The Inhabitants of the Philippines Part 17

The campaign was marked by an absence of co-operation between the land and sea forces. Admiral Dewey, apparently, was not pleased with the way things were managed, for he is said to have stayed on board his ship for months at a time. The warships remained at anchor in Manila Bay whilst arms [12] and ammunition were landed at the outposts or on the coasts without hindrance, and it was not till November that troops were landed at Dagupan, the northern terminus of the railway, though this obviously ought to have been done in February, so as to attack the enemy front and rear.

The necessity for small gunboats soon made itself felt, but such was the jealousy of the army towards the navy that it was decided that these must be army gunboats, and General Otis is reported to have purchased thirteen small gunboats at Zamboanga, in March 1899, without consulting or informing Admiral Dewey or even asking for an escort for them. It so happened that the Spaniards evacuated Zamboanga before any American forces arrived, and the insurgents promptly took possession of the gunboats already paid for and proceeded to plunder them of everything useful to them. A native account says that they took the gunboats up the Rio Grande into the interior, but this is denied by the Americans. Ultimately a cruiser was sent down to convoy the gunboats, and if I am correctly informed, they were commissioned in charge of junior naval officers.

Obviously, the services of the navy should have been utilised to the utmost extent, and advantage should have been taken of the prestige they had gained by the victory over the Spaniards, and of the great popularity and sympathetic personality of Admiral Dewey. A serious responsibility rests upon whoever allowed jealousy to prevent the co-operation of the land and sea forces, since by failing to secure this they needlessly sacrificed the lives of American soldiers and prolonged the war.

Lieut.-General Sir Andrew Clarke, R.E., a former governor of the Straits Settlements, and the greatest authority in England on the affairs of the Malay States and Islands, was good enough to write a letter which was forwarded to Mr. Day, and published in the Blue Book, p. 628.

He pointed out that, although a moderate military force might be desirable at one or two important centres, a naval force was of more value, especially gunboats able to move freely amongst the islands and ascend the many rivers and inlets of the sea.

Therefore to the fleet and its officers he advised that political and civil administration of the Philippines should, at least in the first instance, be entrusted. Sir Andrew believed, and I venture to say that I thoroughly agree with him, that amongst the officers of the United States navy, active and retired, can be found many men of wide experience, broad views, and generous sympathy well fitted to administer the affairs of the protectorate. Sir Andrew also advised, as Foreman did, and as I do, that the members of the Religious Orders, i.e., the Augustinians, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Recollets, should be advised to return to Spain, receiving compensation for their property.

Sir Andrew Clarke summed up his advice as follows: "Enlist native sympathy by fairness and justice, and rule through native agents, supervised by carefully selected American residents."

As the fleet, by destroying the Spanish squadron, had rendered it possible to bring troops by sea, and by capturing the a.r.s.enal and blockading the Port of Manila, had invigorated the insurrection, and in fact had brought about the cession of the islands by Spain, it would appear to outsiders that it and its officers had a strong claim to the leading part in completing the settlement and pacification of the Archipelago for which the best authorities considered them to possess special qualifications. Besides, if peace was really wanted, it would have been better to entrust the negotiations to the man who had had his fight rather than to one looking for his chance. The craze for military renown is nowhere more rampant than in the United States. Occasions are few and far between, and we must not expect generals to throw them away and fly in the face of Providence.

This, however, did not commend itself to those who pull the strings; we ignore the reasons, but we see the result. Perhaps it was thought that to allow Dewey to add to his victor's laurel wreath the palm of the pacificator would be too much honour for one man, and might raise him to an inconvenient height in the estimation of his fellow citizens.

A year and twenty days after his decisive victory Admiral Dewey sailed from Manila in his flagship. Wherever the British ensign flew he was received with every demonstration of honour and respect both by naval and military officers and by civilians. His reception in New York was marked by an almost delirious enthusiasm. But long before he arrived, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, disgusted with the conduct of the campaign, made a speech at the Miami University and denounced the President for neglect of duty which brought on the war in the Philippines.

He said: "If the bitterest enemy of the United States had sought to bring upon it in that quarter the greatest trouble in the shortest time, he could have devised for that end no policy more successful than the one we have already pursued." It must be added that Mr. Whitelaw Reid, perhaps to prevent being accused of having sympathy with the enemy, denounced Aguinaldo and the Tagals as rebels, savages and treacherous barbarians, unfit for citizenship or self-government, and declared that the Philippines belong to America by right of conquest.

I suppose Mr. Whitelaw Reid, or perhaps any citizen of the United States, has a right to denounce his own President, and certainly the management of the Philippine annexation has been bad from the beginning.

But I think Mr. McKinley was badly served by the Peace Commission. They seem to me to have made many and egregious mistakes.

1. They took General Merritt's opinion that the Tagals would submit, and accepted Mr. Foreman's a.s.surance of Tagal plasticity and accommodating nature.

2. They disregarded the intimation of D. Felipe Agoncillo, the accredited agent of the Tagals, that these would accept no settlement to which they were not parties.

3. They treated several millions of civilised Christian people like a herd of cattle to be purchased with the ranch.

4. Under Article VIII., they guaranteed the religious orders the possession of estates already taken from them.

5. Under Article IX., they gave the expelled friars the right to return and exercise their profession.

To ill.u.s.trate their careless procedure, I may add that they did not even accurately determine the boundaries of the Archipelago to be ceded, and now, in August 1900, $100,000 is to be paid to Spain for Sibutu and Cagayan Sulu Islands, left out by mistake. If any man has a right to say, "Save me from my friends," that man is William McKinley.

As regards Aguinaldo and the Tagals, I think that Mr. Whitelaw Reid's irritation at their protracted resistance has led him on too far. I prefer the opinion of Senator h.o.a.r, who, speaking in the Senate of three proclamations of Aguinaldo, said: "Mr. President, these are three of the greatest state papers in all history. If they were found in our own history of our own revolutionary time we should be proud to have them stand by the side of those great state papers which Chatham declared were equal to the masterpieces of antiquity."

In the same speech he says, and I commend his words to the reader's attention: "Mr. President, there is one mode by which the people of the Philippine Islands could establish the truth of the charges as to their degradation and incapacity for self-government which have been made by the advocates of Imperialism in this debate, and that mode is by submitting tamely and without resistance to the dominion of the United States."

Mr. Whitelaw Reid, however, was perfectly right in one thing. The Philippines belong (or will belong) to America by right of conquest. On August 28th, 1899, Mr. McKinley addressed the 10th Pennsylvania Regiment at Pittsburgh soon after their arrival from Manila. He said: "The insurgents struck the first blow. They reciprocated our kindness with cruelty, our mercy [13] with Mausers.... They a.s.sailed our sovereignty, and there will be no useless parley until the insurrection is suppressed and American authority acknowledged and established. The Philippines are ours as much as Louisiana, by purchase, or Texas, or Alaska." Here we get down to the bed rock, and discard all flimsy pretences. The Americans have undertaken a war of conquest, they bought it in fact, but I fear they are not happy either about its material progress or its moral aspect. We shall have to wait till November to see what they think about it.

But whenever the cost in lost lives, ruined health, and shattered minds, to say nothing of dollars, comes to be known, there will be a great outcry in America.

Mr. McKinley and his advisers are much to be pitied, for they were misled by the information given them by those they relied on.

The False Prophets of the Philippines.

Here is an extract from General Merritt's evidence taken from the Blue Book, fifty-sixth congress, third session, doc.u.ment No. 62, part I, p. 367:

Mr. Reid: Do you think any danger of conflict is now reasonably remote?

General Merritt: I think there is no danger of conflict as long as these people think the United States is going to take possession there. If they imagine or hear from any source that the Spaniards are to be reinstated there, I think they will be very violent.

Mr. Davis: Suppose the United States, by virtue of a treaty with Spain, should take Luzon ... paying no attention to the insurgents --how would that be taken by Aguinaldo?

General Merritt: I think Aguinaldo and his immediate following would resist it; but whether he could resist to any extent I do not know, because his forces are divided. I believe that, as matters go, Aguinaldo will lose more or less of his power there.

The Chairman: If the United States should say, We will take this country and govern it our own way, do you think they would submit to it?

General Merritt: Yes, sir.

Mr. Davis: How many troops in your opinion will be necessary to administer the government of this island--to secure the administration of our government there?

General Merritt: From 20,000 to 25,000 would be requisite at first.

I admire the conviction of this distinguished officer that the benefits of American rule would be highly appreciated by the Tagals, of whom, by-the-bye, he knew next to nothing, having only been a few weeks in Manila amongst sycophantic Mestizo-Americanistas.

That interesting people were, however, of a different opinion. On p. 4582 of the 'Congressional Record,' I find that Senor Mabini, in a manifesto published at San Isidro, April 15th, 1899, states that "race hatred is much more cruel and pitiless among the Anglo-Saxons"

(he is comparing them with the Spaniards). Again he says, "Annexation, in whatever form it may be adopted, will unite us for ever to a nation whose manners and customs are different from our own, a nation which hates the coloured race with a mortal hatred, and from which we could never separate ourselves except by war." The outbreaks against the negroes that have recently happened [August, 1900] in New Orleans, Liberty City, Georgia, and in New York, seem to justify Senor Mabini's remarks.

Don Macario Adriatico, in an answer to a message of General Miller, writing from Jaro, January 3rd, 1900, says: "It could easily be conceived that the Philippines would not suffer a new reign, least of all of a nation on whose conscience the curse of the Redskins rests as a heavy load."

In other doc.u.ments they refer to the probable action of the Trusts, and antic.i.p.ate that, what with the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust, and the Hemp Trust, they would soon find themselves reduced to the condition of porters and workmen, or even of domestic servants.

They seem to have an intelligent antic.i.p.ation of what will probably befall them when conquered, and hence their desperate resistance to a large American army.

But let us now turn up the evidence of another expert on the Philippines, Mr. John Foreman, who also ventured to prophesy what the Tagals would do (Blue Book, before mentioned, p. 443).

Mr. Foreman (answering Mr. Day): "The Tagals are of a very plastic nature, willing in their nature (sic), I should say, to accommodate themselves and take up any new established dominion which might be decided upon, and I think they would fall into any new system adopted.

"The inhabitants of the Central Islands or Visayas are more uncouth, decidedly less hospitable, and somewhat more averse to a.s.sociations and relations with outsiders than the Tagals, but I think they would easily come under sway. They want a little more pressure and would have to be guided, more closely watched, and perhaps a little more of the iron hand used than in Luzon."

Thus was the administration in Washington misled, and it is probable that the American military chiefs reported that they could easily overcome all opposition, so they were allowed to try.

Yet in June, 1900, we read, "The recall of General Otis is taken to mean that the administration considers the war to be at an end, and that there is no longer any necessity for military rule."

General McArthur is appointed to the command, however, and the first thing he does is to cable to Washington for more troops, whilst Admiral Remey asks for an extra battalion of marines. These are to be sent, also at least three regiments of infantry. Sixty-five thousand men and forty ships of war are now admitted to be the proper garrison to hold down the Philippines.

However necessary reinforcements may be, so deep is the racial antipathy between the United States' soldiers, white or black, and the natives, that every additional man sent out is a source of disaffection, and even exasperation. Not only will the volunteers become demoralised and diseased in mind and body by their sojourn in America's new possession, but the very fact of their presence renders the pacification of the country more difficult. The more troops are kept there, the more discontented the natives will be.

To bring this chapter up to date, the position seems to be as follows: There is a recrudescence of activity amongst the insurgents; fighting is going on over a great part of the Archipelago, the American troops are hara.s.sed and overworked, sickness is rife, including the bubonic plague; yet, notwithstanding all this, the Taft Commission has taken over the administration of the islands from September 1st.