The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 24

UNITED STATES PHILIPPINE COMMISSION

President's Office, Manila, June 17, 1901.

Major-General Arthur MacArthur, U. S. A.,

Military Governor of the Philippine Islands, Manila.

Sir:

I am directed by the commission to inform you that it has made the following appointments under the recent Judicial Act pa.s.sed June 11, 1901:

You will observe that among our appointees are five army officers: Brigadier General James F. Smith, Lieutenant James H. Blount, Jr., 29th Infantry, Captain Adam C. Carson, 28th Infantry; Captain Warren H. Ickis, 36th Infantry; and Lieutenant George P. Whitsett, 32d Infantry.

It is suggested that it would be well for these officers to resign their positions in the United States military service to the end that they may accept the civil positions, take the oath of office, and immediately begin their new duties.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

(Signed) Wm. H. Taft, President.

Official extract copy respectfully furnished Lieutenant James H. Blount, Jr., 29th Infantry, U. S. Vols., Manila, P. I. Your resignation, if offered in compliance with above letter, will be accepted upon the date preferred.

By command of Major-General MacArthur:

(Signed) E. H. Crowder Lieutenant-Colonel and Judge Advocate, U. S. A. Secretary.

Military Secretary's Office, June 18, 1901.

General Smith had come out as colonel of the 1st Californias, and had won his stars on the field of battle, as has already been described in an earlier chapter. He went from the army to the Supreme Bench--at Manila. The archipelago had been divided by the Taft Commission into fifteen judicial districts, containing three or four provinces each,--each district court to be a nisi prius or trial court. Judge Carson (Va.) went to the Hemp Peninsula District in the extreme south of Luzon, already described, and four years later to the Supreme Bench, where he still is. Judge Ickis (Ia.) went to Mindanao, and later died of the cholera down there. Judge Whitsett (Mo.) went to Jolo (the little group of islets near British North Borneo), but his wife died soon afterward, and he resigned and came home. The writer (Ga.) went to northern Luzon, to the First District hereinafter noticed.

Just here it may be remarked that the reader will need no long complicated description of the details of the organization of the new government, interspersed with unp.r.o.nounceable names, if he will simply a.s.sume the view-point Governor Taft had in the beginning. Governor Taft simply a.n.a.logized his situation to that of a governor of a State or Territory at home. His fifty provinces were to him fifty counties, twenty-five of them in the main island of Luzon, which, as heretofore stated, is about the size of Ohio or Cuba (forty odd thousand square miles), and contains half the population and over one-third the total land area of the archipelago. However, each of his provincial governors was liberally paid, and the authority of a governor of a province was, on a small scale, more like that of one of our own state chief executives than like the authority and functions of the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners of a county with us. For instance, the governorship of Cebu, with its 2000 square miles of territory and 650,000 inhabitants, was quite as big a job as the governorship of New Mexico, or some other one of our newer States.

So that the task on which Governor Taft entered July 4, 1901, was the governing of a potential ultimate federal union in miniature, containing nearly eight millions of people. One slight mistake I think he made was in providing that the governors of the provinces should be ex-officio sheriffs of the Courts of First Instance (of the fifteen several judicial districts aforesaid). This was to enable the Judges of First Instance to keep a weather eye on the provincial governors, the judiciary at first being largely American, and it being the programme to have native governors, some of them recently surrendered insurgent generals, as rapidly as practicable and advisable. The scheme was good business, but not tactful. It subtracted some wind from the gubernatorial sails to be a sheriff, a provincial governor under the Spanish regime having been quite a vice-regal potentate. But the judges were as careful to treat their native governors with the consideration the authority vested in them called for as Governor Taft himself would have been. So no substantial harm was done, and the real power in the provinces of questionable loyalty remained where it belonged, in American hands.

Just after Governor Taft's inauguration, the four newly appointed district judges just out of the army called on the governor. Judge Carson was the spokesman, though without pre-arrangement. He said: "Governor, we have called to pay our respects and say goodbye before going to the provinces. We have been acting under military orders so long, that while we are not here to get orders, we would like to have any parting suggestions that may occur to you." Governor Taft said: "Well, Gentlemen, all I can think of is to remind you that if what we have all heard is true the Spanish courts usually operated to the delay of justice, rather than to the dispensing of it. So just go ahead to your respective districts, and get to work, remembering that you are Americans." So we did. Of course none of us loaned ourselves for a moment to the amiable Taft fiction that "the great majority of the people are entirely willing to government under the supremacy of the United States." We had all had a share in the subjugation of the Islands as far as it had progressed at that time, and had seen the Filipinos fight--unskilfully and ineffectively, it is true (because they none of them understood the use of two sights on a rifle, and simply could not hit us much), but pluckily enough. We knew the Filipinos well, and our att.i.tude was simply that of "Pharaoh and the Sergeant," in Kipling's ballad of the conquest of Egypt. However, we knew nothing of the Egyptians, except what we had learned in the Bible, gave no thought to whether our occupation was to be "temporary"

like the British occupation of Egypt since 1882, or temporary like the American occupation of Cuba in 1898. That was a matter for the people of the United States to determine later. But somebody had to govern the Islands, and there we were, and there were the Islands. In the scheme of things some one had to do that part of the world's work, and, as the salaries were liberal, we went to the work, not concerning ourselves with amiable fictions of any kind. I think our att.i.tude was really one of more intimately sympathetic understanding of the Filipinos than that of Governor Taft himself, because we had all known them longer, and all spoke their language, i. e., the language of the educated and representative men (Spanish), and knew their ways, their foibles, and their many indisputably n.o.ble traits. But we did not start out to play the part of political wet-nurses. Our att.i.tude was, if Mr. Filipino does not behave, we will make him.

Judge Carson and myself had one peculiar qualification for fidelity to the Taft policies for which we were ent.i.tled to no credit. We instinctively resented any suggestion comparing the Filipinos to negroes. We had many warm friends among the Filipinos, had shared their generous hospitality often, and in turn had extended them ours. Any such suggestion as that indicated implied that we had been doing something equivalent to eating, drinking, dancing, and chumming with negroes. And we resented such suggestions with an anger quite as cordial and intense as the canons of good taste and loyal friendship demanded. I really believe that the southern men in the Philippines have always gotten along better with the Filipinos than any other Americans out there, and for the reasons just suggested. Not only is the universal American willingness to treat the educated Asiatic as a human being endowed with certain unalienable rights going to redeem him from the down-trodden condition into which British and other European contempt for him has kept him, but the American from the South out there is a guarantee that he shall never be treated as if he were an African. The African is aeons of time behind the Asiatic in development; the latter is aeons ahead of us in the mere duration of his civilization. The Filipino has many of the virtues both of the European and the Asiatic. Christianity has made him the superior in many respects, of his neighbor and racial cousin, the j.a.panese. And Spanish civilization has produced among them many educated gentlemen whom it is an honor to call friend.

The five lawyers, who on ceasing to be volunteer officers became judges, had other incentives also to make the Taft Government a success. The possession of power is always pleasant. We knew the military folk were going to stand by and watch the civil government, and prophesy failure. This of course put us on our metal to impress upon the dictatorial gentry of the military profession, with didactic firmness, the fundamental importance to all American ideals that the military should be subordinate to the civil authority.

The First Judicial District to which the writer was first a.s.signed comprised four provinces, Ilocos Norte, in the Ilocano country, the province situated at the extreme northwestern corner of Luzon, in the military district the conquest of which by General Young has already been fully described; and the three provinces of the Cagayan valley, [371] overrun by Captain Batchelor on his remarkable march from the mountains to the sea in November, 1899, also already described. Here I remained for a year, and then came home on leave, desperately ill; being given, on returning to the Islands after my recovery, an a.s.signment in one of the southern islands, hereinafter dealt with.

We volunteers were all commissioned as judges as of the 15th of June, though none of us I believe were mustered out until June 30th. The day after I was notified of my appointment as judge, as above set forth, desiring to enter upon my judicial emoluments, which were several times those I was receiving as a soldier, I removed the shoulder-straps and collar ornaments from my white duck suit, and went over and took the oath of office before the Chief Justice of the Islands. We had not yet been mustered out of the army, but as above stated, Governor Taft had suggested to General MacArthur that we resign without waiting for the day of muster out, so we could get to work that much sooner, and General MacArthur had notified us that if we cared to resign at once as suggested, he would cable our resignations to Washington. Immediately after qualifying before the Chief Justice, I left his office and on emerging from the court-house hailed a carromata, [372] but the driver said No, he would not carry me. I suggested in a very rudimental way, in rather rudimental Spanish suited to him, that he was a common carrier, and as such under a duty to transport me. He said his horse was tired. His horse did not look tired. He would not have thus casually toyed with veracity if I had had my shoulder-straps on. An autoridad (a representative of const.i.tuted authority) is to the ma.s.ses of the Filipino people something which instinctively challenges their respect and obedience, more especially where the "authority" is firm and just. Respect for authority is their most conspicuous civic trait, and it is on this element in the lower ninety, on the intelligence and capacity to guide them of the upper ten, and on the ardent patriotism of both, that I predicate my difference with President Taft as to the capacity of the Filipino people for self-government. However, as I was to all appearances not an "authority," this ignorant man treated me as merely one of the Americans who, having invaded his country, apparently were not sure whether they were afraid of his people or not. Again I tried diplomacy, offering him an exorbitant fare. "Nothing doing." It was about siesta time, and he would not budge. Here then was the civil government proposition in a nutsh.e.l.l, to take the ignorant people and teach them their rights under theoretically free inst.i.tutions, instead of letting their own people do it in their own way; to reason directly with such people as this cochero (hackman), to begin at the bottom of the social scale right on the jump, the idea being to fit them, the sacred (?) majority, to know their rights and "knowing dare maintain"

them against the educated minority, as if the latter did not have a greater natural interest in their welfare than any stranger could possibly have. That I indulged all these reflections at the time I of course do not mean to say. The significance of the incident has of course deepened in the light of the subsequent years. At any rate, I did not succeed in budging that cochero. I walked home, forego the difference between the military and the judicial salary for the two weeks remaining before muster-out day, put my shoulder-straps back on, and kept them on until June 30, 1901. [373]

When I first landed on the China seacoast of the district I was to preside over, I was met by quite a reception committee of the leading men, who conducted me with great courtesy to the provincial capital. A little later the justices of the peace paid their respects. One of them came thirty miles to do so. The court-room was very long, and when I first spied this last man, he was at the other end of the room bowing very low. He would bow, then advance a few steps, then bow again, then resume the forward march toward me. I reminded myself of some ancient king, so profound were his obeisances. At first I thought to myself, "He bows too low, he must have been up to some devilment lately!" Experience showed me later that it was simply one of the ever-present manifestations of the respect of the Filipino for const.i.tuted authority. They positively love to show their respect for authority, just as a good soldier loves to show his respect for an officer. Here some American remarks: "Ah, but that is not good proof of capacity for self-government. They would not 'cuss out' the party in power enough." I answer: Who made you the judge to say that our particular form of government and our particular way of doing things is better for each and every other people under the sun than any they can devise for themselves? But there was of course another possible reason for the profundity of the obeisances of my judicial subordinate above mentioned. When I reached that province of Ilocos Norte in July, 1901, the people were in a state of submission that was simply abject. They had at first worked the amigo business on General Young, and treachery of that kind had been so inexorably followed by dire punishment, that every home in the country had its lesson. Yet that was the only way. The poor devils did not seem to know when they were licked. This is not maudlin sentiment. It is a protest against the cotemporary libel on Filipino patriotism about "the great majority"

being "entirely willing" to accept our rule, and the cotemporary belittling of the work the army had to do to make them accept it.

I remained in charge of the First Judicial District for more than a year, and during that period tried few or no crimes of a political character, that is to say, indictments for sedition or the like--attempts to subvert the government. The district comprised a total population of about a half million people, more than one-eighth of the population of Luzon, and a total area of over 13,000 square miles, nearly one-third of all Luzon. But remember, this was in northern Luzon, where the work of pacification was lucidly completed by the army before the "peace-at-any-price" policy began. We will see what happened in my friend Judge Carson's district, and in the rest of southern Luzon later. The princ.i.p.al broad general fact I now recall, in connection with the administration of justice in the First Judicial District during the year or more I had it, is that the main volume of business on the court calendars was crimes of violence of a strictly non-political character due to lack of efficient police protection in the several communities, consequent on withdrawal of military garrisons. The country was in an unsettled state. The aftermath of war, lawless violence, was virulently present, and the presence of troops scattered through a province, under such circ.u.mstances, is a wonderful moral force to restrain lawlessness. However high the purpose, however kindly the motive, the setting up of a civil government in the Philippines at the time it was set up, when the country was far from ready for it, was a terrible mistake. Of course no one man in a given province or judicial district had a bird's-eye view of the whole situation and the whole panorama at the time, such as we can get at this distance, in retrospect. Of course it did not lie in human nature for the men responsible for the mistake to see it at first, and, the die once cast, they had to keep on, with intermittent resort to military help, the extent of which help was always minimized thereafter. To show how little the general state of the archipelago was understood by American provincial officials busy in a given part of it, and getting little or no news of the outside world, I remained in the First Judicial District from July, 1901, to August, 1902, and heard nothing of the great insurrection in southern Luzon, in Batangas, and the adjacent provinces, which raged during the winter of 1901-02, except a vague rumor that there was trouble down there. The Filipinos did, however. Of course for Mr. Root to be able to furnish in December, 1901, a report, as Secretary of War, to the President, for consumption by Congress and the people of this country, to the effect that his volunteer army had been mustered out on schedule time, June 30, 1901, and a "civil" government set up and in due operation, was a nice showing, calculated to sooth latent public discontent with wading through slaughter to over-seas dominion. Reports thereafter of disturbances could always be waived aside as merely local in character, and not serious. If it were stoutly a.s.serted that everything was quiet all over the archipelago except in certain parts of certain localities, naming them, that sounded well, and as the public at home simply skipped the unp.r.o.nounceable names, not caring much whether they represented molecules or hemispheres, all went well. For instance, most of the provinces of the archipelago were organized under "civil"

government prior to the inauguration of Governor Taft, which occurred, July 4, 1901, and on July 17th, thereafter, Batangas, Cebu, and Bohol were restored to military control. [374] I suppose the fact that Batangas, Cebu, and Bohol had been so restored was duly announced at the time in the a.s.sociated Press despatches from Manila. But what light did it throw on the situation? Who knew whether any one of these names represented a mountain lair, a country village, a remote islet, or a large and populous province? As a matter of fact, each was a province, and the total population of the three provinces was 1,180,655, [375] and their total area 4651 square miles. [376]

The eminent gentlemen charged with the government of the Islands, once they committed themselves to their "civil" government, persisted always in treating the insurrection, as General Hanc.o.c.k's campaign speeches used to treat the tariff--as "a local issue." The true a.n.a.logy, that of a house on fire, with the fire partly but not wholly under control, and momentarily subject to gusts of wind, never seems to have occurred to them. Here were provinces aggregating nearly twelve hundred thousand people, officially admitted to be still in insurrection within less than two weeks after the announcement of the inauguration of a civil government, which included them, with its implied a.s.sertion of a state of peace as to them.

If to the three provinces above named you add the province of Samar, later of dark and b.l.o.o.d.y fame, you have a fourth province as to which not only had there been no "civil" government organized on paper, but no claim yet made by any one that we had ever conquered it. We had been so busy in Luzon and elsewhere that we had not yet had time to bother very much with Samar. The area of Samar is 5276 square miles, and its population 266,237. (See the census tables already cited.) In their report dated October 15, 1901, [377] you find the Commission admitting that "the insurrection still continues in Batangas, Samar, Cebu" and "parts of" Laguna and Tayabas provinces. Now the euphemistic limitation implied in the words "parts of" is quite negligible, for any serious purpose, since our troops kept the insurgents rather constantly on the move, and the population in all the "parts of" any province that was still holding out backed up the combatants morally and materially, with information as to our movements, supplies, etc., whenever the insurgent detachments, in the course of their peregrinations, happened to pa.s.s through those "parts." So, to make a recapitulation presenting the political situation admitted by the Commission to exist a little over three months after the inauguration of civil government, we have the insurrection still in progress as follows:

Province Area (sq. m.) Population

Batangas 1,201 257,715 Cebu 1,939 653,727 Bohol 1,511 269,223 Laguna 629 148,606 Tayabas 5,993 153,065 Samar 5,276 266,237 ------ --------- Total 16,549 1,748,573

According to his own official statements, it thus appears that on October 15th, after Governor Taft set up his "civil" government on the Fourth of July, throughout one-fifth of the territory and among one-fourth of the population insurrection was rampant. The total area of the archipelago, if Mohammedan Mindanao be excepted (for the reason that the Moros never had anything to do with the Filipinos and their insurrection against us), is about 80,000 square miles, having a total population of 7,000,000. So that, to restate the case, one-fifth of the house was still on fire, and one-fourth of the inmates were trying their best to keep the fire from being put out.

Just here I owe it to President Taft, under whose administration as governor I served as a judge, as well as to myself, to explain why I have so frequently put the word "civil" in quotations in referring to the civil government of the Philippines. Broadly speaking, if "civil" does not imply consent of the governed, it at least distinctly negatives the idea of a bleeding, prostrate, and deeply hostile people. And, in that the civil government of the Philippines founded in 1901 did so negative the actual conditions it was a kindly humbug. When you go around the country sending people to the penitentiary by scores for political crimes, and then get criticised afterwards for "subserviency" to the government you are thus serving, you get a trifle sensitive about such criticism. Now the core of the charges made in this country against the Philippine judiciary in the early days was that they were parties to a humbug, pliable servants of a government which was trying to produce at home an incorrect impression of substantial absence of unwillingness on the part of the governed. I am very sure that the five ex-officers of the volunteer army above named, who went from the army to the bench, never did, by act or word, lend themselves to the idea that there was any "consent" on the part of the governed. Those of us who had been in Cuba with General Wood had but a little while previously observed there a civil regime under a military name. We were now, in the Philippines, serving a military regime under a civil name. We had all of us doubtless--if there was an exception it is immaterial--served on military commissions. We therefore felt, without immodesty, that we could deal out to insurrectos and their political cousins, the brigands, more even-handed justice, as a military commission of one, than a board of several officers, booted, spurred, and travel-stained from some recent man-hunt. Turning, however, from the more inconspicuous objects of Professor Willis's attacks, [378]

the American trial judges in the Philippines in the pioneer days, to the now wide-looming historic personage who was his real objective, I was asked at a public meeting in Boston, rather significantly, by one of the most eminent lawyers in this country, Mr. Moorfield Storey, formerly president of the American Bar a.s.sociation, whether or not there had been attempts in the Philippines, while I was there, to make the judiciary subservient to the executive. My answer was, "No, the lawyers who have been in charge of the Philippine Government have never been guilty of any unprofessional conduct." But the distinguished Boston barrister above referred to has a nephew who is now and has been since 1909, Governor of the Philippines--and who, before he went out there was a representative of Big Business in Boston--Governor Forbes, and I have no idea that any judge who during that time has rendered any decision of importance he did not like has been promoted to the Supreme Bench of the Islands, though I know that under Governor Taft, Judge Carson unhesitatingly declared a certain act of the Commission null and void as being in conflict with an Act of Congress, and before the time-servers had gotten through wondering at his rashness, Mr. Taft had him put on the Supreme Bench of the Philippines [379]

because he liked that kind of a judge.

Having sown the wind by setting up his civil government too soon, let us now observe the whirlwind Governor Taft reaped within six months thereafter. Of course the civil and military folk were at daggers' points. That goes without saying. But their differences were decorously suppressed so that the Filipinos did not get hold of them. To that end, the situation was also diligently concealed in the United States. In his proclamation of July 4, 1902, you find President Roosevelt publicly smoothing the ruffled feathers of that rugged hero of many battles in two hemispheres, General Chaffee, and also commending Governor Taft, and telling them how harmoniously they had gotten along together to the credit of their common country. But in 1901, shortly after General Chaffee had relieved General MacArthur, you find the following cablegram:

Executive Mansion, Washington, October 8, 1901.

Chaffee, Manila: I am deeply chagrined, to use the mildest possible term, over the trouble between yourself 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 implicitly that you and Taft will come to agreement.

Theodore Roosevelt. [380]

The most important words of the above telegram are "and here at home." The "serious effect here at home" so earnestly deprecated was that the real issue between General Chaffee and Governor Taft might be ventilated by some Congressional Committee, and thus bring out the prematurity with which, to meet political exigencies, the civil government had been set up. The issue was that General Chaffee was recognizing the hostility of the people, and deprecating the withdrawal of the police protection of the army from districts in which there were many people who, though tired of keeping up the struggle, and willing to quit, were being harried by the die-in-the-last-ditch contingent. This would mean, ultimately, an examination, such as has already been made in this volume, of the evidence on which Governor Taft based his half-baked opinion of 1900 that "the great majority"

were "entirely willing" to American sovereignty. It would also show up Mr. Root's nonsense about "the patient and unconsenting millions,"

so shamelessly flouted in the presidential campaign of 1900, and his pious Philippics against delivering said millions "into the hands of the a.s.sa.s.sin, Aguinaldo," [381] and would reveal the truth confessed by Secretary Root in a speech made to the cadets at West Point in July, 1902, after the trouble had blown over, in which, apropos of the valor and services of the army, he referred proudly to its having then just completed the suppression of "an insurrection of 7,000,000 people."

On September 28, 1901, just prior to President Roosevelt's above cablegram pouring oil on the troubled politico-military insular waters, a company of General Chaffee's command, Company C, of the 9th Infantry, had been taken off their guard and ma.s.sacred at a place called Balangiga, in the island of Samar. [382] This had made General Chaffee somewhat angry, and explains the subsequent dark and b.l.o.o.d.y drama of which General "Jake" Smith was the central figure, whereby Samar was made "a howling wilderness." But Governor Taft was filled with much more solicitude about the success of his civil government than he was about the obscure lives lost at Balangiga. Apropos of the Balangiga affair he was wearing the patience of the doughty Chaffee with remarks like this: "The people are friendly to the civil government," and suavely speaking of "the evidence which acc.u.mulates on every hand of the desire of the people at large for peace and protection by the civil government." [383] The same Taft report goes on to deprecate "rigor in the treatment" of the situation and the "consequent revulsion in those feelings of friendship toward the Americans which have been growing stronger each day with the spread and development of the civil government."

General "Jake" Smith was sent to Samar shortly after the Balangiga ma.s.sacre, and did indeed make the place a howling wilderness, with his famous "kill-and-burn" orders, instructions to "kill everything over ten years old" and so forth, and the army was in sympathy generally with most of what he did,--except, of course, the unspeakable "10 year old" part--piously exclaiming, as fallible human nature often will in such circ.u.mstances, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Now the civil government could have put a stop to all this if it had wanted to. It had the backing of President Roosevelt. But it quietly accepted the benefit of such "fear of G.o.d"--to use the army's rather sacrilegious expression about that Samar campaign--as the military arm put into the heart of the Filipino, and went on the even tenor of its way, still maintaining that the Filipinos must like us because the civil government was so benevolent,--as if the Filipinos drew any nice distinctions between Governor Taft and General Chaffee, or supposed the two did not represent one and the same government, the government of the United States. There was much investigation about that awful Samar campaign afterward. General Smith was court-martialed and partly whitewashed, at least not dismissed. At General Smith's court-martial, there was some dispute about the alleged orders to "kill and burn,"

to "kill everything over ten years old," etc. But the nature of the campaign may be inferred from General Smith's famous circular No. 6, which, issued on Christmas eve, 1901, advised his command, in effect, that he did not take much stock in the civil commission's confidence that the people really wanted peace; that he was "thoroughly convinced"

that the wealthy people in the towns of his district were aiding the insurgents while pretending to be friendly and that he proposed to

adopt a policy that will create in all the minds of all the people a burning desire for the war to cease; a desire or longing so intense, so personal, and so real that it will impel them to devote themselves in real earnest to bringing about a real state of peace. [384]

During all his trial troubles, General Smith "took what was coming to him" without a murmur, and General Chaffee stuck to him as far as he could without a.s.suming the primary responsibility for the fearful orders above alluded to. If, when General Smith went to Samar, his superior officer, General Chaffee, was in just the direly vengeful frame of mind he, General Smith, afterwards displayed, and prompted him to do, substantially, what he afterward did, which is by no means unlikely, General Smith never whimpered or put the blame on his chief. But a fearful lesson was given the Filipinos, and the civil government profited by it. General Chaffee was never really pressed on whether he did or did not prompt General Smith to do what he did; Governor Taft was never even criticised for not protesting; but with a flourish of presidential trumpets, General Smith was finally made "the goat," by being summarily placed on the retired list, and that closed the b.l.o.o.d.y Samar episode of 1901-02. I wonder General Smith has not gone and wept on General Miles's shoulder and like him become a member of the Anti-Imperialist League of Boston. Some of the best fighting men in the army say that as a soldier in battle General Smith is superb. At any rate he may find spiritual consolation in the following pa.s.sage of the Scriptures which fits and describes his case: