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?