(3) Because from one of the islands through which the northern line of the Treaty of Paris runs, situated only a pleasant morning’s journey in a launch due north of Aparri, the northernmost town of Luzon, you can see, on a clear day, with a good field-glass, the southern end of Formosa, some 60 or 70 miles away. Japan can land an army on American soil at Aparri any time she wants to, overnight—an army several times that of the total American force now in the Philippines,[48] or likely ever to be there. From Aparri it is 70 miles up the river to Tueguegarao, 40 more to Iligan, and 90 more, all fairly good marching, to Bayombong, in Nueva Viscaya (total distance, Aparri to Bayombong, 200 miles) the province which lies in the heart of the watershed of Central Luzon. I know what I am talking about, because that region was the first judicial district I presided over, and many a hard journey I have had over it, circuit riding, on a scrubby pony. Part of it I have been through in the company of President Taft. It thus appears that from Aparri to Bayombong there would be but a week or ten days of unresisted marching to reach the watershed region, Nueva Viscaya. The Japanese soldier’s ration is mainly rice, so that he can carry more days’ travel rations than almost any other soldier in the world. Never fear about their making the journey inside of a week or ten days, once they start. To descend from the watershed aforesaid, over the Caranglan Pass, and down the valley of the Rio Grande de Pampanga to Manila, another three or four days would be all that would be needed. It would be a Japanese picnic. Fortifying Corregidor Island, at the entrance to Manila Bay, which is about all the serious scheme of defence against a foreign foe we have out there, is quite like the reliance of the Spaniards on Morro Castle, at the mouth of the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, against our landing at Guantanamo. Our garrison in the Philippines, all told, is but a handful. Aparri is an absolutely unfortified seaport, at which the Japanese could land an army overnight from the southern end of Formosa. There are no military fortifications whatsoever to stay the advance of an invading army from Aparri down the Cagayan Valley, and thence over the watershed of Nueva Viscaya Province, through the Caranglan Pass, and down the valley of the Pampanga River to Manila. So that to-day Japan can take Manila inside of two weeks any time she wants to. That is why I object to the President’s “jollying” the situation along as best he can, without taking the American people into his confidence. Any army officer at our War College will inform any member of the House or Senate on inquiry, that Japan can take the Philippines any time she wants to. President Taft and the Mikado may keep on exchanging the most cordial cablegrams imaginable, but the map-making goes on just the same. And, earnest and sincere as both the President and the Emperor undoubtedly are in their desire to preserve the general peace, who is going to restrain Hobson and Hearst, and several of Japan’s public men equally distinguished and equally inflammatory? Heads of nations cannot restrain gusts of popular passion. The Pacific Coast is not so friendly to Japan as the rest of our country, and as between Japan and the Pacific Coast, we are pretty apt to stand by the latter without inquiring with meticulous nicety into any differences that may arise.
The reason I said in the chapter before this one that Mr. Root is a dangerous man to Republican institutions was because he is of the type who are constantly finding situations which they consider it best for the people not to know about. After the McKinley election of 1900 was safely “put over,” Mr. Root, as Secretary of War, let Judge Taft go ahead and ride his dove-of-peace hobby-horse in the Philippines, duly repeating to the American people all the cheery Taft cluckings to said horse, at a time when the real situation is indicated by such grim correspondence as the following cablegram dated January 29, 1901:
Wood, Havana: Secretary of War is desirous to know if you can give your consent to the immediate withdrawal Tenth Infantry from Cuba. Imperative that we have immediate use of every available company we can lay our hands on for service in the Philippines. (Signed) Corbin.[49]
But let us turn from this sorry spectacle of Mr. Root pulling the wool over the eyes of his countrymen to make them believe the Filipinos were not quite so unconsenting as they seemed to be, and again look at the sheer splendor of American military ability to get anything done the Government wants done. I refer to the capture of Aguinaldo.
One of the most eminent lawyers in this country once said to me, “I would not let that man Funston enter my house.” I tried to enlighten him, but as I happened to be a guest in his house at the time, which entitled him to exemption from light if he insisted—which he did—General Funston and he have continued to miss what might have been a real pleasure to them both. The following is, as briefly as I can dispose of it, the story of the capture of Aguinaldo on March 23, 1901.
Ever since Aguinaldo had escaped through our lines in November, 1899, his capture had been the one great consummation most devoutly wished. It has already been shown how busy with the war the army was all the time Judge Taft was gayly jogging away astride of his peace hobby about the insurrection being really quite regretted and over. However, in the favorite remark with which he used to wave the insurrection into thin air, to the effect that it was now merely “a Mafia on a large scale,” there was one element of truth. The general feeling of the people, both educated and uneducated, was such as to countenance the attitude of the leaders that pro-American tendencies were treason. Any leader who surrendered of course was thereafter an object of at least some suspicion to his fellow-countrymen, however assiduous his subsequent double-dealing. As long as Aguinaldo remained out, this state of affairs was sure to continue indefinitely, possibly for years to come. If captured, he would probably himself give up the struggle, and use his influence with the rest to do likewise. Therefore, in the spring of 1901, each and every one of General MacArthur’s 70,000 men was, and had been since 1899, on the qui vive to make his own personal fortunes secure for life, and gain lasting military distinction, by taking any sort of chances to capture Aguinaldo. On February 8, 1901, an officer of General Funston’s district, the Fourth, in central Luzon, intercepted a messenger bearing despatches from Aguinaldo to one of his generals of that region, directing the general (Lacuna) to send some reinforcements to him, Aguinaldo. General Funston’s headquarters were then at San Fernando, in the province of Pampanga—organized as a “civil” government province by act of the Taft Commission just five days later.[50] Through these despatches and their bearer, General Funston ascertained the hiding-place of the insurgent chieftain to be at a place called Palanan, in the mountains of Isabela Province, in northeastern Luzon, near the Pacific Coast. Early in the war we had availed ourselves of a certain tribe, or clan, known as the Maccabebes, who look nowise different from all other Filipinos, but who had, under the Spanish government, by reason of long-standing feuds with their more rebellious neighbors, come to be absolutely loyal to the Spanish authorities. When we came they had transferred that loyalty to us, and had now become a recognized and valuable part of our military force. So it occurred to General Funston; “Why not personate the reinforcements called for, the American officers to command the expedition assuming the rôle of captured American prisoners?” The plan was submitted to General MacArthur and adopted. A picked company of Maccabebes was selected, consisting of about eighty men, and General Funston decided to go himself, taking with him on the perilous expedition four young officers of proven mettle: Captain Harry W. Newton, 34th Infantry, U. S. Volunteers, now a captain of the Coast Artillery; Captain R. T. Hazzard, 11th Volunteer Cavalry; Lieutenant O. P. M. Hazzard, his brother, of the same regiment, the latter now an officer of the regular army, and Lieutenant Mitchell, “my efficient aid.”[51] March 6, 1901, the U.S.S. Vicksburg slipped quietly out of Manila Bay, bearing the participants in the desperate enterprise—as desperate an undertaking as the heart and brain of a soldier ever carried to a successful conclusion. General Thomas H. Barry wrote Secretary of War Root, after they left, telling of their departure, and stating that he did not much expect ever to see them again. The chances were ten to one that the eighty men would meet five or ten times their number, and, as they were to masquerade as troops of the enemy, they could not complain, under the recognized laws of war as to spies, at being summarily shot if captured alive. And the whole Filipino people were a secret service ready to warn Aguinaldo, should the carefully concocted ruse be discovered anywhere along the journey. They went down to the southern end of Luzon, and through the San Bernardino Straits into the Pacific Ocean, and thence up the east coast of Luzon to Casiguran Bay, about 100 miles south of Palanan, landing at Casiguran Bay, March 14th. The “little Macks,” as General Funston calls the Maccabebes, were made to discard their dapper American uniforms after they got aboard the ship, and don instead a lot of nondescript clothing gathered by the military authorities at Manila before the Vicksburg sailed, so as to resemble the average insurgent command. Not a man of them had been told of the nature of the expedition before sailing. This was not for fear of treachery, but lest some one of the faithful “Macks” should get his tongue loosed by hospitality before departing. Also, their Krag-Jorgensen regulation rifles were taken from them, and a miscellaneous assortment of old Springfields, Mausers, etc., given them instead, to complete the deception. An ex-insurgent officer, well known to Aguinaldo, but now in General Funston’s employ, was to play the rôle of commanding officer of the “reinforcements.” To read General Funston’s account of this expedition is a more convincing rebuttal of the contemporaneous Taft denials of Filipino hostility and of the unanimity of the feeling of the people against us, than a thousand quotations from official documents could ever be. It was necessary to land more than 100 miles south of Aguinaldo’s hiding-place, lest the smoke of the approaching vessel should be sighted from a distance, and some peasant or lookout give the alarm. Accordingly, they landed at Casiguran Bay by night, with the ship’s lights screened, the Vicksburg at once departing out of sight of land, and agreeing to meet them off Palanan, their destination, on March 25th, eleven days later. From the beginning they vigilantly and consummately played the rôle planned, the “Macks” having been drilled on the way up, each and all, in the story they were to tell at the first village near Casiguran Bay, and everywhere thereafter, to the effect that they had come across country, and en route had met ten American soldiers out map-making, and had killed two, wounded three, and captured five. They were to point to General Funston and the four other Americans in corroboration of their story. Speaking of himself and his four fellow “prisoners,” General Funston says, “We were a pretty scrubby looking lot of privates.” The villagers received the patriot forces, thus flushed with triumph, in an appropriate manner, and supplied them with rations and guides for the rest of their 100-mile journey to the headquarters of the “dictator.” General Funston is even at pains to say for the village officials that they were very humane and courteous to himself and the other four American “prisoners.” They reached Palanan Bay, eight miles from Palanan, on March 22d. Here Hilario Tal Placido, the ex-insurgent officer whose rôle in the present thrilling drama was that of “commanding officer” of the expedition, sent a note to Aguinaldo, stating that he had halted his command for a rest at the beach preparatory to marching inland and reporting to the Honorable Presidente, that they were very much exhausted, and much in need of food, and please to send him some. Of course that was the natural card to play to put Aguinaldo off his guard. The food came, and the bearers returned and casually reported to the Honorable Presidente that his honorable reinforcements would soon be along, much to the honorable joy—to make the thing a little Japanesque—of the president of the honorable republic. This incident has been since made the occasion of some criticism—that it was contrary to decency to accept Aguinaldo’s food and then attack him afterwards. General Funston very properly replies in effect that the case would have been very different had he thrown himself on Aguinaldo’s mercy, taken his food, and used treachery afterwards, but that his conduct was entirely correct, under the code of war, for the reason that should he and his command be captured while personating enemy’s forces, Aguinaldo would have had a perfect right, under the rules of the game, to shoot them all as spies. He adds rather savagely, concerning “certain ladylike persons in the United States” who have censured his course in the matter, that he “would be very much interested in seeing the results of a surgical operation performed on the skull of a man who cannot readily see the radical difference between the two propositions,” and that he doubts if a good quality of calf brains would be revealed by the operation.
At all events, the expedition was very much refreshed by the food and highly delighted at the proof, contained in the sending of it, that Aguinaldo did not suspect a ruse. But now came one of the many emergencies which had to be met by quick wit in the course of that memorable adventure. Aguinaldo sent word to leave the “prisoners” under a guard in one of the huts by the sea-shore, where there was one of the Aguinaldo retainers in charge, an old Tagalo. After a hurried, whispered conversation, “prisoner” Funston instructed “Commanding Officer” Placido to go ahead with his main column and then a little later send back a forged written order purporting to be from Aguinaldo, for the “prisoners” to come on also. This was shown to the old Tagalo, thus disarming suspicion on his part. But now came the “closest shave” they had. The column met a detachment from Aguinaldo’s headquarters sent down with instructions to relieve the necessarily worn-out guard of the newly arrived “re-inforcements” that were supposed to be guarding the five prisoners at the beach, and let said guard come on up to headquarters with the rest of the “re-inforcements,” the idea being to still leave the prisoners at the beach so they would not learn definitely as to the Aguinaldo whereabouts. Detaining the officer commanding this detachment for a moment or so on some pretext, the “Commanding Officer” of the “re-inforcements” whispered to a Maccabebe corporal to run back and tell General Funston and the rest of the “prisoners” to jump in the bushes and hide. This they did, lying within thirty feet of the detachment, as it passed them en route for the beach. Of course a fight would have meant considerable firing, and the quarry might hear it, take fright, and escape. Finally they reached Palanan, the “prisoners” quite far in the rear. Placido got safely into Aguinaldo’s presence, followed at a short distance by the main body of his Maccabebes. Aguinaldo’s life-guard of some fifty men, neatly uniformed, presented arms as Placido entered the insurgent headquarters building, and thereafter waited at attention outside. Then the worthy Placido entertained the honorable Presidente with a few cock-and-bull stories about the march across country, etc., made obediently to the President’s order, keeping a weather eye out of the window all the time. As soon as the Maccabebes had come up and formed facing the Aguinaldo life-guard, Placido went to the window and ordered them to open fire. This they did, killing two of the insurgents and wounding their commanding officer. The rest fled, panic-stricken, by reason of the surprise. Then Placido, a very stout individual, grabbed Aguinaldo, who only weighs about 115 pounds, threw him down, and sat on him, until General Funston, the Hazzards, Mitchell, and Newton arrived. The orders were iron-clad that under no circumstances, if it could be avoided, was Aguinaldo to be killed. His signature to proclamations telling the people to quit the war was going to be needed too much. The party rested two days and then set out for the coast again, on March 25th, the day the Vicksburg had agreed to meet them. “At noon” says General Funston, “we again saw the Pacific, and far out on it a wisp of smoke—the Vicksburg coming in!” In due course they reached Manila Bay. The old palace of the Spanish captains-general, then occupied by our commanding general, is up the Pasig River, accessible from the bay by launch. By that method General Funston took his precious prisoner to the palace without the knowledge of a soul in the great city of Manila. He arrived before General MacArthur had gotten up. In a few minutes the General came out. “Where is Aguinaldo?” said he, dryly. He supposed General Funston simply had some details to tell, like the commanding officers of hundreds of other expeditions that had gone out before that on false scents in search of the illustrious but elusive Presidente. “Right here in this house,” said General Funston. General MacArthur could hardly believe his ears. A few days later, General Funston walked into General MacArthur’s office. The latter said; “Well, Funston, they do not seem to have thought much in Washington of your performance. I am afraid you have got into trouble.” “At the same time he handed me,” says General Funston in the Scribner Magazine article above mentioned, “a cablegram announcing my appointment as a brigadier-general in the regular army.”
In his annual report for 1901,[52] General MacArthur describes the capture of Aguinaldo as “the most momentous single event of the year,” stating also that “Aguinaldo was the incarnation of the insurrection.” This last statement explains why he was so anxious to capture him alive. If dead, he would be sure to get re-incarnated in the person of some able assistant of his entourage, thus insuring undisturbed continuance of the war. He was most graciously treated by General MacArthur during his stay as that distinguished soldier’s “guest” at the Malacañan palace, from March 28th until April 20th. The word “guest” is placed in quotations because the host thought so much of him that he considered him worth many hundred times his weight in gold, and had him watched night and day by a commissioned officer. Everything that had been done by the Americans since November, 1899, was explained to him, and he was made to see that our purposes with regard to his people were not only benevolent but also inflexible; in other words that there was no altering our determination to make his people happy whether they were willing or not. Seeing this, Aguinaldo bowed to the inevitable. The programme explained to Aguinaldo is wittily described by a very bright Englishwoman as a plan “to have lots of American school teachers at once set to work to teach the Filipino English and at the same time keep plenty of American soldiers around to knock him on the head should he get a notion that he is ready for self-government before the Americans think he is”—a quaint scheme, she adds, “and one characteristic of the dauntlessness of American energy.” To be brief, on April 19th, Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the American Government, which all agree he has faithfully observed ever since, and issued a proclamation recommending abandonment of further resistance. This proclamation was at once published by General MacArthur and signalized by the immediate liberation of one thousand prisoners of war, on their likewise taking the oath of allegiance. In his proclamation Aguinaldo said, among other things:
The time has come, however, when they [the Filipino people] find their advance along this path [the path of their aspirations] impeded by an irresistible force. * * * Enough of blood, enough of tears and desolation.
He concludes by announcing his final unconditional submission to American sovereignty and advises others to do likewise.[53]