The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 25

But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. [385]

In his Report for 1901 Governor Taft says that the four princ.i.p.al provinces, including Batangas, which gave trouble shortly after the civil government was set up in that year, and had to be returned to military control, were organized under civil rule "on the recommendation" of the then commanding general (MacArthur) [386]: It certainly seems unlikely that the haste to change from military rule to civil rule came on the motion of the military. If the Commission ever got, in writing, from General MacArthur, a "recommendation" that any provinces be placed under civil rule while still in insurrection, the text of the writing will show a mere soldiery acquiescence in the will of Mr. McKinley, the commander-in-chief. Parol contemporaneous evidence will show that General MacArthur told them, substantially, that they were "riding for a fall." In fact, whenever an insurrection would break out in a province after Governor Taft's inauguration as governor, the whole att.i.tude of the army in the Philippines, from the commanding general down, was "I told you so." They did not say this where Governor Taft could hear it, but it was common knowledge that they were much addicted to d.a.m.ning "politics" as the cause of all the trouble.

Governor Taft's statement in his report for 1901, that the four princ.i.p.al provinces, above named, Batangas and the rest, were organized under civil rule "on the recommendation of General MacArthur,"

is fully explained in his testimony before the Senate Committee of 1902. From the various pa.s.sages hereinbefore quoted from President McKinley's state papers concerning the Philippines, especially his messages to Congress, the political pressure Mr. McKinley was under from the beginning to make a show of "civil" government, thus emphasizing the alleged absence of any real substantial opposition to our rule by a seeming absence of necessity for the use of force, so as to palliate American repugnance to forcing a government upon an unwilling people, has been made clear. There were to be no "dark days of reconstruction." The Civil War in the United States from 1861 to 1865 was a love feast compared with our war in the Philippines. Yet the work of reconstruction in the Philippines was to be predicated on the theory of consent, so persistently urged by President McKinley before the American people from the beginning, viz., that the insurrection represented only a small faction of the people. We have seen how General MacArthur also had originally, in 1898, entertained this notion, and how by the time he took Malolos in March, 1899, he had gotten over this notion, and had--regretfully--recognized that "the whole people are loyal to Aguinaldo and the cause he represents." And now came Governor Taft, after fifteen months more of continuous fighting, to tell General MacArthur, on behalf of Mr. McKinley, that he, MacArthur, did not know what he was talking about, and that "the great majority" were for American rule. The representative men of my own State of Georgia welcomed the return of the State to military control in 1870. Most of them had been officers of the Confederate army. The Federal commander simply told them that if they could not restrain the lawless element of their own people, he would. By premature setting up of the Philippine civil government, the lawless element was allowed full swing. General MacArthur had been in the Civil War. He knew something about reconstruction. But here were the Taft Commission, with instructions from Mr. McKinley to the effect that civil government, government "essentially popular in form," was to be set up as fast as territory was conquered. It didn't make any difference about the government being "essentially popular"

just so it was "essentially popular in form." To the Senate Committee of 1902, Governor Taft said:

General MacArthur and the Commission did differ as to where the power lay with respect to the organization of civil governments, as to who should say what civil governments should be organized, the Commission contending that, under the instructions, it was left to them, and General MacArthur thinking that everything was subject to military control ultimately, in view of the fact that the islands were in a state of war. [387]

Governor Taft then added that he and General MacArthur reached a modus vivendi. When a good soldier once finds out just what his commander-in-chief wants done, he will endeavor, in loyal good faith, to carry out the spirit of instructions, no matter how unwise they may seem to him. As soon as General MacArthur saw what President McKinley wanted done, he proceeded to co-operate loyally with Governor Taft to carry out the plan. He well knew the country was not ready for civil government, but if Mr. McKinley was bent on crowding civil government forward as fast as territory was conquered, he would make his recommendations on that basis. In the matter of the utter folly of the prematurity with which the civil government was set up in the Philippines in 1901, and the terrible consequences to the hapless Filipinos, hereinafter described, which followed, by reason of the premature withdrawal of the police protection of the army and the sense of security its several garrisons radiated, from a country just recovering from some six years of war, General MacArthur's exemption from responsibility is shown by his reports for 1900 and 1901. [388] The former has already been fully examined, and the original sharp differences between him and Governor Taft made clear. In the latter report dated July 4, 1901, the date of the Taft inauguration as Governor, and also, if I mistake not, the day of General MacArthur's final departure for the United States, the latter washes his hands of the kindly McKinley-Taft nonsense, born of political expediency, about there having never been any real fundamental or unanimous resistance, in no uncertain terms thus:

Anything in the immediate future calculated to impede the activity or reduce the efficiency of these instruments [our military forces,] will not only be a menace to the present, but put in jeopardy the entire future of American possibilities in the archipelago. [389]

No, President Taft can never make General MacArthur "the goat" for what General Bell had to do in Batangas Province in 1901-02 to make our "willing" subjects behave. Nor can the ultimate responsibility before the bar of history for the awful fact that, according to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Atlas of the Philippines of 1899, the population of Batangas Province was 312,192, and according to the American Census of the Philippines of 1903 it was 257,715, [390] rest entirely on military shoulders. An attempt to place the responsibility for the prematurity of the civil government on General MacArthur was made by Honorable Henry C. Ide, who was of the Taft Commission of 1900, and later Governor General of the Islands, and is now Minister to Spain, in the North American Review for December, 1907. But Mr. Taft, a man of n.o.bler mould, has at least maintained a decorous silence on the subject except when interrogated by Congress, and when so interrogated, his testimony, above quoted, if a.n.a.lyzed, places the responsibility where it honestly belongs. In 1900 the Taft Commission were not taking much military advice.

Batangas province was first taken under the wing of the peace-at-any-price policy by the Act of the Taft Commission of May 2, 1901, ent.i.tled "An Act Extending the Provisions of 'the Provincial Government Act' [391] to the Province of Batangas." By the Act of the Commission of July 17, 1901, the provinces of Batangas, Cebu, and Bohol, were restored to military control. When the civil authorities turned those provinces back to military control, they well knew the frame of mind the military were in, and there is no escape from the proposition that they, in effect, said to the military: "Take them and chasten them; go as far as you like. After you are done with them, it will be time enough to pet them again. But for the present we mean business." General Bell was scathingly criticised on the floor of the United States Senate for what he did in Batangas in 1901-02, but by the time he took hold there it had become a case of "spare the rod and spoil the child." The subst.i.tution by the Commission of kindness, and a disposition to forget what the Filipinos could not forget, for firmness and the policy of making them submit unreservedly to the inevitable,--viz., abandonment of their dream of independence--had created among them a well-nigh ineradicable impression that, for some reason or other, whether due to disapproval in the United States of the so-called "imperial" policy or what not, we were afraid of them. General Bell's task in Batangas, therefore, was to eradicate this impression all over the archipelago by making an example of the Batangas people.

In General Chaffee's report for 1902, [392] he prefaces his account of General Bell's operations in Batangas as follows:

The long-continued resistance in the province of Batangas and in certain parts of the bordering provinces of Tayabas, Laguna, and Cavite, had made it apparent to me and to others that the insurrectionary force keeping up the struggle there could exist and maintain itself only through the connivance and knowledge of practically all the inhabitants; that it received the active support of many who professed friendship for United States authority, etc.

This last was a thrust at Governor Taft's new-found Filipino friends and advisers, in whose lack of sympathy with the cause of their country the Governor so profoundly believed, but in whose continuing co-operation in the killing of his soldiers General Chaffee believed still more profoundly.

General Bell's famous operations on a large scale in Batangas began January 1, 1902. The great mistake of the Civil Commission, to which they adhered so long, was in supposing that when the respectable military element of the insurgents was pursued to capture or surrender, these last could and would thereafter control the situation. As a matter of fact, whether they could or not, they did not.

In his celebrated circular order dated Batangas, December 9, 1901, General Bell announced:

To all Station Commanders:

A general conviction, which the brigade commander shares, appears to exist, that the insurrection in this brigade continues because the greater part of the people, especially the wealthy ones, pretend to desire, but do not in reality want peace; that when all really want peace, we can have it promptly. Under such circ.u.mstances, it is clearly indicated that a policy should be adopted that will, as soon as possible, make the people want peace and want it badly.

The only acceptable and convincing evidence of the real sentiments of either individuals or town councils should be such acts publicly performed as must inevitably commit them irrevocably to the side of Americans by arousing the animosity of the insurgent element. * * * No person should be given credit for loyalty simply because he takes the oath of allegiance, or secretly conveys to Americans worthless information and idle rumors which result in nothing. Those who publicly guide our troops to the camps of the enemy, who publicly identify insurgents, who accompany troops in operations against the enemy, who denounce and a.s.sist in arresting the secret enemies of the Government, who publicly obtain and bring reliable and valuable information to commanding officers, those in fact who publicly array themselves against the insurgents, and for Americans, should be trusted and given credit for loyalty, but no others. No person should be given credit for loyalty solely on account of having done nothing for or against us so far as known. Neutrality should not be tolerated. Every inhabitant of this brigade should be either active friend or be cla.s.sed as enemy.

In his Circular Order No. 5, dated Batangas, December 13, 1901, [393]

General Bell announced that General Orders No. 100, Adjutant General's Office, 1863, approved and published by order of President Lincoln, for the government of the armies of the United States in the field, would thereafter be regarded as the guide of his subordinates in the conduct of the war. This order is familiar to all who have ever made any study of military law. Ordinarily, of course, a captured enemy is ent.i.tled to "the honors of war," i. e., he must be held, housed, and fed, unless exchanged, until the close of the war. But where an enemy places himself by his conduct without the pale of the laws of war, i. e., where he does not "play the game according to the rules,"

he may be killed on sight, like other outlaws.

Under General Orders No. 100, 1863, men and squads of men who, without commission, without being part or portion of the regularly organized hostile army, fight occasionally only, and with intermittent returns to their homes and avocations, and frequent a.s.sumption of the semblance of peaceful pursuits, divesting themselves of the character and appearance of soldiers; armed prowlers seeking to cut telegraph wires, destroy bridges and the like, etc., are not ent.i.tled to the protection of the laws of war and may be shot on sight. In other words, the game being one of life and death, you must take even chances with your opponent. General Bell's defenders on the floor of the Senate simply relied on General Orders No. 100. However, there is nothing about reconcentration in that order. We learned that from the Spaniards. In fact we never did succeed in bringing to terms the far Eastern colonies we bought from Spain, until we adopted her methods with regard to them. Another of the expedients adopted by General Bell in Batangas seems harsh, but it was used by Wellington in the latter end of the Napoleonic wars, and by the Germans in the latter end of the Franco-Prussian War. It was to promise the inhabitants of a given territory that whenever a telegraph wire or pole was cut the country within a stated radius thereof, including all human habitations, would be devastated. It is in General Bell's Circular Order No. 7 of December 15, 1901, [394] that we find the genesis of the idea of basing tactics used by Weyler in Cuba on Mr. Lincoln's General Order 100. He there says:

Though Section 17, General Orders 100, authorizes the starving of unarmed hostile belligerents as well as armed ones, provided it leads to a speedier subjection of the enemy, it is considered neither justifiable nor desirable to permit any person to starve who has come into towns under our control seeking protection.

This order goes on to direct that all food supplies encountered be brought to the towns. Of course this does not mean supplies captured from the enemy's forces, which may lawfully be destroyed at once. To those not familiar with reconcentration tactics it should be explained that reconcentration means this: You notify, by proclamation and otherwise, all persons within a given area, that on and after a certain day they must all leave their homes and come within a certain prescribed zone or radius of which a named town is usually the centre, there to remain until further orders, and that all persons found outside that zone after the date named will be treated as public enemies. General Bell's order of December 20th, provided that rice found in the possession of families outside the protected zone should, if practicable, be moved with them to the town which was the centre of the zone, that that found apparently cached for enemy's use should be confiscated, and also destroyed if necessary.

Whenever it is found absolutely impossible to transport it [any food supply] to a point within the protected zone, it will be burned or otherwise destroyed. These rules will apply to all food products.

No person within the reconcentration zones was permitted to go outside thereof--cross the dead line--without a written pa.s.s. The Circular Order of December 23d, apparently solicitous lest subordinate commanders might become infected with the Taft belief in Filipino affection, directs that after January 1, 1902, all the munic.i.p.al officials, members of the police force, etc., "who have not fully complied with their duty by actively aiding the Americans and rendering them valuable service," shall be summarily thrown into prison. [395]

Circular Order No. 19, issued on Christmas Eve, 1901, provided that,

in order to make the existing state o war and martial law so inconvenient and unprofitable to the people that they will earnestly desire and work for the re-establishment of peace and civil government,

subordinate commanders might, under certain prescribed restrictions, put everybody they chose to work on the roads. [396] This was an ingenious blow at the wealthy and soft-handed, intended to superinduce submission by humbling their pride. Note also the seeds of affection thus sown for the civil government under the reconstruction period which was to follow. In one of d.i.c.kens novels there occurs a law firm by the name of Spenlow and Jorkins. Mr. Spenlow was quite fond of considering himself, and of being considered by others, as tender-hearted. Mr. Jorkins did not mind. When the widow and the orphan would plead with Mr. Spenlow to stay the foreclosure of a mortgage, that benevolent soul would tell them, with a pained expression of infinite sympathy, that he would do all he could for them, but that they would have to see Mr. Jorkins, "who is a very exacting man,"

he would say. In the dual American politico-military regime in the Philippines of 1901-02, Governor Taft was the Mr. Spenlow, General Chaffee the Mr. Jorkins. But the former always seemed to harbor the amiable delusion that the Filipinos did not at all consider the firm as the movants in each proceeding against them, and that on the contrary they were sure to make a favorable contrast in their hearts between the kindness of Mr. Spenlow and the harshness of Mr. Jorkins. He seemed blind to the fact that the Filipinos, in considering what was done by any of us, spelled us--U. S.

General Bell's Circular Order No. 22, also a Christmas Eve product, re-iterates the usual purpose to make the people yearn for civil government, and the usual warning that none of them really and truly want the blessings of American domination and Benevolent a.s.similation as they truly should, and adds:

To combat such a population, it is necessary to make the state of war as insupportable as possible; and there is no more efficacious way of accomplishing this than by keeping the minds of the people in such a state of anxiety and apprehension that living under such conditions will soon become unbearable. Little should be said. The less said the better. Let acts, not words, convey intentions. [397]

Under date of December 26, 1901, General Bell reports:

I am now a.s.sembling in the neighborhood of 2500 men, who will be used in columns of fifty each. I expect to accompany the command.

* * * I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley, and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of town. All able-bodied men will be killed or captured.

Such was the central idea animating the Bell Brigade that overran Batangas in 1902. The American soldier in officially sanctioned wrath is a thing so ugly and dangerous that it would take a Kipling to describe him. I have seen him in that mood, but to describe it is beyond me. Side by side with innumerable ambuscades incident to the nature of the field service as it then was, in which little affairs the soldier above mentioned had lost many a "bunkie," there had gone on for some time, under the McKinley-Taft peace-at-any-price policy, whose keynote was that no American should have a job a Filipino could fill, much appointing to munic.i.p.al and other offices of Filipinos, many of whom had at once set to work to make their new offices useful to the cause of their country by systematic aid to the ambuscade business. With this and the Balangiga ma.s.sacre ever in mind, the men of General Bell's brigade began their work in Batangas in a mood which quite made for fidelity in performance of orders to "make living unbearable" for the Filipino "by acts, not words." Also, the American soldier can sing, sometimes very badly, but often rather irrepressibly, until stopped by his officer. Also, whether justly or unjustly is beside the question, he considers a politician who pets the enemy in the midst of a war a hypocrite. So General Bell's 2500 men began that Batangas campaign on New Year's Day, 1902, giving preference, out of their repertoire, to a campaign song whose ominous chorus ran:

"He may be a brother of William H. Taft But he ain't no friend of mine,"

and between songs they would say purringly to one another, "Remember Balangiga." And their commanding officer was the very incarnation of this feeling. So listen to the stride of his seven-league boots and the ring of his iron heel:

I expect to first clean out the wide Looboo Peninsula. I shall then move command to the vicinity of Lake Taal, and sweep the country westward to the ocean and south of Cavite, returning through Lipa. I shall scour and clean up the Lipa mountains. Swinging northward, the country in the vicinity of [here follows a long list of towns] will be scoured, ending at [a named mountain], which will then be thoroughly searched and devastated. Swinging back to the right, the same treatment will be given all the country of which [two named mountains] are the main peaks.

And so on ad libitum. General Bell's course in Batangas was commended in the annual report of his immediate superior, a very humane, as well as gallant, soldier, General Wheaton, as "a model in suppressing insurrections under like circ.u.mstances." [398] The Batangas programme was approved by General Chaffee, the commanding general. In 1902 the United States Senate rang with indiscriminate denunciation of the Batangas severities and the Samar "kill and burn" orders. I tried in 1903, without success, to satisfy my distinguished and beloved fellow-townsman, Senator Bacon, that at the time it was adopted it had become a military necessity, which it had. The fact was that the McKinley-Taft policy of conciliation, intended to gild the rivets of alien domination and cure the desire for independence by coddling, had loaned aid and comfort to the enemy, by creating, among a people used theretofore solely to force as a governmental agency for making sovereignty respected, the pathetic notion that we were afraid of them, and might be weakening in respect to our declared programme of denying them independence. The Bell opinion of the Commission's confidence in Filipino gladness at its advent among them is sufficiently apparent in his orders to his troops. On May 23, 1902, Senator Bacon read in the Senate a letter from an officer of the army, a West Point graduate and a personal friend of the Senator's, whose name he withheld, but for whose veracity he vouched, which letter alluded to "a reconcentrado, pen with a dead line outside, beyond which everything living is shot"; spoke of "this corpse-carca.s.s stench wafted in" (to where the letter-writer sat writing) as making it "slightly unpleasant here,"

and made your flesh crawl thus:

At nightfall clouds of vampire bats softly swirl out on their orgies over the dead.