The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States

It is difficult to understand the situation existing in the Philippines when the first gun was fired in Manila Bay without first turning back the pages of history for a brief period. Much can be conveyed to the reader, however, in explaining the grievances of many decades against the colonial government, by saying that the Spanish system in the islands was essentially the same as that followed in her South American possessions, including the island of Cuba. What differences there may have existed were purely of degree,—the atrocities committed in the Oriental colony being the worse⁠[1]. In the clerical predominance, in the power of the Church, in the baseness of its industrial and economic organization and the shallowness of the governmental machinery in every branch,—the situation in the Philippines was the exact replica of that found in Cuba.

Prior to 1872, some thirty-four major and minor revolts against the foreign authority had already taken place in different localities of the archipelago. Most of them were short-lived, and practically all had been suppressed by the better-trained Spanish regulars, though not without much bloodshed and extreme cruelties. It was between the years 1868–72, however, that the new era in the Philippines really began. It was then that the storm broke as a result of three important and closely allied events occurring almost together.

The first was the opening of the Suez canal which brought the Islands closer to Europe. This bond was supplemented later by the laying of the commercial cables, so that the Philippines learned to think with the rest of the world. The proverbial Oriental content with despotism now gave way to the yearning for self-expression, for nationalism, and for freedom.

The second was the continuation, but in a more flagrant form, of racial discrimination between the Spanish born whites and the native Malays. This was specially manifested by the removal of Filipino priests from their parishes to make way for the Spanish Recollets. The indignation that swept the Filipino laymen at this act which they considered unjustified is difficult to measure. But it marked the day when they began to harbor thoughts against the Spaniards which they dared not speak aloud.

The third event which wrought considerable changes in the Islands was the founding of the short-lived Republic in Spain, for it was between these years that Queen Isabella was overthrown and the Spanish radicals gained the ascendancy. The movement was short-lived, but during that brief period many radical and progressive officials had come to Manila and planted in the minds of the natives some new and startling ideas about democracy, equality and practical self-government. Furthermore, these newly arrived officials bluntly and openly pointed out the shortcomings and autocracy of the clergy who, it must be remembered, were the most hated and feared representatives of Spain⁠[2].

It is not surprising, then, that all the ancient grievances of the past now received an added airing. In the face of it, however, the friars kept up their courage and when the downfall of the Spanish liberals again placed them in a position where they could wreak vengeance, they immediately did so. The wholesale arrests, the garrotings, the cruel punishments inflicted after the most flagrant of mock trials have been recounted too often to be repeated here. Suffice it to say that the most unspeakable instruments of torture employed in the days of the Inquisition were revived and used. Wholesale deportations followed to the Carolines, to Jolo, Balabac, Ceuta, Fernando Po, the Ladrone Islands, and even to far away Africa. Many men, members of wealthy Filipino families, succeeded in escaping to Europe where they could air their pleas for better government with safety.

There were also wholesale executions, and much innocent blood was sacrificed. Among the victims of this sad episode were three beloved Filipino priests, one of whom was so old and so feeble that he was carried to the scaffold. The evidence of mutiny against them all was so doubtful that the Roman Catholic Church stubbornly refused to degrade them. The Archbishop was so thoroughly convinced of their innocence that he allowed them to wear their priestly robes to the gallows.

This policy of wanton cruelty, instead of inspiring the natives with fear, drew them together. A new nation was here conceived, and the time came when the Filipinos, instead of looking towards Spain as the land to which they owed allegiance, turned to the Philippines as the true father-land. All this occurred in 1872.

In the years that followed the movement grew. The native exiles living in Spain and other continental countries, drawn together by a common grievance and a common desire to better the fate of their countrymen, founded societies and established newspapers in which they recounted their wrongs and asked for reforms. Many of them were joined by their sons who came for their education, but felt that they were also charged with a sacred mission for the good of their country as well as of Spain. Many writings of these men were secretly circulated in the Philippines where they had a considerable influence. The most important was undoubtedly a novel written by Dr. Jose Rizal, a native Filipino then studying in the University of Heidelberg. Noli me Tangere it was called and it depicted the evils of the friar system in the Islands and the injustice that resulted from it. This novel which was smuggled into the Islands became the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the movement, and Rizal rose to the prominence which he richly deserved. The book was, of course, condemned by the Spanish officials and native houses were searched in the hope of locating copies and punishing their owners. Yet most of the available copies circulated secretly for years: truly a remarkable proof of Filipino unity.

In 1892, fully knowing the danger which a visit to the Islands meant, the gentle idealist returned to the Philippines. Shortly after his arrival he formed a “Philippine League.” The predominating idea of this society was of the peaceful type, for it sought merely educational, moral and economic progress. In fact, it was too mild a plan for many Filipinos. Nevertheless, the Spaniards seized the only Filipino leader who, more than any other malcontent, stood for peace and cooperation with the Spanish government and exiled him to the southern island of Mindanao. It was sheer blundering stupidity, for by doing it they raised the already venerated leader to a pinnacle difficult to exaggerate⁠[3].

With Rizal as an exile in distant Mindanao, the other native leaders now abandoned all thought of securing reform through peaceful methods. They turned to direct action as the last resort. A small secret society under the leadership of Andres Bonifacio was formed, and it soon became the most powerful insurrectionary body in the Islands. It was called the “Katipunan,” and its doors were opened to both rich and poor alike. To the many thousands of able-bodied Filipinos who joined it, the society was almost like a new religion. It is worth while to examine the ideals taught to the Neophytes. Here were some of them:

All men are equal, regardless of the color of their skin.

The life which is not consecrated to the cause of justice is a tree without shade, even though it may not have a poisonous root.

Good practices solely for personal benefit, and not from a desire to do good, are worthless.

The true holiness is charity, love for others, and adjusting one’s acts according to the good and the reasonable.

One may have more than another in riches, wisdom or beauty but in manhood all are equal.

Always preserve a high sense of honor, for the word of the honorable man is sacred.

Waste not time; riches lost may be recovered, but time, once lost, never returns.

Defend the weak, and fight the oppressor.

In Life’s thorny road, the man is the guide of his wife and children, and if he teaches them evil, evil will they practice.

The greatest man is not the king nor he with a high bridged nose, nor white skin, nor the priest who represents God; but he is really noble who, born in the forest, possesses no language save his native tongue, and yet is moderate in speech and careful to uphold his dignity and his honor. This man is a patriot and knows how to defend his country.

When this country is radiant with the light of liberty and we are all united as brothers, then will the pains of the past be rewarded⁠[4].

Despite the strict oaths of secrecy taken by its members, however, the Spanish authorities got wind of the society. The report was spread that the Katipunan meant to massacre the entire population. The friars in their delirious anxiety could now do but one thing—ask the civil authorities for more power and greater activity by the police with the consequent increase of arrests. In order to gain information from the suspected, the most horrible methods of torture were again employed. Men were hung up by their thumbs, their bones were crushed,—too often they were mutilated for life.

It was just about this time that Dr. Rizal, becoming dissatisfied with the violent methods planned by the revolutionists, petitioned the Spanish government that he be sent to the fever-stricken camps of Cuba where he might serve in Her Majesty’s army as a physician. The Governor-General granted Rizal’s petition. Before he reached Manila, however, the rebellion had begun. Nevertheless he was allowed to continue his journey to Spain where he planned to join the army for Cuba.

But as if the enmity of the friars could not otherwise be appeased, Rizal was detained when he reached Suez, arrested and brought back to Manila. A new Governor-General, chosen by the friars, now sealed his fate. Following another mock trial at which the Filipino martyr was not even allowed to choose his counsel, he was led to his execution and in the presence of a howling, cheering Spanish crowd killed by a volley. There were comparatively few Filipinos present. Most of them were in their homes, praying for the man about to be sacrificed on the altar of freedom.

The volley of musketry which rang out that early December morning in 1896 sealed the fate of Spain forever in the Philippines. The nation which had been conceived in 1872 was now born. The circumstances of Rizal’s death were so dramatic, the ideals for which he labored so noble, and his innocence of complicity in the existing revolution so clearly manifest, that the native multitudes were inspired as if by a second crucifixion.

One can only wonder that the final outbreak did not occur sooner. Two months before Rizal’s execution, for example, the Spaniards caused the arrest of numerous Filipinos in Vigan, a province which up to that time had not revolted. These men were shipped to Manila in the holds of vessels like pieces of merchandise, their hands and feet being tied securely. On arrival at the capital the victims were hauled from their dingy hole by derricks and dumped into a filthy crowded jail where many died of suffocation. In other parts of the archipelago, this process of extermination continued. Day after day, night after night, men and women were dragged out of their homes and sent to prison for inspection.

This ghastly business could not continue forever, and even the home government awoke in time to recall Governor Poltaveja and send in his place a more peaceful administrator, General Primo de Rivera. Governor Rivera wanted peace, and he immediately offered an amnesty to all who would lay down their arms within a specified time. The Filipino leaders, conscious of their inability to cope effectively with the Crown forces, which had recently been reenforced, and being desirous of assuring the welfare of their country, thereupon issued a proclamation in which they stated the conditions under which they would agree to lay down their arms. This document must be examined with care. It demanded:

1. Expulsion of the friars.

2. Parliamentary representation, freedom of the press, religious toleration, administrative and economic autonomy.

3. Equal pay and equal treatment for Spanish and insular civil officers.

4. Restoration of all friar lands to their original owners.

5. No more banishments.

6. Legal equality for all classes.

The Spanish governor promised to fulfill all these requests and as a further guarantee of his good faith offered to pay the leaders of the Katipunan who were to be banished to a foreign land the sum of $400,000.00. After negotiations which lasted several months, the so-called “Pact of Biac-na-bato” was signed, and Aguinaldo with thirty-four other leaders sailed for Hongkong. “No definite time was fixed during which these men were to remain away from the Philippines; and if the promises made by Spain were not fulfilled they had the right to return”⁠[5]. The old slander that Aguinaldo sold out the revolutionary movement for a bribe has been so thoroughly exploded by the best of authorities, that it requires uncommon audacity to repeat it⁠[6].

The fact was, however, that Governor Rivera was trying to steer a middle course. He issued a scathing denunciation of the friars, but failed to recommend their removal. It did not take long for the Filipinos to realize that none of the expected reforms were forthcoming. New insurrections immediately broke out in different sections of the archipelago. In the island of Cebu, 400 miles south of Manila, the rebels raided the city and besieged the Spanish forces in their citadel. In northern Luzon the revolt quickly gained impetus. All this occurred, of course, in the absence of their recognized leader, Aguinaldo⁠[7].

Conditions had reached such an acute state on February 22, 1898, forty-nine days before the United States declared war on Spain, that the American consul, Williams, stationed in Manila, sent the following significant dispatch to the State Department in Washington:

Conditions here and in Cuba are practically alike. War exists; and battles are of almost daily occurrence. Prisoners are brought here and shot without trial, and Manila is under martial law. The Crown forces have been unable to dislodge a rebel army within ten miles of Manila, and last Saturday, February 19, a battle was there fought. A republic is organized here as in Cuba. Insurgents are being armed and drilled, are rapidly increasing in number and efficiency, and all agree that a general uprising will come as soon as the Governor-General embarks for Spain, which is fixed for March⁠[8].

Into this turbulent arena of war and organized revolt Admiral Dewey sailed with his squadron, and with a few well-directed shots destroyed the Spanish fleet without the loss of a single life. The wires of the world vibrated with the startling news of his victory and the conquest of the archipelago had begun.

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The people of the United States were allowed to believe that it was a piece of good fortune that Dewey’s fleet was in Asiatic waters. As a matter of fact the capture of Manila had been planned long before the Maine was destroyed and the Spanish war begun.

On the afternoon of December 30, 1924, a discussion was held in New York City under the auspices of the League for Industrial Democracy. The subject chosen was American Imperialism, and among the principal speakers on the occasion was the well-known banker, Otto H. Kahn, who spoke on “The Myth of American Imperialism.” Feeling, no doubt, the tremendous significance of his words as a denial that such a force existed, no time was lost in reproducing the address in full, to be widely distributed later by the so-called “Committee of American Business Men.”

Mr. Kahn’s address as printed covered twenty-six pages. Less than half a page is devoted to the Philippine situation, however, and it is interesting to read how he dealt with the subject. He said:

Owing to the limitation of the time available, I cannot enter into the matter of America’s ownership of the Philippines, except to point out that it came to us as an unforeseen incident of the Spanish-American war, unsought and decidedly unwanted, but, having come, it involves a national responsibility which, in self-respect and in duty, we are bound to discharge, and of which we cannot divest ourselves until it is fairly discharged.

This was a sweeping generalization, and yet it was a statement representing the widespread belief today among the Americans unfamiliar with the earlier years of American occupation. Let us, therefore, make a closer examination of that period, so inadequately understood at the time but which can now be studied soberly and with fuller knowledge.

Although when war was declared American thought and purpose were limited to Cuban emancipation, it became apparent that it was impossible thus to limit her action. War knows but one law. The enemy must be attacked and destroyed wherever possible. Hence the prompt occupation of Porto Rico followed, though Porto Rico had not revolted, for the thought of driving a misgoverning country from one island, and leaving her in another close by where a similar situation might later exist was clearly indefensible.

Granting that Spain was to be driven out, what was to be done with Porto Rico? Of course, Cuba was to have her freedom,—she had been promised that. But Porto Rico—somehow the analogy did not fit. The island was smaller, there had been no revolt, and there was great need of a naval station in that locality. But why go further? Only idealists questioned the wisdom of doing it, any other nation would have done it, and so.... Well, that is the way that empires grow!

But there were also the Philippines. And only six hundred miles away lay Admiral Dewey with his fleet loading coal in Hongkong. What a piece of good fortune for the American cause. It was but a matter of hours before Dewey received the order to sail and destroy the enemy fleet.

And yet the most remarkable thing about this naval victory which immediately thrilled the American nation from coast to coast and placed the Philippines definitely on the map was that it did not come unsolicited or unpremeditated. It had been planned months before. Let us see how and why.

When the possibility of war with Spain became generally accepted, Admiral Dewey was in the Gulf of California in command of the Narragansett. As a true naval expert the thought of taking the Philippines came to him.

If war with Spain is declared, the Narragansett will take Manila [he said]. In command of an efficient force in the Far East, with a free hand to act in consequence of being so far away from Washington, I could strike promptly and successfully at the Spanish forces in the Philippines.

This was in the fall of 1897⁠[1]. He thereupon sought the command of the Asiatic squadron, and with Mr. Roosevelt’s aid obtained it⁠[2].

Thus it was that while the indignation of a sympathetic American public was daily increasing at the atrocities in Cuba, Dewey was quietly but efficiently fitting his squadron, firmly determined to capture Manila⁠[3]. He sailed on December 7, 1897, more than two months before the destruction of the Maine, with the eyes of the naval authorities watching him with interest. While lying at anchor in Hongkong there was flashed to him on February 25, 1898, the following significant cable from the then Assistant Secretary of the Navy:

Dewey, Hongkong:

Order the squadron except the Monocacy to Hongkong. Keep full of coal. In the event of declaration of war with Spain, your duty will be to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and start offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until further orders.

(Signed) Roosevelt⁠[4].

And yet this was six weeks before war was declared.

The results of the battle in Manila Bay are well known. It literally electrified the American nation. The significance of such a gallant victory could not be over-estimated in the eyes of her citizens. What a horizon had been opened! The stage was set for the beginning of America’s manifest destiny,—entry into world politics,—into world power. This was but natural. In the words of Henry Watterson, it was

the natural impulse of a people full of exultation and pride over the completeness, without precedent in naval war, of the victory that Dewey had achieved with a skill and intrepidity that conferred splendor upon American arms. It was the spontaneous outburst of simplest patriotism to ask that that flag so valiantly planted, might float there forever in memory of the heroes who raised it⁠[5].

There were also challenging voices, urging that the flag should remain.

Who dares halt it now [cried Senator Beveridge], now when history’s largest events are carrying it forward, now when we are at last one people, strong enough for any task, great enough for any glory destiny can bestow? Blind is he who sees not the hand of God in events so vast, so harmonious, so benign.

But glory and power were not the only incentives. If in the face of a sacred pledge to Cuba there had not been wanting counselors who urged the retention of the island for its commercial possibilities, their numbers were now augmented as the movement gained momentum. There was a glamour of romance in the entire project and the spell was difficult to resist. As the Hon. Frank A. Vanderlip, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, aptly put it in 1898,—

Together with the islands of the Japanese Empire, since the acquirement of Formosa, the Philippines are the pickets of the Pacific, standing guard at the entrances to trade with the millions of China and Korea, French Indo-China, the Malay Peninsula, and the islands of Indonesia to the south. Australia may even be regarded as in the line of trade. The possession of the Philippines by a progressive, commercial power, if the Nicaragua Canal project should be completed, would change the course of ocean navigation as it concerns a large percentage of the water-borne traffic of the world. The project is alluring. In the undeveloped resources of the Philippines the sanguine radicals see a great opportunity for our genius. They recognize that in a decade we might make a change greater than has been wrought since Magellan’s discovery until the present time. They see great development companies formed to cultivate tobacco and sugar by modern methods, others formed to test the richness of the unknown mineral deposits, and still others to develop transportation or to reap the treasures of the forest.

And so this gentleman, who stood high in the councils of the administration, finally concluded:

We thus see with sudden clearness that some of the most revered of our political maxims have outlived their force [and then adds], a new mainspring ... has become the directing force ... the mainspring of commercialism⁠[6].

Thus began and thus was fostered the campaign for the retention of the Philippines. As a distributing centre, with half the population of the world living within a radius of 3500 miles from Manila, the possession of the islands was indeed “alluring.”

In that proud hour of nation-wide rejoicing accompanied by the vast commercial possibilities which victory had disclosed, the American multitude failed to hear the voice of the Filipinos. To the former annexation meant, and could now mean only annexation like the previous acts of American expansion. No thought was here given to the wishes of the eight million natives in the Islands who, under the rule of Spain, had taken part in thirty-six distinct uprisings as a protest against the cruelties and injustices from which they had suffered in the same manner as had the Cubans.

There had been, of course, vague reports of a revolution then existing in the Philippines just as one had been existing in Cuba. Could not the Islands be turned over to the revolutionists? True, there had been no definite promises such as those made to a nearer neighbor, but should not Spain’s title, if any, be forfeited for the same reasons that her claims to Cuba were being ignored? The Americans whose interests in the occupation sprang purely from altruistic and sympathetic motives thought that the Filipinos were entitled to the same treatment as the Cubans. Could the Filipino rebels have organized an island government of their own? If not, would an American protectorate for a limited number of years have been more plausible? These were natural inquiries, but any reports which might to some extent have answered these questions were not forthcoming. The islands were too far distant,—half the people of the country did not know where they were. Of course, there were those who also believed with good reason that the intervention in Cuba was actuated by purely altruistic motives—that of a helping hand to a weaker nation. Thus, the venerable Senator Hoar, writing many years afterwards about this agitating period, said,

I believed then, and I believe now, that it was our duty to deliver them (the Philippines) from Spain, to protect them against her, or against the cupidity of any other nation until the people could have tried fully the experiment of self-government in which I have little doubt they would have succeeded⁠[7].

But there were also those who, in a spirit of evil ambition, had already decided to retain the Philippines, if retention would benefit the United States. On August 2, 1898, a commissioner was appointed by the Secretary of State to “investigate and report on financial and industrial conditions in the Philippine Islands.” This was eleven days before the capture of Manila. The report that followed by Commissioner Edward Harden and which was sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, covered the field examined as well as the existing conditions permitted. It spoke of the present situation of Philippine industry and predicted the future possibilities that awaited the hand of a modern expert. That regarding Manila hemp, the leading industry of the Islands, specially deserved attention.

Manila hemp [said the report] is used in the manufacture of cordage of a superior class. For ships’ purposes it is superior to any other material considering its cost and wearing qualities.... It is found nowhere else in the world.... There is a great future for this product. There are vast tracts of uncultivated land ... where it flourishes with greatest vigor, and all that is needed is capital and enterprise to open it up⁠[8].

Not apparently content with the preliminary investigations conducted by these executive departments, the President himself decided to take a hand. He therefore dispatched the following cable to Admiral Dewey on August 13, the day after the signing of the protocol ending hostilities:

Dewey, c/o American Consul:

The President desires to receive from you any important information you may have of the Philippines, the desirability of the several islands, the character of their population, coal and other mineral deposits, their harbor and commercial advantages and in a naval and commercial sense which would be the most advantageous.

Allen, Secretary⁠[9].

Of course, these proceedings were not made known to the public at that time. This powerful minority in order to fulfill their imperialistic aims had already embarked on a program unique in its nature and fraught with hazardous consequences, as events later proved. Briefly, their plan was to conceal their well-devised scheme of retention, and should such project be forcibly exposed,—to justify it, all the while pretending to be working solely for the good of the Filipinos. Their real feeling was, however, bluntly expressed by Mr. Denby of McKinley’s first Philippine Commission when he said:

The cold practical question remains: will the possession of these islands benefit us as a nation? If they will not, set them free tomorrow and let their peoples, if they please, cut each other’s throats⁠[10].

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Aguinaldo was in Singapore when America declared war on Spain. The American consul at that port, Mr. E. Spencer Pratt, tells in his own words what this incident meant to him

Being aware [said Mr. Pratt] of the great prestige of General Aguinaldo with the insurgents, and that no one, either at home or abroad, could exert over them the same influence and control that he could, I determined at once to see him.

An interview followed and it was arranged that if Admiral Dewey, then at Hongkong with his squadron should so desire, the Filipino leader would join him at that port and arrange a plan of cooperation with the American forces⁠[2]. Pursuant to this understanding, Mr. Pratt immediately telegraphed to Dewey as follows:

Aguinaldo, insurgent leader, here. Will come Hongkong arrange with Commodore for general cooperation insurgents Manila if desired. Telegraph.

To which Admiral Dewey (then a Commodore) immediately replied:

Tell Aguinaldo come as soon as possible.

But by the time the Filipino leader reached Hongkong the future Admiral had been given his papers and was steaming towards Manila Bay. In heralding the coming of the Americans, however, the insurgent leaders at Hongkong sent to the Islands a manifesto addressed to the Filipinos proclaiming the benevolent mission of the invaders, and urging them not to heed the appeals of the Spaniards to oppose the Americans. The proclamation read thus:

Compatriots: Divine Providence is about to place independence within our reach. The Americans, not from mercenary motives, but for the sake of humanity and the lamentations of so many persecuted people have considered it opportune to extend their protecting mantle to our beloved country.... At the present moment an American squadron is preparing to sail to the Philippines.... The Americans will attack by sea and prevent any reenforcements coming from Spain.... We insurgents must attack by land.... There where you see the American flag flying, assemble in number; they are our redeemers!

Aguinaldo’s proclamation a few days later was of the same tenor:

Filipinos [he said], the great nation, North America, cradle of liberty and friendly on that account to the liberty of our people ... has come to manifest a protection ... which is disinterested towards us, considering us with sufficient civilization to govern by ourselves this our unhappy land.

It has always been a question whether or not a promise to grant the Filipinos their freedom in the manner that Cuba had been promised hers was made. American officials, Dewey included, vehemently deny having made such promise, while the Filipinos and a few later American students of history stoutly maintain the contrary. Assuming that no promises were made by properly accredited agents of the American government, it is certain that the revolutionists were led by the action of the American forces in the Philippines to believe that the United States would give them independence. Their frame of mind as a result of the early assurances received from the American consuls at Singapore and Hongkong may be gathered from the tone of the following letter written by Consul Wildman of Hongkong to Aguinaldo:

Do not forget [he said] that the United States undertook this war for the sole purpose of relieving the Cubans from the cruelties under which they were suffering and not for the love of conquests or the hope of gain. They are actuated by precisely the same feelings for the Filipinos⁠[3].

When Aguinaldo arrived in Manila on the American gunboat McCulloch which Dewey had expressly sent to Hongkong to bring the Filipino leader, he immediately went to see Dewey. The latter at once urged him to start cooperation. “Go ashore and start your army,” he told the Filipino⁠[4]. Aguinaldo did the rest. “He began operations towards Manila,” said Dewey, “and did wonderfully well. He whipped the Spaniards battle after battle....” And so Dewey’s protégé worked, under the constant advice and encouragement of the American commander. At that time, of course, the American land forces had not arrived, and were not due to arrive for several months. In the meantime the Filipino army was daily expending its power and risking the lives of its men in this aggressive land campaign. This accounts for Admiral Dewey’s great concern in aiding them. Let the Admiral testify to this: “I knew what he was doing—driving the Spaniards in—was saving our troops”⁠[5]. Further testimony of this active cooperation between the two forces is amply furnished by the Admiral.

They looked on us as their liberators [he testified before the Senate committee⁠[6]]. Up to the time the army came he (Aguinaldo) did everything I requested. He was most obedient; whatever I told him to do he did. I saw him almost daily⁠[7].

The reason which prompted the American representative to act so cordially is best described in his own words:

I was waiting for troops to arrive [testified Dewey] and I thought that the closer they (the Filipinos) invested the city, the easier it would be when our troops arrived to march in. The Filipinos were our friends, assisting us; they were doing our work⁠[8].

And when asked how strong a force Aguinaldo had under his command, Dewey added: “They could have had any number of men; it was just a question of arming them. They could have had the whole population”⁠[9]. These declarations took place before an investigating committee of the Senate in 1902, but that the war department in Washington knew of the cooperation between the two forces is clear from the official dispatches sent by Dewey from the scene of battle.

Thus, hardly had Aguinaldo landed to organize his forces when Dewey cabled to the Secretary of the Navy as follows:

May 20, 1898:

Aguinaldo, the rebel commander in chief, was brought down by the McCulloch. Organizing forces near Cavite, and may render assistance which will be valuable⁠[10].

Just how valuable this assistance proved to be has been shown by Dewey’s statements in the preceding pages. It took three and a half months for the American Army to arrive on the scene of action and in the meantime the telling dispatches of Dewey now survive to inform us what the Filipino activities actually meant. Thus, a dispatch of June 6 says:

Insurgents have been engaged actively within the province of Cavite⁠[1] during the last week; they have had several small victories, taking prisoners about 1800 men, 50 officers; Spanish troops, not native⁠[11].

Six days later, June 12, comes another telegram from Dewey:

Insurgents continue hostilities and have practically surrounded Manila. They have taken 2500 Spanish prisoners, whom they treat most humanely. They do not intend to attack city proper until the arrival of the U. S. troops thither; I have advised⁠[12].

A week later and another telling dispatch is sent to Washington:

I have given him (Aguinaldo) to understand that I consider insurgents as friends, being opposed to a common enemy.... He has gone to attend a meeting of insurgent leaders for the purpose of forming a civil government. Aguinaldo has acted independently of the squadron but has kept me advised of his progress which has been wonderful. I have allowed to pass by water, recruits, arms and ammunition and to take such arms and ammunition from the arsenal as he needed. Have advised frequently to conduct the war humanely, which he has invariably done.

And then follows this convincing statement:

In my opinion these people are superior in intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races⁠[13].

But as a forerunner of the breach which was shortly to follow comes the testimony of Dewey that upon the arrival of the American army, instead of seeing him daily as he had done in the past, he “had not much to do with him after the army came”⁠[14].

Although the Admiral had thus lost interest in Aguinaldo’s cooperation, however, it soon appeared that the commander of the land forces, General Anderson, who had arrived earlier on the scene of action, thought differently. Addressing Aguinaldo on July 4, 1898, he said:

General:

I have the honor to inform you that the United States of America whose land forces I have the honor to command in this vicinity ... has entire sympathy and most friendly sentiments for the native people of the Philippine Islands.

For these reasons I desire to have the most amicable relations with you and to have you and your people cooperate with us in the military operations against the Spanish forces.

(Signed) Gen’l T. M. Anderson⁠[15].

Assuming, however, that no promises of independence were made in writing by properly accredited agents in the name of the American government, it is certain that the Revolutionists were led to believe that the United States planned to do for the Philippines what she was then actively doing for Cuba. As General Anderson aptly put it in describing the situation at that critical period:

Whether Admiral Dewey and Consuls Pratt (of Singapore), Wildman (Hongkong) and Williams (Manila) did or did not give Aguinaldo assurances that a Filipino government would be recognized, the Filipinos certainly thought so, probably inferring this from their acts rather than from their statements⁠[16].

Laboring under such a belief the flag of the Philippines was formally unfurled and independence proclaimed amidst elaborate ceremonies at Cavite on June 12, 1898⁠[17]. This was exactly two months before the American forces of occupation finally entered Manila. Events moved rapidly. The Revolutionary government issued its proclamation providing for a temporary constitution, until it could be replaced by one formally drawn by delegates from the archipelago formally assembled. In the words of the document itself, its purpose was

to abolish with a firm hand the inveterate vices of the Spanish administration, substituting a more simple and expeditious system of public instruction for that superfluity of civil service and ponderous, tardy and ostentatious official routine⁠[18].

Accompanying this provisional constitution whose main object was “to struggle for the independence of the Philippines until all nations including Spain, shall expressly recognize it, and to prepare the country for the establishment of a real Republic,” was a presidential message from Aguinaldo. This is a noteworthy document for it clearly mirrored the true aspirations of the Filipinos. It concluded as follows:

Thus they have constituted a revolutionary government with wise and just laws suited to the abnormal conditions confronting them, and which at the proper time will prepare them for a true republic. Thus, taking for its only justification the right, for its sole aid, justice, and for its only means honorable labor, the government calls upon all its Filipino sons without distinction of class, and invites them to unite solidly with the object of forming a noble society ennobled, not by blood or pompous titles, but by labor and the personal merit of the individual,—a free society where there is no place for egotism and personal politics which wither and blight, nor for envy and favoritism which debase, nor for charlatanry and buffoonery which cause ridicule.

No other course is possible. A people that has given proof of fortitude and valor in suffering and in danger, of industry and learning in time of peace, is not made for slavery. These people are called to be great, to be one of the strong arms of Providence in directing the destinies of humanity. These people have sufficient energy and resources to recover from the ruin and humiliation in which it has been placed by the Spanish government and to claim a modest but worthy place in the concert of free nations.

Given at Cavite, June 23, 1898.

(Signed) Emilio Aguinaldo⁠[19].

The march of events continued. On June 27 rules for the conduct of executive business were announced. On July 25, the members of the Cabinet were named, and the Congress assembled in the town of Malolos on September 15. The Revolutionary Government was now ready to merge into the Republic. Thus it came about that on August 6, one week before the occupation of Manila by the American forces, Aguinaldo as President issued an address to the foreign governments in which he stated that his revolutionary government was then the ruling power in fifteen provinces of the island of Luzon, where complete order and perfect tranquillity reigned under the administration of civil authorities duly elected for that purpose, and that the Filipino army was then holding 9,000 Spanish prisoners of war who were being treated according to the rules of war⁠[20]. This proclamation was substantiated by a secret investigation conducted at that time by Major Bell with the purpose of ascertaining the strength of the Filipinos in the event that General Merritt had trouble with them⁠[21]. “There is not a particle of doubt,” concluded Major Bell, “that Aguinaldo and his leaders will resist any attempt of any government to reorganize a colonial government there”⁠[22].

And who was this man Aguinaldo, the recognized leader of the Filipino cause? Let John Barrett, the strong supporter of the powers that be, give a picture of the Filipino and his successes. Writing from the scene of action, having personally known the Filipino and having seen him put aboard the American gunboat at Hongkong for the direct purpose of going to Cavite to organize an army and make war upon the Spaniards in cooperation with the American forces, Mr. Barrett continues thus:

After his arrival at Cavite he organized with wonderful rapidity a provisional government, and in a short time had an army which was capturing Spanish outposts with the frequency of trained regulars....

The impression went abroad among the masses of the people that Aguinaldo had arrived to establish an independent government, and that the Americans would assist him. The actual working of his government under the guns of our ship was sufficient evidence to them of our approval.... These influences had a tremendous effect. Before Aguinaldo had been in Cavite a month he not only had more soldiers than he could arm, but contributions of large sums of money, with unlimited amounts of rice and other raw food supplies brought in by the people for the support of his Army.

Of the Congress, Mr. Barrett says:

By the middle of October he had assembled at Malolos a Congress of one hundred men.... These men whose sessions I repeatedly attended, conducted themselves with great decorum and showed a knowledge of debate and parliamentary law that would not compare unfavorably with the Japanese Parliament. The executive portion of the government was made up of a ministry of bright men who seemed to understand their respective positions.

The army of Aguinaldo seems to have been the greatest of his achievements in the estimation of Mr. Barrett.

He had over twenty regiments [wrote Mr. Barrett] of comparatively well-dressed soldiers carrying modern rifles and ammunition. I saw many of these regiments executing not only regimental but battalion and company drill with a precision that astonished me.... The people in all the different towns took great pride in this army. Nearly every family had a father, son or cousin in it. Wherever they went they aroused enthusiasm for the Filipino cause⁠[23].

Such an estimate of Aguinaldo is largely corroborated by those Americans who directly came in contact with him. Thus Mr. Jacob Schurman, President of the First Philippine Commission, characterized him as having

enjoyed the confidence of the insurgents and their sympathizers and abettors ... in virtue of his patriotic services, his attested honesty and his remarkable gift of surrounding himself with able coadjutors and administrators⁠[24].

“He (Aguinaldo) was the incarnation of the feelings of the Filipinos,” adds General MacArthur⁠[25].

It is difficult to understand the success of the insurgent forces against the better trained Spaniards otherwise than by ascribing it to the unusual intelligence on the part of their leaders and the firm determination of the people. Six weeks before the American occupation of Manila, for example, John T. McCutcheon, reporting for the Chicago Record narrated the march of events in a special dispatch dated the 24th of June, as follows:

All during the week following there was constant evidence of the strife that was being waged between Cavite and Malate.... Imus, Bacoor, Las Pinas and Paranaque were captured in less than a week notwithstanding the fact that the Spaniards had splendid guns and ammunition in unlimited quantities, supported by five mountain batteries and rapid fire guns.... Over in Cavite the calm passionless statements of great victories that Aguinaldo gave us were being substantiated every day for hundreds and hundreds of Spanish soldiers were being marched in and placed in prison!... Closely following the remarkable insurgent successes in Cavite Province, where the whole district had been captured in eight days, came stories of other successful operations in Pampanga Province; Macabebe and San Fernando were captured and the great Spanish General Molet fled in terror to Manila. Over one thousand Spanish soldiers had been taken prisoners and their arms given out to natives as quickly as possible.... Our respect for the insurgent prowess had grown a great deal, for by June 30 they had taken almost every province in Luzon, with the exception of isolated garrisons and were hammering away at the doors of Manila⁠[26].

By August the insurgents had surrounded the city with fourteen miles of trenches, the water and food supply had been cut off, internal trade paralyzed and the inhabitants of the unfortunate city reduced to horseflesh diet. Such was the result of a three and a half months’ blockade with Dewey guarding the harbor and the Filipinos closing in by land⁠[27]. So closely were the Filipinos besieging Manila that when General Anderson arrived with his land forces to commence offensive hostilities he was compelled to request from Aguinaldo permission to occupy a part of the Filipino fighting line and trenches⁠[28].

Capitulation of the city turned out to be a mere matter of form under these circumstances. Through the Belgian consul, M. Andre, stationed in Manila, Commodore Dewey and General Merritt arranged with the Spanish commandants for the surrender of the city. There was to be no real fighting, no resistance except the display of a white flag after the firing of a few shots to save the delicate honor of the Castilians. But one thing the Spaniards demanded, and that was that no Filipino troops were to enter the city. To this arrangement the Americans agreed⁠[29]. General Anderson, thereupon, notified Aguinaldo to forbid his troops to enter the city. The unpleasant information was naturally received with indignation, for it meant that the Filipinos must lie in their trenches and watch all the glory of the capture fall to thousands of American troops whose contribution to the victory had consisted in their amiable presence on the American transports that had brought them from San Francisco. Further than this, until the treaty of Paris was decided upon the Filipinos had no way of knowing whether the Americans were to turn them back to Spain or set them free. If it was to be the former then the Revolution would continue and it was natural that the Filipinos should wish to be in possession of the capital city.

Fearing as he had reason to fear, that the order to stay back would not be obeyed, General Anderson sent his troops to hold the main bridge into the city with no other purpose than to fire, if necessary, upon their late friends. As Anderson himself put it in addressing Aguinaldo: “Unless your troops are withdrawn beyond the lines of the city’s defences before Thursday, the fifteenth instant, I shall be compelled to resort to forcible action”⁠[30].

The situation was very critical [said General Greene]. Our soldiers believed that the Filipinos had fired upon them and the Filipinos were almost beside themselves with rage and disappointment. The friendly relations we had with Generals Ricarte and Noriel alone prevented the conflict with them then and there⁠[31].

But if the break between them had been averted in August, it failed to end the tension between the two armies.

It is now worth while to view the situation as it stood at that time.

We held Manila and Cavite [said General Anderson] the rest of the Island (Luzon) was held not by Spaniards but by the Filipinos. On the other islands the Spaniards were confined to two or three fortified towns⁠[32].

Even these were later captured by the natives also, so that General Otis adds:

Thus, in December, 1898, we find that in northern and southeastern Luzon, in (the islands of) Mindoro, Samar, Leyte, Panay and even on the coast of Mindanao and in some of the smaller islands, the aggressive Tagalog present in person and, whether civilian or soldier, supreme in authority⁠[33].

Shortly after the occupation of Manila, two officers of Admiral Dewey’s squadron, with the latter’s permission, made an intimate inspection of the interior of the island to bring back a report of which Admiral Dewey himself said that it contained “the most complete and reliable information obtainable in regard to the present state of the northern part of Luzon.” This report was forwarded to Mr. Long, the Secretary of the Navy and, in response to a Senate resolution may be found reported in Senate Document 196, 56th Congress, 1st Session, bearing date of February 26, 1900. Messrs. Sargent and Wilcox, the two officers in question, spent two months in their travels and they saw and heard even more than that which was reported by the commanders from Manila.

As a tribute to the efficiency of Aguinaldo’s government and the law abiding character of his subjects [wrote Mr. Sargent] I offer the fact that Mr. Wilcox and I pursued our journey through in perfect security and returned to Manila with only the most pleasing recollections of the quiet and orderly life which we found the natives to be leading under their new régime (the Filipino Republic).

The travellers also had an opportunity to witness some of the ceremonies inaugurating civil government under the new-born republic. They describe those which occurred in the province of Caaygan as follows:

The Presidentes of all the towns in the provinces were present at the ceremony.... Colonel Tirona made a short speech.... He then handed the staff of office to the man who had been elected governor of the Province. This officer also made a speech in which he thanked the military forces and assured them that the work they had begun would be perpetuated by the people, where every man, woman and child stood ready to take up arms to defend their newly won liberty and to resist with the last drop of their blood the attempt of any nation whatever to bring them back to their former state of dependence. He then knelt, placed his hand on an open Bible, and took the oath of office.

There is a variety of feeling among the Filipinos [adds Mr. Sargent] in regard to the debt of gratitude they owe the United States. In every town we found men who said that our nation had saved them from slavery and others who claimed that without our interference their independence would have been recognized before this time. On one point they were united, however, viz. that whatever our government may have done for them, it has not gained the right to annex them.

Of course, it must be remembered that all this region outside of Manila and its environments was “terra incognita” to the thousands of American soldiers stationed in Manila and to the millions of Americans at home. That is why with the help of the censored press during the war that followed, American public opinion utterly failed to realize what an efficient government the Filipinos had established several months before the treaty of Paris. The first intimate glimpse accorded the volunteer army of occupation occurred in the fall of the following year when that peaceful territory was finally overrun by the invading army of the greatest republic in the world.

No one can read the evidence here presented without seeing that the representatives of the United States in the islands and the government in Washington knew that the Filipinos believed that the United States would give them independence and in that belief were helping the Americans; that while their help was needed nothing was done to disturb that belief but, on the contrary, pains were taken not to disturb it, if not indeed to encourage it, and the Filipinos were allowed to fight the battles of the invaders. Among gentlemen, or in a country where the principle of estoppel is recognized, such conduct would be held equivalent to a binding promise.

Can the “great nation North America” afford to adopt a lower standard of decency?

---

During the war the President had already shown a shrewd instinct for trading, thus expressed in his own words: “While we are conducting war and until its conclusion we must keep all we get; when the war is over we must keep what we want”⁠[1]. Thus it was that when, after less than four months of fighting the Spanish government acting through the good offices of the French government finally decided to ask for peace, she was, to say the least, taken by surprise at the conditions imposed by the victorious President.

When the desire for a parley was first brought to the attention of McKinley he summoned his Cabinet for a protracted conference to discuss the terms of peace. Those relating to the Philippines naturally elicited the most attention. Secretary Bliss seeing great commercial opportunities in the Islands favored taking the entire group. So did Attorney General Griggs. Secretaries Gage and Long thought a naval base would be enough. As for the Secretary of State, Mr. Day, we quote Mr. McKinley’s own words. Commenting on the varying views of his Cabinet which ranged from the retention of the whole archipelago to one or two more important islands, McKinley jokingly added, “But Judge Day only wants a hitching post.”

So much for the administration’s early attitude regarding its benevolent and kindly intentions towards the Philippines⁠[2].

In response, therefore, to the Spanish Minister’s request for peace, a request in which that able representative of the Queen Regent assured the President and his administration that the Spanish treatment of Cuban insurrection had been adopted solely “to spare the great island from the dangers of premature independence,” Mr. McKinley submitted the following conditions for the suspension of hostilities:

First: the relinquishment by Spain of all claim to Cuba and immediate evacuation of the island.

Second: the cession to the United States of the islands of Porto Rico and the other islands then under the sovereignty of Spain in the West Indies, and also the cession of an island in the Ladrones to be selected by the United States.

Third: that the United States was to be entitled “to occupy and hold the city, bay and harbor of Manila pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace which should determine the control, disposition and government of the Philippines”⁠[3].

Spain was not alone in her denunciation of these hard terms. The French ambassador, M. Cambon, through whom the interests of the Spanish government were being represented in Washington, tried in vain to secure a modification of these terms, particularly that regarding Porto Rico which “he characterized as evincing a spirit of conquest inconsistent with the declaration of disinterestedness with which the United States had commenced the war”⁠[4]. It should be remembered also that these terms were made two weeks before the final capture of Manila. At this early stage it is already evident that the President failed to recognize in any way the existing fact that there was a native uprising in the Islands and that a Philippine Republic had been proclaimed under it.

Five commissioners were appointed to negotiate the final treaty with Spain but it is significant to notice that three of them were avowed Imperialists⁠[5] and already known to be in favor of acquiring territories in the Far East. These three were the Hon. Cushman Davis, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Hon. William P. Frye, member of the same Committee, and the Hon. Whitelaw Reid, who had formerly held the post of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to France.

Under such auspicious beginnings it was an easy matter for the President to communicate with sufficient tact the secret instructions which were to guide the commissioners in Paris. These secret instructions were prepared with great detail and care and must be examined accordingly. In them, the President first expressed in high sounding language the altruistic purposes with which the war had been waged.

It is my earnest wish [he said] that the United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in making war.... The lustre and the moral strength attaching to a cause which can be properly rested upon the considerate judgment of the world should not under any illusion of the hour be dimmed by ulterior designs which might tempt us into excessive demands or even into adventurous departure on untried paths.

These were fine words, indeed, but, they were meant only for Cuba and not for the Philippines.

The Philippines [continued the President] stand upon a different basis. It is none the less true, however, that without any original thought of complete or even partial acquisition, the presence and success of our arms at Manila impose upon us obligations which we cannot disregard. The march of events rules and overrules human action ... we cannot be unmindful that without any desire or design on our part, the war has brought us new duties and responsibilities which we must meet and discharge as becomes a great nation in whose growth and career from the beginning the Ruler of Nations has plainly written the high command and pledge of civilization.

But that these were in fact but weasel words to smooth the instructions which were to follow now becomes evident. It bluntly appears in the next paragraph when the President continued thus, “Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent.” And thus, by elaborate gradations finally came the President’s real demand expressed in these words, “The United States cannot accept less than the cession in full right and sovereignty of the island of Luzon”⁠[6].

With these secret instructions in hand the commissioners departed for Paris. There they were joined by other American observers fresh from their Philippine campaigns. Among them were Admiral Dewey, General Merritt, Major Bell and General Green who had come for the purpose of presenting their statement to aid the commissioners in their negotiations. The tenor of their reports was practically the same, holding that it would not be wise to return all of the Islands or even a part of them to Spain, that the cession of the archipelago would be a “good business proposition” and that the Filipinos would not offer much resistance to American rule. How totally without foundation the latter statement was became evident during the Filipino-American war. One of the opinions submitted which no doubt produced a marked effect on the later negotiations came from the Belgian consul in Manila, M. Andre. His statement was that:

The United States can assure a steady government in these islands and in their hands the country will increase in wealth, and will, in a short time, be able to return to the United States the money laid out⁠[7].

Thus it was that on October 26, before the subject of the Philippines was actually brought to the attention of the Peace Conference, the President cabled his commissioners to the effect that recent information had convinced him that the cession of Luzon alone was out of the question and therefore, influenced as he said “by the single consideration of duty and humanity,” he directed that, “the cession must be of the whole archipelago or none.” “The latter,” he continued, “is wholly inadmissible, and the former must therefore be required”⁠[8].

Now throughout these proceedings it is at once apparent that no thought, no consideration, not even a voice was given to the Filipino people. A representative of the Filipinos, Mr. Agoncillo, went to Paris and later to Washington to seek a hearing before the commission, but the doors of both council chambers were slammed in his face and the authorities in Washington would not receive him. He could obtain a hearing nowhere. The whole matter was a business proposition, and the commissioners treated it accordingly. The secrecy with which the President’s designs were guarded may be gathered from the fact that the “Papers relating to the Treaty with Spain,” which included also the private communications between the chief executive and his commissioners, were carefully concealed from the American public until January 31, 1901, that is, after the Presidential elections of 1900 had been successfully passed. Even then the papers only came to light after having been extracted from the jealous custody of the Executive by a Senate resolution demanding them. They were then published as Senate Document, 148, 56th Congress, Second Session.

It is one of the most significant features of this conquest, that at the time when the great issue was at stake neither the Filipinos who were most interested in the outcome nor the Americans who faced the parting of the ways were ever taken into the confidence of the Administration.

It is difficult to understand how the commissioners finally came to an agreement regarding the Philippines. They could, of course, have followed McKinley’s claim and demanded the islands by conquest. But such a position seemed unwarrantable to the commissioners who wired the President accordingly on November 3. Furthermore, the Spanish commissioners feared utter repudiation at home. To lose Cuba and her possessions in the West Indies, “the last memory of a glorious past,” was sorrowful enough, but to lose the Philippines as well was indeed pitiful. But the President stood firm in his demands for the entire archipelago, and so a friendly concession was made whereby the title to the Philippines was apparently bought, “the United States to pay Spain the sum of twenty million dollars within three months after the exchange of ratifications of the present treaty.” Considering that the Islands had a total land area almost equal to that of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and a population of more than seven million it was not a bad bargain at all, and the President certained lived up to his reputation for shrewdness and ability to drive a good business bargain.

And in that manner was the President’s original intention fully accomplished. For in the words of one of his own appointed commissioners, Mr. Davis, it was of the utmost importance that the United States should have a “commanding commercial position” in the waters of the East, “in view of the astounding changes which the Chinese Empire has been subjected to and is destined to further undergo.”

I am interested that this country shall have its share of trade of that great empire [he said]. California, Washington and Oregon have scarcely more than two millions of people. I want to see the commercial development of that part of our country expand until there shall be twenty millions of people there; and I do honestly and sincerely believe, from all I have studied and thought on the subject, that the retention of the Philippine Islands, and their adjustment to our needs and destiny, is a necessary and indispensable step in the advancement to which I have so alluded.

The well-known historian, James Ford Rhodes, contributes much light to this chapter of American history. “It is true,” he wrote in 1922, “that McKinley was inconsistent in his public words.” For “in his message of December, 1897, he had said, ‘forcible annexation ... cannot be thought of; that by our code of morality would be criminal aggression!’” And yet “one cannot read the proceedings of the Peace Commission in Paris,” adds Mr. Rhodes, “and see in any other light than that our taking of the Philippines was ‘forcible annexation’”⁠[9].

The British press of that year, however, showed the incongruity even more effectively. A cartoon was presented entitled “Doctrine and Practice” representing Dame Europe in a garden haughtily saying to an intruder, “To whom do I owe the pleasure of this intrusion?” To which the person addressed replies,—“Ma’am, my name is Uncle Sam.” And this rejoinder follows, “Any relation to the late Colonel Monroe?”⁠[10].

It certainly would have seemed impossible after all that had passed and the help which the United States had asked and accepted from the Filipinos as their allies, that the future of the Islands should be determined without even inviting a suggestion from their people as to what should be the terms of peace. The United States had always insisted that governments rest on the consent of the governed; the President had taken pains to assure the world that “forcible annexation” was not to be thought of as it would be “criminal aggression”; it had even been insisted that “our priceless principles” could not change under “a tropical sun” and that it was with no thought of gain but solely for the good of the Filipinos and the sake of humanity that the American nation was fighting at all, and yet the Washington administration refused, not only to invite suggestion, but even to receive and listen to the envoy whom the Filipinos sent to express their views as to the future of the seven million people who had proved themselves most efficient allies and whose help the American commanders had been glad to invite and accept.

It is all a striking instance of the crimes which have been committed in the name of liberty.

But although the President and his commissioners were highly satisfied with the treaty, their work was far from accomplished. That document had to be ratified and for that purpose all the forces and arguments and all the enthusiasm which the President thought he had found in a tour of the middle west were now employed. The struggle for its ratification, therefore, soon got under way but this fact must be at once noticed,—that although the people were being urged to stand behind the treaty they did not and could not know what the treaty really meant.

And this unfortunate situation was so because to the political leaders of that time the provisions of the treaty meant one of several things. To the majority the cession of the Philippines if ratified meant that America was to be definitely launched upon a policy of colonial expansion. In the past the Federal government had acquired territory on the continent, but in such cases it had also meant eventual statehood by and with the consent of its inhabitants. But the Philippine issue widely differed from this. Not only had the Filipinos not been consulted in the matter, but the administration itself had made it clear that it was not prepared to favor the extension of American citizenship to the natives⁠[11].

Now, there were certain men in the Senate who wished to ratify the treaty and yet were opposed to a policy of colonization. Hence, they proposed to amend it or to pass a resolution clearly stating that the Philippines would ultimately, if not immediately, be given their independence. A number of such resolutions were therefore offered but they all failed to pass.

Another group of Senators, though not perhaps strictly opposed to some other more reasonable policy of expansion, nevertheless objected to the treaty as it then stood because it was an injustice to the Filipinos. This element could not understand why the Cubans should be treated differently from the Filipinos in the face of an official statement made by Admiral Dewey to the effect that “the Filipinos were better fitted for self-government than the Cubans were”⁠[12]. As Senator Mason ably put it,—

Tell me why we should adopt one plan for Cuba and another for the Philippines? Do you say ... “We promised we would not steal Cuba, but we did not promise not to steal the Philippines?” Do you say, with Shylock, “Is it so nominated in the bond?” ... Will you tell me please, how grand larceny and criminal aggression in Cuba become high Christian civilization in the Philippines?

This powerful group of practical anti-imperialists, headed by such men as Senator Hoar, Carl Schurz, and ex-President Harrison, stoutly maintained that the principles underlying the structure of the American republic were not compatible with the policy of holding colonies. They urged the argument that the United States could have no subjects under her suzerainty, because she herself was composed of free citizens. And, finally, they attacked the administration’s intention of governing a subject people without the latter’s consent.

A selfish element among the Senators also had to be contended with. This group was made up of those who feared that annexation of the Philippines would eventually mean the introduction of the Filipinos in some form or another into American life. The idea was apparently repugnant to them. Such an attitude was no doubt, however, a result of misinformation and downright prejudice against Asiatics in general. Senator McLaurin characterized the extent of this feeling when he said that he was against “the incorporation of a mongrel and semibarbarous population into our body politic,” which was “inferior to, but akin to the Negro in moral and intellectual qualities and capacity for self-government.”

So heavily laden was the atmosphere with these objections against ratification, that it became doubtful whether the administration would be vindicated. It remained for Senator Lodge with his fluent language and adroit reasoning, and Mr. Bryan’s mistaken policy to swing the senatorial sentiment in the other direction.

Senator Lodge’s presentation deserves first attention because of the open and high-handed manner in which he presented his case. Briefly, his attitude was that ratification did not necessarily mean annexation or colonization. The time to decide the latter, in his opinion, was after the treaty had been accepted. This was directly opposed to the prevailing view that to accept the treaty meant to enter upon an era of colonial expansion. But the Senator was not to be daunted. He took as his weapon, and he followed as his method of attack, the road which adroit diplomats and statesmen have constantly followed when arguments have failed them—the vanity of human nature.

Let the Senator’s own words testify to this:

When that treaty is ratified [he contended] we have full power and are absolutely free to do with those islands as we please, and the opposition to its ratification may be summed up in a single sentence—that the American people and the American Congress are not to be trusted with that power and with that freedom of action in regard to the inhabitants of those distant islands. Every one of the resolutions thus far offered on this subject is an expression of distrust in the future and in our dealings with other people. It is a well-meant effort to make us give bonds to Fate by means of a Congressional resolution.

The resolutions which the Senator meant were those declaring that the United States did not intend to make a permanent colony of the Philippines, and that ultimately or immediately the Filipinos would be granted self-government.

Could a more direct appeal to the vanity of the American people have been made?

Suppose we ratify the treaty [continued the Senator] the islands pass from the possession of Spain into our possession without committing us to any policy. I believe we can be trusted as a people to deal honestly and justly with the islands and their inhabitants thus given to our care⁠[13].

It is well to recall this language of the late Senator in view of the contention being made today that Congress cannot alienate the Philippines. If the spokesman of the administration of 1898 insisted that the ratification of the treaty would not commit the United States to any policy with regard to the Philippines, and that the Congress could later deal with the Islands in accordance with the wishes of the people, will Congress now repudiate the theory which then prevailed and which largely induced the Senate to ratify the treaty? Can the United States afford to give her enemies this new ground for distrust?

But let the Senator continue once more,—“It is for us to decide the destiny of the Philippines, not for Europe, and we can do it alone and without assistance.” On another occasion he made this most flowery statement,—

To the American people and their government I am ready to intrust my life, my liberty, my honor and, what is far dearer to me than anything personal to myself, the life and liberty of my children and my children’s children. If I am ready thus to trust my children to the government which the American public create and sustain, am I to shrink from intrusting to that same people the fate and fortune of the Philippine Islands?

Evidently it did not occur to the venerable senator that these Filipinos were not to have a voice in the government which he praised so eloquently and that, therefore, in the words of Daniel Webster,—

No matter how easy may be the yoke of a foreign power, no matter how lightly it sits upon the shoulders, if it is not imposed upon him by the voice of his own nation and of his own country, he cannot and he means not to be happy under its burden.

But the Senator’s point had been made. He had convinced many opponents of the treaty that refusal to ratify unless accompanied by a statement of America’s honest intentions meant a distrust of America’s honest abilities to give the Filipinos a square deal. These men thought that such a resolution would mean giving bonds to Spain and to Europe for America’s good conduct.

A further element also entered into the struggle which aided the administration in its fight. It was Mr. Bryan’s arrival in Washington urging the Democrats to ratify the treaty. Like Senator Lodge, Mr. Bryan contended that the treaty as it then stood did not commit the country to a policy of colonization. That policy was to be decided in the coming elections when the attitude towards the Filipino could be more plainly expressed⁠[14]. And so confident was the great commoner that the American public would oppose indefinite if not permanent annexation of the Islands that he was willing to risk the issue until 1900.

The ratification of the treaty [he said] instead of committing the United States to a colonial policy really clears the way for the recognition of the Philippine Republic.... Could the independence of the Filipinos be secured more easily by diplomacy from a foreign and hostile nation than it can through laws passed by Congress and voicing the sentiments of the American people? If independence is more desirable to our people than a colonial policy, who is there and what is there to prevent the recognition of Philippine independence? It is absurd to say that the United States can be transformed from a republic to an empire without consulting the voters⁠[15].

Mr. Bryan may or may not have been justified in taking this attitude, but he certainly failed to foresee the nature of the campaign which his opponents were to launch in order to vindicate the President’s Philippine policy.

While the discussions on the treaty were thus rapidly coming to a close the situation in the Philippines was constantly becoming menacing. American transports bearing thousands of soldiers were being massed in Manila. The insurgents who, it will be remembered, had surrounded the city were being gradually pushed further and further back. In many instances these advances by the Americans were also made in violation of the protocol with Spain which had declared that America was merely “to occupy and hold the city, bay and harbor of Manila pending the conclusion of the treaty.” Generally these orders compelling the Filipinos to make more and more humiliating withdrawals were accompanied with gratuitous threats to use force. What friendship had been left at the time of the occupation had given way to suspicion.

Perhaps no one more than Senator Bacon realized the danger which these relations meant.

While there is not a declaration of war [he said] while there is no avowal of hostile intent, with two such armies fronting each other with such diverse intents and resolves, it will take but a spark to ignite the magazine which may explode.... They (the Filipinos) are opposed to the occupation of their islands by the United States troops [warned the Senator] because of the apprehension that it is the purpose of the United States government to maintain a permanent dominion over those islands; and whenever, we shall by such resolutions as these, say solemnly to the world that such is not our purpose, there is no longer any danger or difficulty⁠[16].

That such was also the view taken by the Filipino leaders and observed by the American commander was also clear. “They begged,” said General Otis, “for some tangible concession from the United States government, one which they could present to the people and which might serve to allay excitement” ⁠[17].

Two days before the vote was taken, however, every attempt to declare America’s real purpose with regard to the Philippines had failed. On that fateful day the hostilities between the Americans and Filipinos against which Mr. Bacon had warned his countrymen finally broke out. The Administration immediately claimed that the insurgents had treacherously begun the hostilities, but even with this inducement to support the treaty, that document was finally ratified with but one vote to spare.

But it was not yet too late to hear the protest of the Filipinos even if it had been ignored for so long a time. The opponents of colonization immediately commenced their efforts to pass their resolutions plainly putting the benevolent attitude which the President and his supporters had been so vaguely hinting at. That of Mr. McEnery’s supplemented by Mr. Bacon’s amendment was, in particular, the most clear and reasonable of all. It read as follows:

Resolved, further, that the United States hereby disclaim any disposition or intention to exercise permanent sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said islands, and assert their determination, when a stable and independent government shall have been erected therein, entitled in the judgment of the government of the United States to recognition as such, to transfer to said government, upon terms which shall be reasonable and just, all rights secured under the cession by Spain, and to thereupon leave the government and control of the Islands to their people.

Surely, the issue could not have been more plainly put. If the United States really intended and could be trusted to deal honestly and fairly with the Filipinos, now was the time to announce her policy. This resolution still gave the United States a wide latitude of discretion as to when the Filipinos could have their cherished freedom. Even Senator Lodge should have had no apprehension in the matter. There were here no bonds to be given to Europe, no distrust in the good faith and judgment of the American people. The resolution merely sought to decide whether the Filipinos would at some distant time in the future eventually be granted that which had been given to Cuba. But this resolution also failed to pass and in its failure the true purpose of the Administration was made clear. The vote was a tie and the casting vote of the Vice-President was cast against it.

---

The last chapter took us to the day when the Senate of the United States, with one vote to spare, finally ratified the treaty. But seven weeks before that momentous occasion the President had already started on his career of usurpation which finally ended in war. On December 21, 1898, he issued a proclamation which he caused to be broadcasted in the Islands. At that time the United States had no title to a foot of land in the Philippines, and whether it would have depended on the ratification of the treaty which was bitterly opposed by many leaders of the Republican party. Until this treaty was ratified the protocol of August 13 remained in force which by its terms merely provided that the United States forces should occupy “the city, bay and harbor of Manila, pending the conclusion of the treaty.” None the less the President began his proclamation by saying that,

the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Manila by the United States squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Dewey followed by the reduction of the city and the surrender of the Spanish forces practically effected the conquest of the Philippine islands and the suspension of Spanish sovereignty therein. With the signature of the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain by their respective plenipotentiaries at Paris on the 10th instant, and as a result of the victories of American arms, the future control, disposition, and government of the Philippine islands are ceded to the United States. In the fulfillment of the rights of sovereignty thus acquired and the responsible obligations thus assumed, the actual occupation and administration of the entire group of the Philippine Islands becomes immediately necessary, and the military government heretofore maintained by the United States in the city, harbor and bay of Manila is to be extended with all possible dispatch to the whole ceded territory.

He concluded by urging the military administration to win the confidence, respect and affection of the Filipinos,

by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of “benevolent assimilation” substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.

The President’s language thus made it clear that he considered the conquest of the Philippine Islands as practically complete, that the United States now owned them and could deal with them as it would and that it did not offer them any voice in their government, much less the independence for which they had struggled so long and which they thought the United States had fought to give them.

The President also went on to say:

All persons who, either by active aid or by honest submission, cooperate with the Government of the United States to give effect to these beneficent purposes will receive the reward of its support and protection. All others will be brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity so far as possible.

Bearing in mind that this Proclamation was issued seven weeks before the treaty was ratified, what did the President assert by it? Simply this—in substance he told the Filipinos:

You are ours, the control of your public property and the revenues of your state are ours, the use and management of your public means of transportation and conveyance are controlled by our authority and while we mean to rule you with benevolence, nevertheless you must accept our sovereignty in order to receive our support and protection, for if you fail to do so the armed forces of the United States will compel you to submit.

The Filipinos realized this; it was not difficult for them to see what the United States really intended, notwithstanding the honeyed phrases of the proclamation. The American commander in Manila, General Otis, also realized it, and knowing the stern resolve of the people to assert their independence he took the liberty of censoring the proclamation by cutting out the words “sovereignty” and “immediate extension of authority.” Unfortunately the proclamation got out by mistake in its original form and served to increase the tension between the two armies.

In accordance with this proclamation, the American forces in Manila gradually extended their occupations beyond the city limits, forcing the Filipino army to retire farther and farther from its original lines. As long as the Filipino forces yielded gracefully to these illegal advances they certainly had a right to feel that no organized attack would be made upon them. But on February 4, two days before the treaty was ratified the American lines were again extended into the outlying territory.

That night an American sentry seeing a Filipino on the newly occupied sector challenged him. What transpired is best stated by this same American private.

I yelled, “Halt!” ... The man moved. I challenged him with another “Halt.” Then he immediately shouted, “Halto” to me. Well, I thought the best thing to do was to shoot him. He dropped. Then two Filipinos sprang out of the gateway about fifteen feet from us. I called “Halt” and Miller fired and dropped one. I saw that another was left. Well, I think I got my second Filipino that time. We retreated to where our six other fellows were and I said, “Line up, fellows, the niggers are in here all through these yards.” We then retreated to the pipe line and got behind the water workmain and stayed there all night. It was some minutes after our second shots before Filipinos began firing⁠[1].

General Otis described the outbreak in his official report in very much the same manner. He said:

An insurgent approaching the picket (of a Nebraska regiment) refused to halt or answer when challenged. The result was that our picket discharged his piece (killing the Filipino) when the insurgent troops near Santa Mesa opened fire on our troops there stationed.... During the night it was confined to an exchange of fire between opposing lines for a distance of two miles.... It is not believed that the chief insurgents wished to open hostilities at that time⁠[2].

It has never been even suggested that this exchange of fire caused any casualties⁠[3].

That the Filipino leaders did not desire an outbreak has also been substantiated from numerous reliable sources since then. Thus Charles B. Elliott, a defender of the American administration, writing as late as 1916 says:

The Filipinos at that particular hour were unprepared for attack or defense. The expected battle came when they were off their guard, most of the higher officers being absent in Malolos⁠[4]. [While] the American authorities in Manila, having taken a more positive stand ... let loose the dogs of war they had been holding ready⁠[5].

The next day General Aguinaldo sent a member of his staff under a flag of truce to interview General Otis and to tell him that the firing of the night before had been against his orders and that he wished to stop further hostilities. To bring this about he proposed to establish a neutral zone wide enough to keep the opposing armies apart. But to this request Otis replied that the fighting having begun must go on “to the grim end”⁠[6]. This refusal was followed by an attack on the Filipino forces which lasted all day and resulted in killing some three thousand natives.

These incidents reviewed by a Senate Committee of which Mr. Lodge was the chairman make other facts stand clear. General MacArthur was questioned as follows:

Senator Patterson: The question is whether the Filipino troops made any attempt to advance upon American troops that night (Feb. 4) or that morning (Feb. 5). You have no knowledge of anything of that kind?

Gen. MacArthur: I have no knowledge of that kind and I presume it was not so because—

Sen. Patterson: The result of that advance was the killing and wounding of more than 3000 Filipinos and, I suppose, their utter disorganization?

Gen. MacArthur: It resulted fortunately in a great victory for the American arms.

Sen. Patterson: And from that time forward the war has gone on?

Gen. MacArthur: It has been in progress ever since⁠[7].

Now, why did the American commander thus receive the request for parley, and why did he begin the war? Certainly, the incident of the night before was one that might well have been dealt with at a friendly conference. The discharge of the firearms was a mistake, an accident, at the most the act of an individual. Certainly it was nothing that would justify a war, so that when Otis not only refused Aguinaldo’s message but also attacked and killed thousands of Filipinos in one day, he acted either with or without orders. When General Otis made a report of this engagement to the War Department he said it “was one strictly defensive on the part of the insurgents and one of vigorous attack by our forces”⁠[8].

The Constitution of the United States strictly provides that Congress alone may declare war. That body certainly had not done so, and no one familiar with the feeling in the United States at this time can believe that Congress would have declared war on their Philippine allies. The Filipinos had done nothing but help the Americans, and if there were any of the latter who were hostile to the natives they were those who, intending to rob the Filipinos of their country, feared that they would encounter resistance. Only one conclusion is possible—the bloody war that followed the attack of February 5 was caused by an act of usurpation.

It may be going too far to say that the attack on the Filipino army was ordered by McKinley, but this much is clear, that he never expressed any disapproval, and that when in dealing with the existing hostilities he told the American people that there would “be no useless parley,” he made himself a party to the usurpation.

The reader will no doubt ask,—what was the significance of this outbreak, what did it accomplish for the President and his administration? Senator Patterson of Colorado ably described the situation in these words:

That attack of February 4 and 5 [he said] became an absolute necessity for the success of the imperialistic marplots at Washington. The treaty was before the Senate. It had been agreed that a vote upon it should be taken on February 6. It was known to everyone that there were lacking two votes of the number required to ratify it. The Filipinos were praying that its ratification would be defeated, for then the treaty would be amended so that Spain would relinquish sovereignty over the Philippines as it had provided for Cuba. The Filipinos had all to gain by preserving the status of the armies as it was before February 6. The imperialists had everything to gain by precipitating a conflict⁠[9].

This question may also well be asked—why did General Otis call the Filipinos “insurgents,” and why was that term constantly employed by the administration in Washington throughout the war? On the day when the battle of February 5 was fought the Filipinos were encamped on grounds assigned to them by the American commanders as their late allies. Following the accidental shooting of two Filipinos by American sentinels and an unauthorized exchange of shots between the lines the American forces had launched a “vigorous attack,” killing thousands of men who had resisted in a “strictly defensive” manner. When this attack was made the treaty was before the Senate and the United States had no title whatsoever to the Island. The Filipinos on the other hand certainly had the right to live in their own country and to defend themselves when attacked. Yet the skillful use of the word “insurrecto” in 1899 and during the years that followed carried an entirely false impression to the people of the United States. It was deception, pure and simple.

Of course, this outbreak had to be justified by the administration in reporting it to the American people. Three different means of deception were therefore adopted. The first was to assert positively that the treacherous Filipinos were to blame for the outbreak. “The first blow was struck by the inhabitants,” said Mr. McKinley, “they assailed our sovereignty, and there will be no useless parley, no pause, until the insurrection is suppressed and American authority acknowledged and established”⁠[10]. On another occasion he went on to say, “We never dreamed that the little body of insurgents whom we have just emancipated from oppression,—we never for a moment believed that they would turn upon the flag that had sheltered them against Spain”⁠[11].

The second was to draw a veil of secrecy over the Philippine events and to establish a censorship of the press. How vigorously the censorship was enforced may be easily inferred from the fact that the staff correspondents of the leading American papers in Manila united in a statement to the American people.

We believe [they said] that owing to official dispatches from Manila made public in Washington, the people of the United States have not received a correct impression of the situation in the Philippines.... The censorship has compelled us to participate in these misrepresentations by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of fact, on the plea as General Otis stated, that “they would alarm the people at home” or “have the people of the United States by the ears.”

Of course, the Manila censor would not permit such a dispatch to be sent from his office. The protest was, therefore, sent by mail to Hongkong and from there cabled to the United States. It was published in the newspapers of this country on July 17, 1899⁠[12].

The American correspondent of the Associated Press, Mr. Robert M. Collins, more graphically described the situation which confronted them.

Recently [he wrote in his letter of July 30, 1899, to Mr. Melville Stone, General Manager] I filed what I thought was the most inoffensive statement that the business men who had appeared before the commission had advocated a retention of the existing system of currency. The censor said, “I ought not to let that go. That would be a lift for Bryan. My instructions are to shut off everything that could hurt McKinley’s administration”⁠[13].

In this way, therefore, were facts being kept away, not from the enemy, but from the people of the United States who were being called upon to sanction the conquest of the Philippines. In this way truth was suppressed.

The third method was to assert that only a small fraction of the population was opposed to American sovereignty.

Well, whom are we fighting [said the Secretary of War Root]? Are we fighting the Philippine nation? No! There is none. There are hundreds of islands inhabited by more than sixty tribes, speaking more than sixty languages, and all but one ready to accept American sovereignty⁠[14].

That this statement was also absolutely unjustified will be shown in the next chapter.

---

The war went on for years, but the vigor and ferocity with which it was carried on by the able commanders of the American army have unfortunately never been fully comprehended by the public. This was largely due to the attempts of those in political office to minimize the importance of the struggle and to convince the people at home that the enemy was but a small fraction of the native population. Bearing in mind the statement of Secretary Root, therefore, we can appreciate the true progress of the war as shown by the war records in Washington. Thus:

On February 10, six days after the firing of that fatal shot which plunged the nation into war, General Lawton succeeded in dislodging an army of 4,000 Filipinos from Caloocan, on the outskirts of Manila. It was at this point, too, that General MacArthur came to realize the stupendous task that lay before his army.

When I first started in against these rebels [he said] I believed that Aguinaldo’s troops represented only a fraction.... I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon ... was opposed to us, but having come thus far, and having been brought much in contact with both insurgents and amigos, I have been reluctantly compelled to believe that the Filipino masses are loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he leads⁠[1].

The island of Luzon alone at that time had a population of over three and a half million.

Four hundred miles south of Manila lie the Visayan Islands, one of the richest groups of the archipelago. Early in December, 1898, General Miller in command of an expedition composed largely of fresh arrivals from San Francisco had previously sailed for Iloilo, the largest city of the Visayas. Arriving there and finding the Filipinos supreme in command, he had courteously asked them to permit his troops to land. This request had been refused. Another request had followed on January 1, 1899, accompanied by a copy of McKinley’s Benevolent Proclamation claiming sovereignty over the archipelago. The Filipinos immediately asked if the American commander carried instructions from Aguinaldo, saying that they could do nothing without orders from their recognized leader “in cases affecting their Federal Government.”

I have the honor to notify you [said the Filipino leader in these islands hundreds of miles from Manila] that, in conjunction with the people, the army, and the committee, we insist upon our pretentions not to consent ... to any foreign interference without express orders from the central government of Luzon (that is, the Government headed by Aguinaldo) ... with which we are one in ideas, as we have been until now in sacrifices⁠[2].

And with regard to the claim of sovereignty made by McKinley seven weeks before the treaty was ratified, this is what the Filipinos in Iloilo said in another dispatch to General Miller:

The supposed authority of the United States began with the treaty of Paris, on the 10th of December, 1898. The authority of the Central Government of Malolos (the seat of Aguinaldo’s government) is founded in the sacred and natural bonds of blood, language, uses, customs, ideas (and) sacrifices⁠[3].

Here were bits of real eloquence substantiated by acts coming from Filipinos four hundred miles south of Manila. Compare these with Secretary Root’s statements about the “sixty tribes” and “sixty languages” and what conclusion are we forced to draw?

In the face of this stubborn resistance General Miller with his several thousand troops had, therefore, decided not to land, but instead picked up anchor and set sail for Manila. The President’s benevolent proclamation in Iloilo, as well as in Luzon, had thus completely failed.

Following the outbreak of February 4, however, Miller again returned with his troops, and, with the assistance of the armed vessels Baltimore and Petrel finally captured the city. Then followed the occupation of Cebu, the third largest city of the archipelago.

During the month of March the so-called “Visayan Military District” was organized and placed under the command of General Miller. This district included the southern islands of Panay, Negros, and Cebu, by far the richest sugar lands of the archipelago. On the thirty-first of the same month, General MacArthur entered the town of Malolos where, for several months, Aguinaldo’s seat of government had been located. One month later he succeeded in driving the main body of Aguinaldo’s army from that vicinity, and the march northward began in earnest. General Lawton in command of another army moved on a parallel line thus forming a big wing which captured and swept everything before them. A base for military operations was established also in San Fernando, forty miles north of Manila⁠[4].

During the summer months that followed the army of the American expeditionary forces was replaced largely by fresh recruits. By October the northern advance was again launched with greater severity towards the great plain of Luzon where Aguinaldo was still supreme. General Lawton with his vastly superior forces again swept everything before him. Generals Wheaton and MacArthur also followed in almost parallel lines, and by November 12 the main body of the Filipino army was forced to scatter. Some managed to return south where they joined the insurgents of that region. Aguinaldo himself succeeded in evading the net and escaped through Wheaton’s lines. After fleeing further northward he sought refuge in the mountains along the eastern coast⁠[5].

Having accomplished his task, General Lawton turned south in order to break the line of communication between the northern and southern armies of the Filipinos. He succeeded in this mission also but sacrificed his life in a battle just twelve miles from Manila.

The new year 1900 marked the beginning of a fresh series of campaigns. General Bates began by launching an aggressive drive in the province of Cavite, southwest of Manila. In the following month, February, General Bell sailed to the southern islands to capture the provinces of North and South Camarines and West Albay where the Filipino forces had been swelled by a number of those defeated in the north. Similar expeditions were sent to the Visayan islands and garrisons established everywhere. A total of four hundred different army posts was the final outcome of this campaign⁠[6].

In June of this same year, General MacArthur, believing that the backbone of the Philippine army had been broken, recommended a proclamation of amnesty. This was issued by the President on the twenty-first, but it soon became evident that although unable to fight in the open as an army, the Filipinos were determined to continue the uneven struggle by guerrilla warfare.

With Aguinaldo in full retreat, the amazing thing is that he was not overpowered sooner. The following account of the defeat of one of his loyal forces, as reported by American eye witnesses, may give the reason why.

It was a great fight that was fought away up on the trail of lonely Tirad Pass on that Saturday morning of December 2. It brought glory to Major Marsh’s battalion of the Thirty-Third volunteer infantry who were the victors. It brought no discredit to the little band of sixty Filipinos who fought and died there. Sixty was the number that, at Aguinaldo’s orders had come down into the pass that morning to arrest the onward march of the Americans. Seven were all that went back over the pass that night to tell Aguinaldo that they had tried and failed. Fifty-three of them were either killed or wounded. And among them, the last to retreat, we found the body of young General Gregorio del Pilar.

We had seen him cheering his men in the fight. One of our companies crouched up close under the side of the cliff where he had built his first intrenchment, heard his voice continually during the fight urging his men to greater effort, scolding them, praising them, cursing, appealing one moment to their love of their native land and the next instant threatening to kill them himself if they did not stand firm. Driven from the first intrenchment he fell slowly back to the second in full sight of our sharpshooters and under a heavy fire. Not until every man around him in the second intrenchment was down did he turn his white horse and ride slowly up the winding trail. Then we who were below saw an American squirm his way out to the top of a high flat rock, and take deliberate aim at the figure on the white horse. We held our breath, not knowing whether to pray that the sharpshooter would shoot straight or miss. Then came the spiteful crack of the Krag rifle and the man on horseback rolled to the ground, and when the troops charging up the mountain side reached him, the boy general of the Filipinos was dead.

We went up on the mountain side. After H company had driven the insurgents out of their second position and killed Pilar, the other companies had rushed straight up the trail, and never stopped until they were far up above the clouds and there was no longer an insurgent in sight. As we went up the trail we passed dead Filipino soldiers. We counted ten in all. Some had been shot several times. We found bloody trails that led to places on the edge of the cliffs, where wounded men had either jumped or fallen off. We passed the second intrenchment high up on the trail. It was built of heavy rocks well banked with earth. Just past this a few hundred yards we saw a solitary figure lying on the road. The body was almost stripped of clothing, and there were no marks of rank on the blood-soaked coat. But the face of the dead man had a look I had never noticed on the face of other dead men in insurgent uniform on the field of battle, in the wake of an American firing line. The features were clear cut and the forehead high and shapely. I decided the man must have been an insurgent officer. A soldier came running down the trail.

“That’s old Pilar,” he said, “we got the old rascal. I guess he’s sorry he ever went up against the Thirty-Third.”

“There ain’t no doubt about its being Pilar,” rattled on the young soldier. “We got his diary and letters and all his papers, and Sullivan of our company’s got his pants, and Snider’s got his shoes, but he can’t wear them because they’re too small, and a sergeant in G. Company got one of his silver spurs, and a lieutenant got the other, and somebody swiped the cuff buttons before I got here or I would have swiped them, and all I got was a stud button and his collar with blood on it.”

So this was the end of Gregorio del Pilar. Only twenty-two years old he managed to make himself a leader of men when he was hardly more than a boy, and at last had laid down his life for his convictions. Major Marsh had the diary. In it he had written under the date of December 2, the day he was killed:

“The General has given me the pick of all the men that can be spared and ordered me to defend the pass. I realize what a terrible task is given me. And yet I feel that this is the most glorious moment of my life. What I do is done for my beloved country. No sacrifice can be too great.”

A private sitting by the fire was exhibiting a handkerchief. “It’s old Pilar’s. It’s got ‘Dolores Hoses’ on the corner. I guess that was his girl. Well, it’s all over with Gregorio.”

“Anyhow,” said Private Sullivan, “I got his pants. He won’t need them any more.”

The man who had the general’s shoes strode proudly past, refusing with scorn a Mexican dollar and a pair of shoes taken from one of the private insurgent soldiers. A private sitting on a rock was examining a golden locket containing a curl of a woman’s hair. “Got the locket off his neck,” said the soldier....

As the main column started on its march for the summit of the mountain a turn in the trail brought us again in sight of the insurgent general far down below us. There had been no time to bury him. Not even a blanket or a poncho had been thrown over him.

A crow sat on the dead man’s feet. Another perched on his head. The fog settled down upon us. We could see the body no longer.

“We carved not a line and we raised not a stone,

But we left him alone in his glory.”

And when Private Sullivan went by in his trousers, and Snider with his shoes, and the other man who had the cuff buttons, and the sergeant who had the spur, and the lieutenant who had the other spur, and the man that had the handkerchief, and another that had his shoulder straps, it suddenly occurred to me that his glory was about all we had left him⁠[7].

In fairness to the sober thought of the Americans, however, it should be stated that the body of the Filipino general was later rescued from those who were despoiling it and buried with full military honors. Over his humble grave the American soldiers erected a stone bearing this convincing testimony:

GENERAL GREGORIO DEL PILAR
KILLED
AT THE BATTLE OF TIRAD PASS
DECEMBER 2, 1899
COMMANDING AGUINALDO’S REAR GUARD
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

It was no doubt just such instances of bravery and personal sacrifices that finally led General Lawton to say:

“Taking into account the disadvantages they have to fight against in arms, equipment and military discipline,—without artillery, short of ammunition, powder inferior, shells reloaded until they are defective, inferior in every particular of equipment and supplies,—they are the bravest men I have ever seen.

What we want is to stop this accursed war.... These men are indomitable. At Bacoor bridge they waited until the Americans had brought their cannon to within thirty-five yards of their trenches. Such men have the right to be heard. All they want is a little justice”⁠[8].

This brief but colorful record of the first stages of the conquest, and the disastrous defeats of Aguinaldo’s army are seldom questioned. But it has often been asked why, seeing that victory over American arms was virtually impossible, the Filipinos should have persisted in sacrificing their lives and their fortunes by carrying on such an unequal struggle. The answer was properly given at that time by Apolinario Mabini, the intellectual leader of the revolution, the Alexander Hamilton of that epoch. He thus expressed the sentiments of his countrymen:

The Filipinos realize that they cannot expect any victory over the American forces; they are fighting to show the American people that they are sufficiently intelligent to know their rights despite any pretense to hide these rights with able sophistry....

The Filipinos maintain their fight against the American troops, not because of an especial hatred, but in order to show to the American people that, far from being indifferent as to their political situation they know how to sacrifice themselves for a government which assures them their individual liberty and which governs them in conformity with the wishes and the needs of the people. They have been unable to avoid that fight, owing to the fact that they have been unable to obtain from the American government any kind of formal and clear promise regarding the establishment of such a kind of government⁠[9].

In order to show that the Filipinos were not by nature of a warring disposition and that they were anxious to have peace and understanding, Mabini continued thus:

The present condition and state of war deprives the people of the chance to manifest freely their aspirations; therefore the Filipinos desire most ardently that the Congress of the United States provide for some means to listen to them before adopting a resolution that would mean a definite decision regarding their future....

I confidently hope that when the Americans and Filipinos have come to know each other better, not only will the present conflict come to an end but also future ones will be avoided. The opinion prevailing among the impartial part of the American nation appears to tend toward adhering to its old traditions and the spirit of justice and humanity, which constitute at the present time the sole hope of all upright Filipinos⁠[10].

In the spring of 1901 finally occurred the most important incident of the war. This was the dramatic ruse which culminated in the capture of Aguinaldo. It will be remembered that ever since the beginning of the campaign the leadership of Aguinaldo was undisputed. The capture of that great leader, therefore, meant everlasting glory to the American soldier brave enough to perform such an exploit.

The opportunity to attempt such a deed came when an officer of General Funston’s district in central Luzon intercepted a messenger from Aguinaldo bearing dispatches to one of his generals in that locality. The message directed the Filipino General Lacuna to send some reinforcements to Aguinaldo’s camp. Here was the golden opportunity. Why not impersonate the reinforcements called for? The plan was submitted to General MacArthur and adopted by him.

The American commander thereupon secured a company of Macabebe Filipino scouts for the purpose. These Macabebe scouts had been loyal to the Spanish military régime and when the Americans came they sided with the invader. They came from a small district in Pampanga province, the population of which at that time was a little over 25,000. In every respect they were pure blooded Filipinos, as later events proved, and the American commanders took advantage of this to deceive the wily Aguinaldo.

On March 6th the U. S. Vicksburg slipped quietly out of Manila Bay bearing the members of the enterprise. Outside the American commanders of whom there were four, no one had been told of the nature of the expedition. Once they were aboard, however, the Macabebes were told to discard their American uniforms and made to dress in such fashion as to most resemble a tired and haggard insurgent command. It was necessary to land over a hundred miles from Aguinaldo’s camp, as the smoke from the vessel might have attracted the attention of some peasant or insurgent lookout who would sound the alarm. General Funston’s account of the precautions taken in this expedition offers the most convincing proof that outside of a few natives, such as the Macabebes who had accepted American sovereignty, the rest of the native population as late as 1901 were hostile to the United States and loyal to Aguinaldo.

The party landed at night with all the ship’s lights screened, and the Vicksburg sailed away immediately agreeing to meet them at a nearer point eleven days later. Thence started the march through a hostile territory. The friendly Macabebes had been carefully drilled in the part they were to play, and the stories they were to tell in the villages that they passed. The story was to the effect that on their march cross country to join Aguinaldo they had encountered a small party of Americans drawing maps of the outlying country. A skirmish followed and after killing and wounding some of them they had succeeded in capturing the five Americans whom they were now bearing to Aguinaldo as prisoners of war.

As the party marched through the villages they were, therefore, received with pride and honor, the natives never suspecting that they were feeding and guiding the enemy, a convincing proof that all Filipinos look alike and do not differ from one another in appearance any more than a Massachusetts man does from a New Yorker. General Funston in his account of this enterprise later took particular pains to say that the village officials and insurrectionists whom they encountered were very humane and courteous to himself and the other four American “prisoners”⁠[11].

When within eight miles of Aguinaldo’s camp, quite exhausted from the long march, the leader of the Macabebe troop, a certain Hilario Tal Placido, sent a note in advance to Aguinaldo saying that he had halted his command at the beach for a short rest as they were exhausted from their long march and very much in need of food. The message also requested that some be sent to them. The food came, and Aguinaldo’s capturers were elated to find that the leader did not suspect the fate that awaited him.

Then came one of the emergencies which American wit had to encounter. Just as the final march was about to begin word came from Aguinaldo that the American prisoners should be left behind in charge of some of his guards. This was no doubt a precaution to prevent the Americans from knowing the exact location of the insurgent camp. After a hurried whispered conversation Funston directed the Macabebes under the command of Placido to go ahead and leave them behind, but to later send a forged order from Aguinaldo directing that the “prisoners” be sent up to the camp after all. This ruse was successfully accomplished also and Placido finally reached Aguinaldo’s presence, the American “prisoners” lagging a short distance behind and out of sight. Aguinaldo’s neatly uniformed guard of fifty men presented arms as Placido entered the insurgent leader’s office and while the Macabebes were nonchalantly forming a cordon around the guard, Placido entertained the President with his story of the march across the country. Then when he saw that the moment had come he went to the window and by a prearranged signal ordered the Macabebes to open fire. So unexpected was the attack that it succeeded in overpowering the guards.

Almost immediately after giving the order Placido, who was a very stout individual, turned and grabbed Aguinaldo, who weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds, threw him down and sat on him until General Funston and the rest of the Americans arrived. After a short rest the party hurriedly covered the remaining eight miles to a certain point in the coast where the Vicksburg had agreed to meet them. The rest of the trip by water was uneventful and in due course of time they reached Manila.

Aguinaldo was taken to the Palace to confront General MacArthur without a soul in Manila knowing about the successful ruse. The Filipino leader was most graciously treated and housed by General MacArthur. He was treated more like a guest than a prisoner of war, although, of course, he was watched night and day by a commissioned officer. It was most important that the leader be kept alive for his influence in quelling the revolution was sorely needed.

During the three weeks’ confinement of the great leader, therefore, everything was done to convince him that further resistance was impossible. Everything that the Americans had done and the attitude they were taking was carefully explained to him, so that he might realize the inflexibility of America’s purpose to remain in the islands for “the good of the Filipino,” whether they liked it or not. The programme explained to him was wittily described by an Englishwoman when she said that it was 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[12].

A quaint scheme indeed and “one characteristic of the dauntlessness of American energy”⁠[13].

And so Aguinaldo bowed to the inevitable. On April 19 he took his oath of allegiance and at the same time issued a proclamation recommending the abandonment of further resistance. Among other things he said:

The time has come, however, when they (the Filipinos) find their advance along this path (the path of their aspiration for freedom) impeded by an irresistible force.... Enough of blood, enough of tears and desolation.... By acknowledging and accepting the Sovereignty of the United States, I believe I am serving thee, my beloved country. May happiness be thine⁠[14].

The capture of Aguinaldo, in the estimation of General MacArthur was “the most momentous single event of the year,” inasmuch as he “was the incarnation of the insurrection”⁠[15]. When the news of his dramatic capture was first received in Washington, Funston was immediately raised to the rank of Brigadier-General, a convincing testimony that the Washington authorities knew Aguinaldo’s importance.

Although the surrender of the Filipino leader was a severe loss to the Filipinos, however, the war went on in full if not with increasing ferocity. Filipino forces were active in the southern islands of Mindoro, Samar, Cebu and Bohol. This condition was deemed sufficient to justify the establishment of the notorious reconcentration camps, the hideous cruelty of which had precipitated the Cuban war⁠[16]. For the island of Samar, the Filipinos had to contend with General “Hell Roaring Jake Smith,” so called because of his methods of conducting “civilized warfare”⁠[17]. We shall make General Smith’s acquaintance later on.

The province of Batangas, not over sixty miles south of Manila was also seething with rebellion. The official reports from the army files tell us graphically what measures were taken to force the native population to submit to American arms. General Bell was in charge of this district. His Circular Order No. 22, to be found in Senate Document 331, 1902, p. 1628, read as follows:

To combat such a population, it is necessary to make the state of war as insupportable as possible, and there is no more efficacious way of accomplishing this than by keeping the minds of the people in such a state of anxiety and apprehension that living under such conditions will soon become unbearable. Little should be said. The less said the better. Let acts, not words, convey the intention.

If we compare this official order with President McKinley’s benevolent proclamation instructing the military administration to win the confidence, respect and affection of the Filipinos, the contrast presented is extraordinary to say the least.

General Bell’s Christmas Day product is even more convincing. His report of December 26, 1901, read as follows:

I am now assembling in the neighborhood of 2,500 men who will be used in columns of about fifty men each. I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of towns. All able-bodied men will be killed or captured.... These people need a thrashing to teach them some good common sense; and they should have it for the good of all concerned.

No official estimate of the number of people killed by such measures throughout the islands since the beginning of the war has ever been made. General J. M. Bell, however, made the estimate that in Luzon alone one-sixth of the native population had been wiped out as a consequence of the war⁠[18]. Luzon then had a population of over three and a half million, and one-sixth of that number meant 600,000 men, women and children. How many of these were killed by powder and lead? General Bell himself gave a suggestive answer when he said as a part of the same statement that:

The loss of life by killing alone has been very great but I think that not one man has been slain except where his death served the legitimate purpose of war. It has been thought necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures.

A Republican Congressman who visited the islands in 1902 confirmed these estimates in an interview published in the Boston Transcript of March 4. Said he:

You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon; and the secret of its pacification is, in my opinion, the secret of pacification of the archipelago. They never rebel in northern Luzon because there isn’t anybody there to rebel. The country was marched over and cleaned in a most resolute manner. The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country, and wherever or whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him. The women and children were spared, and may now be noticed in disproportionate numbers in that part of the island.

The army song of that period vividly typified the feeling of the soldier towards the Filipino. Sung to the tune of “Tramp, tramp, tramp,” the refrain was as follows:

Although no very careful estimate of the total casualties has been made, it is certain from the records, official and semi-official, that the Filipinos killed in battle far outnumbered the American losses. Judge Blount’s examination of the available war records showed a ratio of sixteen Filipinos to every one American killed⁠[20]. Commenting on this disparity in the numbers killed the famous American historian Latane adds that it “cannot be attributed to the superior marksmanship of the American soldiers; it was due rather to the fact that the Filipinos were in many cases not armed with rifles, and in some cases perhaps, to the ruthless slaughter of the wounded”⁠[21].

Considering the fact that the general belief among the American people was that their presence in the islands was merely for the purpose of helping the Filipino, it is indeed astounding to learn how this conquest was being carried along in their name. But did the administration in Washington cherish a similar purpose? We would do well to look for light on this subject.

On page 96, Volume II, of Olcott’s Life of McKinley, which is the standard biography of that President, there appears a facsimile of a memorandum written in Mr. McKinley’s own handwriting and recording a conversation which he had with Admiral Dewey. The piece of paper used by the President was of the White House stationery, and it bore the date of October 3, 1899.

“What is our duty?” was one of the President’s questions. And as Admiral Dewey answered, McKinley wrote his memorandum, as follows:

“Keep the Island permanently. Valuable in every way.”

Then followed questions regarding the number of troops and ships needed for this permanent occupation.

And as if to assure himself of his position, the President finally asked:

“Should we give up the Islands?”

And then follows this grim reply:

“Never—never.”

---

A war of conquest under tropical skies if carried on with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare should not differ from any other struggle, no matter how bitterly contested. Examination of the casualties in the fiercest struggles of the nineteenth century, for example, show always a striking similarity between the proportion of men killed and the men wounded on the field of battle. Generally this ratio is six to one, or at least five to one, that is to say, for every one man killed in battle five or six victims are wounded.

Thus, for example, in the great Boer War this ratio is substantially borne out. At the battle of Magersfontein there were killed, 171; wounded 691; at Colenso, killed 50; wounded 847. In all the battles waged in British East Africa from October, 1899, to June, 1900, killed 2518; wounded 11,405⁠[1].

If we go back a few years and examine the greatest battles of the Civil War, the ratio is even more accurately shown. Thus, at Antietam where the Federal forces attacked, there were killed 2,010; wounded 9,416; at Fredericksburg where the attack was made under a withering fire of rifle and cannon, killed 1,180; wounded 9,028; at the three day battle of Gettysburg, killed 2,834; wounded 13,709; at Cold Harbor where the carnage was frightful, killed 1,905 wounded 10,570⁠[2].

Thus it is seen that in no war where the usages of civilized warfare have been respected has the number of killed approached the number of wounded more nearly than in these figures. The proportion as shown remains constant—about five wounded to one killed.

Turn now to the Philippine campaign where the aim of the military administration was to be one which would “win the confidence, respect and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines”⁠[3]. What do the official war records show? Almost the reverse, that is to say that for every Filipino wounded in battle, five were killed. Thus, in northern Luzon whose people, said Secretary of War Root, “received us (United States) with open arms,” the official records show that 1,014 Filipinos were killed and only 95 wounded⁠[4]. Losses by guerrilla warfare in southern Luzon are almost as convincing. There were, from November 1, 1899, to September 1, 1900, 3,227 killed and only 694 wounded. About 2,800 surrendered during this period.

What do these comparative figures of killed and wounded mean? How may they be accounted for? General MacArthur attempted to give an explanation at the time. He said it arose “from the fact that our soldiers are trained in what we call ‘fire discipline,’ that is, target practice. In other words, they know how to shoot.”⁠[5] But with the same breath he freely admits that “the Boer is the best individual marksman in the world.”⁠[6]

Is it to be believed that the best marksmen in the world, opposed to English soldiers who notoriously fought in the open, killed only one in four of the men they hit, whereas the Americans in numerous skirmishes killed every man they hit, and on an average nearly five out of six? The absurdity of such an explanation is heightened by the report of the Inspector-General of the Division, Colonel Garlington, who during the campaign testified that:

Target practice has been, from the necessities of the case, almost entirely neglected. This important part of the modern soldier’s education should receive prompt attention, and be vigorously prosecuted. At present the army is largely composed of new men without practice or skill in shooting⁠[7].

What then is the real explanation? It is found in the statements from the Americans engaged in the contest, officers as well as soldiers. These signed statements were published in the newspapers of America and they all severely indicated the brutality with which the war was being conducted.

Among the first descriptions to reach this country was that from L. F. Adams of Ozark, Missouri. Referring to the first battle of the war, that of February 5, he said:

In the path of the Washington regiment and Battery D of the Sixth Artillery there were 1,008 dead niggers and a great many wounded. We burned all their houses. I don’t know how many men, women and children the Tennessee boys did kill. They would not take any prisoners.

More reliable testimony is furnished by the American war correspondents stationed in the islands. It will be remembered that these men had previously joined in a protest denouncing the censorship of Manila dispatches. The General Manager of the Associated Press ordered an investigation and the reply from one of the correspondents, Robert M. Collins, contained a statement of a conversation held between General Otis and the protesting correspondents en masse. The following is but a sample of it. Said Mr. Collins:

In that connection we reminded him that the stories of looting in soldiers’ letters home had been little, if any exaggerated. Davis and Bass told him they had personally seen our soldiers bayonetting the wounded, and I reminded him that the cutting off of ears of two American soldiers at Damariscotta had been merely retaliation for similar mutilations of dead Filipinos by the Americans.

(No one could possibly tell stronger stories of the looting and blackmailing by our soldiers than Otis has told although he charges it all to the volunteers.)

There has been according to Otis himself, and the personal knowledge of everyone here, a perfect orgy of looting and wanton destruction of property and most outrageous blackmailing of the natives and Chinamen in Manila, and various incidents like the shooting down of several Filipinos for attempting to run from arrest at a cock fight.

Here was then a statement by well-known correspondents. It was no anonymous slander. The witnesses were ready. Now was the time to investigate, to punish the offenders and to institute a reform. But what was done? Nothing so far as the public records show.

The first investigations which finally resulted from the innumerable letters coming from the soldiers themselves, was the case of Charles Brenner, a private in a Kansas regiment. Speaking of the battle of Caloocan, he wrote to his mother:

Company I had taken a few prisoners and stopped. The colonel ordered them up into line time after time, and finally sent Captain Bishop back to start them. Then occurred the hardest sight I ever saw. They had four prisoners and didn’t know what to do with them. They asked Captain Bishop what to do; and he said, “You know the orders,” and four natives fell dead⁠[8].

What did the military authorities do about this accusation as shown by the official records? On June 10, 1899, or four months after the statement was made, Brenner’s letter was referred by General MacArthur’s order to the inspector general of the division for investigation. What did this investigation show? It showed the testimony of several other witnesses that Captain Bishop had admitted giving the orders, that several others had heard the order given by some one, while one witness (Private Putnam) testified that he with others, had done the shooting. Captain Flanders testified that he ordered the prisoners to the rear, and heard some one give the order to shoot them. A lieutenant heard some one say (he thought at the time it was Captain Bishop) “Kill them! damn it, kill them!” Another witness testified that on the day of the battle, “word was passed along the line that orders were to take no prisoners”⁠[9].

Now at least, an investigation had been made and the facts found as a result of it were then reported to the highest authority in the Islands. This investigation conclusively showed at least three things:

1. That a crime had been committed—i.e., the killing of the prisoners.
2. That Private Putnam admitted having done the shooting itself but said that he had done it in obedience to the orders from his superior officer, Captain Bishop.
3. That the remaining evidence incriminating Bishop was very strong.

Arraigned against all this was Bishop’s denial, in the form of a written statement, that he had given such orders.

What steps were taken to punish the guilty parties? This much was done. General Otis believing Captain Bishop’s denial at once recommended that young Brenner, whose letter had brought about the investigation be court-martialled “for writing and conniving at the publication of the article which brought about this investigation” containing a false charge against Captain Bishop⁠[10]. In other words, Otis proposed to punish the soldier whose statement led to the discovery that a crime had in fact been committed, instead of finding and punishing the criminal.

Nor was this all. Otis further recommended that Private Putnam, the man who had admitted that he shot the prisoners, be tried also by court martial, thus urging the punishment of a private for obeying orders but letting the man who gave them go free.

But if Otis had been so tactless in his acts, he was after all saved from the folly of what he proposed to do. The Judge Advocate, Lieut. Col. E. H. Crowder, to whom these recommendations were sent, knew better than to follow them up. He therefore wrote to Otis on July 3, 1899, urging that the matter be dropped, saying:

I am not convinced from a careful reading of this report that Private Brenner has made a false charge against Captain Bishop. It is certain that the evidence is far from conclusive that he did so.

Nor would the Judge Advocate prosecute Private Putnam for slaying the prisoners because, he said, Putnam’s defense “would be the lawful order of his superior officer.” “If put on trial,” added the Judge Advocate, “it is probable that facts would develop implicating many others.” Hence followed his advice to this effect, “I doubt the propriety of this trial, and am of the opinion that considerations of public policy sufficiently grave to silence every other demand require that no further action be taken in this case”⁠[11].

This recommendation was acted upon by Otis. The War Department in Washington followed Otis’ advice and the record stands showing that the highest authorities declined to punish proven acts of barbarity not because the guilt of the accused was in doubt but because it was probable “that facts would develop implicating many others”; not because there was no reason, but because there was too much reason. Nay, the Commander-in-Chief had even actually proposed to punish the witness (Brenner) who had made the crime known, and let the criminal go free. Is it not also probable that this latter mark of severity against the unfortunate Brenner made itself felt throughout the army, and that the word was passed along the ranks, “Whatever you see, it is not safe to tell!” The strange thing is that soldiers did continue to tell with increasing frequency.

During this sad episode of the conquest, however, there were some convictions of both enlisted men as well as officers. Rule No. 44 of General Order 100 strictly provides that

all wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country; all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer; all robbery, all pillage or sacking even after taking a place by main force; all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants,—are prohibited under penalty of death or such other severe punishment, as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.

If the guilty party is an officer, his punishment should naturally be as severe as the military law permits, for misconduct by one in authority is more pernicious and harmful. The Secretary of War’s own memorandum of February 17, 1901, therefore, will be taken and examined⁠[12]. This choice list compiled and made accessible to the public showing the trials of forty-four men, ten of whom were officers, opens to us only so much of the proceedings as the Secretary permits us to see. What does it show?

Of these ten officers, one was tried and convicted for “firing into town and looting.” Under General Order No. 100 Rule 44, such an offense is generally punishable by death. But in this case the officer was sentenced to—a reprimand.

The second officer, Lieut. Bissell Thomas, of the 35th Volunteer Infantry, was convicted for assaulting prisoners and cruelty. The Court furthermore said that the accused’s acts were “very severe and amounted almost to acute torture” and that they “cannot be too much deplored nor too emphatically denounced.” He was sentenced to a “reprimand” and a fine of three hundred dollars.

The third officer was convicted of “looting and encouraging the same,” and the fourth of “permitting looting.” Both were sentenced to—a reprimand.

The next two officers were convicted of “torture by causing natives to be hung by the neck for ten seconds.” The culprits here were a Lieutenant Perkins and a Captain Brandle. In Brandle’s case⁠[13] the Court found as a fact that he did hang two Filipinos by the neck for ten seconds each on May 26, 1900. Disliking the word “torture,” however, the Court substituted the words “inflict mental anguish upon,” as if hanging by the neck were physically delightful. Here was an absolute case of torture found as a fact, yet when the time came for the sentence his brother officers sentenced him to—a reprimand. Which shows how little indignation was felt by the other officers of the army.

The case of Lieutenant Perkins was very similar. He too was found guilty of hanging two natives by the neck in the same fashion. But the military court not only changed the accusation of “torture” to “mental anguish,” but also imposed a sentence of “a reprimand.”

The last conviction was that of First Lieutenant Brown of the 2d Infantry who was found guilty of “killing a prisoner of war.” This was clearly a plain case of murder, but the sentence meted was dismissal from the service and imprisonment for five years. This punishment looks severe in the light of the others, but the record of the case does not stop here, for on January 27, 1902, this sentence was commuted to a loss of thirty-five places in the army list and the forfeiture of one-half pay for nine months. Outside of that the accused was permitted to regain his position in the army.

The remaining three officers tried were acquitted.

Here then were seven convictions of officers standing high in the records of the army, convictions of looting, torture and murder. Here were crimes justly punishable by death in ordinary cases, and yet under tropical skies they resulted in five reprimands, one fine and a reprimand, and one loss of numbers and half pay for a few months. What did this record say to the rest of the army,—what effect could it have produced in checking similar offenses during the campaigning?

This comedy of errors is magnified when we consider the military orders current at that time. On March 19, 1899, no less a personage than General Otis himself, having found it necessary to give more explicit orders for the conduct of his army, issued the following warning:

Commanding generals of divisions will make renewed efforts to impress upon the troops of their commands the necessity of exercising the greatest vigilance to insure the protection of private property, not only in this city, but wherever they may be quartered or acting.... The burning or looting of houses or buildings of any description or the abuse of unarmed citizens will be punished with the utmost severity known to military law⁠[14].

These were indeed strong words,—on paper. For the specific cases we have just touched show that when a few months afterwards Lieutenant Capp fired and looted a town he received “a reprimand,”⁠[15] while Lieutenant Ellison “for looting and encouraging looting” also received the same punishment⁠[16]. “The utmost severity known to military law,” indeed!

From the latter part of 1900 until 1902 no other officer seems to have been convicted,—in fact only one was tried and he for having improper relations with native women. On April 15, 1902, however, we find an order for the court martial of General Smith. Here was a sensational case surely. What do the records show?

General Smith had been in charge of subduing the island of Samar and his first step had been to install a system of reconcentration. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with this drastic term, it should be explained that reconcentration (as practised by Weyler in Cuba and the American commanders in the Philippines) means the establishment of a certain prescribed zone or place where the people of a district may be herded together. The establishment of this zone is announced by proclamation or otherwise some days in advance and all persons must leave their homes and come within this area, there to remain until further orders. All persons found outside that zone are then treated as public enemies.

Such a method of putting down a rebellion is naturally attended with great hardships. Crops are left to ruin, homes are deserted, and the peaceful as well as the active suffer alike. It was the establishment of such camps in Cuba with the attendant horrors that finally led to the Spanish American War. How the practice of reconcentration affected McKinley when the Spaniards practised it in Cuba, may be expressed in his own words:

It was not civilized warfare [he told Congress], but a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian people.... It was extermination. The only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.

“The steps of the White House are slippery with the blood of the reconcentrados,” said Roosevelt. And yet in the Philippines, however, three years after the Filipino-American war was begun and a year after civil government was supposed to be established under the just administration of Governor Taft, and no person supposed to be deprived of “life, liberty or property without due process of law,” reconcentration camps began to flourish.

But General Smith was not tried for establishing these camps, for they were also used in other provinces of the archipelago. In fact, as late as June 1, 1903, the civil government in Manila, headed by Mr. Taft, passed a law permitting the establishment of such camps⁠[17]. Smith’s difficulties instead came about as a result of the method by which he enforced obedience to these orders.

It happened that on November 4, 1901, the Manila Times, an American daily, gave an account of the progress of the military arm in Samar, which then had a population of 250,000. It stated that General Smith had been in that little island for ten days and that his strong policy was already making itself felt. To continue,

He had already ordered all natives to present themselves in certain of the coast towns saying that those who were found outside would be shot and no questions asked. The time limit had expired ... and General Smith was as good as his word. The policy of reconcentration is said to be the most effective thing of the kind ever seen under any flag. All suspects including Spaniards and half-breeds were rounded up in big stockades and kept under guard.

This news item was published in Manila. Surely, it must have come to the attention of General Chaffee or the War Department at the time. But were any steps taken to investigate or to stay the hand of General Smith? None. Nothing was done until February 4, of the following year, 1902, when this statement was brought to the attention of the United States Senate as a result of a petition signed by ex-Senator Edmunds, S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain), some thirty-six professors of the University of Chicago and many other notables in private life. These gentlemen asked that the matter be investigated and that such practices be stopped. Surely the Secretary of War could not plead ignorance to this demand from responsible citizens. But did he take any positive action to investigate or to stop these practices? So far as the record shows, none! The order to try General Smith by court martial was not given till April 15.

The real gravity of the Smith offense would apparently seem to be worse than that pictured in the newspaper item. To quote from Secretary Root’s letter to the President on July 12, he stated that Smith had given the following oral instruction:

“I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn the better you will please me,” and further, that he wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms and in actual hostilities against the United States, and did in reply to a question by Major Waller asking for an age limit, designate the limit as ten years of age.

It will be observed that in this accusation by the Secretary, which is grave enough on its face, the Secretary interpolated the words, “in actual hostilities against the United States,” after the phrase “capable of bearing arms.” But the dispatches which came from Manila in the course of the trial which were never questioned clearly refute that mitigating phrase. For General Smith’s counsel was quoted as saying,

General Smith did give instructions to Major Waller to “kill and burn” and “make Samar a howling wilderness,” and he admits that he wanted everybody killed capable of bearing arms, and that he did specify all over ten years of age, as the Samar boys of that age were equally as dangerous as their elders.

The accused bore his trial like a man. He admitted giving the orders. He did not seek to excuse them on the ground that his words were reckless talk,—on the contrary, he sought to justify them. On the solitary question, therefore, of whether or no he had given the order the reviewing officers of high rank found him guilty and sentenced him “to be admonished.”

Even the Boston Transcript, one of the strongest supporters of the Washington administration, could not refrain from saying that this sentence was “the very lightest penalty that could be awarded for such an offence against humanity and the laws of war,” adding that had the President done no more “the proceedings of the court martial would have been about as effective as firing a blank cartridge against an armed enemy.”

The representatives of the army upon the court martial were, however, satisfied with this blank cartridge.

When these results were transmitted to the Secretary of War, surely there was an opportunity for him to show manly indignation at General Smith’s inhuman order. But instead of that he sought to justify the leniency of the court on the ground that Smith did not really mean what he said and that his subordinates so understood it. This might conceivably sound probable having come from a man like Mr. Root were we not confronted with official reports from Smith’s subordinates in the course of the campaign showing how they really interpreted the command of their superior officer. Said Major Waller on November 23, 1901⁠[18]:

On the march to Liruan the second column, fifty men, under Captain Bears, in accordance with my orders, destroyed all villages and houses, burning in all one hundred and sixty-five.... I wish to go southward a little, destroying all houses and crops, and, if possible, get the rifles from Balangiga. This plan has been explained to the General (Smith), meeting his approval⁠[19].

This, when viewed in the light of a subsequent endorsement by General Smith himself to the effect that the aforementioned Major Waller “carries out my wishes loyally and gallantly,” and recommending that he be awarded another brevet, speaks for itself.

Fire and looting, killing to exterminate, refusal to take prisoners of war,—there are some of the outrages we have found from such official records as are opened to us. What else do we find from other independent and official sources? The Weir charges are the first to attract attention among the many available.

On the tenth of April, 1901, Andrew K. Weir, a private in the Fourth Cavalry, wrote a letter to his uncle, charging Lieutenant Frederick Arnold and Sergeant Edwards of his regiment with outrageous cruelty to a Filipino prisoner who was stripped naked, given the water torture in the most revolting manner, whipped and beaten unmercifully while he was down, kicked, strung up by the thumbs and then his ankles tied and his feet jerked from under him. Young Weir was an eye witness of this cruelty and complained to Lieutenant Arnold, who told him:

When I give a man to Sergeant Edwards, I want information. I do not know how he gets it; but he gets it anyway.

Weir also charged Arnold with cutting a strip from the man’s ankle, attaching it to a piece of wood, and then coiling the flesh up his shin bone; with having an old man held under water until he was unconscious; with tying several times a man to a saddled horse with a few feet of slack, and then making the rider gallop, dragging the victim if he could not keep up. For all these charges, Weir said that he had witnesses.

These serious charges were eventually brought to the attention of the War Department. The matter was thereupon referred for investigation to the inspector general of Northern Luzon. This officer, Captain P. W. West of the Fifth Infantry, subsequently turned in his findings on August 27, 1901, reporting a mass of testimony proving that Weir’s charges were true. The inspector general also added:

I believe that a thorough investigation into this matter will substantiate the charges made by Private Weir, that prisoners were treated in a cruel and harsh manner, and that Lieutenant Arnold winked at this treatment.

Here certainly was an instance where the preliminary reports of an army investigator largely substantiated the charges. But although this report was sent to the Secretary of War on August 27, 1901, he omitted to send it along with his other reports to the Senate on February 17, 1902. The matter would probably have been entirely ignored had not Senator Culberson introduced a resolution asking for these papers. Senator Lodge came to the rescue of the administration, however, by expressing his wish to find out whether a court martial had been ordered. A few days later Secretary Root answered by saying that a court martial had been ordered for Edwards, the sergeant, but not for Arnold, the Lieutenant, but neither he nor anyone else friendly to the administration offered to say when this was done. The only inference that can be drawn is that no court martial had been ordered until Senator Culberson’s motion forced them to do so.

The most unfortunate result of these hideous crimes and the laxity of the discipline with which they were combatted, was the moral effect it had on the American soldiers, failing as it did to check the progress of such inhuman acts under tropical skies. Take the water cure, for example, which was widely used in order to force the native prisoner to divulge information.

An extract in the New York Evening Post of April 8, 1902, describes this method of conducting war most vividly as in distinct violation of the Articles of War.

Says the letter:

But the water cure! If the tortures I’ve mentioned are hellish, the water cure is plain hell. The native is thrown upon the ground, and, while his legs and arms are pinned, his head is raised partially so as to make pouring in the water an easier matter. An attempt to keep the mouth closed is of no avail; a bamboo stick or a pinching of the nose will produce the same effect. And now the water is poured in, and swallow the poor wretch must or strangle. A gallon of water is much but it is followed by a second and a third. By this time the victim is certain his body is about to burst. But he is mistaken, for a fourth and even a fifth gallon are poured in. By this time the body becomes an object frightful to contemplate. While in this condition, speech is impossible, and so the water must be squeezed out of him. This is sometimes allowed to occur naturally, but it is sometimes hastened by pressure, and “sometimes we jump on them to get it out quick,” said a young soldier to me with a smile—a young soldier, a mere boy hardly ten years out of his mother’s lap.... Does it seem possible that cruelty could further go? And what must we think of the fortitude of the native when we learn that many times the “cure” is twice given ere the native yields? I heard of one who took it three times and died.

How often does it happen? is a natural question. No one knows. A sergeant told me he had seen it taken by between two and three hundred, by as many as twenty sometimes in a day. Another had seen eighty. An officer saw four, but knew of its happening two hundred times.

Another phase of the subject merits our attention,—the effect upon the American. The unconcerned way in which the soldiers and civilians speak of the water cure, the exulting way in most cases, is the saddest phase of all.... These things are not lovely, but they are true.

Indeed, what more evidence of this is needed than that even an army judge advocate like Captain Glenn ordered such a water cure and, on being court-martialed and found guilty, was sentenced to pay a fine of fifty dollars, which is one half the fine that may be imposed for spitting on a public street car in Boston!

All these charges and convictions, all these reliable accusations, as well as the official copies of the orders given by General Bell in Batangas and General Smith in Samar directing that the war be conducted in the most rigorous manner possible were known to the Secretary of War. And yet, as if to calm the public conscience which was beginning to hear the cries of agony from the unfortunate victims of military conquest, the Secretary of War issued an official statement on February 17, 1902, to the effect that:

The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare, with careful and genuine consideration for the prisoner and the non-combatant, with self-restraint, and with humanity never surpassed.

Nor was that all. Two months later in his speech at Arlington on Decoration Day, the President himself said:

Determined and unswerving effort must be made to find out every instance of barbarity on the part of our troops, to punish those guilty of it, and to take, if possible, even stronger measures than have already been taken to minimize or prevent the occurrence of all such instances in the future.

What must we think of these words?

Here, then, were two statements carefully and deliberately planned. Coming as they did from two of the most responsible administrators of the nation, the statements circulated widely and served to restrain other indignant citizens from making fruitless protests. The masses throughout the country also took these statements at their face value for it was easy to believe ill of one’s enemies and well of one’s kin. But even such records only as the administration chose to open to us and the censored dispatches from Manila tell an entirely different story.

And now to view the product of American conquest, quietly and with sobriety. The sudden “imperialistic impulse of 1898–1900,” as Viscount Bryce aptly called it, had come to an end⁠[20]. What had it achieved? What was the future? What was to be done with the Philippines?

No one better than Senator Hoar realized the true import of the situation. The following retrospect, perhaps, gives the most illuminating view of the problem. Said Mr. Hoar to the imperialist members of the Senate Chamber:

When Aguinaldo said he did not want war to go on, and that it went on against his wish, he was told by our General that he would not parley with him without total submission. My friend from Wisconsin declared in the Senate that we would have no talk with men with arms in their hands, whether we were right or wrong. The responsibility of everything that has happened since, which he must have foreseen if he knew something of history and human nature, rests upon him and the men who acted with him.

We cannot get rid of this one fact, we cannot escape it and we cannot flinch it. You chose war instead of peace. You chose force instead of conciliation, with full notice that everything that has happened since would happen as a consequence of your decision. Had you made a declaration to Aguinaldo that you would respect their title to independence, and that all you desired was order and to fulfil the treaty and to protect your friends, you would have disarmed that people in a moment....

Instead of that, gentlemen talked of the wealth of the Philippine Islands, and about the advantage to our trade. They sought to dazzle our eyes with nuggets of other men’s gold. Senators declared in the Senate Chamber and on the hustings that the flag never should be hauled down in the Philippine Islands, and those of you who thought otherwise kept silent and entered no disclaimer.... What your fathers said when they founded the republic; the Declaration of Independence; the great leaders of every generation; our century of glorious history, were appealed to in vain. Their lessons fell upon the ears of men dazzled by military glory and delirious with the lust of conquest. I will not repeat them now. My desire is simply to call attention to the practical working of the two doctrines—the doctrine of buying sovereignty or conquering it in battle, and the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence.

For the last three years you have put one of them in force in Cuba and the other in the Philippine Islands. I ask you to think soberly which method, on the whole, you like better. I ask you to compare the cost of war with the cost of peace, of justice with that of injustice, the cost of empire with the cost of republican liberty.... You have tried both, I hope, to your hearts’ content.

Gentlemen talk about sentimentalities, about idealism. They like practical statesmanship better. But, Mr. President, this whole debate for the last four years has been a debate between two kinds of sentimentality....

You, my imperialistic friends, have had your ideals and sentimentalities. One is that the flag shall never be hauled down where it has once floated. Another is that you will not talk or reason with a people with arms in their hands. Another is that sovereignty over an unwilling people may be bought with gold. And another is that sovereignty may be got by force of arms, as the booty of battle or spoils of victory.

What has been the practical statesmanship, which comes from your ideals and sentimentalities? You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives, the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest, bringing their sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture....

Your practical statesmanship [added Mr. Hoar] has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men after they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.

And then came this prophecy of the future:

This war, if you call it war, has gone on for three years. It will go on in some form for three hundred years, unless this policy is abandoned. You will undoubtedly have times of peace and quiet, or pretended submission. You will buy men with titles or officers or salaries. You will intimidate cowards. You will get pretended and fawning submission. The land will smile and smile and seem at peace. But the volcano will be there. The lava will break out again. You can never settle this thing until you settle it right⁠[21].

Men and women of today may ask on reading these pages, “Why revive these memories that we would fain obliterate? Why add fuel to the feeling of hostility which the Filipinos may have against us today?” The answer is because no American today can deal with the Philippine problem as it now stands without knowing also the history of the conquest, for what American representatives have done in the past may be done again. It is because with all this history behind him, the President of the United States still asserts that the islands came to us “unsought.”

---

A fair estimate of the strained relations existing between Filipino and American in 1900 is easily gathered from the account of what had gone before. On the part of the Filipinos it may safely be said that there was never any faltering, any concealment of what they wanted. They knew what they were struggling for, and at all times and places, by proclamation, by acts, and otherwise, they had made it plain that independence was the goal to attain which they had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor⁠[1].

The policy of the Washington administration, on the other hand, had been so vague and so evasively expressed that the public itself did not know what it was. Those officials who had been most solicitous with regard to the welfare of the Filipinos and the benevolent aims of the American people were the first to combat any attempt to express by Congressional action what these purposes were to be.

In deference to the state of American public opinion, therefore, and in preparation for the coming presidential elections of 1900, Mr. McKinley sent two commissions to the islands. One went early in 1899 and arrived there only to find that the war of conquest was on. The second commission headed by Mr. Taft arrived a year later, while the American forces were still giving Aguinaldo a chase through the mountain fastnesses of Luzon. This commission was charged with the duty of laboring for the peace and prosperity of the Islands, “in the firm hope that through their labors all the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands may come to look back with gratitude to the day when God gave victory to American arms at Manila.”

Both of these commissions were appointed by the President, without asking Congress to authorize either, to define its duties or to fix the commissioners’ salaries. They were, therefore, the representatives of Mr. McKinley, responsible to him, and paid out of the public funds as he saw fit. This has been the sad feature of this phase of the Philippine venture. The commissions went to the Islands, not for the purpose of reviewing the findings of the Paris Peace Commission and thus righting any wrongs that had been committed, but to represent President McKinley who in the approaching elections was definitely committed to the justice of the policy which had taken the Islands for the benevolent purposes so vaguely expressed two years before.

This policy of President McKinley was based on the assumption that Filipinos were unfit for self-government. It was a pity, therefore, that such an able person as Mr. Taft should have come, not to decide on the Filipino’s capacity for independence, but rather as an advocate of the President. “Well, we are in it, and now we must do the best we can.” Of all stages in this long conquest of the Islands, this has been the most deplorable, for all dealings with the Filipinos have been based on the proposition that they are unfit to take care of themselves. Consequently all measures of self-government granted to them by an altruistic Congress are mere “privileges,” and so become a standing affront to the intelligence of the native. And the more power and latitude given to the Filipinos to assert themselves, the more dissatisfaction is there bound to occur in their dealings with a sovereign power which assumes to make such grants on the grounds of benevolence alone. As an American observer has aptly put it,

government and governed thus get wider apart as the years go by, and the raison d’être of the former being the mental deficiencies of the latter, it must, in self defense, assert those deficiencies the more offensively, the more vehemently they are denied⁠[2].

Now the hope of the administration in Washington was to prove that the stubborn resistance of the Filipinos was not as great as was claimed by the military authorities. From the beginning, therefore, the Taft Commission tried to reconcile the subjugation of the Philippines with the liberation of Cuba. Surely no more difficult task could have faced them. Nevertheless, they hoped with all the ardor and benevolence of the President himself that the Filipinos were in fact praying for American sovereignty. And the wish became father to the thought, with the result that friction between Mr. Taft and the military authorities who had for two years been pouring powder and lead into the enemy’s camps and receiving a goodly amount in return, now began to threaten.

Mr. Taft’s message of optimism and good-will regarding the Philippine situation is still well-known. “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,” he reported to the Secretary of War in November, 1900⁠[3]. Said report was naturally circulated immediately throughout the length and breadth of these United States to the glory and triumph of the President’s administration. But it so happened that the Secretary of War during those hectic days was also receiving official reports from the military men in the field of battle which led him to admit four years later, when no further harm would result from it, that in 1900 (sixteen days after the Taft Commission arrived in Manila), “over 70,000 American soldiers from more than 500 stations held a still vigorous enemy in check”⁠[4].

General MacArthur was the official most apprehensive of the true warlike conditions existing in the Islands. While Mr. Taft was crying, “Peace! peace! the Filipinos want peace,” General MacArthur was cabling an entirely different story to Washington.

Wherever throughout the archipelago there is a group of insurgent army [he wrote to the Secretary of War], it is a fact beyond dispute that all contiguous towns contribute to the maintenance thereof. In other words, towns regardless of the fact of American occupation and town organization are the actual bases for all insurgent military activities.... Indeed it is now the most important maxim of Filipino tactics to disband when closely pressed and seek safety in the nearest barrio; a manœuver 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 citizen⁠[5].

Further cold military facts concerning the stubbornness of Filipino resistance are contributed by the General.

The success of this unique system of war depends upon almost complete unity of action of the entire 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. One traitor in each town would effectually destroy such a complex organization⁠[6].

Secretary of War Root knew of this side of the picture also, but he took care not to reveal it to the voting public, at least not until the elections of 1900 had been safely met. Yet he did not ignore these ominous warnings. In reply to General MacArthur’s request that nothing be done to diminish his armed forces unless absolutely necessary, he sent his assurances through the Adjutant General in the following convincing dispatch:

Secretary of War directs (that) no instructions from here be allowed (to) interfere or impede (the) progress (of) your military operations which he expects you (to) force to successful conclusion⁠[7].

And as if these precautionary measures were not sufficient there followed shortly after this grim inquiry to General Wood in Cuba:

Wood, Havana: Secretary of War is desirous to know if you can give your consent to the immediate withdrawal (of the) Tenth Infantry from Cuba. Imperative that we have (the) immediate use of every available company we can lay our hands on for service in the Philippines.

Signed: Corbin⁠[8].

Thus it was that while the American people were being happily and successfully pacified with Mr. Taft’s optimistic reports endorsed by the Secretary of War, the latter was also acting in full coöperation with the military representatives in the Islands urging MacArthur to force the natives to really plead for peace by employing the more customary and efficacious arguments—powder and lead.

In the light of these events, therefore, it was but natural to suppose that the question of imperialism would be the main issue in the presidential campaign of 1900. Everything had pointed that way. It is therefore interesting to compare the attitude of the Republican party at the beginning of the campaign with the attitude adopted a year before in order to secure acquiescence in the treaty. Attention has been called to Senator Lodge’s argument for ratification that the treaty only gave the American people power to determine the fate of the Philippines, but did not commit them to any policy. This position was accepted and endorsed by the President and his Cabinet. In pursuance of this he told the American people ten days after the ratification that,

The whole subject is now with Congress; and Congress is the voice, the conscience, and the judgment of the American people. Upon their judgment and conscience can we not rely?... Our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag.

Secretary Long also sought to emphasize this compliance of the President with the laws of the land by saying that if the treaty had been rejected it would

have taken out of the hands of the people and put into the hands of one man, the President, absolute authority over the Philippines, limited only by the indefinite scope of what is called the war power, wielded by a purely military arm holding a naked sword. Think of that for imperialism. It is a great credit to the President [he concluded] that, like Julius Cæsar and George Washington, he has refused this offer of a “kingly crown.” On the contrary, the good old democratic plan has been adopted of putting the disposition of these Islands into the hands of the American people who will duly express their will through their representatives in Congress assembled. I have no doubt the President is delighted to have the elephant off his hands and on theirs⁠[9].

These were indeed fine words yet the events which followed after they were uttered showed how little was meant by them. For after the treaty was ratified Congress was not consulted as to what should be done with the Philippines. No extra session was called to consider this very important question. Nay more, when the next regular session of Congress convened on December 5, 1899, the President said in his message:

It does not seem desirable that I should recommend at this time a specific and final form of government for these islands. When peace shall be restored, it will be the duty of Congress to construct a plan of government which shall establish and maintain freedom and order and peace in the Philippines. The insurrection is still existing; and, when it terminates, further information will be required as to the actual condition of affairs before inaugurating a permanent scheme of civil government.... As long as the insurrection continues, the military arm must necessarily be supreme.

This was a distinct invitation to Congress to leave the “elephant” on his hands, and the invitation was accepted. But it will be observed that the question of holding the islands—the question upon which the Senate divided equally, the question which the treaty left open—was treated by the President as settled. His words were: “The Islands lie under the shelter of our flag. They are ours by every title of law and equity. They cannot be abandoned.”

Who settled this question? Not Congress which had never considered it. It was the President by his proclamation of December 21, 1898, six weeks before the treaty was ratified. Thus did the President assume the “kingly crown” which his Secretary had praised him for declining. With this “crown” the President sanctioned a war without the authority of Congress, he refused to parley, and he told Congress that the question was not open for their consideration and would not be until the conquest by arms had been completed. What wearer of a “kingly crown” could more despotically have dealt with a question of such vital importance to two nations? The voice, the conscience and the judgment of the American people had thus been stifled, and now the President was brought to judgment.

Senator Lodge had also forgotten his words employed during the debate for ratification. Gone were the Senator’s honeyed phrases about the good judgment and sense of the American people in giving the Filipinos their just dues.

We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others, [he now told the members of the National Convention]. While we regard the welfare of these people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We believe in trade expansion.

Although these dreams of military glory and commercial advantage were still dazzling the eyes of men, however, the leaders were not sure that the voting public would sanction such sentiments as those of Senator Lodge. It was well-known that in the ranks of the ruling party itself, there were strong dissenters, such as Senators Hoar and Bacon, and men like Boutwell, Hepburn, Henderson, Harrison, Edmunds, Reed and many others prominent in Republican circles. The list of eminent citizens opposed to a policy of colonization, furthermore, was to say the least full of potential power as the campaign which they led had gained a marked number of supporters. To name only a few of the more noted leaders there were Carl Schurz, Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, Jane Addams, Wayne McVeagh, Champ Clarke, Thomas Mott Osborne, Jacob Gould Schurman and a host of others.

Therefore, when the moment came to openly announce their platform, the Republican leaders adopted this sugar-coated promise with regard to the Philippines:

Our authority could not be less than our responsibility, and wherever sovereign rights were extended it became the high duty of the Government to maintain its authority; to put down armed insurrection and to confer the blessings of liberty and civilization upon all the rescued people. The largest measure of self-government consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be secured by law.

The real issue of permanent or indefinite retention was thus evaded. However, it was really not necessary to openly assert it, for inasmuch as the Islands were said now by the President to be unconditionally annexed to the United States by virtue of the Treaty of Peace without any reservation whatsoever, a mere continuation of the present status really held no promise of ultimate freedom to the Filipinos.

Wise Republicans had realized this and they made the best use of it. By thus stating their policy, they were placed on the defensive with regard to the imperialist issue. Instead of openly having to assert it they merely had to check any attempt or movement to alienate the possession of the Islands, which they declared had been unconditionally annexed to the nation by the terms of the treaty of Paris.

We can understand this situation better by comparing the status of the Filipinos in the eyes of the Republican party with that of the Cubans. In 1900 American control in Cuba was, it will be remembered, still in effect. The control of the government was not delivered to the Cuban people until May 20, 1902. But in the meantime the Cubans were from the very start “free and independent” and a truly sovereign people,—the presence of American control being merely temporary for the purpose of “pacification.” The Filipinos were, on the other hand, to remain subjects of the Americans for how long no one knew,—or at least no one would tell. In the meantime they were to be given only the “largest measure of self-government which shall be consistent with their welfare and our duties.” The “our duties” here referred to the duties, so-called, of an absolute, sovereign power vested in the tender hands of an alien Congress sitting ten thousand miles away and in no way representative of, or responsible to the people whose liberties and rights lay in their hands.

The platform, therefore, connoted absolute ownership—ownership secured through a treaty with Spain. Hence to them there was no such thing as a war going on against the Filipinos. The fighting going on under the tropical skies was but “an armed insurrection” against the “legal authority” of the United States. As the President himself had described it a few months before: “There is a rebellion in one of the Islands now, but it will be put down as we put down all rebellions against the United States”⁠[10].

When the time came for the Democrats to summon their forces, however, they failed to meet the situation. True it is that the Convention proclaimed imperialism to be “the paramount issue of the campaign.” Their platform with regard to the Philippines was also particularly clear. Besides condemning and denouncing the Philippine policy of the McKinley administration it further added these significant proposals:

We favor an immediate declaration of the nation’s purpose to give to the Filipinos:

1. A stable form of government.
2. Independence.
3. Protection from outside interference such as has been given for nearly a century to the republics of Central and South America.

The first two proposals certainly were reasonable enough if we are to believe that America’s mission in the Philippines was purely to aid the Filipinos, and yet such a declaration has never been made by the Republican party to this day.

The failure to meet the issue of 1900 is found in Mr. Bryan’s insistent demands that the silver question be also injected in the Democratic banner. This clouded the issue and weakened their forces, for instead of giving combat on the clean cut issue of imperialism which they could have easily shown was of transcendant importance, Mr. Bryan diverted an undue amount of attention to a discussion of monetary standards. Further than this, the injection of the latter question meant the loss of full support by the gold Democrats as well as anti-imperialist Republicans who, though vehemently condemning the Philippine policy of their President were unwilling to see their country adopt a false and dangerous system of currency. Prominent leaders of the campaign, therefore, urged Mr. Bryan to change his views but he stood firm⁠[11].

And thus the issue was obscured. To the conservative men of the country at large it seemed a choice between free silver and an undecided Philippine policy with full assurances on the part of the Republicans that God who moved mysteriously had placed the Islands in American hands in the interests of civilization and humanity.

We must not forget also the spectacular campaign of misrepresentation that swept the country from the printed page and the stump. This is what the Secretary of War, Mr. Root, told a gaping public about the beginning of the war. Said he:

On the night of February 4, the day before the Senate approved the treaty, an army of Tagalogs, a tribe inhabiting the central part of Luzon, under the leadership of Aguinaldo, a Chinese half-breed, attacked in vastly superior numbers our little army in possession of Manila, and after a desperate and bloody fight was repulsed in every direction⁠[12].

And again:

The day was not then, but it came on the 4th of February when a body of Filipino troops marched under cover of night, swiftly and silently, through our lines, regardless of the sentry’s challenge, and, when he fired, volleys of musketry and roar of cannon upon every side commenced the proposed destruction of our little army.

Compare such flagrant statements with the official reports of General Otis given in a previous chapter (Chapter VI) and preserved in the archives of the War Department and we have an idea how far this defender of the administration deviated from the truth.

Here again is General Otis’s report:

An insurgent approaching the picket [of a Nebraska regiment] refused to halt or answer when challenged.

The candidate for the vice-presidency, Mr. Roosevelt, also contributed a picture.

The reasoning which justifies our having made war against “Sitting Bull” [said the exponent of a strenuous life] also justifies our having checked the outbreaks of Aguinaldo and his followers, directed, as they were against Filipino and American alike.... To grant self-government to Luzon under Aguinaldo [he continued] would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief.

It was indeed a bold man who would say such libelous words, and yet they were not uttered on the spur of the moment at some political rally. They are to be found verbatim in Roosevelt’s letter of acceptance of his nomination for the vice-presidency. Such a carefully prepared document naturally went all over the country and helped form the opinions of many who were only too glad to believe ill of the people with whom their country was at war.

But we must not forget the President. What did he have to say relative to the Philippine war?

The American people [he said] are asked by our opponents to yield the sovereignty of the United States in the Philippines to a small fraction of the population—a single tribe out of eighty or more inhabiting the archipelago. We are asked to transfer our sovereignty to a small minority in the islands without consulting the majority, and to abandon the largest portion of the population which has been loyal to us to the cruelties of the guerrilla insurgent bands, and to this end repress the opposition of the majority.

It would have struck a disinterested inquirer as singular that “a single tribe out of eighty,” a small portion of the population, had been able to wage war so long against a powerful American army and the “largest portion of the population which had been loyal to us”.

These so-called Philippine tribes have been receiving such notoriety to this day that we might as well pause now and see how much weight should be given to these statements. The existence of tribes has been decided by ethnologists, who claim to see among the brown-skinned natives certain differences which stamp them into the category of tribesmen. Now, even as early as 1901, men like Governor Taft were vehemently maintaining that these differentiations were purely theoretical and of little value.

The word “tribe” [he said], gives an erroneous impression. There is no tribal relation among the Filipinos. There is a racial solidarity among them undoubtedly. They are homogeneous. I cannot tell the difference between an Ilocano and a Tagalog or a Visayan.... To me all Filipinos are alike.

Mr. Schurman, President of the first Philippine commission, representing McKinley in 1899, was just as earnest in his convictions.

Nothing could more unhappily describe ... these people than the word “tribe” [he said]. Let us drop so misleading a term, and speak of them as communities, and let us call the aggregate of these communities the Philippine nation.

In 1903 a census of the Philippines was taken by the American officials, and in comparing the tables of this census with that of the United States, we find these American representatives saying, “Those of the Philippine census are somewhat simpler, the differences being due mainly to the homogeneous character of the population of the Philippine islands”⁠[13].

A report made by Senator Lodge himself, the staunchest supporter of the administration, was also procurable at the time the President made these statements. This report, “Senate Document 171, 56th Congress, First Session,” had been prepared for the Committee on the Philippines. What did it show?

The inhabitants of the Philippines [said the report] belong to three sharply distinct races—the Negrito race, the Indonesian, and the Malayan race. It is universally conceded that the Negritos are the disappearing remnants of a people which once populated the entire archipelago [while now] but a few scattered and numerically insignificant groups of them remain.... It is believed that not more than 25,000 (twenty-five thousand) of them exist in the entire archipelago, and the race seems doomed to early extinction.

The report also gave a table of eighty-four tribes, so-called, by the scientists to whom we must owe obedience. But these tables showed that twenty-one of this number belonged to the Negritos, so that one quarter of the President’s eighty tribes were described in the official report as “a few scattered and numerically insignificant groups” of a race “doomed to early extinction.” Both numerically and otherwise they were and they continued to be as insignificant a part of the population as are the Norridgewock Indians in Maine or the Mashpees in Massachusetts. But could these facts be gathered from the President’s statements?

Taking now the next group, the Indonesian, we find that Senator Lodge’s report confined this race to the island of Mindanao. Sixteen tribes are classified under it, one fifth of the President’s eighty, and the whole number was estimated also at 250,000. Thirty-seven of the eighty tribes, therefore, contained only 275,000 out of a population of over 7,000,000 people. But to turn to the report. The rest of the tribes, forty-seven in number, were Malays, and of these eight, including the Moros who were given as 100,000, numbered 6,350,000 people, leaving for the other thirty-nine tribes about 375,000. We therefore, find that out of the eighty-four tribes in the report, seventy-six contained only about 650,000. “Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.”

Of the rest, the six million three hundred and fifty thousand, all were Malays, all were Catholics softened by three centuries of intimate contact with Spain, and they lived chiefly in Luzon and the Visayan Islands, where the war was waging in full vigor. From these official reports, and those of Mr. McKinley’s own witnesses, Taft, Schurman and Lodge, what must we say of the President’s language?

In spite of these spirited pictures, however, the campaign proved to be less exciting than that of 1896⁠[14]. Because of the confusing issues, party dissenters were numerous, and on both sides also many more thousands, though faithfully following the party banner gave it only a half hearted support. Other thousands refrained from voting⁠[15].

With the elections of 1900 out of the way, however, and the novelty of the possession having waned, came America’s second sober thought. The changing mind of the American people could not long endure the logic of the arguments which both friend and foe of the administration now put forward with somewhat friendly moderation. Power, commerce, and military glory ceased to be invoked as the arguments for the indefinite retention of the Philippines. The administration now defended its Philippine policy on other grounds—namely, philanthropy. It was urged that the duty of educating the Filipinos, of teaching them the rudiments of self-government and leading them out into the bright sunlight of western civilization was the mission of the American representatives in the Philippines.

But there were also those who though happy in feeling that the wave of imperialism was on the wane nevertheless realized, that at bottom the mischief was the same.

It is a significant concession to public opinion [said Senator Carmack] that we no longer hear the argument of greed and avarice and the hunger for other men’s possessions openly and defiantly proclaimed. I cannot help thinking [he added] that something has been yielded and something gained when the President of the United States no longer talks of seizing “points of vantage” and no longer defends our Philippine venture by glorifying England’s despotic rule over subject races and her bloody march to empire across the bodies and through the blood of slaughtered people. It may not signify any change of heart or of purpose, but it shows a realization of the fact that the public conscience is awake, and it shows that the authors of this policy begin to understand that they cannot justify “criminal aggression” by pointing to the profits of the crime. It is a cheering sign that the second sober thought has come, that the better nature of the American people is again in the ascendant, when the party responsible for a bucaneering war is compelled to veil the grossness of its designs⁠[16].

This second sober thought of America also brought a marked innovation into the local problems of the archipelago. Prior to 1901 the seed of greedy imperialism among the Americans in the Islands had already blossomed into full bloom. Those then, were the days when men talked of “the Empire.” Life was gay and irresponsible for the white man, and many there were indeed who felt and acted like petty kings. Into this paradise of power and prestige now came Mr. Taft as Civil Governor to recognize the rights of the Filipino. Mr. Taft brought with him into that new field something which Filipinos had never seen to any marked degree among the American civilians and military officers with whom they had come in contact. He brought sympathy, courtesy and friendly understanding. He gathered around him those Filipino insurgents in 1901 who, having realized the futility of their efforts to combat the American forces, had bowed to the inevitable and had resolved to dedicate their efforts towards making the best of the situation.

This was a great concession to the Filipinos and they appreciated it. The new governor gained popularity as the days went by, for as each revolting province was whipped into submission Mr. Taft followed in the wake of the army to institute civil government and promise the natives that if they threw down their arms they would have peace and local self-government. Thus it was that his resounding battle cry of “The Philippines for the Filipinos” gained in power as well as in volume as the new governor went about quietly conquering the population with words rather than with swords. And in so doing he began a new programme which meant, when carefully analyzed, a permanent colonial system, maintained by the absolute power of the United States until the Filipinos become contented subjects. It meant and it means today Philippine independence—never. To that matter attention must now be directed.

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The substitution of white duck in the place of khaki and brass buttons as the dress of the American official in the Philippines may be said to characterize Governor Taft’s manner of quelling Filipino opposition and at the same time reconciling the McKinley representations with the actual state of affairs in the Islands. Therefore he proposed to establish Civil Government in order to pacify the natives and to assure the people at home that things were going along as they should. Of course, this policy was vehemently opposed by the military commanders whose real task was to combat the insurrection in some of the remaining islands. As late as October 8, 1901, for example, while the administration was publicly saying that the American representatives were getting along harmoniously, we find this significant telegram from Washington addressed to the commanding general in Manila,—

Chaffee, Manila.

I am deeply chagrined to use the mildest term possible over the trouble between you and Taft. I wish you to see him personally, and spare no effort to secure prompt and friendly agreement in regard to the differences between you. Have cabled him also. It is most unfortunate to have any action which produces friction and which may have a serious effect both in the Philippines and here at home. I trust implicity that you and Taft will come to agreement.

Signed: Theodore Roosevelt⁠[1].

These disagreements were the natural outcome of having two officials in the field—one who wanted civil government because he believed in it, and the other who said there was no place for civil government while several hundred thousand inhabitants were being herded together in reconcentration camps.

Now, the term “civil government” is most inviting. Although it does not necessarily imply a government by the consent of the governed, it at least distinctly negatives the idea of a government conducted by the military arm in a country of bleeding, prostrate and hostile people. To be able to tell the public at home, therefore, that there was civil government in the Philippines was to put everyone in good humour. What if General Bell and his army were searching every ravine and mountain side in Batangas province, a hundred miles or so from Manila, armed to the teeth and fully determined to kill “every able-bodied man in sight?” What care that General Smith was making Samar a “howling wilderness,” ordering his subordinates to “kill and burn,—the more you kill the better you will please me?” What matter that thousands were being herded together in reconcentration camps. Civil government it must be to please the public at home. All disorders in the Islands from that moment could be described as acts of mere banditti. Of course this vicious situation was not made known to the American people at that time, but six years later, when the true facts no longer affected the safety of the party in power, there came this blunt confession by the American Governor, General Smith. Said he in his inaugural address:

While the smoke of battle still hung over the hills and valleys of the Philippines, and every town and barrio in the Islands was hot with rebellion, she (the United States) replaced military with a civil régime and on the smouldering embers of insurrection planted civil government⁠[2].

We are naturally curious to learn what kind of government was thus being offered by Mr. Taft and what was the nature of the policy back of it. Under the new régime a civil governor in person of Governor Taft himself, took the place of the military commander. Though not wearing gilt braid like the other potentates in Asia he was absolute master of the central government, as will appear from the nature of his powers.

The legislative branch was composed of the so-called Philippine Commission. There were originally five members, all Americans, appointed by the President of the United States but drawing salaries in excess of that received by American cabinet officers, and like all the other expenses of the Government paid by the Filipino tax-payers. This constituted the central civil government. There were besides, of course, a host of subordinate officers in executive and judicial positions, Filipinos and Americans alike, the latter holding the best paid offices. But for all purposes of government, the Americans in the Commission, of which Mr. Taft, as Governor, was entitled to be one, ruled the destinies of the nation. They made laws and administered them; they appointed and removed; they were the “civil government.”

How absolute was the power residing in this body may be shown by an incident related by an American in the service of that government. One of the laws passed by the Commission in 1901 ⁠[3] had provided that an American, in order to qualify for a position in the Philippine judiciary should be more than thirty years of age, and should have the experience of a five years’ practice in American law courts. In 1903 President Roosevelt wished to give the Hon. Beekman Winthrop a position on the Philippine Bench. Winthrop, then a recent graduate of the Harvard Law School, was under thirty years of age. Judge Taft called his secretary, Mr. Ferguson, to acquaint him of this appointment. “Fergy,” he said, in his good natured manner, “make me out a commission for Beekman Winthrop as a judge of First Instance.”

“You can’t do it. Governor,” his secretary properly replied. “It’s against the law. He’s not old enough.”

“I can’t, eh?” said the Governor humorously. “I’ll show you. Send me a stenographer.”

The stenographer came and the Governor dictated a new law, striking out the thirty year old requirement from the old statute and inserting twenty-five in its place. In addition to the requirement that the appointee must have practiced law for a period of five years, another phrase was added, as follows: “or be a graduate of a reputable law school”⁠[4].

Secretary Ferguson was then summoned anew. The governor told him to get the rest of the members of the Commission. This was done immediately, and within a few minutes the new statute had been passed and made the law of the land.

“Now,” said Governor Taft good naturedly to the law-abiding Ferguson, “make out that commission”⁠[5].

Although Mr. Winthrop with his Harvard record did make a good judge, the incident is narrated merely to show how absolutely five Americans could make, publish and execute Philippine laws. Even the English despots on the mainland of Asia could not have exercised more despotic power.

So much for the framework of Governor Taft’s civil government. Now what did it aim to accomplish? In judging the Taft policy as announced by its founder it is well to remember always that the statements of facts and conditions and the nature of the people dealt with come from the lips of persons who are speaking in their own defense and who in most cases were possible candidates for higher offices in the future. Being mere men, they naturally tend to present their own side of the case. In this matter, the men from whom we expect the desired information, become advocates of the policy to be examined rather than impartial reporters.

Now all that these high colonial officials then said may have been true. Certainly, a majority of their countrymen believed their statements, because they said them. Suppose the declarations had been false,—the American people would have believed them just the same. It is natural that what American governors say concerning the Filipino will be accepted as gospel truth by their countrymen however little they may believe the assertions of their rulers at home. Past events in the history of this nation itself have always shown that although statements of presidents, governors and mayors in describing their own administration are severely criticized by those directly concerned, yet these same people will accept the statements of their officers abroad as gospel truth. Thus, after the Civil War what the carpet-bag officers said was considered true, while the criticism of eminent Southerners was considered as “rebel talk.” And so this much can also be said of the future—that no matter who the governor may be in the Philippines, the declaration of the American will be accepted in the United States rather than that of a Filipino. This is the insurmountable difficulty, for the side of the Filipino will, therefore, never be understood by Americans.

Let us, however, judge the Taft programme on its face as the founder himself and those who have since followed him characterize the policy.

In the first place, then, it is noticed that Mr. Taft’s programme was founded on one great assumption, namely, that the American people were and would continue to be unselfish in their attitude towards the Filipino, and hence that they could be trusted to keep men in office who would carry out this policy, no matter how absolute a power they might be able to wield from that position.

Thus, Governor Taft clearly stated his first position:

The people of the United States have under their guidance and control in the Philippines, an archipelago of 3000 islands, the population of which is about 7,600,000 souls. Of this 7,000,000 are Christians, 600,000 are Moros or other Pagan tribes⁠[6].

Now, up to Mr. Taft’s régime, there had never been any talk at all in official circles about the possibility of ever letting the Filipinos have their independence. No such idea had ever been suggested by President McKinley, the man most responsible for the acquisition of the Islands. True it was that he had spoken of giving the Filipinos “individual rights,” and perhaps some ultimate participation in their government, but that the complete withdrawal of American sovereignty should ever follow had not been considered by him.

But in 1901 the imperialist flame had burned itself out and America’s second thought had succeeded. Hence Judge Taft’s purpose to improve the people and prepare them for the hour of their liberation. Just when this independence was to be granted, however, no one could or would tell. Mr. Taft, however, offered the solution of this intricate problem and we may believe his purpose has not changed since.

To put it briefly, Judge Taft insisted then and insists even today, that upon the American people rests the duty of solving the Philippine problem, asserting also that they are capable of accomplishing the task when the time comes to decide upon it once and for all. In the meantime,—well, let Judge Taft himself speak:

As a friend of the Filipinos [he said] it is my anxious desire to enlarge that class of Americans who have a real interest in the welfare of the Islands, and who believe that the United States can have no higher duty or function than to assist the people of the Islands to prosperity and a political development which shall enable them to secure to themselves the enjoyment of civil liberty⁠[7].

All of this sounded well indeed, but note in the first place that “civil liberty” does not mean political liberty, far less independence. The method by which this new structure was to be achieved was also carefully stated by its founder.

“The first requisite of prosperity in the Islands,” he said, “is tranquillity, and this should be evidenced by a well-ordered government.”

How long this upbuilding would require, Judge Taft was not sure then, but this much he was willing to concede.

It may be that when the Filipinos have been transformed into a people capable of safely maintaining an independent self-government they will ask it, and then I have no doubt that it will be accorded them.

This promising remark, however, loses its value in the light of the language which followed it.

It may be however [added Judge Taft] and I think quite as likely that by that time the Filipinos will be so well satisfied with the good resulting from a union with the United States that they will prefer to maintain a relation like that which now binds Canada and Australia to Great Britain, and that the United States will then value its association with this pearl of the Oriental tropics. But whatever the ultimate decision it is certain that the time cannot arise for a considerable period, probably several generations.

Judge Taft thus advocated a policy of waiting several generations which means indefinitely, before the question could be decided. In the meantime he would oppose permitting the Filipinos to talk or ask for their freedom for, he said, “The Filipinos should learn the disadvantages that arise to everybody in the country from political agitation for a change in the form of government in the immediate future.”

During this wait of several generations, however, it is apparent from Judge Taft’s words that it was his hope that the United Sates would really learn to value its association with “this pearl of the Oriental tropics.”

It is estimated [he temptingly told the New York Chamber of Commerce] that not more than five million acres of land are owned by natives in the islands, and that remaining sixty-five million is owned by the government.

That is, the United States government. Now it so happened that soon after the acquisition of the Philippines, the American Congress had passed a law limiting the number of acres which a company might buy. This was intended to prevent a few Americans from monopolizing the land. This limitation in Judge Taft’s opinion was “much too low for the cultivation of sugar.” However, “there is a provision in the law,” added the Judge, “by which irrigation companies may own stock in land companies, so that probably the limitations may be evaded if private profit requires.” Curious that such a suggestion should have come from the highest officer of the land charged with the duty of enforcing the law.

Here then, was Judge Taft’s policy as he presented it in 1904, and as he would, no doubt, still present it today: The American people, a self-sacrificing and conscientious nation, having no object in view save the benefit of the Filipinos, should retain the absolute control of the Philippines indefinitely, or at least for several generations, meanwhile introducing education, sanitary improvements and other good things, all of which were to be paid for by the Filipinos. In due time the American people would decide, first—whether they had proved themselves fit for independence, and second, whether independence was good for them. The hope that the Filipinos themselves would in due time lose the desire for freedom was, of course, not to be abandoned. During this long period of several generations the Americans could and would in fact be invited to acquire larger and larger interests in the Islands while the Filipinos would be permitted such “civil liberties” as Congress might choose to grant them.

Finally, as if to support the wisdom of this policy and the reasonableness of giving the Filipinos such limited freedom, Judge Taft finally added: “To make the Declaration of Independence apply equally to the Filipinos as to the American colonists, is to be blind to the plainest facts and to sacrifice truth to an impossible dogma and a rhetorical phrase.”

Each of these proposals will now be taken up in order to show not only the fallacy of expecting to see the plan work out, but also to point out the viciousness underlying the policy which Judge Taft then believed to be right.

First, then, as to this “impossible dogma and rhetorical phrase” known as the Declaration of Independence. Did the framers of this document really mean it to apply only to the revolting colonists? Against Mr. Taft’s word we quote Abraham Lincoln’s estimate of that Declaration.

Its authors meant it to be [he said] as, thank God, it is now proving itself—a stumbling block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant that when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they would find at least one hard nut to crack.

But Governor Taft did try to crack this nut by confusing expansion with imperialism. He said,

Since the foundation of our government the people of the United States, that is the states as distinguished from the territories, have been engaged in governing other people. We did it in the case of Louisiana. We have done it in the case of every territory that was subsequently admitted to the United States.

finally adding that if this governing of other people who have no voice in the government is to violate the Declaration of Independence, then “we have been violating the Declaration of Independence for a hundred years.”

There is this to remember, however, in the cases with which Governor Taft sought to justify his action. The people of the United States beginning as a fringe of inhabitants on the edge of a continent adopted a Constitution to which they consented. This constitution gave to their Congress control over the unoccupied land not belonging to any state, and in the exercise of that power Congress adopted the policy of letting persons settle on this land and organize territorial government, and as the settlers became sufficiently numerous in any region, that region was admitted to statehood. To the establishment of this policy the people as a whole had consented beforehand, and every man who settled in that territory did so with knowledge of that policy. In the case of Louisiana, that huge tract of land was acquired by treaty and by purchase, whereby the United States bound itself to incorporate its inhabitants in the Union and to give them all the rights of American citizens.

Contrast this with the Philippine situation of 1904 when Governor Taft made these statements or even with the situation today. In those islands there were then some eight millions of people who had resisted American sovereignty until overcome by force of arms. United as a people in desiring their independence, Mr. Taft would refuse it to them because in the estimation of those who had conquered them they were not fit to govern themselves. Is it possible that so able a lawyer as Judge Taft failed to detect this difference between the American government of territories and the government of Filipinos against their will?

Still Mr. Taft seemed to be satisfied that it was enough to give the Filipinos “civil liberties.” This, he said, had been “secured to every man, woman and child among the Christian Filipinos,” these rights being equivalent to those “contained in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States except the right to bear arms and the right to be tried by jury.”

But was it true then, and is it true now, that such rights as the Filipinos were given were really equivalent to the Bill of Rights in the Constitution? They were not rights—they were mere privileges granted by an absolute foreign power resting on an Act of Congress which could be repealed at will. Was that freedom? A free man is one whose rights are his and cannot be taken away from him against his will. This was instead an absolute government, in name by the American people, and in fact by the President and his officers.

There are those, however, who might say that the course of events has since justified Judge Taft’s policy, and that creation of the Philippine Assembly in 1907 and the Senate in 1916, are convincing proofs of this gradual extension of liberty to the Filipinos. How much liberty these measures really meant will be taken up in the succeeding chapters. For the present—attention is focussed on Judge Taft’s policy alone.

Let us assume, therefore, that Judge Taft’s programme is faithfully carried out. The question remains who is to decide when the Filipinos are fit for independence? Certainly not the American residents in the Islands who, having invested their money there and having always regarded the Filipinos as inferiors would naturally exert their utmost influence to perpetuate American sovereignty. Governor Taft himself distrusted these Americans for, as he told the New York Chamber of Commerce,

The American merchants easily caught the feeling of hostility and contempt felt by many of the soldiers for the Filipinos, and were most emphatic in condemning the policy of the government in attempting to attract the Filipinos and make them so far as might be a part of the new order.

As for the organ of these American settlers which is so frequently heard in the United States, Judge Taft had this to say:

The American newspapers ... also took the tone of their advertisers and their subscribers and hence it is that the American community in the Philippines today is largely an anti-Filipino community, prone apparently in dealing with the natives to call them names, to make fun of them and to deride every effort toward their advancement and development.

Let the reader of today, therefore, read the reports of these papers and American residents with a grain of salt, for they are not disinterested and impartial judges.

Where, then, are we to find “the good sense and virtue of the American people,” which will in time adequately and faithfully decide the question? Can the Americans at home be entrusted with this task of deciding the destinies of several million Filipinos? It is submitted that they cannot do so, because nearly all, if not actually all the elements necessary for a real knowledge of the conditions existing in the islands or for the creation of genuine sympathy with the aspirations of the Filipinos, are sorely lacking in the hearts and minds of the American people.

First, as to a knowledge of the true conditions in the Islands. Well, we remember the censorship during the war. One cannot forget also that Governor Taft’s own testimony before the Senate Committee, when information was desired in 1902, gave no idea of the true extent to which torture, destruction and reconcentration had been carried on in the attempt to conquer the Islands. Men are human the world over and whenever they speak of that which may reflect on their personal positions they will put the best face possible upon the matter so as to provoke the least hostile criticism. When these men speak, therefore, their administration as well as the whole policy of the political party in Washington which placed them in power is put on trial. Governor Taft himself, may have been above temptation in these matters, but would there be many like him?

This mental attitude on the part of the highest officials in the Islands and those most closely connected with them is largely substantiated by a confession made by an ex-official himself, the Hon. W. Morgan Shuster, a former member of the Philippine Commission. Writing in 1914 in the January issue of the Century Magazine, he said:

The records of our congressional committee and of the War Department are filled with reports, speeches, letters, testimony and statistics going to show what the party then in power wanted the American people to think about the Filipinos. If any one thought differently, he became at once, in official eyes, a dreamer, an anti-imperialist, or a demagogue. His opinions were taboo in high governmental circles, and he was deemed an unsafe man to hold important office. This was only natural and I recall it merely to show how the opinion of the American people on the question has really been formed.

Then followed this convincing statement:

The opinion of the ordinary American citizen as to the Filipinos is largely influenced by the statements or the pronouncements of the very few men in public life who have had, or were thought to have had, exceptional facilities for knowing the real facts and situation. Thus the views of ex-Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, of ex-Secretary of War Root, of Senator Lodge, of the different Philippine governors and members of the Philippine Commission and of the commanding generals who have served in the islands have been the real source of “American Public opinion.”

As a matter of fact [confessed Mr. Morgan Shuster] it is doubtful whether the views of any of these gentlemen were reached in a strictly impartial and judicial manner. With the possible exception of Mr. Taft, they took up the subject as I did, with a previously formed conviction that the facts were going to sustain the accepted government belief and policy, which were that the Filipinos were not fit to be, and should not of right be, independent, at least for a very long time to come. How long few ventured to predict. It is said that Mr. Taft when invited by President McKinley to go to Manila as head of the Civil Commission, stated that he was opposed to our holding the islands. That, however, was before he had been intimately connected with the administrative policies already adopted, which were based on the opposite belief.

How about the minor American officials? How would they report the progress of the Filipino for self-government? Does the question warrant an answer? Pray, how else than in the same characteristic manner in which their superior officers approached the problem? Indeed how could they be expected to do otherwise? On that side was their bread buttered! Time has shown that many of these men did not stop there, but have gone to the extent of deliberately misrepresenting conditions in the Islands. While on leave of absence at home or having permanently retired from Philippine service, these men have launched a propaganda from the speaking platform and the printed page wilfully slandering the natives whom they detest.

Granting, therefore, that Americans at home might conceivably wish to know the true facts upon which to base the exercise of their good sense and judgment, there are no means by which they can easily learn them. This is the unhappy result of the intolerable situation where one nation insists on governing another without that other’s consent. For outside of these official dispatches and perhaps a few other accounts by prolific writers of sensationalism and trash, whose main object is to secure a wide circulation for their volumes, nothing from the side of the Filipino can ever be forthcoming. The political retentionist sees to it that nothing is printed except official dispatches and perhaps an occasional report concerning Filipino incapacity. The case for the petitioner is “crowded out by the press of other matter,” that the conspiracy of silence may continue.

But the question which always remains is whether the American people will ever take an interest in the matter even if they do have reliable information. Are they not so immersed in their own affairs, so busy in their struggles to make money and so indifferent by reason of the great distance separating them that even the intelligent men have not and cannot give the necessary time to understand the Philippine situation? If the people of the greatest American cities accept corrupt and ignorant government which affects them directly rather than take the time and trouble necessary to improve it, what chance is there of their devoting time to the affairs of an alien people thousands of miles away?

The Filipinos can, therefore, only rely for justice upon the American officials governing them. Now against a foreign oppressor men rely on armies and navies, but against domestic tyranny they can only raise the shield of a constitution. This restraint on arbitrary power is the only protection of the individual against the government which rules him. Great as is an Anglo-Saxon’s confidence in his fellowmen, for example, he has employed in the past, and he is today employing this device to protect himself from being ridden by men of the same blood and color as himself. The unwritten English Constitution has grown up from the efforts of English subjects to restrain English kings. Americans have erected similar safeguards to prevent American Presidents, governors, judges and even legislatures from oppressing American citizens.

If a citizen of Massachusetts needs protection against his fellow citizens, if the American people dare not give their President and Congress a power unfettered by a constitution, is it not too clear for argument that the shield of a constitution is far more needed by the Filipinos to protect them from a government authorized by men who do not know them and only learn of them through the reports of others who present their side of the case most strongly and who openly regard the natives as their inferiors?

But there is even another safeguard lacking against which laws and even constitutions are ineffectual when the true liberties of a people are threatened. This is public opinion, the force which, more than anything else will restrain the rulers of every modern state. An enlightened public opinion, however, can exist only where the public is informed and when the public is interested. Neither of these conditions can be relied upon in America’s dealing with the absolute government of the Philippines. The absence of the former has already been treated in this and preceding chapters. Of the latter it can safely be said that popular indifference and lack of genuine interest have characterized the occupation of the Philippines ever since the establishment of civil government. Once the novelty of the conquest had worn away, it has been impossible to induce the American people to take more than a passing interest in the conduct of Philippine affairs. The complaints of the Filipinos fall upon the ears of men, who though supposed to judge them, know nothing of them and care little to learn about them. Say what you will of an American’s intelligence, of his energy and high purposes and fitness to govern himself, it is because he knows not and cares not what is done in the Philippines that he and his fellowmen are unfit to govern the islands.

But the Taft policy, however, proposed and it has in fact succeeded in its proposal, that these inferior natives with whom the great body of Americans would not care to associate, should be given only such measure of free government as unenlightened and unsympathetic Americans think them qualified to use, exercising in doing so a power unfettered by any constitution and unrestrained by any informed and interested public opinion.

Now it may be that in the future as in the past, a group of really disinterested Americans of high calibre will take a serious view of their duty and responsibility in the Islands—that is, the kind of duty and responsibility that the Taft programme calls for. Such an instance occurred shortly after the establishment of the Taft régime when several thousands of Americans signed a petition for Philippine independence. Governor Taft described these men as “a number of excellent and prominent gentlemen.”—and well he might. Could not these “excellent and prominent gentlemen” be trusted with the problem? Apparently not in Mr. Taft’s opinion, for he told the New York Chamber of Commerce at the time when the petition was presented that “the good people who signed the petition” should not “intermeddle with something the effect of which they are very little able to understand⁠[8].”

Who were these men whose ability to understand the Philippine situation Judge Taft so seriously questioned? The list included Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Farley, more than fifty bishops, more than sixty judges, a long list of college presidents and leading educators, such as Eliot of Harvard, Schurman of Cornell, himself not without experience in the Philippines, and ex-President Cleveland. There were also Andrew Carnegie, Charles Francis Adams, Wayne McVeagh and thousands of other respected and prominent men in private life. Here were the spiritual and the intellectual leaders of America. If they were “little able to understand,” to whom in the United States could the Filipinos look for leadership in their behalf? If these American leaders must not “intermeddle,” how can Judge Taft justify his “abiding confidence in the power of the American people to reach a right conclusion?”

If, therefore, the Americans in the Islands as well as the good and intelligent Americans at home cannot be trusted, no one is left, unless by “the good sense and judgment of the American people,” Mr. Taft really meant the President, the Secretary of War, and their appointees, who in the past have been indifferent to human rights and only too ready to seek commercial advantage.

It has been constantly urged, however, that this “benevolent despotism,” for that is what the Taft programme really meant then and now, was merely a step towards preparing the Filipinos for eventual independence. This argument is being used to this day, and will continue to be so used by all those who seek to hide the vicious character of their scheme. For this method of dealing with the problem unfits rather than prepares the Filipinos for independence.

The policy of Governor Taft, in the first place, creates a new race problem because his position rests entirely upon the assumption that the Filipinos, being unfit to govern themselves, should be governed by a race of superior people. Everything, therefore, that the American officials in the Philippines say about the fitness of the Filipino will be accepted as gospel truth by the great majority. They will never take the word of the Filipino against the word of the American. The side of the Filipino will, therefore, not only never be understood in this country but will suffer greatly as the years go by because the more stubbornly the Filipino asserts his fitness for self-government, the more vehemently will his caretakers in the Islands deny it.

The Taft policy moreover creates a far more serious obstacle to independence, for during this period of education paid for by the Filipino it calls for the investment of large amounts of American capital in the Islands hoping that in that manner the Americans will, as the years go by, learn to value truly “this pearl of the Oriental tropics.” Stripped of its sugar coating the Taft policy is to keep the Islands for generations and to plant there in the meantime American citizens and American capital. Now there is nothing clearer in the history of all nations than the inevitable alliance between financial and political power. Wherever capital goes it seeks to control the government in its own interest. If invested in a weak foreign state its owners seek to own the government of that state or, failing in this, exert their efforts to make the home government interfere and control it. This was the origin of the Boer War. This laid the basis for the Indian Empire, and like influences have inspired English, French, and German aggression in Asia and Africa.

Such also are the vicious results which the Taft programme insures. Every dollar of American capital implanted in those Islands becomes a rivet which binds them to the United States, and every American residing there learns to argue soon enough against Philippine independence. State it as you will, the Taft policy means indefinite retention maintained by the absolute power of the United States until the Filipinos become contented subjects. The “Philippines for the Filipinos,” degenerates into the “Philippines for the Americans,” with as much liberty to the Filipinos thrown in as is not inconsistent with American interests. Well did Senator Lodge say several years before, “We believe in trade expansion.”

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Mr. Taft’s Civil Government was adopted on July 4, 1901. What have been its most beneficent results since then, as proclaimed by the American officials themselves? The first results were quite evident—more schools, better roads, and an improved system of sanitation. What did these mean?

“We have given them education and public improvement,” said the administration. Let us state this more accurately. “We,” the benevolent American people have selected American teachers to teach Filipinos what “we” choose, making the Filipino treasury pay for such expenses. “We” have decided what improvements were needed, have effected such improvements under the supervision of American office-holders, and have later presented the bill to the native taxpayer. These American officers, technical as well as administrative, have been paid large salaries and the system has naturally been most expensive to the impoverished islanders.

From the way these material benefits have been related to the Americans at home, however, one is led to assume that the improvements effected have cost the American taxpayer a considerable amount. That the contrary is true was baldly stated by Secretary of War Stimson who in his report of 1912 said, “And the cost of all this and of the much more that has been similarly done has been borne by the Filipino people themselves.”

Is not this method of improving a nation like the rich man who tells his poor neighbor that he ought to have a larger house, better furniture, newer clothes, horses and carriages and forthwith orders them, but has them charged to his neighbor without consulting him as to how these bills are to be met? It is a form of charity easy to the soi-distant benefactor but ruinous to the unhappy neighbor. Surely if “we” insisted upon teaching the Filipinos the American language, instead of propagating the already implanted Castilian tongue, “we” should at least have defrayed that portion of the bill. Evidently this was a benevolence tinctured with New England thrift. Was not this policy aptly expressed at that time by Mr. Dooley when he said:

In ivry city in this unfair land we will erect school houses an’ packin’ houses an’ houses iv correction; an’ we’ll larn ye our language because ’tis aisier to larn ye ours than to larn oursilves yours. An’ we’ll give ye clothes, if ye pay f’r thim; an’ if ye don’t, ye can go without. And whin ye’re hungry ye can to th’ morgue—we mane th’ resth’rant—an’ ate a good square meal if ar-rmy beef. An’ we’ll sind th’ gr-reat Gin’ral Eagan over f’r to larn ye etiquette, an’ Andhrew Carnegie to larn ye pathriteism with blowholes into it, an’ Gin’ral Alger to larn ye to hould onto a job; an’ whin ye’ve become edycated an’ have all th’ blessings if civilization that we don’t want, that’ll count ye one. We can’t give ye anny votes, because we haven’t more thin enough to go round now; but we’ll treat ye th’ way a father shud treat his childher if we have to break ivry bone in ye’er bodies.

The teaching of the English language, however, did accomplish something at the expense of the Taft policy. It opened to the Filipinos the history of the American revolution, the Declaration of Independence. It opened to them the words of Lincoln that “no man is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent.” And yet the Taft policy expected to have these pupils as contented subjects for generations, enjoying the contempt that was daily being heaped upon them, loving to be treated as an inferior people. How strange an expectation!

Nor was this prophecy far fetched. Six years after the establishment of the Taft Government, one of his successors, Governor Smith, was forced to point out with regret “the growing gulf between the two peoples” and to say that an era of ill feeling had started between Americans and Filipinos and, I hesitate to say it, “race hatred”⁠[1]. And no wonder. Let Mr. Leupp, a staunch supporter of the late President Roosevelt give an idea of the conditions then existing in the Islands. Speaking of the American residents in the Philippines who, say what one will, are the only Americans known to the majority of Filipinos, he said:

These men are the loudest and most bitter in their criticisms of the conduct of affairs. They disapprove most vigorously the friendly attitude of our government towards the natives, and denounce the policy of benevolent assimilation as preposterous and visionary.... They object to the appointment of so many Filipinos to office and instead of cultivating the good will of the native people and creating a demand for American goods, they spend their time and energy finding fault and making gloomy predictions.

The people here described have sent emissaries to Washington to convince the authorities that things are all wrong in the Philippines, that the iron hand of white supremacy should replace the Taft policy of “The Philippines for the Filipinos.” What they call a Chamber of Commerce in Manila is really an organization for bringing about conditions more favorable to the exploitation of the islands, without reference to the welfare of the natives. The admission of Chinese labor is the first thing the chamber of commerce wants in this program.

The relations between the “American element” there and the Filipinos are most seriously strained; the newspapers which cater to it never say a word for the Filipinos, nor, for that matter, the civil government. The despicable “little brown brother” poem has been widely circulated. It is about as true a picture of the Filipinos as “the Leopard’s Spots” is of the negro in America. No one can read its fierce arraignment of the natives and learn that it is almost a national hymn with our soldiers here, and then imagine that relations between the two races are very cordial⁠[2].

But for even better testimony, let these American residents speak their own mind. At a mass meeting held by them in Manila one speaker expressing his belief that the American government had been weak and vacillating, added:

Now I believe in “benevolent assimilation” (which quotation was greeted with laughter). I believe it so strongly that I would, if necessary, pin it to these islands with the bayonet.

Then, referring to a celebration that the Filipinos had had in which American and Filipino flags had been displayed, came this ambitious claim:

They (the Filipinos) did not realize that we, who are here tonight, are the Government, and that that government could not have been here without us, and cannot stay here without us.... I believe in peace and harmony. I always did, and when I had a battalion of volunteers behind me I felt awful peaceful.... I believe that if we could put about one hundred thousand American troops here it would be very peaceful (laughter), exceedingly so, and you would not see any more Katipunan (Filipino) banners eight or ten feet long, with their designs emblazoned in silk, going along the streets with a little six cent American flag carried underneath it. It would be too peaceful for that.

So much for the bonds of friendship between the two peoples. No wonder they have led to further bickerings on the part of the American residents whenever concessions have been granted to the Filipinos. No wonder too that when, in 1907, the Filipinos were finally granted a Philippine assembly, they made that the occasion to renew their demand for independence. Before the establishment of this Philippine Assembly it was virtually an act of disloyalty to talk of independence. Mr. Taft himself had refused to permit the Filipinos to organize an independence party. But with the veil of suppression removed in 1907, the agitation for a complete separation was formally launched, and has been kept up since with increasing vigor.

What about the economic blessings given to the country? As the fires of insurrection were finally suppressed, the Filipinos turned to their chosen occupation—agriculture. The fields were then in a ravaged condition as a result of the prolonged period of war. The struggle had reduced most of the provinces to a state of misery. In his report of 1902, the Secretary of War, Mr. Root, had acknowledged these catastrophes. He said,

The ills which have recently befallen the people of the islands call for active and immediate measures of relief. The people of a country just emerging from nearly six years of devastating warfare, during which productive industry was interrupted, vast amounts of property were destroyed, the bonds of social order were broken, habits of peaceful industry were lost ... had a sufficiently difficult task before them to restore order and prosperity. In addition to this, however, the people of the Philippine islands have within the past year been visited by great misfortunes. The rinderpest has destroyed about ninety per cent of all their carabaos, leaving them without draft animals to till their land and aid in the ordinary work.... The rice crop has been reduced to twenty-five per cent of the ordinary crop ... cholera has raged and is still raging throughout the islands....

And yet on November 19 of that same year, the President was telling the people of the United States that “the islands have never been as orderly, as peaceful or as prosperous as now” ⁠[3], which statement properly induced Mr. Burrit Smith to say, “The President’s prosperity seems to be composed in nearly equal parts of pestilence and famine.” For indeed, the bare comparison of the statement with the facts made arguments superfluous.

As late as August 2, 1905, the Representatives of Batangas province addressed a letter to Governor Taft to show the miserable condition of the municipality of Balayan. The statistics they offered showed that, whereas in 1896 the number of inhabitants in that district was 41,308, in 1905 the number had been reduced to 13,924. There had been 19,500 hectares of cultivated land in 1896—there were only 1,700 in 1905. Other items had suffered even more, rice having fallen from 39,020 to 12,500 cavanes, sugar from 520,000 to 12,300; maize from 110,000 to 10,000, cows 3,680 in 1896, only 80 left seven years later; oxen from 4,110 to 433; hens from 96,000 before the war to only 5,000 four years after the establishment of civil government. Consider what a story those figures tell.

In addition to these calamities there had been placed upon the shoulders of the entire population an internal revenue tax, of which Professor Paul S. Reinsch said:

Outside of Italy it would be hard to find a system of taxation that so efficiently scours the whole field of business. The merchants and professional men of a country like the United States would look upon it as a most unbearable burden.

In the light of these hardships, it would be reasonable to expect that the economic policy of the United States towards the Islands would be guided by the desire to make them as prosperous as possible. And yet the first few years of American legislation in this matter showed a series of blunders which resulted in heaping further hardships upon the already prostrated people.

When the Islands were under the dominion of Spain the native planters had had the benefit of a limited Spanish market, but when the United States sovereignty was extended to the archipelago this market was taken away, and in its place nothing was given. The first tariff act passed by the American Congress to regulate the trade of the Philippines was that of March 8, 1902. It allowed Philippine products coming into the United States a reduction of 25%, from the regular Dingley rates. Governor Taft realized how ineffective this reduction was, and he pleaded very earnestly with Congress to give his “Filipinos” something in lieu of the privileges they had under Spain. But the sugar and tobacco interests in the United States checked his efforts because they were afraid that Philippine products would endanger their domestic crops.

There were one or two “jokers” in this tariff legislation of 1902 also that are already well-known. One was the clause which abolished the export tax on Philippine produce coming to the United States. Among these native products was the world-famous Philippine hemp. This native product was at the time sorely needed in the home markets, and the object of the law was clearly to favor the exportation of this article to the United States exclusively and thus defeat the British and other foreign exporters in Manila from getting their share of the article in question.

The method by which this was accomplished was even more vicious, and really constituted the big “joker” of the tariff act. It will be remembered that export taxes were collected on Philippine produce as they left the custom house in Manila. Now the levying of taxes on exports is strictly prohibited by the Constitution of the United States, but the Supreme Court at Washington had said that the Constitution did not extend to the Philippines. Among the articles thus taxed was hemp, but the tariff law of 1902 now said that if the hemp shipped from Manila was proved to have been consumed in the United States, then the export duties already paid would be refunded to the shipper in order to give him the true benefit of a reduction. This odd method of administering the law was thus double-edged. It not only gave the American exporter a tremendous advantage over his British rival, but it also favored the American shipper over the Filipino planter.

This was so because when the native planter sold his crop he was forced to sell it at the current price which assumed that an export tax would be levied upon it. To an American shipper the recovery of this export duty later was a matter of routine, as he could easily prove through his American offices that the hemp was in fact received and consumed in the United States. But the Filipino planter or broker dealing on a much smaller scale could not, without difficulty and expense, follow his few bales into the markets of the United States and then prove to the custom officials that the hemp was in fact consumed there. The result of this American legislation was apparent—only the big fish, like the American Hemp trust, got the benefit of this so-called favored reduction.

Governor Taft and his commission saw the injustice thus placed on the native planters, and they earnestly besought Congress to remove such legislation from the statute books of the United States.

“These refundable duties,” they said in their report of 1904, “are in effect a gift of that amount to the manufacturers of the United States who use hemp in their operations”⁠[4].

Their report of the following year was just as earnest in its complaint.

“It is a direct burden upon the people of the Philippine Islands,” they said, “because it takes from the Insular treasury export duties collected from the people and gives them to manufacturers of hemp products in the United States.”

Surely this was a poor way to make the Filipinos learn to value their association with the United States, and Mr. Taft’s commission tried to impress the American Congress with this consideration.

“It seems hardly consistent,” they said, that “with our expressions of purpose to build and develop the Philippine Islands ... we are thus enriching a few of our own people at their (Filipino) expense”⁠[5].

By 1906 the situation had not abated. When the American Governor General Ide returned to the United States he frankly said, “By annexation we killed the Spanish market for Philippine sugar and tobacco, and our tariff shuts these products from the United States, and today both these industries are prostrated”⁠[6].

It would be fruitless to examine in detail all the steps taken by the powerful American elements at home and abroad to aid their own interests at the expense of others. Dr. Parker Willis, Professor of Economics in the Washington and Lee University, after making an exacting study of the tariff laws, finally added this convincing summary:

Wines were taxed in such a way as to discriminate against the light Spanish beverages and in favour of the Californian. Canned goods were taxed according to weights of the cans, a plan which favoured Chicago and St. Louis producers as against English. Beer was so rated that the American product shipped in barrels was favoured against the beer of other countries. Every effort was made to help the American and hamper the foreign shipper⁠[7].

An even more scholarly discussion of these discriminations was published in the Journal of Political Economy for March, 1903.

And yet in the midst of these calamities and discriminations, President Roosevelt was telling the American Congress, that,

No great civilized power has ever managed with such wisdom and disinterestedness the affairs of people committed by the accident of war to its hands⁠[8].

Mr. Taft realized the burdens which American interests, afraid of the so-called Asiatic competition, were thus placing on the industries of the Philippines. He, therefore, labored hard, quietly and with infinite patience, and finally after a campaign of nine years succeeded in convincing the sugar and tobacco industries in the United States that a little Philippine produce would do them little harm and would put the Islanders in good humor. The Payne tariff law was therefore enacted in 1909, permitting the free entrance of Philippine produce up to certain limits prescribed by the Act.

This relief was by no means satisfactory, however, for the new tariff proposed to continue the tax on exports shipped to foreign countries from Manila. Well did the Hon. Oscar W. Underwood tell Congress:

When you put a tax on your people for engaging in export trade, to that extent you lessen their ability to successfully meet their foreign competitor, and reduce the territory in which they can successfully dispose of their surplus products abroad. Our forefathers in writing the Constitution of the United States, recognizing the false principle on which the export tax was based, put it in the fundamental law of the land that the United States Government should not lay export taxes. If we enact this law, we write into the statute book for the Philippine Islands, legislation which is little short of barbarous, legislation that no government in the civilized world except Turkey and Persia, and other second class nations countenance today⁠[9].

The protest was vain, for the American hemp interests won and the provision for an export tax was adopted. The Hon. Manuel Quezon arguing for the repeal of this export tax two years later, ably put forth this unanswerable argument:

Although it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that the provisions of the Constitution are not in force in the Philippines, I have serious doubts as to whether said decision also meant that this government has the power to enact laws for the islands which are expressly prohibited by the Constitution of the United States⁠[10].

In 1909, a distinguished son of Boston, the Hon. W. Cameron Forbes, assumed the position of Governor General in the Philippines. He was able, conscientious, and unselfish, and thoroughly convinced that the Taft program was justified, and, as an untiring worker, was determined to make this policy a true blessing to the Filipinos. During the four years that he occupied that exalted position, he sacrificed his health and his comfort in exchange for the consciousness that comes from a job well done. His extreme courtesy, his marked sympathy for the aspirations of the Filipinos and his deep-rooted interest in all affairs appurtenant to the Islands made him a most gracious person to deal with, and during his administration he made friends readily and kept them for all time. Certainly, then, if the policy founded by Judge Taft was the right one, no more admirable person could have been found to administer it. If we must oppose him and criticize him, therefore, we do so not on personal grounds but because he pursued a policy which we believe was wrong—because the undertaking in which he engaged was hopeless.

Governor Forbes’s inaugural address aptly characterized his policy. Improvement in the material conditions of the Islands and the people was the keynote of his speech, and he declared that capital was the greatest need of the country.

Capital [he said] demands a stable government. Capital is not particularly interested in the color or design of the flag, it wants just and equitable laws, sound and uniform currency on the part of the government, just and fair treatment in the courts. The faith of the United States is pledged that all of these benefits shall be permanently assured to the Filipinos ... There is not on the horizon discernible any cloud which indicates the possibility of any kind of disturbance in the present status of these Islands, either from within or without, by war or insurrection. The United States is strong, determined, fixed in her policy and not to be dissuaded or coerced. The development of the Philippines will proceed along the lines originally set forth, strictly adhered to by each successive administration and by the gradual process in line of declared policy.... The government should offer every reasonable inducement to capital and should make more liberal the land and mining laws and lessen the restrictions which are at present discouraging investors.

In a word, then, Governor Forbes’s policy was to introduce more capital from sources foreign to the Philippines, and thus create material prosperity. To induce American and other foreign investors to settle in the Islands it was also his aim to assure these men that their investments would be protected by American control. His ideal was not, however, novel for it was the deal also of many in his generation and of those who had preceded him in office. This policy is opposed, therefore, simply because it creates an interest hostile to Philippine independence, because it makes separation more difficult and more costly. It was capital which brought on the Boer War, it was capital which led to the conquest of India, it is capital which promotes the aggression of the strong upon the weak, and so to the policy of introducing material improvements by foreign capital while the Philippines are yet in a state of dependence, their people are absolutely opposed.

If the Filipinos must be taught something about Yankee ingenuity, let them be taught to help themselves with their own resources, and not with the money of others. Set before them, as was set before the founders of the American republic, “the glorious prospect of entire independence,” that it may “breathe into them anew the breath of life,” as it did into the breasts of those who have gone before them. And if foreign capital must come into the Philippines, as it will inevitably come, let it come when the Islands are independent, so that it may settle as it has settled in Mexico and Cuba with the full understanding that it is the native government upon which it must depend for security. This policy, though investments may be slow at first, will encourage foreign capital more and more as the peoples of the world learn to look upon the Filipinos as human beings anxious to contribute their modest share to the welfare of mankind. Is this not infinitely better than the policy which to this day tells the sensitive Filipinos,—

no matter what you think, we shall act without regard to your wishes as we alone are fit to judge of your ability; we alone will decide when independence is good for you; meanwhile you shall have no voice in your government save that which we choose to give you.

How absolute the American control of the Philippine treasury has been to this day was stated in the leading editorial of the Boston Transcript for September 24, 1925, from which the following is a quotation:

The American people are brought to a crisis in their and the government’s relations with the Philippine Islands by the decision of the Philippine Supreme Court that rulings of the insular auditor are not definitive, but may be appealed to the local courts. The power of the Philippine auditor (an American official) subject to that of the Governor-General and the United States Secretary of War, is absolutely necessary to the maintenance of American authority in the islands.... The present decision has been promptly appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and no doubt a prompt ruling will be handed down from that tribunal. If it should sustain the Philippine decision, the decisive authority of the American government in the islands would be at an end, and the islands themselves might as well be turned over to the Filipinos.

In other words one subordinate official with a salary of six thousand dollars must have absolute control over the use which is made of taxes raised from eleven millions of people. What nation would submit to such tyranny? How would such an officer appointed by the Governor of New York be received in Massachusetts?

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To lessen the absolute power of the American representatives in the Philippines, and in order to fulfill the promise of the Philippine plank in the Democratic platform of 1912 which had declared for an immediate declaration of the nation’s purpose “to recognize the independence of the Philippine Islands as soon as a stable government” could be established, Mr. Jones of Virginia introduced a bill in the House of Representatives in August, 1914. The bill which passed the House besides providing for a more popular and autonomous form of government, contained a preamble to the effect that it was and always had been “the purpose of the people of the United States to withdraw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands and to recognize their independence as soon as a stable government could be established therein.”

When the bill was presented to the Senate, however, the preamble was slightly changed. Independence, according to the Senate bill was to be granted when, in the judgment of the United States it would be “to the permanent interests of the Philippine Islands.” The question thus naturally arose when the bill was under discussion whether the new proposal really paved the way for independence.

Suppose [asked Senator Cummings of Iowa] that I believe it would be better for the people of the Philippine Islands to remain permanently attached to the United States as a state, with all the privileges of a state or otherwise, would I not fulfill the promise or assurance of the preamble in voting to retain the Philippine Islands as a part of the territory of the United States?

To this question. Senator Hitchcock who was supporting the new preamble candidly replied, “I presume the Senator would.”

Interest was thus aroused by this sudden revelation that the preamble as now worded did not explicitly pledge independence after all. To put an end to this uncertainty, and in order to show the seriousness of the pledge which the Administration wished to give the Filipinos, Senator Clarke of Arkansas introduced an amendment authorizing the President of the United States to definitely “withdraw and surrender all right of possession, supervision, jurisdiction, control, and sovereignty” over the Philippine Islands and requiring that the transfer of possession and sovereignty be made absolute in not less than two nor more than four years. The proposed measure also authorized the President to acquire land sites desired by the United States for naval and coaling stations in the Philippines.

So strong was the feeling in the Senate in favor of Philippine autonomy that this unexpected proposal, grave and far-reaching as it was meant to be, was successfully carried. When the final vote was taken the measure was accepted, the vote being fifty-two against twenty-four, the Democrats solidly voting for it and carrying six Republican ballots as well. Never had the Filipinos been as near their goal as on this occasion. It was certainly the most decisive step ever taken by a branch of the American Congress.

When the news was cabled to the Philippines, the Filipinos greeted their triumph with enthusiasm and hopes that the House would likewise vote favorably on the bill. It will be remembered that ever since the American occupation of 1898 neither House of Congress had made a definite statement of America’s policy. When the bill, as amended, was brought before the House, however, it suffered another change.

It was found necessary to hold a conference between the committees of the two Houses in order to reconcile the varying views regarding the liberty to be granted the Filipinos. As finally passed and enacted into law by both Houses, the Jones Bill made the statement that “it is and always has been the purpose of the people of the United States to withdraw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands and to recognize their independence as soon as a stable government can be established therein.” In order to speedily accomplish this purpose the new law also granted immediately a larger share of self-government in matters of domestic concern. The importance of this measure, however, which had the approbation of both Houses, lay in the pledge which for eighteen years a Republican administration had been able to avoid. Now, however, not only was America’s word given, but a test had also been provided—that of a stable government. The problem of the future must therefore be limited to the question whether the Filipinos had succeeded in establishing a stable government.

In accordance with the spirit of the new law, Governor Francis Burton Harrison who had succeeded Cameron Forbes in 1913 immediately began to place Filipinos in charge of the administration as rapidly as possible, until the American Governor General, the Vice-Governor, the Secretary of Public Instruction, the Insular auditor and a few minor officials were the only Americans left in office. But the theoretical sovereignty of the American people still remained, a sovereignty based on force and certainly not sanctioned or even acquiesced in by the Filipino people.

It would entail an endless array of facts and figures to recount the progress and missteps of the new régime. But a brief survey of the most undisputed facts would show beyond a doubt that the Filipinos were not forgetting what had been taught them by the “self-sacrificing” Americans. Take the matter of schooling and education. Under the Forbes administration the attendance in public schools had reached 440,000, but in 1921, when Governor Wood came to assume his duties he found that the Filipinos had provided accommodations for over 1,100,000. Only 7,512,000 pesos had been spent annually for education in 1913 when Governor Forbes left; in 1921 over 22,000,000 pesos were employed to provide for the increased attendance in schools. Of course the number of schools rose in proportion as well, from 2,934 in 1913, to 5,944 in the course of Filipino administration, while the number of Filipino teachers kept pace accordingly—from 7,671 to 17,575.

In the field of transportation the material progress effected was just as convincing. First class roads increased from a total mileage of 2,035 kilometers in 1913 to 4,698, or an increase of over 100 per cent in eight years. So with inter-island coastwise traffic,—from 680 vessels with a net tonnage of 54,396, the number rose to 3,044 with a net tonnage of 99,376.

In 1913 there were no public dispensaries giving free medical treatment but within eight years the Filipinos established over 800 such institutions. There were then also only two insular and six provincial hospitals, but that was increased under Filipino “misgovernment” to eleven insular and eleven provincial hospitals. There was only one organization for infant welfare when the Filipinos took charge unhampered by an American Governor General. Here was clearly a large field for improvement as infant mortality in the Islands had in the past been unusually heavy. They proved themselves equal to the task, however, for by 1921 there were 615 institutions functioning for this purpose. Death rates thus fell from 32.28 per thousand for the periods of 1908–13, to 28.62 from 1914–19, despite the fact that an epidemic of influenza had ravaged the Islands in 1918.

During this significant period of Philippine autonomy, of course mistakes were made as mistakes always are made by even the best of all governments. We do not seek to excuse them or to place responsibility for them upon the shoulders of the American Governor General who was on the ground and who was responsible in numerous instances for unwise appointments. Suffice it to say that marked progress was made during this period of trial, how marked will be shown by the report of the investigation made by leading Republicans—of which more anon.

It was no doubt in view of these marked advances and the evident capacity of the Filipinos to manage their own interests that President Wilson finally informed Congress that the Filipinos had fulfilled the required condition set before them.

Allow me to call your attention to the fact [he told the Houses of Congress on December 7, 1920] that the people of the Philippine Islands have succeeded in maintaining a stable government since the last action of the Congress in their behalf, and have thus fulfilled the condition set by the Congress as the precedent to a consideration of granting independence to the Islands. I respectfully submit that this condition precedent having been fulfilled, it is now our liberty and our duty to keep our promise to the people of those Islands, by granting them the independence which they so honorably covet.

If the future of the Philippine Islands had been without regard to party fortunes in the United States such a recommendation would undoubtedly have resulted in definite action. But another political party assumed power on March of the following year and the New Republican President, Mr. Harding, almost immediately sent a commission of his own to the Philippines there to make a study of the situation in order to inform the new administration. In this action is clear proof of the difficulties that attend the efforts of impartial Americans to learn the exact state of affairs in the Islands, because each administration in Washington views the problem from a different angle and refuses to trust the findings of the party which preceded it.

Two eminent Republicans, both of whom were well-known to be against Philippine independence, were the chosen investigators. It might properly have occurred to the President that impartial men should have been sent, or that at least one member of the commission should have been in favor of independence. As it was both General Wood and Governor Forbes who had never changed their views in regard to Philippine independence were made final arbitrators. No one need question the honest purposes of both men, as they stood high in the estimation of their own fellow-citizens, but men are human and when they have for years maintained a certain point of view they cannot approach the subject anew with an open or judicial mind. The Filipinos, however, hoped that they might after a more careful investigation change their outlook.

The Wood-Forbes mission spent some six months in the Islands. They brought back a report recommending the continuance of American control. The commission stated that they had found marked progress in the Islands, but recommended nevertheless that the hour for independence had not yet come as the people needed more time “to absorb and master the powers already in their hands.”

The field of government service was in particular the one in which the greatest progress had been made.

We find [said the commission] that many Filipinos have shown marked capacity for government service and that the young generation is full of promise; that the civil service laws have been in the main honestly administered⁠[1]. In many positions they have shown marked capacity and have done better than could reasonably be expected of an inexperienced and untried people. There are many holding high positions in the judicial, executive and educational departments who would be a credit to any government. They are proud as they may well be, of the advance they have made since the beginning of American control of the Islands, for it can be safely stated that no people under the friendly tutelage of another have made so great a progress in so short a time⁠[2].

We find [said the commission] that the legislative chambers are conducted with dignity and decorum and are composed of representative men⁠[3].

These statements having been made by men known to have been opposed to Philippine independence should be interpreted in the strongest light possible. Can they be applied also to most of the state legislatures in America?

Nevertheless, the commission finally concluded by submitting the following recommendations:

1. We recommend that the present general status of the Philippine Islands continue until the people have had time to absorb and thoroughly master the powers already in their hands.
2. We recommend that the responsible representative of the United States, the Governor General, have authority commensurate with the responsibilities of his position. In case of failure to secure the necessary corrective action by the Philippine Legislature, we recommend that Congress declare null and void legislation which has been enacted diminishing, limiting, or dividing the authority granted by the Governor General under act of Congress No. 240 known as the Jones Bill.
3. We recommend that in case of a deadlock between the Governor General and the Philippine Senate in the confirmation of appointments the President of the United States be authorized to make and render the final decision.

The first general recommendation naturally meant retention for another indefinite period of years,—a continuation of the Taft policy. The other two meant the diminishing of powers already in the hands of the Filipinos. The American Congress has not acted on either of the latter, but when General Wood was appointed governor shortly after the submission of this report it was evident to all that he would to a large extent be influenced in the exercise of his powers by the recommendations which he himself had made. Many there were, therefore, who feared that a clash between him and the native legislators was inevitable.

To put it mildly the attitude of the new Governor was that the Chief Executive being the representative of American sovereignty was entitled to exercise an authority over the Philippines equal to or even more than that of the President of the United States over his own people, inasmuch as the Governor’s veto is practically final, whereas that of an American president may be and is in fact frequently overridden by a legislature. Nay, more, as we have seen that the American auditor appointed by the Governor was to have final authority over the Philippine expenditures.

The claim of the Filipinos on the other hand may be gathered from the words of one of its greatest leaders. Senator Osmenà. Speaking before the Philippine barristers, he expressed Filipino sentiment in these words:

The Filipinos know that theirs is now an autonomous régime; that they and not the Governor General, are being subjected to a test; that they and not the Governor General are in duty bound to establish a stable government here, and that they and only they are committed to the task of hastening the day for the granting of their independence. They, therefore, have the right to follow and be guided by their own leaders and to expect that their control in the government of their own country be real, ample and effective.... To surrender our present lease of governmental power or our control over internal affairs for one reason or another, is not only sheer cowardice; it is downright desertion of duty—treason against the Nation⁠[4].

Here then were two conflicting positions—the Governor claiming for himself greater power as an executive than that wielded by an American president, and the Philippine legislature asserting that in matters of domestic concern they, as representatives of the people and responsible to them, should be the ones to decide the local problems of the day.

The legislative session of 1922–23 left little doubt in the minds of men that the conflict would not be long delayed. Following the resignation of the Philippine Cabinet and the Council of State because, as the Filipino leaders alleged, the Governor General was overriding the clear law, the Filipinos decided to appeal their case to the American people. Knowing how impossible it is for the Filipinos to arouse the interest of Americans in these matters, they hoped, nevertheless, that they might succeed in laying their case before Congress. For that purpose they sent a commission to Washington headed by Speaker Roxas of the Philippine House of Representatives.

The Commission came to state that Governor General Wood had been guilty of illegal and arbitrary acts and that the irritation caused by his course had led various Philippine leaders to resign their official positions.

This event, [added the Filipino spokesman] grave and serious as it is, once more demonstrates that the immediate and absolute independence of the Philippines which the whole country demands, is the only complete and satisfactory settlement of the Philippine problem.

About the time when this delegation took its headquarters in Washington there was a bill pending before the Committee on Insular Affairs favoring Philippine independence. The Boston Globe of March 9, 1924, reported the progress of this bill in these terms:

The United States House of Representatives Committee on Insular Affairs has this week voted to report out a bill favoring Philippine independence by a vote of eleven to five. The Filipino representatives in this country were jubilant. They felt that there is a strong sentiment in the present Congress.... Just as the rejoicing was highest ... President Coolidge dropped a bombshell upon their festival of hope.

Now, what was this bombshell with which the President could defeat Filipino aspirations without consulting Congress? It was an open letter from the President addressed to the Filipino delegates in reply to their list of grievances growing out of the intolerable situation in the Islands. The President’s letter was written along familiar lines, but it must be considered carefully, bearing in mind that it was published just as the Insular Committee was proposing to report a bill to grant the Islands their independence and, in the language of the New York Times of March 14, “blocked any such bill in Congress,” and was intended to do so.

Said the President to the head of the Philippine Commission:

The extent to which the grievances which you suggest are shared by the Filipino people has been a subject of some disagreement. The American Government has information which justifies it in the confidence that a very large proportion, at any rate, and possibly a majority of the substantial citizenry of the Islands, does not support the claim that there are grounds for serious grievances.

But does a general statement of this sort carry conviction? From whom did the information come? What is meant by “substantial citizenry?” What did the President mean by “the American Government”? Lincoln said it was a “government by the people,” but the people had not received such information nor had Congress, their chosen representatives. If there was any reliable information why did not the President make it known to the people or to Congress? Surely, if the President would not rely upon the unanimous voice of the Philippine legislature, a legislature which, in the opinion of the Wood-Forbes Report is “composed of representative men,” it was imperative that the President give the people the information which he had received, in order that they might judge its value. The question is a question for the people—not for Mr. Coolidge alone.

The President went on to say also that, “a considerable section of the Filipino people is further of the opinion that at this time any change which would weaken the tie between the Filipinos and the American nation would be a misfortune to the Islands.” What is this considerable section? What is the evidence of such a feeling? The President has no right to act upon information which he will not disclose.

It has been years since the desire for independence by Filipinos was firmly established. Every year since the organization of the Philippine Legislature in 1916, and before that the Philippine Assembly in 1907, a resolution has been adopted unanimously asking the Congress of the United States to grant independence. There is not a single dissenting vote in the Houses when this matter is brought up. All political parties in the Islands are for immediate independence and they vie with each other in their efforts to secure their country’s freedom. There is not a single man in the Philippines who can be elected to office if he does not advocate independence. Even the Wood-Forbes Report substantiated this attitude, for they “found everywhere, among the Christian Filipinos (which compose ninety per cent of the population) the general desire for independence.” If the President, therefore, had evidence to the contrary upon which he could safely rely, it should have been published. It is a familiar rule of law that “fraud lurks in general statements”—“Dolus latet in generalibus.”

But the President went on instead to speak of the altruism of the United States in helping the Filipinos.

A great responsibility came unsought to the American people [he said] referring to the period of 1898. It was not imposed upon them because they had yielded to any designs of imperialism or of colonial expansion. The fortunes of war brought American power to your Islands, playing the part of an unexpected and welcome deliverer.

This claim that the Islands came to the United States unsought by the fortunes of war has been dealt with in earlier chapters of this volume.

It was not to be wondered, however, that the President should have again alluded to this period of the conquest in such a high-handed manner. This method was adopted by McKinley twenty-seven years before and it has since been handed down intact and accepted by the American people, because they have always been too busy to look at the sources of information or to even examine with a grain of salt these statements though made by men presenting their side of the case and defending the policies for which they are responsible.

But the most naïve suggestion in the President’s letter was his statement to the commission and, through them to the Filipino people, that they would “do well to consider most carefully the value of their intimate association with the American nation.” These were Governor Taft’s words nineteen years before when he expressed the hope that the Filipinos would learn to value their connection with the United States, while the United States would then also appreciate this “pearl of the Oriental tropics.” Do not both these suggestions look toward permanent retention?

Is it not also safe and reasonable to assume that ever since 1898 the Filipinos have carefully considered the possible value of a permanent or even an indefinite connection with the United States? Is it not clear that having so considered it they have unequivocally expressed for the last twenty-five years their ardent desire to terminate these relations? What, therefore, did the President expect to gain by urging them to reconsider a question which they have already studied and on which their attitude has never varied?

Even with the presence of the American flag in the Islands today the archipelago is one of the most poorly protected lands in the world. Any considerable force can easily overthrow the scanty representation of American arms in the Islands, and it is absurd to believe that the American people would permit a President or a Secretary of War to send the forces necessary to protect eleven millions of “inferior” people. Nor have the Filipinos forgotten that when their peace was last endangered during the World War, orders were given to the American military and naval forces to leave the Islands in the event of a threatened attack.

What respect does the President pay to the solemn promise made by the government of the United States in the Jones Law that as soon as the Filipinos had established a stable government they should be granted their independence? Here is a promise and a test to decide when independence should be granted. The Filipinos have contended that this test has been satisfied by them. President Wilson upheld this contention and President Coolidge added some support to this when he said in his letter that:

In education, in cultural advancement, in political conceptions and institutional development, the Filipino people have demonstrated a capacity which cannot but justify high hopes for their future.

But the President stated his conclusion, nevertheless, that

there had not been thus far a full realization of the fundamental ideals of Democratic government. There have been evidences of a certain inability or unwillingness to recognize that this type of governmental organization rests upon the theory of complete separation of the legislative, executive and judicial functions. There have been many evidences of a disposition to extend the functions of the legislature and thereby curtail the proper authority of the executive,

which under the veil of generality means that the Governor General and the Philippine legislature have disagreed. Such disagreements are not rare in the realm of American national and state government, but it has never been suggested that they were proof of political incapacity on the part of the legislatures or of infallibility on the part of the President. Is the President entitled to make this opinion of his, with no statements of the facts on which he relies, binding on two nations? Are not his fellow-citizens entitled to weigh the “evidences” to which he refers?

In a word, therefore, we find the President brushing aside the test of a stable government made by Congress in 1916 and substituting in its place several tests of his own, such as a legislature acting in entire harmony with a Governor appointed by him but paid out of the taxes raised from the Filipino people. Wherein does the President get the authority to make this test? How many independent nations in the world today can establish the clear recognition of the separation of powers which the President wants the Filipinos to achieve before independence is granted them? Even in the United States the relative weight of each department in the Federal government varies from time to time and in no other country in the world does the American experiment prevail—and yet they are all independent.

Suppose the President’s test is applied to himself. Where does our constitution give him the power to determine the future of eleven millions of men and their relations with the United States? Who gives him the right to decide whether their government corresponds with the American ideals or not? Did not the Supreme Court of the United States unequivocally declare that the “Constitution of the United States did not follow the flag” into the Philippines, as it does in the American territories? Did not even McKinley himself announce from the beginning of the occupation that America had no intention of applying her own theories of government in the Islands, but intended rather to insure the welfare of the Filipinos with due respect for even their “prejudices if necessary”?⁠[5] The powers which the President now exercises are not executive. They are legislative and the President usurped them to prevent Congress from exercising its legitimate right to decide the Philippine issue.

The relations of the United States with the Philippines are peculiarly a subject to be dealt with by Congress. This was asserted at the outset of the occupation and has never been questioned. What right has the President to interfere with their deliberations and seek to impose his opinion upon them? History repeats itself, and as the Islands were acquired and held and a war declared by the President, without consulting Congress, so now the Executive usurps the function of Congress and would continue the occupation of the Islands because he approves it.

This new and impossible test set by the President really meant and will continue to mean unless changed, that the promise made by an American Congress in 1916 can be treated as “a scrap of paper” in order to give place to a policy which gives the Filipinos no hope of independence as long as an excuse may be found by the President for holding that the government of the Islands is not what it should be, or that it does not correspond with his ideals. Apply such tests to the American cities and which would be left to govern itself?

For the sake of clarity let us again state the problem in the Philippines as it arose in 1923 and as it exists today. General Wood and the Filipinos have been and continue to be at issue, the latter asserting that the Governor’s course has been arbitrary and lawless. History has invariably shown that when a military officer is placed in civil authority he is apt to irritate the people over whom he is placed. Here was an issue—is it not reasonable to suppose that an impartial tribunal should have settled the problem? The least partial tribunal to which the Filipinos could state their case was Congress, but the President took it into his own hands, and has assumed to decide it without action by Congress.

It is a fundamental fact in the government of one people by another that the governing power stands by its own representatives, believes in them and is determined to sustain them. And so the President sustained his representative on this occasion. He told the complaining Filipinos that he had “full confidence in the ability, good intentions, fairness and sincerity” of General Wood, and pronounced him, “a hard working, painstaking and conscientious administrator,” finding no evidence that he had “acted with any other than the purposes of best serving the real interests of the Filipino people.”

What do these words mean? Only that the President approves his appointee. But General Wood may have had one idea as to the “real interest” of the Filipinos, and the Filipinos a very different one. He may have sincerely adopted what he considered the proper means, and yet in the judgment of others they may have been improper. A man may be “hard working, painstaking and conscientious” in the pursuit of what he thinks is good for a population, and yet be an unsuccessful administrator lacking sympathy, wisdom and tact.

Are there not in the United States differences and deadlocks between “conscientious, painstaking and hard working” Presidents and Congresses; between Governors of “ability, good intentions and fairness” and state legislatures, and between mayors and councils in the most progressive cities of America? When a President is tried on articles of impeachment as was Andrew Johnson, when members of a Cabinet are forced to resign because of blundering stupidity or dishonesty, when elected governors are sent to the state penitentiaries for dishonest practices, do such catastrophes prove that the country is not fit for self-government?

No one need question the honest purposes of the President or of General Wood, but the principles on which the American government was founded are eternal, and consistently with them the fate of a nation cannot be decided by a few men. The New York Times of March 14, 1924, gives a glaring example of the practice which in 1898 permitted a few men to conquer the Islands. The dispatch in question came from Washington and described a “conference in the office of the Secretary of War” which, the paper said, “may have an important hearing on Philippine independence as several American business men who have interests in the Philippines attended.” A list of these business men was given. One had “extensive interests in the Islands,” another was “a member of the Chamber of Commerce,” a third had “large sugar plantations” and a fourth was a “hemp importer.” With these were joined Secretary Weeks, General McIntyre and Ex-Vice-Governor Gilbert, the latter being one of the strongest advocates of indefinite control. Here were a few Americans with private interests at stake met to advise the Secretary of War as to what should be done in the Philippines, and although there were several Filipino officials in Washington at that time, not one was present.

Is it not wiser and safer to leave the question in the hands of the representatives of the American people, and let the issue be settled after open debate in Congress, rather than permit the President to dispose of the Islands according to the counsel of men whom he believes “able to give the best advice” but whom he does not name, or by secret meetings between the Secretary of War and interested American business men?

Just as President McKinley deliberately settled the fate of the Islands without consulting Congress in accordance with the desires of a few selfish Americans who believed in trade expansion, President Coolidge in March, 1924, blocked favorable action by Congress in behalf of the Filipinos and, at the behest apparently of a few American capitalists, undertook to settle the future of the Philippines for many years to come. The letter of the President was but one step in this well-conceived scheme to hold the Islands permanently, or at least until the interest of these trade expansionists no longer warrants the maintenance of “a door to the commercial markets of the Far East.” The plan will succeed, unless the American people realize in time what “benevolent assimilation” really means.

---

The arguments of those, who would retain the Islands purely for so-called benevolent motives, today consist mostly in prophecies of disaster. These men claim to see the downfall of all that is good in the Philippines in the event of American withdrawal. Suppose we view the record which the Filipinos have made within the last quarter of a century. We need not do this in detail, as that would demand too much time and space, but we can view the work as the American critics themselves have seen it.

An examination, therefore, would show that the record of the Filipinos has been like that of every other nation in the world for a similar period of time. There has been unwise legislation and excellent legislation. There have been ill-advised appointments as there are in every country on earth, but there have also been admirable choices for administrative and judicial positions. The people have regularly held their elections with earnestness but with fairness, and with orderly conduct. Said Governor General Wood to the Philippine Legislature in 1922:

I congratulate you and through you the Filipino people, on the orderly and lawful conduct of the recent elections which, notwithstanding the keenness of the struggle and the appearance of a strong new party in the field, were conducted with due regard to the rights of the candidates and with the absence of fraud and irregularity which would be a credit to any people.

Of course, the Filipinos have made mistakes. There have been errors in the conduct of their affairs, and these, sad to relate, have been meticulously picked out, enlarged, colored and blazoned before the American public by the retentionists who would fain base their campaign for indefinite control on the ground that the natives are incapable of governing themselves. But on the whole, what does the record show? The Wood-Forbes mission after spending six months in the Islands making the most exhaustive investigation for a report to a Republican President said, “no people under the friendly tutelage of another, have made so great a progress in so short a time”⁠[1]. The Filipino progress in the estimation of the late President Harding “is without parallel anywhere in the world”⁠[2]. Are these testimonials not convincing enough? Must there be absolute perfection? Must there be a Utopia in the Islands?

But there are those who would say that this progress has been due entirely to the “constant support and supervision at every step by Americans.” This is a great assumption. That is what every teacher is apt to think of a pupil’s achievement, but the pupils seldom agree and they generally have a right to think differently. The good schools, the good roads, the good water, the improved sanitary conditions—how were they achieved? At the outset the Americans contributed advice and direction—the Filipinos contributed the money and the labor. Now practically all four elements are contributed by the Filipinos themselves. If more American advice is needed in the future along these lines, this advice can be secured by paying for it as has been done in the past, but it will then be cheaper because there will be none of the heavy expenses attending American administration. This is what Asiatic nations like Siam have done, and they have achieved success and prosperity and have also maintained their honor as well.

It was Mr. Taft who at one time said that to confer independence upon the Filipinos would be “to subject the great mass of their people to the dominance of an oligarchical and probably exploiting minority.” Where have the Filipinos been all these years? For a long time they were under the domination of five oligarchs, the American Commissioners, and with the passing of years that number was reduced to one—the American Governor General under no responsibility to the people over whom he rules. This kind of oligarchy has been a stubborn fact—the Filipino “oligarchical minority” is a pure fancy.

That there will be leaders among the Filipinos is undoubtedly true, just as there are leaders and “bosses” in the political circles of the United States, and these leaders, like all leaders, will be a minority of the people, but they will at least be men of the same blood, the same aspirations, and the same traditions as their followers. These leaders will at least understand their constituents and have respect for them and sympathize with them, which is a very different thing from the government of millions of people by a few foreigners who look down upon the governed as members of an inferior race, and upon that assumption rest their right to govern. Well did Mr. Curry of New Mexico, who served eight years in the Philippines as governor of three provinces, finally say:

The government which the Filipinos will establish may not be approved by the ordinary American citizen, but it will suit the Filipinos themselves.

And that is the final test. The best government for any people is the government which they like.

Let us examine even more closely, however, the prophecy that if given entire independence the Filipinos would “fall a prey to the strongest of the sectional aggregations.” What does that statement mean? It means only that the strongest party will carry the elections, and the defeated party like all defeated parties here and elsewhere will bewail the fact that the country has become a “prey” to the officers in power. These prophecies are the familiar weapons of political contests. They do not frighten the Filipinos and they should not frighten Americans.

There is also the prophecy among retentionists that the Filipinos, if independent, will give up all that is good and take to mutual slaughter as the best way to settle their domestic difficulties. This argument is absurd. Filipinos have learned that good water is healthy and that good roads are useful, and they have no more desire to die of disease or to be killed in battle than peaceful Americans have. The instinct of self-preservation is as strong among them as it is among the Anglo-Saxons.

The Philippine schools which received such great impetus under early American guidance, why did they become so pronouncedly successful? Why are there more than a million children attending schools today? It is because the Filipinos have sent their children there to be taught. What made them do this? No law has compelled it. The children went and studied because they wanted to learn—Americans did not implant the desire in their breasts. It was already there in 1900 and it will remain there when America has gone.

How is the rest of the world today faring in this matter of self-government? Are there not nations all over the world governing themselves, not as the United States would have them, but as they themselves prefer? Nor are the eyes of the American people free from beams. We have only to read the morning paper to see things proposed and too often carried out by American governors, legislators, and statesmen, municipal, state and national, that more intelligent Americans deplore. And yet the remedy for these evils is not to invite some more successful nation to come and govern the United States, but to let the parties in error correct the abuses themselves. Well did President Eliot say:

“Political freedom means freedom to be feeble, foolish and sinful in public affairs as well as freedom to be strong, wise and good.”

And this is true of all freedom—individual or political. If the Filipinos should quarrel, therefore, which they have not yet done where the national independence of their country has been concerned, let the nation now free, whose way to freedom has not been made through dissension and folly, through bloodshed and civil war, cast the first stone.

But does bloodshed and civil war necessarily threaten the future of a Philippine republic? Too often it has been said that anarchy would inevitably ensue if the United States left the Islands. Let us look at this closely. When the American troops reached the Islands in 1898, there was no anarchy and the Filipinos were governing themselves. But more blood was shed in the Filipino-American war that ensued than in the three hundred years of Spanish oppression. There is no reason to think that Asiatics are more prone to civil war than Europeans. Turn the pages of history! The War of the Roses, the English Revolution and the wars with Scotland and Ireland occurred while the British nation was in the making. Gettysburg and Antietam, Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor—do not these names mean something to Americans? Are there not gray-haired men even today who remember the days when Americans killed their brother Americans on the field of battle? Remember that, and then bear in mind that Asiatic nations have endured as long as the memory of men extends, undestroyed by civil war. Why then should it be assumed that the Filipinos would develop a passion for slaughtering each other which would exceed the measure allowed to civilized nations?

Nor is this all. The history of the Philippines has shown that its people are natural republicans possessed of the democratic spirit, and the more recent pages of their history are illumined with the most eloquent proofs of their unity. Whenever or wherever the opportunity has been presented to them they have availed themselves of it by an attempt to establish a republic. When the American people first became acquainted with the Filipinos the latter were engaged in a fight for national independence. When success seemed within reach they set up not a Tagalo Republic, or a Republic of Luzon, but a Philippine Republic established by representatives from the Islands. They did not then draw a separate constitution for each province but instead prepared a constitution for the whole group of islands, and when the national hymn was composed by the revolutionists it was addressed not to any portion of the archipelago but to the whole adored fatherland. There is not a region in the whole archipelago which has not been sprinkled with the blood of its inhabitants in their struggle for the liberty of their country. “They could have had any number of men,” said Admiral Dewey in 1898, “it was just a question of arming them. They could have had the whole population.”

A great deal of harm has been done by Americans who misrepresent the true condition of the Philippines, that of calling the Filipinos tribesmen in particular being the most current infamy. The Filipinos know that to this day they are being thus discredited by innuendo if not by direct misrepresentation. They know that the majority of Americans in the Islands look upon them with undue authority and hardly concealed contempt. This attitude is not new to an Anglo-Saxon and where there is political mastery as well, the feeling of superiority is augmented. All this is, of course, offensive to the Filipino and it is an offense which seriously threatens the respect and the admiration which they have for all liberty-loving and democratic Americans.

Assuming, however, for the purposes of argument, that the American administration has governed well, what is there to assure the continuance of good government under their supervision? The whole policy of today which was really begun by Mr. Taft is founded on the assumption that the American people are and will continue to be unselfish toward the Filipino, and that they can be trusted as well to keep men in office anxious to carry out this unselfish and altruistic policy. Is this view compatible with human nature as justified by the experience of the American people at home? Have they forgotten the Tweed Ring and the Teapot Dome, to give only two illustrations?

There will always be in the future, as there has been in the past, a body of Americans anxious to make money and hoping to find it in the Philippines. There will always be governors naturally solicitous for the success of their administration and unwilling to disclose the facts which might lead to criticism or condemnation. They will always tell some of the Americans at home, as Mr. Taft told some thousands of “excellent and prominent gentlemen,” not to intermeddle because they are “very little able to understand” the situation. And then, of course, there will always be the great body of the good-natured but over-busy American people knowing little and caring less about their distant subjects and believing what Americans say about them because the latter are of their own flesh and blood. How many, how many indeed, are the Americans today who, on finding a small headline in some obscure corner of the daily newspaper to the effect that the “Filipinos want independence,” casually dismiss the subject by remarking, “Oh well, they shall have it when they are ready.”

It is in that manner that the good-natured American prides himself on the fair dealing which Filipinos are to receive from people of an alien race. Why do not these Americans pause a moment to consider whether their own house is in such good order, and whether they are willing to trust their own countrymen in matters concerning the life and the destiny of their own country. Do they not see their own officials, judges, mayors, governors and legislators directly opposed to public opinion and severely criticized in the newspapers and on the stump? So little is their trust in their own elected officers that they do not in many jurisdictions permit these men to occupy their positions for even a brief period of time without the additional safeguard of the recall, the initiative and the referendum, or a provision against re-election.

When we find representatives of a defeated political party in America prophesying all sorts of evil because their opponents, men of the same blood, color and ability as themselves, are placed in power by a majority vote,—when Americans will not trust Americans at home, how can the good-natured citizen, with nothing at stake in the Philippines, confidently hope that men can be trusted with absolute power over millions of aliens whom they consider their inferiors, and where there is no public opinion which they may fear, no American press to criticize them, no initiative, no referendum, no recall? Does the graft which disgraces every city in the United States disappear in the Philippines? Men are essentially selfish, and power is always used to benefit him who wields it.

There is another argument, however, which has been constantly urged by retentionists as well as by well-meaning Americans to the effect that an independent Philippines would become a prey to Japanese aggression and commercial exploitation. What are these arguments worth? It is well for these kindly Americans to first consider certain significant facts concerning Filipino-Japanese relations.

In the first place, then, it must be remembered that the Japanese and Filipinos always have maintained the best of relations. Both peoples respect each other, both nations sympathize with one another. Japan has also every desire to gain the abiding confidence of the Filipinos for, as the leader of the Far East, she wants all the other smaller nations to look upon her as their champion and their defender. She can, therefore, ill afford to make any move which may create the enmity of eleven million people.

Nor has Japan shown any desire to make the Philippines a “hitching post” as Secretary Day of McKinley’s cabinet had openly advocated twenty-seven years ago. Although Filipino doors have been open to Japanese immigration in the past, less than seven thousand have availed themselves of it, the tropical climate of the archipelago being extremely distasteful to them.

Assume, however, that Japan does cherish secret intentions against Filipino autonomy, there is this to be considered,—that a Japanese base on Philippine waters would be a direct threat to British supremacy in that corner of the world. Hongkong is thirty-six hours by passenger steamer from Manila, Borneo almost touches the island of Palawan, Singapore is but a step away, and even Australia may well be considered to be on the direct line of trade. Is it conceivable then that Great Britain will permit Japanese occupancy without raising a hand of protest? And it is currently known that English statesmen wield a mighty influence in the foreign affairs of the Japanese Empire.

Japan has, furthermore, made it clear through the utterances of her acknowledged statesmen that if a proposal to neutralize the Philippines were made she would be among the first to affix her seal to such a binding covenant. Now these covenants of neutralization are, of course, not final, and they cannot guarantee for all time the security of the archipelago. But this much is certain,—that promises of that nature become sacred in the eyes of the world and if openly repudiated turn friends into foes. Where the interests of other nations become endangered, who having relied upon such promises, as well they might, have acted upon them, repudiation makes war justifiable. Well did Japan herself herald her participation in the World War in these words:

We of Japan took up arms against Germany because a solemn treaty was not to us “a scrap of paper”.... We are in the war, we insist on being in it, and we shall stay in it because earnestly, as a nation and as individuals, we believe in the righteousness of the cause for which we stand; because we believe that only by a complete victory for that cause can there be made a righteous, honorable and permanent peace, so that this world may be made safe for all men to live in, so that all nations may work out their destinies untramelled by fear⁠[3].

And the Filipinos believe in the Japanese word even if the Congress of the United States apparently does not. Both peoples also realize that they have everything to gain by maintaining an attitude of friendship and coöperation because their economic interests demand it, Japan being essentially a manufacturing nation and the Philippines thriving purely on agriculture. And as peoples of the Far East they have additional reason to stand on good terms, that they may present a direct front to Anglo-Saxon aggressions.

What now of American exploitation in the Philippines? Early in 1924, the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila issued for the third time a little pamphlet which was widely distributed in the United States. It was entitled, the Philippine Problem Presented from a New Angle. After elaborately building an argument to the effect that the Philippines can never be given their independence by Congress because they are as much a part of American domain as California and Louisiana, and hence can only be alienated by a constitutional amendment, these boosters of Philippine trade presented the following tempting considerations to the American public at home.

They said:

1. No unconditional promise of independence has ever been made [to the Filipinos] even in the preamble to the Jones Bill⁠[4].

2. We are here by right, we are here by conquest and we have a title by conquest and a title by purchase⁠[5].

3. We are here as possessors, and we are here as sovereigns; we are here as owners and controllers of absolute sovereignty⁠[6].

4. The Philippines are larger than New England and Pennsylvania combined.... They are United States territory ... [and are] inalienable by Congress⁠[7].

5. The American people own 63,000,000 acres of public domain in this territory⁠[8].

6. Your Philippine territory is the base for your trade with China⁠[9].

7. This portion of the world is the great arena of future commerce⁠[10].

8. Hard fibre! Magic phrase of commerce! The product that beckoned the first Yankee clippers to Manila! In its Philippine territory the United States holds exclusively the premier hard fibre region of the world, sole source of Manila hemp that binds the homeland harvests and outfits homeland ships. The homeland requires two-thirds of all Manila hemp grown in this territory and none of merchantable quality grows elsewhere⁠[11].

9. In this territory homeland farm products find a growing annual market. And so with homeland manufactures⁠[12].

10. Think about this territory; learn about this territory; tell your Congressmen to lay off of this territory as to base attempts to withdraw or curtail your sovereignty!⁠[13]

11. Take a national view of this territory; endorse the organized territory movement. We need such an act⁠[14].

12. “Vizualize!”⁠[15]

And so on ad infinitum,

(Signed) The American Chamber of
Commerce of the Philippine Islands.

These statements need no comment. They are self-incriminating and constitute in the face of all fair opposition the strongest arguments why the Philippines should be free. This movement on the part of the American business men in the Islands was, of course, not new. In the past as in the present, they have been one of the most fruitful sources for the propagation of misinformation regarding Filipino incapacity. Can the statements of Americans in the Philippines be worth a whit, in the face of this evidence?

Let the American public, therefore, be warned for the drive has not abated. Today we find business interests and even public men openly advocating the retention of the Islands, not indefinitely but for all time, in order that the American nation may ride on inflated wheels.

America will never let the Philippines go [said Congressman James Begg to the Filipinos during his visit to the Islands a few months ago]. She cannot.... Much of America’s future prosperity is intertwined with the future of the Far East. The Philippines are America’s outposts in the doorway to the Orient.... America is now on the ground. Our troops are here, our flag is here⁠[16].

Do the American people sanction these views? If they do, then they should say so openly and frankly,—it would be more humane and less cowardly. If they do not, and we believe that the latter is the truth, then it is time that an overwhelming public sentiment should make itself felt against these imperialists and thus destroy the greatest menace which lies in the path of Filipino autonomy, of Filipino freedom, of Filipino life itself.

But there is an even deeper reason why delay may prove fatal. Today, the United States is the greatest nation in the world of men. But that distinction has also been enjoyed by other nations as well, who then felt so secure and so confident in their positions that no one dared prophesy the ruin which the future held in store for them. Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain—where are they today?

When the French historian Guizot asked Lowell how long the American republic would last, he replied, “As long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.” These ideas are indeed the foundation of the American government, and whatever weakens them endangers the life of the Republic.

There are today certain domestic problems which threaten the security of the nation and which Americans must definitely settle among themselves. There is the question of restraining the power of capital and suppressing the excesses of labor; there is the task of hindering the immoderate usurpation of governmental powers by a minority, and there is the nation-wide effort to inculcate in the minds of the masses the necessity of obedience to law. To meet these problems the American people must have a deeply-rooted faith in their institutions and a passionate love of justice.

They cannot, therefore, afford to insist that the American Declaration of Independence was not meant to apply to the Filipinos; they cannot repudiate the words of the men who framed that document when they said, “Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which we contended were the rights of human nature”; they cannot govern millions of men in a foreign land where the constitution does not protect them,—and still hope to preserve in full strength that faith in the equal rights of men which is the soul of the American nation.

Truly did Froude say,

If there be one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free nations cannot govern subject provinces. If they are unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution, the constitution itself will fall to pieces, through mere incompetence for its duties.

This, then, is an appeal to reason,—if a Federal Union cannot live half slave and half free, can it live with millions of men denied a voice in the government which controls them?

How long will the people of the United States assert a right to a foreign country conquered confessedly by “criminal aggression” and held by acts carefully kept from their knowledge through misrepresentation, concealment and what Mr. Lodge called “hypocritical pretences” of altruism? The people of the United States consider themselves sensible, keen and benevolent. Can they read the record presented in these pages and not resent the things which have been done in their name and insist upon a new assertion of the great principles upon which their government rests?