The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 3

Once the President [Aguinaldo] is in the Philippines with his prestige, he will be able to arouse the ma.s.ses to combat the demands of the United States, if they should colonize that country, and will drive them, the Filipinos, if circ.u.mstances render it necessary, to a t.i.tanic struggle for their independence, even if later they should succ.u.mb to the weight of the yoke of a new oppressor. If Washington proposes to carry out the fundamental principles of its Const.i.tution, it is most improbable that an attempt will be made to colonize the Philippines or annex them. It is probable then that independence will be guaranteed. [30]

The truth is that instead of leaving everything to the chance of our continuing in the same unselfish frame of mind we were really in when the Spanish-American War started, Aguinaldo and his people, not sure but what in the wind-up they might even be thrown back upon the tender mercies of Spain, played their cards boldly and consistently from the beginning with a view of organizing a de facto government and getting it recognized by the Powers as such at the very earliest practicable moment. They believed that the Lord helps those who help themselves. They had antic.i.p.ated our change of heart and already had it discounted before we were aware of it ourselves. They were already acting on the idea that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty while public opinion in the United States concerning them was in a chrysalis state, and trying to develop a new definition of Liberty which should comport with the subjugation of distant island subjects by a continental commonwealth on the other side of the world based on representative government. The prospective subjects did not believe that a legislature ten thousand miles away in which they had no vote would ever give them a square deal about tariff and other laws dictated by special interests. They had had three hundred years of just that very sort of thing under Spain and instinctively dreaded continuance of it. That their instincts did not deceive them, our later study of Congressional legislation will show. The Filipinos had greatly pondered their future in their hearts during the last twelve months of Spain's colonial empire, watching her Cuban embarra.s.sments with eager eye.

Having seen the frame of mind in which they approached the contract implied in Admiral Dewey's cheery words, "Well now, go ash.o.r.e there and start your army," what were the facts of recent history within the knowledge of both parties at the time? What had been the screams of the American eagle, if any, concerning his moral leadership of the family of unfeathered bipeds?

President McKinley's annual message to Congress of December, 1897, [31] calling attention to conditions in Cuba as intolerable, had declared that if we should intervene to put a stop to them, we certainly would not make it the occasion of a land-grab. The other nations said: "We are from Missouri." But Mr. McKinley said, "forcible annexation" was not to be thought of by us. "That by our code of morality would be criminal," etc. So the world said, "We shall see what we shall see." Then had come the war message of April 11, 1898, [32] reiterating the declaration of the Cuban message of December previous, that "forcible annexation by our code of morality would be criminal aggression." In other words we announced to the overcrowded monarchies of the old world, whose land-l.u.s.t is ever tempted by the broad acres of South America, and ever cooled by the virile menace of the Monroe doctrine, that we not only were against the principle of land-grabbing, but would not indulge in the practice. Immediately upon the conclusion of the reading of the war message, Senator Stewart was recognized, and said, among other things: "Under the law of nations, intervention for conquest is condemned, and is opposed to the universal sentiment of mankind. It is unjust, it is robbery, to intervene for conquest." Then Mr. Lodge stood up, "in the Senate House a Senator," and said:

We are there [meaning in this present Cuban situation] because we represent the spirit of liberty and the spirit of the new time, and Spain is over against us because she is mediaeval, cruel, dying. We have grasped no man's territory, we have taken no man's property, we have invaded no man's rights. We do not ask their lands. [33]

These speeches went forth to the world almost like a part of the message itself. And Admiral Dewey, like every other American, in his early dealings with Aguinaldo, after war broke out, must have a.s.sumed a mental att.i.tude in harmony with these announcements. But the world said, "All this is merely what you Americans yourselves call 'hot air.' We repeat, 'We are from Missouri.'" Then we said: "Oh very well, we will show you." So in the declaration of war against Spain we inserted the following:

Fourth: That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and a.s.serts its determination when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.

This meant, "It is true we do love the Almighty Dollar very dearly, oh, Sisters of the Family of Nations, but there are some axiomatic principles of human liberty that we love better, and one of them is the 'unalienable right' of every people to pursue happiness in their own way, free from alien domination." All these things were well known to both the contracting parties when Admiral Dewey set Aguinaldo ash.o.r.e at Cavite, May 20, 1898, and got him to start his insurrection "under the protection of our guns," as he expressed it. [34] Accordingly, when the insurgent leader went ash.o.r.e, the declaration of war was his major premise, the a.s.surances of our consuls and the acts of our Admiral pursuant thereto were his minor premise, and Independence was his conclusion. Trusting to the faith and honor of the American people, he took his life in his hands, left the panoplied safety of our mighty squadron, and plunged, single-handed, into the struggle for Freedom.

What was the state of the public mind on sh.o.r.e, and how was it prepared to receive his a.s.surances of American aid? Consider the following picture in the light of its sombre sequel.

Just as the war broke out, Consul Williams had left Manila and gone over to Hong Kong, where he joined Admiral Dewey, and accompanied him back to Manila, and was thus privileged to be present at the battle of Manila Bay, May 1st. Under date of May 12th, from his consular headquarters aboard the U. S. S. Baltimore, he reports [35] going ash.o.r.e at Cavite and being received with enthusiastic greetings by vast crowds of Filipinos. "They crowded around me," says Brother Williams, "hats off, shouting 'Viva los Americanos,' thronged about me by hundreds to shake either hand, even several at a time, men, women, and children, striving to get even a finger to shake. So I moved half a mile, shaking continuously with both hands."

Tut! tut! says the casual reader. What did the Government at Washington know of all these goings on, that it should be charged later with having violated as binding a moral obligation as ever a nation a.s.sumed? It is true that the news of the Williams ovation, as in the case of the Pratt serenade, reached Washington only by the slow channels of the mail. But Washington did in fact receive the said news by due course of mail. When it came, however, Washington was nursing visions of savages in blankets smoking the pipe of peace with the agents of the Great White Father in the White House--i.e., thought, or hoped, the Filipinos were savages--and remained as deaf to the sounds of the Williams ovation as it had been to the strains of the Pratt serenade.

However, hardly had Admiral Dewey taken his binoculars from the gig that carried Aguinaldo ash.o.r.e to raise his auxiliary insurrection, when he called his Flag Secretary, or the equivalent, and dictated the following cablegram to the Secretary of the Navy:

Aguinaldo, the rebel commander-in-chief, was brought down by the McCulloch. Organizing forces near Cavite, and may render a.s.sistance that will be valuable. [36]

This sounds a little more serious than "earnest boys" alleging the lack of a toothbrush as an excuse for declining mortal combat, does it not? How valuable did this a.s.sistance prove? Admiral Dewey had to wait three and one half months for the army to arrive, and this is how the commanding general of the American forces describes conditions as he found them in the latter part of August:

For three and one half months Admiral Dewey with his squadron and the insurgents on land had kept Manila tightly bottled. All commerce had been interdicted, internal trade paralyzed, and food supplies were nearly exhausted. [37]

And, he might have added, the taking of the city was thus made perfectly easy. Otherwise, as Aguinaldo put it in one of his letters to General Otis, we would not have taken a city, but only the ruins of a city. Admiral Dewey said to the Senate Committee in 1902: "They [the Spaniards] surrendered on August 13th, and they had not gotten a thing in after the 1st of May." [38]

In the early part of the next year, 1899, President McKinley sent out a kind of olive-branch commission, of which President Schurman of Cornell University was Chairman. The olive branch got withered in the sulphur of exploding gun-powder, so the Commission contented itself with making a report. And this is what they said concerning what followed the Dewey-Aguinaldo entente:

Shortly afterwards, the Filipinos began to attack the Spanish. Their number was rapidly augmented by the militia who had been given arms by Spain, all of whom revolted and joined the insurgents. Great Filipino successes followed, many Spaniards were taken prisoners, and while the Spanish troops now remained quietly in Manila, the Filipino forces made themselves masters of the entire island [of Luzon] except that city. [39]

Of conditions in July, sixty days after Admiral Dewey had on May 20th said to Aguinaldo in effect, "Go it, little man, we need you in our business," Mr. Wildman, our Consul at Hong Kong, writing to the State Department, said, in defending himself for his share in the business of getting Aguinaldo's help under promises, both express and implied, which were subsequently repudiated, that after he, Wildman, put the insurgent chief aboard the McCulloch, May 16th, bound for Manila to co-operate by land with our navy: "He * * * organized a government * * * and from that day to this he has been uninterruptedly successful in the field and dignified and just as the head of his government,"

[40] a statement which Admiral Dewey subsequently endorsed. [41]

We have seen the preliminaries of this "government" started under the auspices of our Admiral and under what he himself called "the protection of our guns" (ante). Let us note its progress. If you turn the leaves of the contemporaneous official reports, you see quite a moving picture show, and the action is rapid. On May 24th, still "under the protection of our guns," Aguinaldo proclaimed his revolutionary government and summoned the people to his standard for the purpose of driving the Spaniards out forever. The situation was an exact counterpart of the cotemporary Cuban one as regards ident.i.ty of purpose between "liberator" and "oppressed." His proclamation promised a const.i.tutional convention to be called later (and which was duly called later) to elect a President and Cabinet, in whose favor he would resign the emergency authority now a.s.sumed; referred to the United States as "undoubtedly disinterested" and as considering the Filipinos "capable of governing for ourselves our unfortunate country"; and formally announced the temporary a.s.sumption of supreme authority as dictator. Copies of these proclamations were duly furnished Admiral Dewey. The latter was too busy looking after the men behind his guns and watching the progress of his plucky little ally to study Spanish, so he forwarded them to the Navy Department without comment--"without reading them," said he to the Senate Committee in 1902. [42] When his attention was called to them before the Committee by one of the members reading them, his comment was, "Nothing about independence there, is there?" [43] It seems to me it did not take an international lawyer to see a good deal "there," about independence. In a proclamation published at Tarlac in the latter part of 1899, which appears to have been a sort of swan-song of the Philippine Republic, Aguinaldo had said, in effect, "Certainly Admiral Dewey did not bring me from Hong Kong to Manila to fight the Spaniards for the benefit of American Trade Expansion," and in this proclamation he claimed that Admiral Dewey promised him independence. It is true, that in a letter to Senator Lodge, which that distinguished gentleman read on the floor of the Senate on January 31, 1900, Admiral Dewey denounced this last statement as false. It is also true that those Americans are few and far between who will take Aguinaldo's word in preference to Admiral Dewey's. Certainly the writer is not one of them. But Aguinaldo is no Spanish scholar, being more of a leader of men than a master of language, and what sort of an interpreter acted between him and the Admiral does not appear. Certainly he never did get anything in writing from Admiral Dewey. But after the latter brought him to Manila, set him to fighting the common enemy, and helped him with guns and otherwise in quickly organizing an army for the purpose, the Admiral was at least put on inquiry as to just what Aguinaldo supposed he was fighting for. What did the Admiral probably suppose? He told the Senate Committee that the idea that they wanted independence "never entered his head." The roar of mighty guns seems to have made it difficult for him to hear the prattlings of what Aguinaldo's proclamations of the time called "the legitimate aspirations of a people." The milk in the cocoanut is this: How could it ever occur to a great naval commander, such as Admiral Dewey, familiar with the four quarters of the globe, that a coterie of politicians at home would be so foolish as to buy a vast straggly archipelago of jungle-covered islands in the South Seas which had been a nuisance to every government that ever owned them? But let us turn from the Senate Committee's studies of 1902 to the progress of the infant republic of 1898 at Cavite.

The same day the above proclamations of May 24th were issued, we find Consul Williams, now become a sort of amphibious civilian aide to Dewey, having his consular headquarters afloat, on the U. S. S. Baltimore, of the squadron, writing the State Department, describing the great successes of the insurgents, his various conferences with Aguinaldo and the other leaders, and his own activities in arranging the execution of a power of attorney whereby Aguinaldo released to certain parties in Hong Kong $400,000 then on deposit to his credit in a Hong Kong bank, for the purpose of enabling them to pay for 3000 stand of arms bought there and expected to arrive at Cavite on the morrow, and for other needed expenses of the revolutionary movement. He says, in part: "Officers have visited me during the darkness of the night to inform the fleet and me of their operations, and to report increase of strength. When General Merritt arrives he will find large auxiliary land forces adapted to his service and used to the climate." [44] Throughout this period Admiral Dewey reports various cordial conferences with Aguinaldo, though he is not so literary as to vivify his accounts with allusions to the weather. In one despatch he states that he has "refrained from a.s.sisting him * * *

with the forces under my command" [45]--explaining to him that "the squadron could not act until the arrival of the United States troops."

Six days after the issuance of the Dictatorship proclamations above mentioned, viz., on May 30th, Admiral Dewey cables the Navy Department [46]:

Aguinaldo, revolutionary leader, visited Olympia yesterday. He expects to make general attack May 31st.

He did not succeed entirely, but there was hard fighting, and the cordon around the doomed Spaniards in Manila and its suburbs was drawn ever closer and closer.

The remarkable feat of Aguinaldo's raising a right formidable fighting force in twelve days after his little "Return from Elba," which force kept growing like a s...o...b..ll, is difficult, for one who does not know the Filipinos, and the conditions then, to credit. It is explained by the fact that Admiral Dewey let him have the captured guns in the Cavite a.r.s.enal, that Cavite was a populous hotbed of insurrection, and that many native regiments, or parts of regiments, quite suited to be the nucleus of an army, having lots of veteran non-commissioned officers, deserted the Spaniards and went over to the insurgents, their countrymen, as soon as Aguinaldo arrived.

On June 6th, we have another bulletin sent to the Navy Department by Admiral Dewey, transmitting with perceptible satisfaction further information as to the progress of his indefatigable protege:

Insurgents have been engaged actively within the province of Cavite during the last week; they have had several small victories, taking prisoners about 1800 men, 50 officers; Spanish troops, not native. [47]

Along about this period Aguinaldo happens to get hold of a belated copy of the London Times of May 5, 1898. It contains considerable speculation on the future of the Philippines which casts a shadow over the soul of the president of the incipient republic. Having read President McKinley's immortal State papers about the moral obliquity of "forcible annexation," he is moved to write direct to the source of those n.o.ble sentiments. The letter is dated June 10, 1898. It is addressed, with a quaintness now pathetic, "To the President of the Republic of the Great North American Nation." It greets the addressee with "the most tender effusion of" the writer's soul, expresses his "deep and sincere grat.i.tude," in the name of his people, "for the efficient and disinterested protection which you have decided to give it to shake off the yoke of the cruel and corrupt Spanish domination, as you are doing to the equally unfortunate Cuba" and then proceeds to tell of "the great sorrow which all of us Filipinos felt on reading in the Times the astounding statement that you, sir, will retain these islands," etc. He proceeds:

The Philippine people * * * have seen in your nation, ever since your fleet destroyed in a moment the Spanish fleet which was here * * * the angel who is the harbinger of their liberty; and they rose like a single wave * * * as soon as I trod these sh.o.r.es; and captured in ten days nearly the whole garrison of this Province of Cavite in whose port I have my government--by the consent of the Admiral of your triumphant fleet. [48]

The writer closes his letter with an impa.s.sioned protest against the occurrence of what is suggested in the Times, and speaks of his fellow-countrymen as "a people which trusts blindly in you not to abandon it to the tyranny of Spain, but to leave it free and independent," and adds his "fervent prayers for the ever-increasing prosperity of your powerful nation." [49]

But the signer of the foregoing letter did not spend all his time praying for us, as may be observed in this bulletin from Admiral Dewey concerning the way he was lambasting the common enemy, sent the Navy Department, June 12th:

Insurgents continue hostilities and have practically surrounded Manila. They have taken 2500 Spanish prisoners, whom they treat most humanely. They do not intend to attack city proper until the arrival of United States troops thither; I have advised. [50]

Four days later Washington chided the hapless Pratt at Singapore about having talked to Aguinaldo of "direct co-operation" with Admiral Dewey, saying: "To obtain the unconditional personal a.s.sistance of General Aguinaldo in the expedition to Manila was proper, if in so doing he was not induced to form hopes which it might not be practicable to gratify." [51] This communication goes on to advise Mr. Pratt that the Department cannot approve anything he may have said to Aguinaldo on behalf of the United States which would concede that in accepting his co-operation we would owe him anything. Yet it did not tell Admiral Dewey to quit coaching him, because the service he was rendering was too valuable. There is no communication to Admiral Dewey about "hopes which it might not be practicable to gratify" in the official archives of those times. There was Admiral Dewey coaching Aguinaldo and telling him to wait for the main attack until General Merritt should arrive with our troops. Why? Because he expected Merritt to co-operate with Aguinaldo, and of course Aguinaldo expected exactly what Dewey expected.

In reviewing the history of those times the writer has not been so careless as to have overlooked Senator Lodge's elaborate speech in the Senate on March 7, 1900, wherein attention is called to the circ.u.mstance that a few days after Aguinaldo landed at Cavite, the Navy Department cabled cautioning Dewey to have no alliance with him that might complicate us, and that the Admiral answered he had made no alliance and would make none. But if actions speak louder than words, the Senator's point does not rise above the dignity of a technicality.

The same day the State Department reprimanded Pratt, as above indicated, viz., June 16th, Consul Williams at Manila wrote them a glowing communication [52] about how "active and almost uniformly successful" Aguinaldo was continuing to be. But no resultant enthusiasm is of record. Two days later, on June 18th, Aguinaldo issued his first formal Declaration of Independence. The infant republic was now less than a month old, but it already had a fine set of teeth. The Spaniards had seen them. The proclamation was of course addressed to the Filipino people, and called on them to rally to the cause, but he was also driving at recognition by the Powers. It read in part: "In the face of the whole world I have proclaimed that the aspiration of my whole life, the final object of all my wishes and efforts, is your independence, because I have the inner conviction that it is also your constant longing." [53] Many Americans insist that this is mere "hot air" and that the average Filipino peasant does not think much more than his plough animal, the scoffer himself being stupidly unaware that this has been precisely the argument of tyranny in all ages. But the pride a people will have in seeing the best educated and most able men of their own race in charge of their affairs seems to me too obvious to need elaboration. It was always accepted by us as axiomatic until we took the Philippines. It is a cruel species of wickedness for an American to tell his countrymen that the Filipino people do not want independence, for some of them may believe it.

The Declaration of Independence of June 18th is known to students of Philippine political archaeology as the Proclamation establishing the "dictatorial" government. The princ.i.p.al thing it did was to supplement the absolute dictatorship proclaimed May 24th by provisions for organizing in detail. It also declared independence. A more elaborate Declaration followed on June 23d, known as the proclamation establishing the "revolutionary" government. This made provision for a Congress, a Cabinet, and courts. Of course it was only a paper government the day the ink dried on it. But we will follow it through its teething, and adolescence, to the attainment of its majority at an inauguration where the president was driven to the place of the taking of the oath of office in a coach and four, through a short and very self-respecting heyday, and a longer peripatetic existence, to final dissolution. The doc.u.ment of June 23d reminds us of a fact which in reading it at this late date we are apt to forget, viz., that the Filipinos did not know at what moment their powerful ally, the American squadron, might up anchor and sail away to the high seas, to meet another Spanish fleet; thus leaving them to the tender mercies of the Spaniards, possibly forever. So they were losing no time. In fact, they had set to work from the very beginning with a determination to try and secure recognition from the Powers at the earliest moment. In appealing to the public opinion of the world with a view of paving the way to recognition by the Powers--which recognition would mean getting arms for war with Spain or any other power without the inconveniences of filibustering--Aguinaldo says on behalf of his people in the proclamation of June 23d, above mentioned, that they "now no longer limit themselves to asking for a.s.similation with the political const.i.tution of Spain, but ask for a complete separation (and) strive for independence, completely a.s.sured that the time has come when they can and ought to govern themselves."

Mr. Frank D. Millet, who reached Manila soon enough (in July) to see the ripples of this proclamation, describes the effect on the people. While Mr. Millet is one of the best men that anybody ever knew, a proposition as to which I am quite sure the President of the United States and many people great and small in many lands would affirm my judgment, [54] still, he writes from a frankly White Man's Burden or land-grabbing standpoint--is in harmony with his environment. At page 50 of his book, [55] he reproduces the proclamation last above quoted from, and adds the following satirical comment: "This flowery production was widely circulated and had a great effect on the imagination of the people, who, in the elation of their present success in investing the town and in their belief that the United States was beginning a campaign in the Philippines to free them from Spanish oppression (italics mine) shortly came to think that they were already a nation."

Copies of these June proclamations also, as in the case of those of May 24th, were duly forwarded by Aguinaldo to Admiral Dewey [56] and by him forwarded to Washington without comment. In his letter transmitting them to Dewey, Aguinaldo announces that his government has "taken possession of the various provinces of the archipelago." Just exactly how many provinces he had control of on June 23d will be examined later. The very same day the proclamation of June 23d declaring independence was issued, Admiral Dewey cabled the Navy Department [57]: "Aguinaldo has acted independently of the squadron, but has kept me advised of his progress which has been wonderful. I have allowed him to take from the a.r.s.enal such Spanish arms and ammunition as he needed." After adding that "Aguinaldo expects to capture Manila without any a.s.sistance," the Admiral, evidently divining the temptation that was then luring the political St. Anthonies at Washington, volunteers this timely suggestion:

In my opinion these people are superior in intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races. [57]