The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

Is it me or Emilio Aguinaldo?

was a point of departure, in the matter of information, which served to acquaint them with all that had gone before. They resented the loss of prestige to American arms and desired to restore that prestige. While engaged in so doing, they became aware, during the Presidential year 1900, that the campaign of that year in the United States was based largely upon the pretence that the majority of the Filipinos welcomed our rule. Naturally, their experience led them to a very general and very cordial detestation of this pretence. For one thing, it was an unfair belittling of the actual military service they were rendering. People hate a lie whether they are able to trace its devious windings to its source or sources, or to analyze all its causes, or calculate all its possible effects, or not. The real rock-bottom falsehood, not as fully understood then as it became later, consisted in the impression sought to be produced at home, in order to get votes, that the great body of the Filipino people were not really in sympathy with their country’s struggle for freedom, and would be really glad tamely to accept the alien domination so benevolently offered by a superior people, but were being coerced into fighting through intimidation by a few selfish leaders acting for their own selfish ends. While our fighting generals in the field,—General MacArthur, for instance, whose interview with a newspaper man just after the fall of Malolos, in March, 1899, subsequently verified by him before the Senate Committee of 1902, has already been noticed—at first believed that it was only a faction that we had to contend with, they soon discovered that the whole people were loyal to Aguinaldo and the cause he represented. But, while the point as to how unanimous the resistance was remained a disputed matter for some little time among those of our people who did not have to “go up against it,” the most curious fact of that whole historic situation, to my mind, is the absolute identity of the disputed suggestion with that which had previously been used in like cases in all ages by the powerful against people struggling to be free, and the cotemporaneous absence of any notation of the coincidence by any conspicuous spectator of the drama, to say nothing of us smaller fry who bore the brunt of the war or any portion of it.

Those men of ’99 in the Philippines realized in 1900, vaguely it may be, but actually, that they were waging a war of conquest after the manner of the British as sung by Kipling, but under the hypocritical pretence that they were doing missionary work to improve the Filipino. They did not know whether the Filipinos could or could not run a decent government if permitted. It was too early to form any judgment. And even then there was no unanimous feeling that they could not. Brigadier-General Charles King, the famous novelist, who was in the fighting out there during the first half of 1899, was quoted in the Catholic Citizen, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in June, 1899, as having said in an interview given at Milwaukee:

There is no reason in the world why the people should not have the self-government which they so passionately desire, so far as their ability to carry it on goes.

The real reason why the war was being waged was stated with the honesty which heated public discussion always brings forth, by Hon. Charles Denby, a member of the Schurman Commission of 1899, in an article which appeared in the Forum for February, 1899, entitled “Why the Treaty Should be Ratified:”[3]

The cold, hard, practical question alone remains: “Will the possession of the islands benefit us as a nation?” If it will not, set them free to-morrow.

But in the same magazine, the Forum, for June, 1900, in other words to the very same audience, in an article whose title is a protest, “Do we Owe the Filipinos Independence?” we find this same distinguished diplomat sagaciously deferring to that not inconsiderable element of the American public which is opposed to wars for conquest, with the rank hypocrisy which must ever characterize a republic warring for gain against the ideals that made it great, thus:

A little time ought to be conceded to the Administration to ascertain what the wish of the people [meaning the people of the Philippine Islands] really is;[4]

adding some of the stale but ever-welcome salve originally invented by General Otis for use by Mr. McKinley on the public conscience of America, about the war having been “fomented by professional politicians,” and not having the moral support of the whole people. “A majority of the Filipinos are friendly to us,” he says. Even as early as January 4, 1900, in the New York Independent, we find Mr. Denby abandoning all his previous honesty of 1899 about “the cold, hard, practical question,” and rubbing his hands with invisible soap to the tune of the following hypocrisy:

Let us find out how many of the people want independence, and how many are willing to remain loyal to our government. It is believed a large majority [etc.].[5]