[19] November 1, 1913.
[20] Speaker of the Assembly.
Chapter XXVI
Murder As a Governmental Agency
In discussing the prevalence of slavery in the Philippine Islands, Sr. Manuel Quezon has stated that it has never existed there as an institution. This is true, to the extent at least that it has never been recognized as a legal institution, nor directed nor authorized by order of any competent governmental authority. The same statements cannot be truthfully made with reference to murder, as I shall conclusively show by the records of the Insurgent government.
I wish at the outset to draw a sharp line between acts of barbarity or ferocity, committed without authority by ignorant and irresponsible Insurgent officers or soldiers during the heat of battle or as the result of passions aroused by armed strife, and those which I now discuss. The former must be regarded as breaches of military discipline. Aguinaldo sought to protect his government from their consequences by issuing endless orders in Spanish strictly forbidding them.
His troops were ordered again and again to respect American prisoners and treat them with humanity.
So far as concerns his own people, however, he displayed a very different spirit from the outset.
As we have already noted there exists among the Insurgent records a document written in Tagálog by him, and therefore obviously not intended for the information of Americans, which contains the following:—