The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 20

and by June, 1900, when Judge Taft arrived, they had gotten still warmer [307]; and in General Otis's successor they had a commander who understood his men thoroughly, and was determined to carry out honestly, with firmness, and without playing, as his predecessor had done, the role of political henchman, the purpose for which the army he commanded had been sent to the Islands to accomplish. In this state of the case, the Taft Commission came out.

This would seem rather an odd point at which to terminate a chapter on "MacArthur and the War," seeing that General MacArthur continued to command the American forces in the Philippines and to direct their strenuous field operations until July, 1901, more than a year later, when he was relieved by General Chaffee, on whom thereafter devolved the subsequent conduct of the war. But we must follow the inexorable thread of chronological order, and so yield the centre of the stage from June, 1900, on, to Mr. Taft, else the resultant net confusion of ideas about the American occupation of the Philippines might remain as great as that which this narrative is an attempt in some degree to correct.

All through the official correspondence of 1899 and 1900 between the Adjutant-General of the Army, General Corbin, and General Otis at Manila, one sees Mr. McKinley's sensitiveness to public opinion. "In view of the impatience of the people" you will do thus and so, is a typical sample of this feature of that correspondence. [308]

Troubled, possibly, with misgivings, as to whether, after all, in view of the vigorous and undeniably obstinate struggle for independence the Filipinos were putting up, it would not have been wiser to have done with them as we had done in the case of Cuba, and troubled, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, about the effect of the possible Philippine situation on the fortunes of his party and himself in the approaching campaign for the presidency, Mr. McKinley sent Mr. Taft out, in the spring preceding the election of 1900, to help General MacArthur run the war. We must now, therefore, turn our attention to Mr. Taft, not forgetting General MacArthur in so doing.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TAFT COMMISSION

The papers 'id it 'andsome, But you bet the army knows.

Kipling, Ballad of the Boer War.

The essentials of the situation which confronted the Taft Commission on its arrival in the islands in June, 1900, and the mental att.i.tude in which they approached that situation, may now be briefly summarized, with entire confidence that such summary will commend itself as fairly accurate to the impartial judgment both of the historian of the future and of any candid contemporary mind.

It is not necessary to "vex the dull ear" of a mighty people much engrossed with their own affairs, by repet.i.tion of any further details concerning the original de facto alliance between Admiral Dewey and Aguinaldo. Suffice it to remind a people whose saving grace is a love of fair play, that, after the battle of Manila Bay, when Admiral Dewey brought Aguinaldo down from Hong Kong to Cavite, both the Admiral and his Filipino allies were keenly cognizant of the national purpose set forth in the declaration of war against Spain, and that the Filipinos could not have been expected to make any substantial distinction between the casual remarks of a victorious admiral on the quarter-deck of his flagship in May, remarks concurrent and consistent with actual treatment of the Filipinos as allies, and the imperious commands of a general ash.o.r.e in December thereafter, acting under specific orders pursuant to the Treaty of Paris. The one great fact of the situation, "as huge as high Olympus," they did grasp, viz., that both were representatives of America on the ground at the time of their respective utterances, and that one in December in effect repudiated without a word of explanation what the other had done from May to August. They had helped us to take the city of Manila in August, and, to use the current phrase of the pa.s.sing hour, coined in this period of awakening of the national conscience to a proper att.i.tude toward double-dealing in general, they felt that they had been "given the double cross." In other words they believed that the American Government had been guilty of a duplicity rankly Machiavellian. And that was the cause of the war.

We have seen in the chapters on "The Benevolent a.s.similation Proclamation" and "The Iloilo Fiasco" that, in the Philippines at any rate, no matter how mellifluously pacific it may have sounded at home--no matter how soothing to the troubled doubts of the national conscience--the Benevolent a.s.similation Proclamation of December 21, 1898, was recognized both by the Eighth Army Corps and by Aguinaldo's people as a call to arms--a signal to the former to get ready for the work of "civilizing with a Krag"; a signal to the latter to gird up their loins for the fight to the death for government of their people, by their people, for their people; and that the yearning benevolence of said proclamation was calculated strikingly to remind the Filipinos of Spain's previous traditional yearnings for the welfare of Cuba, indignantly cut short by us--yearnings "to spare the great island from the danger of premature independence" [309] which that decadent monarchy could not even help repeating in the swan-song wherein she sued to President McKinley for peace. We did not realize the absoluteness of the a.n.a.logy then. It is all clear enough now. We can now understand how and why Mr. McKinley's programme of Annexation and Benevolent a.s.similation of 1898-9, blindly earnest as was his belief that it would make the Filipino people at once cheerfully forego the "legitimate aspirations" to which we ourselves had originally given a momentum so generous that nothing but bullets could then possibly have stopped it, was in fact received by them in a manner compared with which Canada's response in 1911 to Speaker Champ Clark's equally benevolent suggestion of United States willingness to accord to Canada also, gradual Benevolent a.s.similation and Ultimate Annexation, was one great sisterly sob of sheer joy as at the finding of a long lost brother. From the arrival of the American troops on June 30, 1898, until the outbreak of February 4, 1899, there had been two armies camped not far from each other, one born of the idea of independence and bent upon it, the other at first groping in the dark without instructions, and finally instructed to deny independence. There was never any faltering or evasion on the part of Aguinaldo and his people. They knew what they wanted and said so on all occasions. At all times and in all places they made it clear, by proclamation, by letter, by conversation, and otherwise, that independence was the one thing to which, whether they were fit for it or not, they had pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor."

We have seen how easily the war itself could have been averted by the Bacon Resolution of January, 1899, or some similar resolution frankly declaring the purpose of our government; how here was Senator Bacon at this end of the line pleading with his colleagues to be frank, and to make a declaration in keeping with "the high purpose" for which we had gone to war with Spain, instead of holding on to the Philippines on the idea that they might prove a second Klondike, while justifying such retention by arbitrarily a.s.suming, without any knowledge whatever on the subject, that the Filipinos were incapable of self-government; how, there, at the other end of the line, at Manila, Aguinaldo's Commissioners, familiar with our Const.i.tution and the history and traditions of our government, were making, substantially, though in more diplomatic language, precisely the same plea, and imploring General Otis's Commissioners to give them some a.s.surance which would quiet the apprehensions of their people, and calm the fear that the original a.s.surance, "We are going to lick the Spaniards and set you free," was now about to be ignored because the islands might be profitable to the United States.

We have seen the war itself, as far as it had progressed by June, 1900, one of the bitterest wars in history, punctuated by frequent barbarities avenged in kind, and how, if the Taft Commission had not come out with McKinley spectacles on, they would have seen the picture of a bleeding, prostrate, and deeply hostile people, still bent on fighting to the last ditch, not only animated by a feeling against annexation by us similar to that the Canadians would have to-day if we should also try the Benevolent a.s.similation game on them--first with proclamations breathing benevolence and then with cannon belching grape-shot--but further animated by the instinctive as well as inherited knowledge common to all colored peoples, whether red, yellow brown, or black, that wheresoever white men and colored live in the same country together, there the white man will rule. Understand, this was before Judge Taft had had a chance to a.s.sure them, with the kindly Taft smile and the hearty Taft hand-shake, that their benevolent new masters were going to reverse the verdict of the ages, and treat them with a fraternal love wholly free from race prejudice. If Judge Taft could only have arrived in January, 1899, and told them that the Bacon Resolution really represented the spirit of the att.i.tude of the American people toward them, then the finely commanding bearing of Mr. Taft, and the n.o.ble genuineness of his desire to see peace on earth and goodwill toward men, might even have prevented the war. But this is merely what might have been. What actually was, when he did arrive, in June, 1900, was that the milk of human kindness had long since been spilled, and his task was to gather it up and put it back in the pail. When I, a Southern man who have taken part in the only two wars this nation has had in my lifetime, reflect that in this year of grace, 1912, Mr. Underwood's otherwise matchless availability as the candidate of his party for President is questioned on the idea that it might be a tactical blunder, because of "the late war," which broke out before either Mr. Underwood or myself were born, I cannot share the Taft optimism as to the rapidity with which the scars of "the late war" in the Philippines will heal, and as to the affectionate grat.i.tude toward the United States with which the McKinley-Taft programme of Benevolent a.s.similation will presently be regarded by the people of the Philippine Islands.

We have seen the futile efforts of the Schurman Commission of 1899, sent out that spring, in deference to American public opinion, with definite instructions to try and patch up a peace, by talking to the leading spirits of a war for independence, now in full swing, about the desirability of benevolent leading-strings. "They [meaning the Schurman Commission] had come," says Mr. McKinley, in his annual message to Congress of December 5, 1899, [310] "with the hope of co-operating with Admiral Dewey and General Otis in establishing peace and order." They came, they saw, they went, recognizing the futility of the errand on which they had been sent. And now came the Taft Commission a year later, on precisely the same errand, after the Filipinos had sunk all their original petty differences and jealousies in a very reasonable instinctive common fear of economic exploitation, and a very unreasonable but, to them, very real common fear of race elimination, amounting to terror, and been welded into absolute oneness--if that were somewhat lacking before--in the fierce crucible of sixteen months of b.l.o.o.d.y fighting against a foreign foe for the independence of their common country. President McKinley's message to Congress of December, 1899, is full of the old insufferable drivel, so grossly, though unwittingly, ungenerous to our army then in the field in the Philippines, about the triviality of the resistance we were "up against." The message in one place blandly speaks of "the peaceable and loyal majority who ask nothing better than to accept our authority," in another of "the sinister ambitions of a few selfish Filipinos." Thus was outlined, in the message announcing the purpose to send out the Taft Commission, the view that no real fundamental resistance existed in the islands. Basing contemplated action on this sort of stuff, the presidential message outlines the presidential purpose as follows--this in December, 1899, mind you:

There is no reason why steps should not be taken from time to time to inaugurate governments essentially popular in their form as fast as territory is held and controlled by our troops.

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

To this end I am considering the advisability of the return [to the islands] of the commission [the Schurman Commission]

or such of the members thereof as can be secured.

In Cuba, General Wood began the work of reconstruction at Havana with a central government and the best men he could get hold of, and acted through them, letting his plans and purposes percolate downward to the ma.s.ses of the people. Not so in the Philippines. Reconstruction there was to begin by establishing munic.i.p.al governments, to be later followed by provincial governments, and finally by a central one; in other words, by placing the waters of self-government at the bottom of the social fabric among the most ignorant people, and letting them percolate up, according to some mysterious law of gravitation apparently deemed applicable to political physics. Of course, these poor people simply always took their cue from their leaders, knowing nothing themselves that could affect the success of this project except that we were their enemies and that they might get knocked in the head if they did not play the game. "I have believed,"

says Mr. McKinley, in his message to Congress of December, 1899, "that reconstruction should not begin by the establishment of one central civil government for all the islands, with its seat at Manila, but rather that the work should be commenced by building up from the bottom." Whereat, the young giant America bowed, in puzzled hope, and worldly-wise old Europe smiled, in silent but amused contempt.

If at the time he formulated this scheme for their government Mr. McKinley had known anything about the Philippines, or the Filipinos, he would have known that what he so suavely called "building from the bottom" was like trying to make water run up hill, i.e., like starting out to have ideas percolate upward, so that through "the ma.s.ses" the more intelligent people might be redeemed. The "n.i.g.g.e.r in the woodpile" lay in the words "essentially popular in form." Of course no government by us "essentially popular" was possible at the time. But a government "popular in form" would sound well to the American people, and, if they could be kept quiet until after the presidential election of 1900, maybe the supposed misunderstanding on the part of the Filipinos of the benevolence of our intentions might be corrected by kindness. Accordingly, the following spring, cotemporaneously with General Otis's final departure from Manila to the United States, in which free country he might say the war was over as much as he pleased without being molested with round-robins by Bob Collins, O. K. Davis, John McCutcheon, and the rest of those banes of his insular career, who so pestiferously insisted that the American public ought to know the facts, the Taft Commission was sent out, to "aid" General MacArthur, as the Schurman Commission had "aided"

General Otis. [311]

It would seem fairly beyond any reasonable doubt that the official information the Taft Commission were given by President McKinley concerning the state of public order they would find in the islands on arrival was in keeping with the information solemnly imparted to Congress by him in December thereafter, which was as follows: "By the spring of this year (1900) the effective opposition of the dissatisfied Tagals"--always the same minimization of the task of the army as a sop to the American conscience--"was virtually ended." Then follows a glowing picture of how the Filipinos are going to love us after we rescue them from the hated Tagal, but with this circ.u.mspect reservation: "He would be rash who, with the teachings of contemporary history, would fix a limit" as to how long it will take to produce such a state of affairs. Looking at that mighty panorama of events from the dispa.s.sionate standpoint now possible, it seems to me that Mr. McKinley's whole Philippine policy of 1899-1900 was animated by the belief that the more the Philippine situation should resemble the really identical Cuban one in the estimation of the American people, the more likely his Philippine policy was to be repudiated at the polls in the fall of 1900. The Taft Commission left Washington for Manila in the spring of 1900, after their final conference with the President who had appointed them and was a candidate for re-election in the coming fall, as completely committed as circ.u.mstances can commit any man or set of men to the programme of occupation which was to follow the subjugation of the inhabitants, and to the proposition of present incapacity for self-government, its corner-stone; to say nothing of the embarra.s.sment felt at Washington by reason of having stumbled into a b.l.o.o.d.y war with people whom we honestly wanted to help, had never seen, and had nothing but the kindliest feelings for. While the serene and capacious intellect of William H. Taft was still pursuing the even tenor of its way in the halls of justice (as United States Circuit Judge for the 8th Circuit), the Philippine programme was formulated at Washington. Judge Taft went to Manila to make the best of a situation which he had not created, to write the lines of the Deus ex machina for a Tragedy of Errors up to that point composed wholly by others. It has been frequently stated and generally believed that when Mr. McKinley sent for him and proposed the Philippine mission, Judge Taft replied, substantially: "Mr. President, I am not the man for the place. I don't want the Philippines." To which Mr. McKinley is supposed to have replied: "You are the man for the place, Judge. I had rather have a man out there who doesn't want them." The point of the original story lay in what Mr. McKinley said. The point of the repet.i.tion of it here lies in what Mr. Taft said, the inference therefrom being that he did not think the true interests of his country "wanted" them, and that had he been called into President McKinley's council sooner he would have so advised; an inference warranted by his subsequent admission that "we blundered into colonization." [312]

It is utterly fatal to clear thinking on this great subject, which concerns the liberties of a whole people, to treat Judge Taft's reports as Commissioner to, and later Governor of, the Philippines as in the nature of a judicial decision on the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government. When he consented to go out there, he went, not to review the findings of the Paris Peace Commission, but at the urgent solicitation of an Administration whose fortunes were irrevocably committed to those findings, including the express finding that they were unfit for self-government, and the implied one that we must remain to improve the condition of the inhabitants. He was thus not a judge come out to decide on the fitness of the people for self-government, but an advocate to make the best possible case for their unfitness, and its corollary, the necessity to remain indefinitely, just as England has remained in Egypt. The war itself convinced the whole army of the United States that Aguinaldo would have been the "Boss of the Show"

had Dewey sailed away from Manila after sinking the Spanish fleet. The war satisfied us all that Aguinaldo would have been a small edition of Porfirio Diaz, and that the Filipino republic-that-might-have-been would have been, very decidedly, "a going concern," although Aguinaldo probably would have been able to say with a degree of accuracy, as Diaz might have said in Mexico for so many years, "The Republic? I am the Republic." The war demonstrated to the army, to a Q. E. D., that the Filipinos are "capable of self-government," unless the kind which happens to suit the genius of the American people is the only kind of government on earth that is respectable, and the one panacea for all the ills of government among men without regard to their temperament or historical antecedents. The educated patriotic Filipinos can control the ma.s.ses of the people in their several districts as completely as a captain ever controlled a company. [313] While the munic.i.p.al officials of the McKinley-Taft munic.i.p.al kindergarten were stumbling along with the strange new town government system imported from America, and atoning to their benignant masters for mistakes by writing them letters about how benignant they--the teachers--were, they--the pupils,--according to the contemporaneous description by the commanding general of the United States forces in the islands, were running a superbly efficient munic.i.p.al system throughout the whole archipelago, "simultaneously and in the same sphere as the American governments, and in many instances through the same personnel,"

[314] in aid of the insurrection. General MacArthur humorously adds that the town officials "acted openly in behalf of the Americans and secretly in behalf of the insurgents, and, with considerable apparent solicitude for the interest of both." In short, the war at once demonstrated their "capacity for self-government" and made granting it to them for the time being unthinkable. For the war was fought not on the issue of the capacity, but on the issue of the granting. The Treaty of Paris settled the "capacity" part. The army in 1898, 1899, and 1900 can hardly be said to have had any much more decided opinion on the capacity branch of the subject, than Perry did about the j.a.panese in 1854. The Paris Peace Commission having solemnly decided the "capacity part" adversely to the Filipinos and the war having followed, thereafter Mr. Taft went out to make out the best case possible in support of the action of the Peace Commission and, ex vi termini, in support of everything made necessary by the fact of the purchase. Unless some one goes out to present to the American people the other side of the case, they will never arrive at a just verdict.

Committed, a priori, to the task of squaring the McKinley Administration with its course as to Cuba, the only course possible for the Taft Commission was to set up a benevolent government based upon the incompetency of the governed, which, being a standing affront to the intelligence of the people, earns their hatred, however it may crave their love. By the very bitterness of the opposition it permits yet disregards, it binds itself ever more irrevocably to remain a benevolent engenderer of malevolence. Government and governed thus get wider apart as the years go by, and, the raison d'etre of the former being the mental deficiencies of the latter, it must, in self-defence, a.s.sert those deficiencies the more offensively, the more vehemently they are denied. What hope therefore can there be that the light that shone upon Saul on the road to Damascus will ever break upon the President? What hope that he will ever re-attune his ears to the voice of the Declaration of Independence, calling down from where the Signers (we hope without untoward exception) have gone, crying: "William, William, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the right of a people to pursue happiness in their own way"? The difference between the President and the writer is that both went out to scoff and the latter remained--much longer--to pray.

The Taft Commission arrived at Manila on June 3, 1900, loaded to the guards with kindly belief in the stale falsehood wherewith General Otis, ably a.s.sisted by his press censor, had been systematically soothing Mr. McKinley's and the general American conscience during the whole twenty months he had commanded the Eighth Army Corps, [315]

viz., that the insurrection was due solely to "the sinister ambitions of a few selfish leaders," and did not represent the wishes of the whole people. It is true that the insurrection originally started under Admiral Dewey's auspices and under the initial protection of his puissant guns was headed by a group of men most of whom, including Aguinaldo, were Tagalos. But all Filipinos look alike, the whole seven or eight millions of them. They differ from one another not one whit more than one j.a.panese differs from another. And they all feel alike on most things, [316] because they all have the same customs, tastes, and habits of thought. Said Governor Taft to the Senate Committee in 1902:

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

so-called,--I do not know the number, possibly eight or ten, or twelve,--that speak different languages, there is a h.o.m.ogeneity in the people in appearance, in habits, and in many avenues of thought. To begin with, they are Catholics." [317]

Certainly this should forever crucify the stale slander, still ignorantly repeated in the United States at intervals, which seeks to make the American people think the great body of the Filipino people are still in a tribal state, ethnologically. [318] A Tagalo leader is about as much a "tribal" leader as is a Tammany "brave"

of Irish antecedents. In fact there is much in common between the two. Both are clannish. Both have a genius for organization that is simply superb. Both are irrepressible about Home Rule. Countless generations ago the Filipinos were lifted by the Spanish priests out of the tribal state, and the educated people all speak Spanish. But the original tribal dialects, which the Spanish priests patiently mastered and finally reduced for them to a written language, still survive in the several localities of their origin. So that every Filipino of a well-to-do family is brought up speaking two languages, Spanish, and the local dialect of his native place, which is the only language known to the poorer natives of the same neighborhood. Surely even the valor of ignorance can see that we are presumptuously seeking to reverse the order of G.o.d and nature in a.s.suming that an alien race can lead a people out of the wilderness better than could a government by the leading men of their own race to whom the less favored look with an ardent pride that would be a guarantee of loyal and inspiring co-operation. You can beat a balking horse to death but you cannot make him wag his tail, or otherwise indicate contentment or a disposition to cordial co-operation which will make for progress. Mr. Bryan has visited the Philippines, and his evidence is simply c.u.mulative of mine, as mine, based on six years'

acquaintance with the Filipinos, is simply c.u.mulative of Admiral Dewey's testimony of 1898, so often cited hereinbefore, and of the opinion of Hon. George Curry, a Republican member of Congress from New Mexico who served eight years in the Philippines, and believes they can safely be given their independence by 1921. Mr. Bryan says:

So far as their own internal affairs are concerned, they do not need to be subject to any alien government.

He further says:

There is a wide difference, it is true, between the general intelligence of the educated Filipino and the laborer on the street and in the field, but this is not a barrier to self-government. Intelligence controls in every government, except where it is suppressed by military force. Nine tenths of the j.a.panese have no part in the law-making. In Mexico, the gap between the educated cla.s.ses and the peons is fully as great as, if not greater than, the gap between the extremes of Filipino society. Those who question the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government forget that patriotism raises up persons fitted for the work that needs to be done." [319]

It is because I believe that in the Philippines we are doing ourselves an injustice and keeping back the progress of the world by depreciating and scoffing at the value of patriotism as a factor in self-government and in the maintenance of free inst.i.tutions, that I have written this book. There is no more patriotic people in the world than the Filipino people. I base this opinion upon an intimate knowledge of them, and in the light of considerable observation throughout most of Europe, and in Asia from the Golden Horn to the mouth of the Yang-tse. Woe to the nonsense, sometimes ignorant, sometimes vicious, wherewith we are regaled from time to time by Americans who go to Manila, smoke a cigar or two in some American club there, and then come back home and depreciate the Filipino people without at least correcting Col. Roosevelt's wholly uninformed and cruel random a.s.sertions of 1900 about the Filipinos being a "jumble of savage tribes," and about Aguinaldo being "the Osceola of the Filipinos," or their "Sitting Bull!" It is wonderfully inspiring to turn from such stale slander to Mr. Bryan's above statement of the case for our Oriental subjects, a statement framed in his own infinitely sympathetic and inimitable way, which says for me just what I had long wanted to express, but could not, so well. And in the midst of the recurring slander that the Filipino people are "a heterogeneous lot," it is refreshing to find in a preface to the American Census of the Philippines of 1903, by the Director thereof, a pa.s.sage where, in comparing the tables of that census with those of the Twelfth Census of the United States, he says:

"Those of the Philippine Census are somewhat simpler, the differences being due mainly to the more h.o.m.ogeneous character of the population of the Philippine Islands." [320]

When we consider the above in the light of the past and present operation of our own immigration laws, it is not flattering, but it may and should tend to awaken some realization of the manifold nature and blinding effects of current misapprehensions in the United States concerning the inhabitants of the Philippines. One Filipino does not differ from another any more than one American does from another American--in fact they differ less, considering immigration. The Filipino people are not rendered a heterogeneous lot by having three different languages, Ilocano, Tagalo, and Visayan, [321] which are respectively the languages spoken in the northern, the central, and the southern part of their country, any more than the people of Switzerland are rendered heterogeneous by the circ.u.mstance that in northern Switzerland you find German spoken for the most part, while farther south you find French, and near the southernmost extremities some Italian. At this late date no credible person acquainted with the facts will be so poor in spirit as to deny that the motives of the men who originally started the insurrection were patriotic. Nor will any one who served under General Otis's command in the Philippines deny that that eminent desk soldier continued to cling to his early theory that it was a purely Tagalo insurrection long after the deadly unanimity of the opposition had seeped, with all-pervading thoroughness, into the general mind of the army of occupation. The white flag or rag of truce, alias treachery, used to be hoisted to put us off our guard in pretence of welcome to our columns approaching their towns and barrios. Such use of such a flag, followed by treachery, the ultimate weapon of the weak, had been in turn followed, with relentless impartiality in countless instances, by due unloosening of the vials of American wrath, until every nipa shack [322] in the Philippine Islands that remained unburned had had its lesson, written in the blood of its occupants or their kin, to the tune of the Krag-Jorgensen or the Gatling. Yet General Otis's reports are always bland, and always convey the idea of an insurrection exclusively Tagalo.

In the summer of 1900, the newly arrived civilians, the Taft Commission, had no special interest in the soldiers who, for better, for worse, were "doing their country's work," as Kipling calls his own country's countless wars against its refractory subjects in the far East; and no especial sympathy with that work. Two years later we find President Roosevelt, in connection with the general amnesty of July 4, 1902, congratulating his "bowld lads," as Mr. Dooley would call them--meaning General Chaffee and the Eighth Army Corps--on a total of "two thousand combats, great and small" up to that time, but you never find in any of Governor Taft's Philippine state papers any more affirmative recognition of continued resistance to American rule than some mild allusion to "small but hard knocks"

being administered here and there by the army. From the beginning there was a systematic belittling, on the part of the Taft Commission, of the work of the army, incidentally to belittling the reality and unanimity of the opposition which was daily calling it forth. [323]

This was not vicious. It was essentially benevolent. It was part of the initial fermentation of their preconceived theory. But the trouble about their theory was that it was only a theory. It would not square with the facts. They were trying to square the subjugation of the Philippines with the freeing of Cuba, a task quite as soluble as the squaring of a circle. They hoped, with all the kindly benevolence of Mr. McKinley himself, that the opposition to our rule was not as great as some people seemed to think. They had come out to the islands earnestly wishing to find conditions not as bad as they had been a.s.serted to be. And the wish became father to the thought and the thought soon found expression in words--cablegrams to the United States presenting an optimistic view as to the prospects of necessity for further shedding of blood in the interest of Benevolent a.s.similation, alias Trade Expansion. Some flippant person will say, "That is a polite way of charging insincerity." This book is not addressed to flippant persons. It is a serious attempt to deal with a problem involving the liberties of a whole people, and will be, as far as the writer can make it, straightforward, dignified, and candid. Judge Taft's fearful mistake of 1900-1901 in the matter of his premature planting of the civil government--a mistake because based on the idea that "the great majority of the people" welcomed American rule, and a fearful mistake because fraught with so much subsequent sacrifice of life due to too early withdrawal of the police protection of the army--was not the first instance in American history where an ordinarily level-headed public man has, with egregious folly, mistaken the mood and temper of a whole people. The key to his mistake lay in the fact that, coming into a strange country in the midst of a war, he ignored the advice of the commanding general of the army of his country concerning the military situation, and took the advice of a few native Tories, or Copperheads, of wealth, who had never really been in sympathy with the insurrection and who, flocking about him as soon as he arrived, told him what he so longed to be told, viz., that the war did not represent the wishes of the people but was kept up by "a conspiracy of a.s.sa.s.sination" of all who did not contribute to it either in service or money. He thereupon decided that the men who told him this really represented the voice of the people, and that the men in the field who had then been keeping up the struggle for independence for sixteen months, in season and out of season, were simply "a Mafia on a very large scale." Consequently the Taft Commission had been in the islands less than three months when Secretary of War Root at Washington was giving the widest possible publicity to cablegrams from them, such as that dated August 21, 1900, mentioned in the preceding chapter, conveying the glad tidings that "large number of people long for peace and are willing to accept government under United States" [324]; and by November next thereafter, the "large number" had grown to "a great majority," and the "willing"

to "entirely willing." The November statement was:

A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States. [325]

Yet, as we saw in the preceding chapter, the real situation in the Philippines at this very time was described four years later at the Republican National Convention of 1904 by Mr. Root thus: