out on it a wisp of smoke--the

Vicksburg coming in!" In due course they reached Manila Bay. The

old palace of the Spanish captains-general, then occupied by our

commanding general, is up the Pasig River, accessible from the bay

by launch. By that method General Funston took his precious prisoner

to the palace without the knowledge of a soul in the great city of

Manila. He arrived before General MacArthur had gotten up. In a few

minutes the General came out. "Where is Aguinaldo?" said he, dryly. He

supposed General Funston simply had some details to tell, like the

commanding officers of hundreds of other expeditions that had gone out

before that on false scents in search of the illustrious but elusive

Presidente. "Right here in this house," said General Funston. General

MacArthur could hardly believe his ears. A few days later, General

Funston walked into General MacArthur's office. The latter said;

"Well, Funston, they do not seem to have thought much in Washington

of your performance. I am afraid you have got into trouble." "At the

same time he handed me," says General Funston in the Scribner Magazine

article above mentioned, "a cablegram announcing my appointment as

a brigadier-general in the regular army."

In his annual report for 1901, [360] General MacArthur describes

the capture of Aguinaldo as "the most momentous single event of

the year," stating also that "Aguinaldo was the incarnation of the

insurrection." This last statement explains why he was so anxious to

capture him alive. If dead, he would be sure to get re-incarnated in

the person of some able assistant of his entourage, thus insuring

undisturbed continuance of the war. He was most graciously treated

by General MacArthur during his stay as that distinguished soldier's

"guest" at the Malacanan palace, from March 28th until April 20th. The

word "guest" is placed in quotations because the host thought so

much of him that he considered him worth many hundred times his

weight in gold, and had him watched night and day by a commissioned

officer. Everything that had been done by the Americans since November,

1899, was explained to him, and he was made to see that our purposes

with regard to his people were not only benevolent but also inflexible;

in other words that there was no altering our determination to make

his people happy whether they were willing or not. Seeing this,

Aguinaldo bowed to the inevitable. The programme explained to

Aguinaldo is wittily described by a very bright Englishwoman as a

plan "to have lots of American school teachers at once set to work

to teach the Filipino English and at the same time keep plenty of

American soldiers around to knock him on the head should he get a

notion that he is ready for self-government before the Americans

think he is"--a quaint scheme, she adds, "and one characteristic of

the dauntlessness of American energy." To be brief, on April 19th,

Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the American Government,

which all agree he has faithfully observed ever since, and issued

a proclamation recommending abandonment of further resistance. This

proclamation was at once published by General MacArthur and signalized

by the immediate liberation of one thousand prisoners of war, on

their likewise taking the oath of allegiance. In his proclamation

Aguinaldo said, among other things:

The time has come, however, when they [the Filipino people] find

their advance along this path [the path of their aspirations]

impeded by an irresistible force. * * * Enough of blood, enough

of tears and desolation.

He concludes by announcing his final unconditional submission to

American sovereignty and advises others to do likewise. [361]

Soon after this General Tino surrendered in General Young's district,

and in another part of northern Luzon, General Mascardo, commanding

the insurgent forces in the provinces of Bataan and Zambales,

heretofore described as "the west wing of the great central plain,"

also surrendered. In the latter part of June, General Cailles, with

whom we have already had occasion to become acquainted, in connection

with Judge Taft's "Mafia on a large scale," also surrendered in

Laguna Province. After that, there was never any more trouble in

northern Luzon. But during the spring of 1901, the Commission had

been very busy organizing the provinces of southern Luzon under

civil government, thus cutting short the process of licking it into

submission and substituting a process of loving it into that state

through good salaries and otherwise--a policy which postponed the

final permanent pacification of that ill-fated region for several

years, as hereinafter more fully set forth.

The unconditional absoluteness with which Judge Taft acted from the

beginning on the assumption that the Filipinos would make a distinction

between civil and military rule, and that their objection to us was

because we had first sent soldiers to rule them and not civilians,

and that these objections would vanish before the benignant sunlight

of a government by civilians, is one of the great tragedies of all

history, considering the countless lives it eventually cost. As a

matter of fact, the Filipino objection had little or no relation

to the kind of clothes we wore, whether they were white duck or

khaki. Their objection was to us, i.e., to an alien yoke. However,

to heal the bleeding wounds of war, the Filipinos were benevolently

told to forget it, and a civil government was set up on July 4, 1901,

pursuant to the amiable delusion indicated. That it has never yet

proved a panacea, and why, will be developed in the next and subsequent

chapters, but only in-so-far as such development throws light on the

present situation--which it is the whole object of this book to do.

And now a few words by way of concluding the present chapter, as

preliminary to the inauguration of a civil government, cannot be

misconstrued, though they come from one who held office under it. I

have certainly made clear that Judge Taft and his colleagues were as

honest in their delusion about how popular they were with the Filipinos

as many other public men who have been known to have hobbies, and my

remarks must be understood as based on the comprehensive bird's-eye

view which we have had of the whole situation from the outbreak of

the war with Spain in 1898 to the end of June, 1901, as a summation

of that situation. It is quite true that all contemporary history is

as much affected by its environment as the writer of it is by his

own limitations. But it certainly seems clear now that, in regard

to the Philippine problem presented in 1898 by the decision to keep

the islands, the American people were played upon by the politicians

for the next few years thereafter, sometimes on the idea that the

Filipino people were not a people but only a jumble of semi-civilized

tribes incapable of any intelligent notion of what independence meant,

and sometimes on the idea that while there was no denying that they

were indeed a civilized, homogeneous, Christian people, yet the great

majority of them did not want independence, and would prefer to be

under a strong alien government. But the key-note to the McKinley

policy from the beginning, his answer to the eager question of his

own people, was that there was no real absence of the consent of the

governed. In Senator Lodge's history of the war with Spain, written in

1899, there is a description of the long struggle for independence in

Cuba, whose existence Spain denied year after year until we decided

that patience had ceased to be a virtue, which description is so

strikingly applicable to the situation in the Philippines during

the first years of American rule that I cannot refrain from quoting

it here:

And we were to go on pretending that the war was not there,

and that we had answered the unsettled question, when we really

had simply turned our heads aside and refused to look. And then

when the troublesome matter had been so nicely laid to sleep,

the result followed which is usual when Congressmen and Presidents

and nations are trying to make shams pass for realities." [362]

By the same high token the Philippine question will always remain

"the unsettled question" until it is settled right. In other words,

the American occupation of the Philippines, having been originally

predicated on the idea that the Filipino people did not really

want independence, a fiction which political expediency incident

to government by parties inexorably compelled it to try to live up

to thereafter, took the form, in 1901, of a civil government founded

upon a benevolent lie, which expressed a hope, not a fact, a hopeless

hope that can never be a fact. And that is what has been the matter

with it ever since.

The papers 'id it 'andsome,

But you bet the army knows.

CHAPTER XV

GOVERNOR TAFT--1901-2

For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of

my people slightly, saying--Peace, peace; when there

is no peace. Jeremiah viii., 11.

On February 22, 1898, the American Consul at Manila, Mr. Williams,

after he had been at that post for about a month, wrote the State

Department, describing the Spanish methods of keeping from the world

the outward and visible manifestations of the desire of the Filipino

people to be free from their yoke thus:

Peace was proclaimed and, since my coming, festivities therefor

were held; but there is no peace, and has been none for two years.

He adds:

Conditions here and in Cuba are practically alike. War exists,

battles are of almost daily occurrence, etc. [363]

As will hereinafter appear, this is not far from a correct description

of the conditions which prevailed successively in various provinces

of the Philippines in gradually lessening degree for the six years

next ensuing after the report of the Taft Commission of November 30,

1900, wherein they said:

A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely

willing to accept the establishment of a government under the

supremacy of the United States. [364]

We have seen how from the date of the outbreak, February 4, 1899, to

the date of his final departure from the islands for the United States

on May 5, 1900, General Otis had diligently supplied the eager ear of

Mr. McKinley with his "situation well in hand" and "insurrection about

to collapse" telegrams, Secretary of War Alger having meantime been

forced out of the cabinet--in part, at least--by a public opinion which

indignantly believed that the real situation was being withheld. We

have seen how, from soon after the arrival of the Taft Commission at

Manila on June 3, 1900, until after the November elections of that

year, the same eager presidential ear aforesaid was supplied with

like material through the presumably innocent but opportunely deluded

optimism of the Commission, as manifested in the above sample message;

how the actual military situation as described by General MacArthur,

the military commander at the time, was one of "desperate resistance by

means of a general banding of the people in support of the guerrillas

in the field," [365] he having wired the War Department on January 4,

1901, "Troops throughout the archipelago more active than at any time

since November, 1899"; [366] and how this had been followed on July

4, 1901, by a civil government, the inauguration of which could by

no possibility be construed as affirming to the people of the United

States anything other than the existence of a state of peace.

We are to trace in this and subsequent chapters how, a short time after

the civil government was instituted, the insurrection got its second

wind; how a year later came another public declaration of peace, on

July 4, 1902; and how this was followed by a long series of public

disorders, combated by prosecutions for sedition and brigandage,

until toward the end of 1906. The drama is quite an allegory--Uncle

Sam wrestling with his guardian angel Consent-of-the-governed. He

finally gets both the angel's shoulders on the mat, however, and so

the two have lived at loggerheads in the Philippines ever since.

As soon as we had once blundered into the colonial business, the

rock-bottom frankness with which we so dearly love to deal with one

another, let carping Europe deny it as she will, was superseded

by a systematic effort on the part of the statesmen responsible

for the blunder to conceal it. It soon became clear to those on the

inside that the sovereign American people had "bought a gold brick,"

that is to say, had made a grievous mistake and had done wrong. But

as it is not expedient for courtiers to tell the sovereign he has

done wrong, because "The king can do no wrong," thereafter all the

courtiers,--i. e. persons desiring to control the "sovereign" while

seeming to obey him--instead of risking loss of the "royal" favor

by boldly telling the people they had done wrong and ought to mend

the error of their ways, began to fill their ears and salve their

conscience with mediaeval doctrines about salvation of the heathen

through governmental missions maintained by the joint agencies of Cross

and Sword. For the foregoing and cognate reasons, Senator Lodge's

description of Spain's last thirty years in Cuba fits our first six

or seven in the Philippines, beginning in 1899 with the original

Otis press censorship policy of "not letting anything go that will

hurt the Administration," and coming on down to a certificate made

in 1907 by the Philippine Commission for consumption in the United

States, to the effect that a state of general and complete peace had

prevailed throughout the islands for a stated period preceding the

certificate, when, as a matter of fact, during the period covered by

the certificate, an executive proclamation formally declaring a state

of insurrection had issued, and the Supreme Court of the islands had

upheld certain drastic executive action as legal because of the state

of insurrection recognized by the proclamation.

The Taft civil government of the Philippines set up in 1901 was an

attempt to answer the question which, during the crucial period of

our country's history following the Spanish War, rang so persistently

through the public utterances of both Grover Cleveland and Benjamin

Harrison: "Mr. President, how are you going to square the subjugation

of the Philippines with the freeing of Cuba?" Mr. McKinley's

answer had been, in effect: "Never mind about that, Grover; you and

Benjamin are back numbers. I will show you 'the latest thing' in the

consent-of-the-governed line, a government not 'essentially popular,'

it is true, nor indeed at all 'popular,' in fact very unpopular,

but 'essentially popular in form.' You lads are not experts on the

political trapeze." Accordingly, as Senator Lodge said concerning

the dreary years of continuous public disorders in Cuba under Spain,

which we finally put a stop to in 1898:

We were to go on pretending that the war was not there, etc.

Lack of frankness is usually due to weakness of one sort or

another. The weakness of the Spanish colonial system lay in the

impotent poverty of the home government and the graft tendencies

of the colonial officials. The weakness of the American colonial

system has always lain in the fundamental unfitness of republican

governmental machinery for boldly advocating and honestly enforcing

doctrines which deny frankly and as a matter of course that governments

derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. There

are so many people in a republic like ours who will always stand by

this last proposition as righteous, and as being the chief bulwark

of their own liberties, and so many who will always regard denial

of that proposition as an insidious practice calculated ultimately

to react on their own institutions, that no colonial government of

conquered subject provinces eager for independence can ever have the

sympathy and backing of all our people. Thus it is that to get home

support for the policy, the supreme need of the colonial government

is constant apology for its own existence, and constant effort to

show that the subject people do not really want freedom to pursue

happiness in their own way as badly as their orators say they do;

that the oratory is mere "hot air"; and that the people really like

alien domination better than they seem to.

Always in a mental attitude of self-defence against home criticism,

in its official reports there is ever present with the Philippine

insular government the tendency and temptation not to volunteer to

the American people evidence within its possession calculated to

awaken discussion as to the wisdom of its continuance. It thus usurps

a legitimate function never intended to be delegated to the Executive,

but reserved to the people. It thus makes itself the judge of how much

the people at home shall know. The law of self-preservation prompts

it not to take the American people into its confidence, at least

not that portion of them who are opposed on principle to holding

remote colonies impossible to defend in the event of war without a

large standing army maintained for the purpose. There is always the

apprehension that the value of apparently unfavorable evidence will

not be wisely weighed by the people at home, because of unfamiliarity

with insular conditions. This is by no means altogether vicious. It

is a perfectly natural attitude and a good deal can be said in favor

of it. But the real vice of it lies in the fact that your colonial

government thus becomes not unlike the president of a certain naval

board before which a case involving the commission of an officer of

the navy was once tried. They had no competent official stenographer to

take down all that transpired. The Navy Department was asked for one,

but they referred it to the board. The president of the board knew very

well that "the defence" wanted to show bias on his part. He exuded

conscious rectitude and plainly resented any suggestion of bias. So

a stenographer was refused and the case proceeded, the proceedings

being recorded in long hand by a regular permanent employee of the

board. Under such circumstances, there is so much which transpires that

is absolutely irrelevant and immaterial, that the proceedings would

be interminable if every little thing were recorded. Consequently,

much that was material, including casual remarks of the president of

the board clearly indicative of bias sufficient to disqualify any

judge or juror on earth, failed of entry in the record. However,

enough was gotten into the record to satisfy the President of the

United States that the president of the board was not only not

impartial, but very much prejudiced, and he reversed the action of

the board. The case of that board is very much like the case of the

Philippine Government. The case of the latter is, as it were, a case

involving a question as to how long a guardianship ought to continue,

and they simply fail and omit to have recorded in a form where it may

be available to the reviewing authority, the American people, much that

is material (on the idea of saving the reviewing authority labor and

trouble), which they think the record ought not to be cumbered with,

or the reviewing authority bothered with. This practice is due to a

confident belief that the American people, being so far away, and being

necessarily so wholly unacquainted with all the ins and outs of the

situation in the Philippines, are not fitted to pass intelligently on

the questions which continually confront the colonial government. This

is not a mental attitude of insult to the intelligence of the people

of the United States. It is simply a belief that they, the colonial

officials, know much better than the American people can ever know,

what is wisest, in each case, to be done in the premises. And there

is much to be said in favor of this view, so far as details go. The

fundamental error of it, however, lies in the assumption that the

American people are forever committed to permanent retention of the

Philippines, i. e., permanent so far as any living human being is

concerned--an assumption wholly unauthorized by any declaration of

the law-making power of this government, and countenanced only by

the oft-expressed hope of President Taft that that will be the policy

some day declared, if any definite policy is ever declared. Thus it

is that throughout the last twelve years those particular facts and

events which (to me) seem most vitally relevant to the fundamental

question in the case, viz., whether or not we should continue to

persist in the original blunder of inaugurating and maintaining a--to

all intents and purposes--permanent over-seas colonial government,

have been withheld from the knowledge of the American public. The

present policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention

is a mere makeshift to avoid a frank avowal of intention to retain

the islands for all future time with which anybody living has any

practical concern. Until it is substituted by a definite declaration

by Congress similar to the one we made in the case of Cuba, and the

present American Governor-General and his associates are substituted

by men sent out to report back how soon they think the Filipinos

may safely be trusted to attend to their own domestic concerns, all

crucial facts and situations that might jeopardize the continuance

of the present American regime in the Philippines will continue,

as heretofore, to remain unmentioned in the official reports of the

American authorities now out there. Until that is done, you will never

hear the Filipino side of the case from anybody whose opinion you are

willing to make the basis of governmental action. These remarks will,

obviously from the nature of the case, be quite as true long after

President Taft, the reader, and I are dead as they are now.

Mr. Taft would be very glad to have Congress declare frankly that it

is the purpose of this Government to hold the Philippines permanently,

i. e., permanently so far as the word means continuance of the "uplift"

treatment long after everybody now on the earth is beneath it. But

because public opinion in the United States is so much divided as

to the wisdom of a policy of frankly avowed intention permanently

to retain the islands, he prefers to leave the whole matter open

and undetermined, so as to get the support both of those who think

a definite programme of permanent retention righteous and those who

think such a programme vicious. He wishes to please both sides of

a moral issue, on the idea that, as the present policy is in his

individual judgment best for all concerned, the end justifies the

means. Yet, as the issue is a moral one, which concerns the cause of

representative government throughout the world, and a strategic one

which concerns the national defence, it should, in my judgment, no

longer be dodged, but squarely met. You constantly hear President Taft

talking quite out loud here at home, in his public utterances, about

the great politico-missionary work we are doing in the Philippines

by furnishing them with the most approved up-to-date methods for

the pursuit of happiness, the avoidance of graft in government, the

elimination of crimes of violence, in short the ideal way to minimize

the ills that human governments are heir to, while every day and every

dollar spent out there by Americans induced by him to go there, are

time and money tensely arrayed against the ultimate independence he

purports to favor. Give the Americans out there a square deal. Let

them know whether we are going to keep the islands or whether we

are not. Honesty is a far better policy than the present policy. The

Americans in the islands, Mr. Taft's agents in the Philippines, talk no

uncandid and misleading stuff about the Philippines being exclusively

for the Filipinos. And they do considerable talking. They need looking

after, if the present pious fiction is to be kept up at this end of the

line. Nobody in the Philippines to-day, among the Americans, considers

talk about independence as anything other than political buncombe very

hampering to their work. Listen to this high official of the insular

government, who writes in the North American Review for February, 1912:

The somewhat blatant note with which we at the beginning

proclaimed our altruistic purposes in the Philippines has died

away into a whisper. To say much about it is to incur a charge

of hypocrisy. [367]

The most important problem which confronted Mr. McKinley when he

sent Judge Taft to the Philippines was how to so handle the supreme

question of public order as to avoid any necessity of having to

ask Congress later for more volunteers to replace those whose terms

of enlistment would expire June 30, 1901. We have already reviewed

the strenuous efforts of General MacArthur during the twelve months

immediately following the arrival of the Taft Commission in June,

1900, to get rid of the shadow of this necessity by the date named,

the regular army having been reorganized meantime and considerably

increased by the Act of February 2, 1901. On March 22, 1901, while

the Taft Commission was going around the islands with their Federal

party folk, holding out the prospect of office to those who would

quit insurging and come in and be good, General MacArthur reported

progress to Secretary of War Root by cable as follows: "Hope report

cessation of hostilities before June 30." [368] His idea was to get

a good military grip on the situation, if possible, by that time,

and, as a corollary, of course, that the grip thus obtained should

be diligently retained for a long time, not loosened, so that the

disturbed conditions incident to many years of war might have a few

years, at least, in which to settle. In his annual report dated July 4,

1901, the date of the inauguration of Judge Taft as "Civil Governor,"

he says, in regard to the imperative necessity for continuing the

military grip by keeping on hand sufficient forces:

Anything in the immediate future calculated to impede the activity

or reduce the efficiency of these instruments will not only be a

menace to the present, but put in jeopardy the entire future of

American possibilities in the archipelago. [369]

General MacArthur believed in keeping the islands permanently. His

views were frankly imperialistic. He had no salve to offer to the

conscience of pious thrift at home anxious to believe that the

Filipinos were not bitterly opposed to our rule, and very much in

favor of what was supposed to be a glittering opening for Trade

Expansion. He was thoroughly imbued with the British colonial idea

known as The White Man's Burden. On the other hand, Governor Taft

firmly believed that kindness would cure the desire of the people for

independence. The difference between these two gentlemen was fully

ventilated afterward before the Senate Committee of 1902. A statement

of General MacArthur's embodying the crux of this difference was read

to Governor Taft by Senator Carmack, and the Governor's reply was:

We did not then agree with that statement, and we do not now

agree with it. [370]

A little later, in the same connection, he said to the same Senate

Committee, with the cheery tolerance of conflicting views which comes

only from entire confidence in the soundness of one's own:

I have been called the Mark Tapley of this Philippine business.

There is no doubt about the fact that President Taft is an

optimist. But while optimism is a very blessed thing in a sick-room or

a financial panic, it is a very poor substitute for powder and lead

in putting down an insurrection, or in weaning people from a desire

for independence accentuated by a long war waged for that purpose,

especially when your kindness must be accompanied by assurances to

the objects of it that on account of a lack of sufficient intelligence

they are not fit for the thing they want. It was upon a programme of

this sort that Governor Taft entered upon the task of reconciling the

Filipinos to American rule more than ten years ago. The impossibility

of the task is of course obvious enough from the mere statement of

it. The subsequent bitterness between him and the military authorities

was quite carefully and very properly kept from the American public

because it might get back to the Filipino public. The military folk

knew that to go around the country setting up provincial and municipal

governments, carrying a liberal pay-roll, with diligent contemporaneous

circulation of the knowledge that anybody who would quit fighting

would stand a good chance to get an office, would seem to many of the

Filipinos a confession of weakness and fear, sure to cause trouble

later. Many of them--of course it would be inappropriate to mention

names--simply did not believe that Mr. Taft was honest in his absurd

notion. They simply damned "politics" for meddling with war, and let

it go at that. But the real epic pathos of the whole thing was that

Mr. Taft was actually sincere. He believed that the majority of the

Philippine people were for him and his policies. As late as 1905,

he seems to have clung to this idea, according to various accounts

by Senators Newlands, Dubois, and others, in magazine articles

written after their return from a trip to the Philippines in that

year in company with Mr. Taft, then Secretary of War. In fact so

impressed were they with the general discontent out there, and yet so

considerate of their good friend Mr. Taft's feelings in the matter and

his confidence that the Filipinos loved benevolent alien domination,

that one of them simply contented himself with the remark:

When we left the islands I do not believe there was a single

member of our party who was not sorry we own them, except Secretary

Taft himself.

Indeed it is not until 1907 that, we find Mr. Taft's paternal

solicitude for his step-daughter, Miss Filipina, finally reconciling

itself to the idea that while this generation seems to want Home

Rule as irreconcilably as Ireland herself and "wont be happy 'til

it gets it," yet inasmuch as Home Rule is not, in his judgment, good

for every people, this generation is therefore a wicked and perverse

generation, and hence the Filipinos must simply resign themselves to

the idea of being happy in some other generation. This attitude was

freely stated before the Millers' convention at St. Louis, May 30,

1907, the speech being reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat the

next day. Said Mr. Taft on that occasion, after admitting that the

Islands had been a tremendous financial drain on us:

If, then, we have not had material recompense, have we had it in

the continuing gratitude of the people whom we have aided?

Answering this, in effect, though not in so many words, "Alas, no,"

he adds, with a sigh which is audible between the lines:

He who would measure his altruism by the thankfulness of those

whom he aids, will not persist in good works.

Thus we see the Mark Tapley optimism of 1902 become in 1907 a species

of solicitude which Dickens describes in Bleak House as "Telescopic

Philanthropy," in the chapter by that title in which he introduces

the famous Mrs. Jellyby, mother of a large and interesting family,

"a lady of very remarkable strength of character, who devotes

herself entirely to the public," who "has devoted herself to an

extensive variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at

present devoted to the subject of Africa, with a general view to the

cultivation of the coffee berry--and the natives,"--to the woeful

neglect of her own domestic concerns and her large and expensive

family of children. Since 1907, Mr. Taft has frankly abandoned his

early delusion about the consent-of-the-governed, and boldly takes

the position, up to that time more or less evaded, that the consent

of the governed is not at all essential to just government.

The apotheosis of Uncle Sam as Mrs. Jellyby is to be found in one of

Mr. Taft's speeches wherein he declared that the present Philippine

policy was "a plan for the spread of Christian civilization in the

Orient."

Thus has it been that, under the reactionary influence of a colonial

policy, this republic has followed its frank abandonment of the idea

that all just government must derive its origin in the consent of

the governed by a further abandonment of the idea that Church and

State should be kept separate. I do not wish to make President Taft

ridiculous, and could not if I would. Nor do I seek to belittle him

in the eyes of his people,--for we are "his people," for the time

being. No one can belittle him. He is too big a man to be belittled

by anybody. Besides, he is, in many respects beyond all question, a

truly great man. But he is not the only great man in history who has

made egregious blunders. And there is no question that we are running

there on the confines of Asia, in the Philippines, a superfluous

governmental kindergarten whose sessions should be concluded, not

suddenly, but without unnecessary delay. The two principal reasons

for retaining the Filipinos as subjects, or "wards," or by whatever

euphemism any one may prefer to designate the relation, are, first,

that a Filipino government would not properly protect life and

property, and second, that although they complain much at taxation

without representation through tariff and other legislation placed or

kept on the statute books of Congress through the influence and for

the benefit of special interests in the United States, yet that such

taxation without representation is not so grievous as to justify them

in feeling as we did in 1776. Whether these reasons for retaining the

Filipinos as subjects indefinitely are justified by the facts, must

depend upon the facts. If they are not, the question will then arise,

"Would a Filipino government be any worse for the Filipinos than the

one we are keeping saddled on them over their protest?"