Shows the prematurity of a civil government set up under pressure of political expediency, and the disorders which followed.
Chapter XVI
[Governor Taft]—1903 403–436
Shows divers serious insurrections in various provinces amounting to what the Commission itself termed, in one instance, “a reign of terror”—situations so endangering the public safety that to fail to order out the army to quell the disturbances was neglect of plain duty, such neglect being due to a set policy of preserving the official fiction that peace prevailed, and that Benevolent Assimilation was a success.
Chapter XVII
[Governor Taft]—1903 (Continued) 437–445
Shows the essentially despotic, though theoretically benevolent, character of the Taft civil government of the Philippines, and its attitude toward the American business community in the Islands.
Chapter XVIII
[Governor Wright]—1904 446–498
Shows the change of the tone of the government under Governor Taft’s successor, his consequent popularity with his fellow-country men in the Islands, and his corresponding unpopularity with the Filipinos. Shows also a long series of massacres of pacificos by enemies of the American government between July and November, 1904, permitted out of super-solicitude lest ordering out the army and summarily putting a stop to said massacres might affect the presidential election in the United States unfavorably to Mr. Roosevelt, by reviving the notion that neither the Roosevelt Administration nor its predecessor had ever been frank with the country concerning the state of public order in the Islands.