The Tagal Republic.
The Tagals had made much progress since the insurrection of 1896–7. Their ideas had advanced considerably since their rudimentary organization in the Province of Cavite, as can be gathered from the improved style of the various proclamations and decrees published by Aguinaldo.
They now organized a Government, a real Civil Administration, extending over a great part of Luzon, and sent an expedition to Visayas. They established a Constitution, a representative government, and reopened the courts and schools, whilst the native clergy carried on public worship as usual. Aguinaldo repeatedly asserted the determination of the Tagal people to fight to the death for independence. At this time the insurgents held 9000 Spaniards as prisoners of war, and they claimed to have 30,000 men under arms.
Paymaster Wilcox, U.S.N., and Mr. Leonard R. Sargent who travelled through part of Luzon for more than 600 miles, and during six weeks, reported[1] to Admiral Dewey that a regular and orderly Administration had been established, and was in full working order.
Aguinaldo was at the head of this Government and of the army co-operating with the American forces by the written request of General Anderson. This should have ensured him and those with him at the very least courteous and considerate treatment at the hands of the American Commanders, and in fact he received this from Admiral Dewey. But as soon as the direction of affairs passed into the hands of the general commanding the army the deeply-rooted contempt felt by Americans for the coloured races was allowed full play, Aguinaldo and his staff found themselves ignored, or treated with scarcely veiled contempt, and the estrangement was gradually increased.
I do not know which party was the aggressor on February the 4th, 1899, each swears that it was the other. The cui bono test cuts both ways, for whilst it appears that the attack on Manila secured two doubtful votes in the Senate for the ratification of the Treaty whereby the Philippines were bought from Spain, on the other hand, Aguinaldo may have felt it necessary to prove to America that the Philippines would fight rather than bow their necks to the Yankee yoke. So that both parties may have had an interest in beginning hostilities. In any case, the next day Aguinaldo offered to withdraw to a greater distance if an armistice was arranged, but Otis declared that “fighting must go on.”
Personally, I think that if a sympathetic and conciliatory attitude had been adopted, had the local government established been recognized, had Aguinaldo and his staff been given commissions in the Native Army or Civil Service, and the flower of the Tagal Army taken into the service of the United States, a peaceful settlement could have been made on the lines of a Protectorate.
I therefore look upon the war as unnecessary, and consider the lives already sacrificed, and that will have to be sacrificed, as absolutely thrown away.
The tragical side of American unpreparedness is manifest in the state of anarchy in which the whole Archipelago has been plunged by the American unreadiness to occupy the military posts as soon as they were vacated by the Spanish garrisons. A hideous orgy of murder, plunder, and slave-raiding has prevailed in Visayas, and especially in Mindanao.
Three conditions were essential to a peaceful settlement:—
First.—A broad-minded and sympathetic representative of America, fully authorized to treat, and a lover of peace.
Second.—A strict discipline amongst the American forces.
Third.—The principal aim and object of the Tagal insurrection must be secured.
General Otis does not seem to me to fulfil the first condition, he lacked prestige and patience, and he showed that he had an insufficient conception of the magnitude of his task by occupying himself with petty details of all kinds and by displaying an ill-timed parsimony. Apparently he had no power to grant anything at all, and only dealt in vague generalities which the Tagals could not be expected to accept.
As regards the second point, I regret that I am not personally acquainted with the gentlemen from Nebraska, Colorado, Dakota and other states serving in the United States Army or volunteers. I have no doubt that they are good fighting-men, but from all I can hear about them they are not conspicuous for strict military discipline, and too many of them have erroneous ideas as to the most suitable drink for a tropical climate.
Manila was in the time of the Spaniards a most temperate city; a drunken man was a very rare sight, and would usually be a foreign sailor. Since the American occupation, some hundreds of drinking saloons have been opened, and daily scenes of drunkenness and debauchery have filled the quiet natives with alarm and horror. When John L. Motley wrote his scathing denunciation of the army which the great Duke of Alva led from Spain into the Low Countries, “to enforce the high religious purposes of Philip II.,” not foresee that his words would be applicable to an American Army sent to subjugate men struggling to be free “for their welfare, not our gain,” nor that this army, besides bringing in its train a flood of cosmopolitan harlotry,[2] would be allowed by its commander to inaugurate amongst a strictly temperate people a mad saturnalia of drunkenness that has scarcely a parallel.
Such, however, is undoubtedly the case, and I venture to think that these occurrences have confirmed many of the Tagals in their resolve rather to die fighting for their independence than to be ruled over by such as these.
More important still was it to take care that the Tagal insurrection should not have been in vain. That rebellion probably cost fifty thousand human lives, immense loss of property, and untold misery. It was fought against the friars and was at last triumphant. The Spanish friars had been expelled and their lands confiscated. Were the Americans to bring them back and guarantee them in peaceable possession, once more riveting on the chain the Tagals had torn off?
This seems to have been General Otis’ intention. I think he might have stood upon the accomplished fact. But he did not.
The Treaty of Peace under Article VIII. declares that the cession cannot in any respect impair the rights of ecclesiastical bodies to acquire and possess property, whilst Article IX. allows Spanish subjects to remain in the Islands, to sell or dispose of their property and to carry on their professions. Presumably General Otis felt bound by the Treaty in which these general stipulations had been embodied by the Peace Commission, in direct contradiction to the advice given them by Mr. Foreman (see p. 463, 55th Congress, 3rd Sess., Doc. No. 62, part 1), who pointed out the necessity of confiscating these lands, but Mr. Gray replied: “We have no law which will allow us to arbitrarily do so.”
As soon as the effect of the treaty was known, Archbishop Nozaleda, who had fled to China from the vengeance he feared, returned to Manila. He seemed to have a good deal of interest with General Otis, and this did not please the natives, nor inspire them with confidence.
Furthermore, it was reported and generally believed that the friars’ vast estates had been purchased by an American Syndicate who would in due time take possession and exploit them.
One can understand the Tagals’ grief and desperation; all their blood and tears shed in vain! The friars triumphant after all!
I do not wish to trace the particulars of the wretched war that commenced February, 1899, and is still (October, 1900) proceeding.
In it the Americans do not seem to have displayed the resourcefulness and adaptability one would have expected from them. For my part, I expected a great deal, for so many American generals being selected from men in the active exercise of a profession, or perhaps controlling the administration of some vast business, they ought naturally to have developed their faculties, by constant use, to a far greater degree than men who have vegetated in the futile routine of a barrack or military station. They prevailed in every encounter, but their advance was very slow, and their troops suffered many preventible hardships. We know very little as to what happened, for the censors, acting under instructions from General Otis, prevented the transmission of accurate information; nothing was cabled, except the accounts of victories gained by the American troops.
It would not be right, however, to pass over the fighting without rendering due tribute to the heroism of the American officers and soldiers.
Who can forget Colonel Funston’s gallant exploit in crossing the Rio Grande on a raft under fire with two companies of Kansas Infantry and enfilading the Tagals’ position? Or his leading part of same regiment in a charge upon an enemy’s earthwork near Santo Tomás, where he was wounded?
What could be finer than the late Colonel Stotsenburg’s leading of the Nebraska regiment in the attack on Quíngua, where he was killed? And since we are speaking of brave men, shall we not remember the late General Antonio Luna and his gallant rally of his army in the advance from Macabébe, when he fearlessly exposed himself on horseback to the American fire, riding along the front of his line? To justify the slow progress of the army, jungles, forests, swamps and hills were introduced on the perfectly flat arable land such as that around Malolos, Calumpit, and San Fernando, extending in fact all the way from Manila to Tarlac.[3] This country supports a dense population, and almost every bit of it has been under the plough for centuries. The only hill is Arayat. During the dry season, say from November to May or June, the soil is baked quite hard, and vehicles or guns can traverse any part of it with slight assistance from the pioneers. The only obstacles are the small rivers and creeks, mostly fordable, and having clumps of bamboos growing on their banks providing a perfect material for temporary bridges or for making rafts.
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[4] 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 arsenal 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 assurance 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 illustrate 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 Hoar, 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[5] with Mausers.... They assailed 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.