Chapter XII

Otis and the War (Continued)

And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole matter gets vital.—Carlyle’s French Revolution.

There can surely be little doubt in any quarter that Mr. Root is, in intellectual endowment and equipment at least, one of the greatest, if he is not the greatest, of living American statesmen. Mankind will always yield due acclaim to men who, in great emergencies, see the essentials of a given situation, and at once proceed to get the thing done that ought to be done. Whether the war in the Philippines was regrettable or not, it had become, by midsummer of 1899, supremely important, from any rational and patriotic standpoint, to end it as soon as possible.

Mr. Root had not been in office as Secretary of War very long before fleets of troop-ships, carrying some twenty-five well-equipped volunteer regiments,[1] were swarming out of New York harbor bound for Manila by way of the Suez Canal, and out of the Golden Gate for the same destination via Honolulu. Nor was there any confusion as in the Cuban helter-skelter. Everything went as if by clockwork. Moreover, along with the new and ample force, went a clear, masterly, comprehensive plan of campaign, prepared, not by General Otis at Manila, but in the War Department at Washington, by officers already familiar with the islands.

It was the purpose of this government at last to demonstrate conclusively to the Filipino people that the representative of the United States at Manila was “the boss of the show,” and that Aguinaldo was not—a demonstration then sorely needed by the exigencies of American prestige. The purpose can readily be appreciated, but to understand the plan of campaign, and the method of its execution, somewhat of the geography of Luzon must now be considered. Before we approach the shores of Luzon and the city of Manila, however, let us consider from a distance, in a bird’s-eye view, as it were, the relation of Luzon to the rest of the archipelago, so as to know, in a comprehensive way, what we are “going out for to see.” We may as well pause at this point, long enough to learn all we will ever need to know, for the purposes of the scope of this narrative, concerning the general geography of the Philippine archipelago, and the governmental problems it presents. (See folding map at end of volume.)

It is a common saying that Paris is France. In the same sense Manila is the Philippines. In fact, the latter expression is more accurate than the former, for Manila, besides being the capital city of the country, and its chief port, is a city of over 200,000 people, while no one of the two or three cities next to it in rank in population had more than 20,000.[2] By parity of reasoning it may be said that Luzon was the Philippines, so far as the problem which confronted us when we went there was concerned, relatively both to the original conception in 1898 of the struggle for independence, its birth in 1899, its life, and its slow, lingering obstinate death in 1900–1902, in which last year the insurrection was finally correctly stated to be practically ended. To know just how and why this was true, is necessary to a clear understanding of that struggle, including not only its genesis and its exodus, but also its gospels, its acts, its revelations, and the multitudinous subsequent commentaries thereon.

The total land area of the Philippine archipelago, according to the American Census of 1903, is 115,000 square miles.[3] The area of Luzon, the principal island, on which Manila is situated, is 41,000 square miles, and that of Mindanao, the only other large island, is 36,000.[4] Between these two large islands, Luzon on the north, and Mindanao on the south, there are a number of smaller ones, but acquaintance with only six of these is essential to a clear understanding of the American occupation. Many Americans, too busy to have paid much attention to the Philippine Islands, which are, and must ever remain, a thing wholly apart from American life, have a vague notion that there are several thousand of them. This is true, in a way. American energy has made, for the first time in their history, an actual count of them, “including everything which at high tide appeared as a separate island.”[5] The work was done for our Census of 1903 by Mr. George R. Putnam, now head of the Lighthouse Board of the United States. Mr. Putnam, counted 3141 of them.[6] Of these, of course, many—many hundred perhaps—are merely rocks fit only for a resting place for birds. 2775, have an area of less than a square mile each, 262 have an area of between 1 and 10 square miles, 73 between 10 and 100 square miles, and 20 between 100 and 1000 square miles. This accounts for, and may dismiss at once from consideration 3130—all but 11. Most of these 3130 that are large enough to demand even so much as a single word here are poorly adapted to human habitation, being in most instances, without good harbors or other landing places, and usually covered either with dense jungle or inhospitable mountains, or both. Their total area is only about 8500 square miles, of the 115,500 square miles of land in the archipelago. None of them have ever had any political significance, either in Spain’s time, or our own, and therefore, the whole 3130 may at once be eliminated from consideration, leaving 11 only requiring any special notice at all—the 11 largest islands. Of these, Luzon and Mindanao have already been mentioned. The remaining 9, with their respective areas and populations, are:

IslandArea[7] in Square MilesPopulation[8]
Panay4,611743,646
Negros4,881560,776
Cebu1,762592,247
Bohol1,411243,148
Samar5,031222,690
Leyte2,722[9]357,641
Mindoro3,85128,361
Masbate1,23629,451
Paragua4,027[10]10,918
Total29,5322,788,878