The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 23

He adds:

Conditions here and in Cuba are practically alike. War exists, battles are of almost daily occurrence, etc. [363]

As will hereinafter appear, this is not far from a correct description of the conditions which prevailed successively in various provinces of the Philippines in gradually lessening degree for the six years next ensuing after the report of the Taft Commission of November 30, 1900, wherein they said:

A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States. [364]

We have seen how from the date of the outbreak, February 4, 1899, to the date of his final departure from the islands for the United States on May 5, 1900, General Otis had diligently supplied the eager ear of Mr. McKinley with his "situation well in hand" and "insurrection about to collapse" telegrams, Secretary of War Alger having meantime been forced out of the cabinet--in part, at least--by a public opinion which indignantly believed that the real situation was being withheld. We have seen how, from soon after the arrival of the Taft Commission at Manila on June 3, 1900, until after the November elections of that year, the same eager presidential ear aforesaid was supplied with like material through the presumably innocent but opportunely deluded optimism of the Commission, as manifested in the above sample message; how the actual military situation as described by General MacArthur, the military commander at the time, was one of "desperate resistance by means of a general banding of the people in support of the guerrillas in the field," [365] he having wired the War Department on January 4, 1901, "Troops throughout the archipelago more active than at any time since November, 1899"; [366] and how this had been followed on July 4, 1901, by a civil government, the inauguration of which could by no possibility be construed as affirming to the people of the United States anything other than the existence of a state of peace.

We are to trace in this and subsequent chapters how, a short time after the civil government was inst.i.tuted, the insurrection got its second wind; how a year later came another public declaration of peace, on July 4, 1902; and how this was followed by a long series of public disorders, combated by prosecutions for sedition and brigandage, until toward the end of 1906. The drama is quite an allegory--Uncle Sam wrestling with his guardian angel Consent-of-the-governed. He finally gets both the angel's shoulders on the mat, however, and so the two have lived at loggerheads in the Philippines ever since.

As soon as we had once blundered into the colonial business, the rock-bottom frankness with which we so dearly love to deal with one another, let carping Europe deny it as she will, was superseded by a systematic effort on the part of the statesmen responsible for the blunder to conceal it. It soon became clear to those on the inside that the sovereign American people had "bought a gold brick,"

that is to say, had made a grievous mistake and had done wrong. But as it is not expedient for courtiers to tell the sovereign he has done wrong, because "The king can do no wrong," thereafter all the courtiers,--i. e. persons desiring to control the "sovereign" while seeming to obey him--instead of risking loss of the "royal" favor by boldly telling the people they had done wrong and ought to mend the error of their ways, began to fill their ears and salve their conscience with mediaeval doctrines about salvation of the heathen through governmental missions maintained by the joint agencies of Cross and Sword. For the foregoing and cognate reasons, Senator Lodge's description of Spain's last thirty years in Cuba fits our first six or seven in the Philippines, beginning in 1899 with the original Otis press censorship policy of "not letting anything go that will hurt the Administration," and coming on down to a certificate made in 1907 by the Philippine Commission for consumption in the United States, to the effect that a state of general and complete peace had prevailed throughout the islands for a stated period preceding the certificate, when, as a matter of fact, during the period covered by the certificate, an executive proclamation formally declaring a state of insurrection had issued, and the Supreme Court of the islands had upheld certain drastic executive action as legal because of the state of insurrection recognized by the proclamation.

The Taft civil government of the Philippines set up in 1901 was an attempt to answer the question which, during the crucial period of our country's history following the Spanish War, rang so persistently through the public utterances of both Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison: "Mr. President, how are you going to square the subjugation of the Philippines with the freeing of Cuba?" Mr. McKinley's answer had been, in effect: "Never mind about that, Grover; you and Benjamin are back numbers. I will show you 'the latest thing' in the consent-of-the-governed line, a government not 'essentially popular,'

it is true, nor indeed at all 'popular,' in fact very unpopular, but 'essentially popular in form.' You lads are not experts on the political trapeze." Accordingly, as Senator Lodge said concerning the dreary years of continuous public disorders in Cuba under Spain, which we finally put a stop to in 1898:

We were to go on pretending that the war was not there, etc.

Lack of frankness is usually due to weakness of one sort or another. The weakness of the Spanish colonial system lay in the impotent poverty of the home government and the graft tendencies of the colonial officials. The weakness of the American colonial system has always lain in the fundamental unfitness of republican governmental machinery for boldly advocating and honestly enforcing doctrines which deny frankly and as a matter of course that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. There are so many people in a republic like ours who will always stand by this last proposition as righteous, and as being the chief bulwark of their own liberties, and so many who will always regard denial of that proposition as an insidious practice calculated ultimately to react on their own inst.i.tutions, that no colonial government of conquered subject provinces eager for independence can ever have the sympathy and backing of all our people. Thus it is that to get home support for the policy, the supreme need of the colonial government is constant apology for its own existence, and constant effort to show that the subject people do not really want freedom to pursue happiness in their own way as badly as their orators say they do; that the oratory is mere "hot air"; and that the people really like alien domination better than they seem to.

Always in a mental att.i.tude of self-defence against home criticism, in its official reports there is ever present with the Philippine insular government the tendency and temptation not to volunteer to the American people evidence within its possession calculated to awaken discussion as to the wisdom of its continuance. It thus usurps a legitimate function never intended to be delegated to the Executive, but reserved to the people. It thus makes itself the judge of how much the people at home shall know. The law of self-preservation prompts it not to take the American people into its confidence, at least not that portion of them who are opposed on principle to holding remote colonies impossible to defend in the event of war without a large standing army maintained for the purpose. There is always the apprehension that the value of apparently unfavorable evidence will not be wisely weighed by the people at home, because of unfamiliarity with insular conditions. This is by no means altogether vicious. It is a perfectly natural att.i.tude and a good deal can be said in favor of it. But the real vice of it lies in the fact that your colonial government thus becomes not unlike the president of a certain naval board before which a case involving the commission of an officer of the navy was once tried. They had no competent official stenographer to take down all that transpired. The Navy Department was asked for one, but they referred it to the board. The president of the board knew very well that "the defence" wanted to show bias on his part. He exuded conscious rect.i.tude and plainly resented any suggestion of bias. So a stenographer was refused and the case proceeded, the proceedings being recorded in long hand by a regular permanent employee of the board. Under such circ.u.mstances, there is so much which transpires that is absolutely irrelevant and immaterial, that the proceedings would be interminable if every little thing were recorded. Consequently, much that was material, including casual remarks of the president of the board clearly indicative of bias sufficient to disqualify any judge or juror on earth, failed of entry in the record. However, enough was gotten into the record to satisfy the President of the United States that the president of the board was not only not impartial, but very much prejudiced, and he reversed the action of the board. The case of that board is very much like the case of the Philippine Government. The case of the latter is, as it were, a case involving a question as to how long a guardianship ought to continue, and they simply fail and omit to have recorded in a form where it may be available to the reviewing authority, the American people, much that is material (on the idea of saving the reviewing authority labor and trouble), which they think the record ought not to be c.u.mbered with, or the reviewing authority bothered with. This practice is due to a confident belief that the American people, being so far away, and being necessarily so wholly unacquainted with all the ins and outs of the situation in the Philippines, are not fitted to pa.s.s intelligently on the questions which continually confront the colonial government. This is not a mental att.i.tude of insult to the intelligence of the people of the United States. It is simply a belief that they, the colonial officials, know much better than the American people can ever know, what is wisest, in each case, to be done in the premises. And there is much to be said in favor of this view, so far as details go. The fundamental error of it, however, lies in the a.s.sumption that the American people are forever committed to permanent retention of the Philippines, i. e., permanent so far as any living human being is concerned--an a.s.sumption wholly unauthorized by any declaration of the law-making power of this government, and countenanced only by the oft-expressed hope of President Taft that that will be the policy some day declared, if any definite policy is ever declared. Thus it is that throughout the last twelve years those particular facts and events which (to me) seem most vitally relevant to the fundamental question in the case, viz., whether or not we should continue to persist in the original blunder of inaugurating and maintaining a--to all intents and purposes--permanent over-seas colonial government, have been withheld from the knowledge of the American public. The present policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention is a mere makeshift to avoid a frank avowal of intention to retain the islands for all future time with which anybody living has any practical concern. Until it is subst.i.tuted by a definite declaration by Congress similar to the one we made in the case of Cuba, and the present American Governor-General and his a.s.sociates are subst.i.tuted by men sent out to report back how soon they think the Filipinos may safely be trusted to attend to their own domestic concerns, all crucial facts and situations that might jeopardize the continuance of the present American regime in the Philippines will continue, as heretofore, to remain unmentioned in the official reports of the American authorities now out there. Until that is done, you will never hear the Filipino side of the case from anybody whose opinion you are willing to make the basis of governmental action. These remarks will, obviously from the nature of the case, be quite as true long after President Taft, the reader, and I are dead as they are now.

Mr. Taft would be very glad to have Congress declare frankly that it is the purpose of this Government to hold the Philippines permanently, i. e., permanently so far as the word means continuance of the "uplift"

treatment long after everybody now on the earth is beneath it. But because public opinion in the United States is so much divided as to the wisdom of a policy of frankly avowed intention permanently to retain the islands, he prefers to leave the whole matter open and undetermined, so as to get the support both of those who think a definite programme of permanent retention righteous and those who think such a programme vicious. He wishes to please both sides of a moral issue, on the idea that, as the present policy is in his individual judgment best for all concerned, the end justifies the means. Yet, as the issue is a moral one, which concerns the cause of representative government throughout the world, and a strategic one which concerns the national defence, it should, in my judgment, no longer be dodged, but squarely met. You constantly hear President Taft talking quite out loud here at home, in his public utterances, about the great politico-missionary work we are doing in the Philippines by furnishing them with the most approved up-to-date methods for the pursuit of happiness, the avoidance of graft in government, the elimination of crimes of violence, in short the ideal way to minimize the ills that human governments are heir to, while every day and every dollar spent out there by Americans induced by him to go there, are time and money tensely arrayed against the ultimate independence he purports to favor. Give the Americans out there a square deal. Let them know whether we are going to keep the islands or whether we are not. Honesty is a far better policy than the present policy. The Americans in the islands, Mr. Taft's agents in the Philippines, talk no uncandid and misleading stuff about the Philippines being exclusively for the Filipinos. And they do considerable talking. They need looking after, if the present pious fiction is to be kept up at this end of the line. n.o.body in the Philippines to-day, among the Americans, considers talk about independence as anything other than political buncombe very hampering to their work. Listen to this high official of the insular government, who writes in the North American Review for February, 1912:

The somewhat blatant note with which we at the beginning proclaimed our altruistic purposes in the Philippines has died away into a whisper. To say much about it is to incur a charge of hypocrisy. [367]

The most important problem which confronted Mr. McKinley when he sent Judge Taft to the Philippines was how to so handle the supreme question of public order as to avoid any necessity of having to ask Congress later for more volunteers to replace those whose terms of enlistment would expire June 30, 1901. We have already reviewed the strenuous efforts of General MacArthur during the twelve months immediately following the arrival of the Taft Commission in June, 1900, to get rid of the shadow of this necessity by the date named, the regular army having been reorganized meantime and considerably increased by the Act of February 2, 1901. On March 22, 1901, while the Taft Commission was going around the islands with their Federal party folk, holding out the prospect of office to those who would quit insurging and come in and be good, General MacArthur reported progress to Secretary of War Root by cable as follows: "Hope report cessation of hostilities before June 30." [368] His idea was to get a good military grip on the situation, if possible, by that time, and, as a corollary, of course, that the grip thus obtained should be diligently retained for a long time, not loosened, so that the disturbed conditions incident to many years of war might have a few years, at least, in which to settle. In his annual report dated July 4, 1901, the date of the inauguration of Judge Taft as "Civil Governor,"

he says, in regard to the imperative necessity for continuing the military grip by keeping on hand sufficient forces:

Anything in the immediate future calculated to impede the activity or reduce the efficiency of these instruments will not only be a menace to the present, but put in jeopardy the entire future of American possibilities in the archipelago. [369]

General MacArthur believed in keeping the islands permanently. His views were frankly imperialistic. He had no salve to offer to the conscience of pious thrift at home anxious to believe that the Filipinos were not bitterly opposed to our rule, and very much in favor of what was supposed to be a glittering opening for Trade Expansion. He was thoroughly imbued with the British colonial idea known as The White Man's Burden. On the other hand, Governor Taft firmly believed that kindness would cure the desire of the people for independence. The difference between these two gentlemen was fully ventilated afterward before the Senate Committee of 1902. A statement of General MacArthur's embodying the crux of this difference was read to Governor Taft by Senator Carmack, and the Governor's reply was:

We did not then agree with that statement, and we do not now agree with it. [370]

A little later, in the same connection, he said to the same Senate Committee, with the cheery tolerance of conflicting views which comes only from entire confidence in the soundness of one's own:

I have been called the Mark Tapley of this Philippine business.

There is no doubt about the fact that President Taft is an optimist. But while optimism is a very blessed thing in a sick-room or a financial panic, it is a very poor subst.i.tute for powder and lead in putting down an insurrection, or in weaning people from a desire for independence accentuated by a long war waged for that purpose, especially when your kindness must be accompanied by a.s.surances to the objects of it that on account of a lack of sufficient intelligence they are not fit for the thing they want. It was upon a programme of this sort that Governor Taft entered upon the task of reconciling the Filipinos to American rule more than ten years ago. The impossibility of the task is of course obvious enough from the mere statement of it. The subsequent bitterness between him and the military authorities was quite carefully and very properly kept from the American public because it might get back to the Filipino public. The military folk knew that to go around the country setting up provincial and munic.i.p.al governments, carrying a liberal pay-roll, with diligent contemporaneous circulation of the knowledge that anybody who would quit fighting would stand a good chance to get an office, would seem to many of the Filipinos a confession of weakness and fear, sure to cause trouble later. Many of them--of course it would be inappropriate to mention names--simply did not believe that Mr. Taft was honest in his absurd notion. They simply d.a.m.ned "politics" for meddling with war, and let it go at that. But the real epic pathos of the whole thing was that Mr. Taft was actually sincere. He believed that the majority of the Philippine people were for him and his policies. As late as 1905, he seems to have clung to this idea, according to various accounts by Senators Newlands, Dubois, and others, in magazine articles written after their return from a trip to the Philippines in that year in company with Mr. Taft, then Secretary of War. In fact so impressed were they with the general discontent out there, and yet so considerate of their good friend Mr. Taft's feelings in the matter and his confidence that the Filipinos loved benevolent alien domination, that one of them simply contented himself with the remark:

When we left the islands I do not believe there was a single member of our party who was not sorry we own them, except Secretary Taft himself.

Indeed it is not until 1907 that, we find Mr. Taft's paternal solicitude for his step-daughter, Miss Filipina, finally reconciling itself to the idea that while this generation seems to want Home Rule as irreconcilably as Ireland herself and "wont be happy 'til it gets it," yet inasmuch as Home Rule is not, in his judgment, good for every people, this generation is therefore a wicked and perverse generation, and hence the Filipinos must simply resign themselves to the idea of being happy in some other generation. This att.i.tude was freely stated before the Millers' convention at St. Louis, May 30, 1907, the speech being reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat the next day. Said Mr. Taft on that occasion, after admitting that the Islands had been a tremendous financial drain on us:

If, then, we have not had material recompense, have we had it in the continuing grat.i.tude of the people whom we have aided?

Answering this, in effect, though not in so many words, "Alas, no,"

he adds, with a sigh which is audible between the lines:

He who would measure his altruism by the thankfulness of those whom he aids, will not persist in good works.

Thus we see the Mark Tapley optimism of 1902 become in 1907 a species of solicitude which d.i.c.kens describes in Bleak House as "Telescopic Philanthropy," in the chapter by that t.i.tle in which he introduces the famous Mrs. Jellyby, mother of a large and interesting family, "a lady of very remarkable strength of character, who devotes herself entirely to the public," who "has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at present devoted to the subject of Africa, with a general view to the cultivation of the coffee berry--and the natives,"--to the woeful neglect of her own domestic concerns and her large and expensive family of children. Since 1907, Mr. Taft has frankly abandoned his early delusion about the consent-of-the-governed, and boldly takes the position, up to that time more or less evaded, that the consent of the governed is not at all essential to just government.

The apotheosis of Uncle Sam as Mrs. Jellyby is to be found in one of Mr. Taft's speeches wherein he declared that the present Philippine policy was "a plan for the spread of Christian civilization in the Orient."

Thus has it been that, under the reactionary influence of a colonial policy, this republic has followed its frank abandonment of the idea that all just government must derive its origin in the consent of the governed by a further abandonment of the idea that Church and State should be kept separate. I do not wish to make President Taft ridiculous, and could not if I would. Nor do I seek to belittle him in the eyes of his people,--for we are "his people," for the time being. No one can belittle him. He is too big a man to be belittled by anybody. Besides, he is, in many respects beyond all question, a truly great man. But he is not the only great man in history who has made egregious blunders. And there is no question that we are running there on the confines of Asia, in the Philippines, a superfluous governmental kindergarten whose sessions should be concluded, not suddenly, but without unnecessary delay. The two princ.i.p.al reasons for retaining the Filipinos as subjects, or "wards," or by whatever euphemism any one may prefer to designate the relation, are, first, that a Filipino government would not properly protect life and property, and second, that although they complain much at taxation without representation through tariff and other legislation placed or kept on the statute books of Congress through the influence and for the benefit of special interests in the United States, yet that such taxation without representation is not so grievous as to justify them in feeling as we did in 1776. Whether these reasons for retaining the Filipinos as subjects indefinitely are justified by the facts, must depend upon the facts. If they are not, the question will then arise, "Would a Filipino government be any worse for the Filipinos than the one we are keeping saddled on them over their protest?"

In his letter of instructions of April 7, 1900, to the Taft Commission, Mr. McKinley first quoted the n.o.ble concluding language with which the articles of capitulation of the city of Manila gave an immediate and supremely comforting sense of security to a city of some three hundred thousand people who had then been continuously in terror of their lives for three and one half months, thus:

This city, its inhabitants, * * * and its private property of all description * * * are placed under the special safeguard of the faith and honor of the American army;

and then added:

As high and sacred an obligation rests upon the Government of the United States to give protection for property and life * * *

to all the people of the Philippine Islands. * * * I charge this commission to labor for the full performance of this obligation, which concerns the honor and conscience of their country.

How the premature setting up of the civil government of the Philippines in 1901 under pressure of political expediency, and the consequent withdrawal of the police protection of the army, was followed by a long series of disorders combated by prosecutions for sedition and brigandage, toward the end of which the writer broke down and left the Islands exclaiming inwardly, "I do not know the method of drawing an indictment against a whole people," will now be traced, not so much to show that the Philippine insular government has failed properly and competently to meet the most sacred obligations that can rest upon any government, but to show the inherent unfitness of a government based on the consent of the governed to run any other kind of a government.

There were five officers of the Philippine volunteer army of 1899-1901 appointed to the bench by Governor Taft in 1901. Their names and the method of their transition from the military to the civil regime are indicated by the following communication, a copy of which was furnished to each, as indicated in the endors.e.m.e.nt which follows the signature of Judge Taft: