The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

Mr. Taft would be very glad to have Congress declare frankly that it is the purpose of this Government to hold the Philippines permanently, i. e., permanently so far as the word means continuance of the “uplift” treatment long after everybody now on the earth is beneath it. But because public opinion in the United States is so much divided as to the wisdom of a policy of frankly avowed intention permanently to retain the islands, he prefers to leave the whole matter open and undetermined, so as to get the support both of those who think a definite programme of permanent retention righteous and those who think such a programme vicious. He wishes to please both sides of a moral issue, on the idea that, as the present policy is in his individual judgment best for all concerned, the end justifies the means. Yet, as the issue is a moral one, which concerns the cause of representative government throughout the world, and a strategic one which concerns the national defence, it should, in my judgment, no longer be dodged, but squarely met. You constantly hear President Taft talking quite out loud here at home, in his public utterances, about the great politico-missionary work we are doing in the Philippines by furnishing them with the most approved up-to-date methods for the pursuit of happiness, the avoidance of graft in government, the elimination of crimes of violence, in short the ideal way to minimize the ills that human governments are heir to, while every day and every dollar spent out there by Americans induced by him to go there, are time and money tensely arrayed against the ultimate independence he purports to favor. Give the Americans out there a square deal. Let them know whether we are going to keep the islands or whether we are not. Honesty is a far better policy than the present policy. The Americans in the islands, Mr. Taft’s agents in the Philippines, talk no uncandid and misleading stuff about the Philippines being exclusively for the Filipinos. And they do considerable talking. They need looking after, if the present pious fiction is to be kept up at this end of the line. Nobody in the Philippines to-day, among the Americans, considers talk about independence as anything other than political buncombe very hampering to their work. Listen to this high official of the insular government, who writes in the North American Review for February, 1912:

The somewhat blatant note with which we at the beginning proclaimed our altruistic purposes in the Philippines has died away into a whisper. To say much about it is to incur a charge of hypocrisy.[5]

The most important problem which confronted Mr. McKinley when he sent Judge Taft to the Philippines was how to so handle the supreme question of public order as to avoid any necessity of having to ask Congress later for more volunteers to replace those whose terms of enlistment would expire June 30, 1901. We have already reviewed the strenuous efforts of General MacArthur during the twelve months immediately following the arrival of the Taft Commission in June, 1900, to get rid of the shadow of this necessity by the date named, the regular army having been reorganized meantime and considerably increased by the Act of February 2, 1901. On March 22, 1901, while the Taft Commission was going around the islands with their Federal party folk, holding out the prospect of office to those who would quit insurging and come in and be good, General MacArthur reported progress to Secretary of War Root by cable as follows: “Hope report cessation of hostilities before June 30.”[6] His idea was to get a good military grip on the situation, if possible, by that time, and, as a corollary, of course, that the grip thus obtained should be diligently retained for a long time, not loosened, so that the disturbed conditions incident to many years of war might have a few years, at least, in which to settle. In his annual report dated July 4, 1901, the date of the inauguration of Judge Taft as “Civil Governor,” he says, in regard to the imperative necessity for continuing the military grip by keeping on hand sufficient forces:

Anything in the immediate future calculated to impede the activity or reduce the efficiency of these instruments will not only be a menace to the present, but put in jeopardy the entire future of American possibilities in the archipelago.[7]

General MacArthur believed in keeping the islands permanently. His views were frankly imperialistic. He had no salve to offer to the conscience of pious thrift at home anxious to believe that the Filipinos were not bitterly opposed to our rule, and very much in favor of what was supposed to be a glittering opening for Trade Expansion. He was thoroughly imbued with the British colonial idea known as The White Man’s Burden. On the other hand, Governor Taft firmly believed that kindness would cure the desire of the people for independence. The difference between these two gentlemen was fully ventilated afterward before the Senate Committee of 1902. A statement of General MacArthur’s embodying the crux of this difference was read to Governor Taft by Senator Carmack, and the Governor’s reply was:

We did not then agree with that statement, and we do not now agree with it.[8]

A little later, in the same connection, he said to the same Senate Committee, with the cheery tolerance of conflicting views which comes only from entire confidence in the soundness of one’s own:

I have been called the Mark Tapley of this Philippine business.

There is no doubt about the fact that President Taft is an optimist. But while optimism is a very blessed thing in a sick-room or a financial panic, it is a very poor substitute for powder and lead in putting down an insurrection, or in weaning people from a desire for independence accentuated by a long war waged for that purpose, especially when your kindness must be accompanied by assurances to the objects of it that on account of a lack of sufficient intelligence they are not fit for the thing they want. It was upon a programme of this sort that Governor Taft entered upon the task of reconciling the Filipinos to American rule more than ten years ago. The impossibility of the task is of course obvious enough from the mere statement of it. The subsequent bitterness between him and the military authorities was quite carefully and very properly kept from the American public because it might get back to the Filipino public. The military folk knew that to go around the country setting up provincial and municipal governments, carrying a liberal pay-roll, with diligent contemporaneous circulation of the knowledge that anybody who would quit fighting would stand a good chance to get an office, would seem to many of the Filipinos a confession of weakness and fear, sure to cause trouble later. Many of them—of course it would be inappropriate to mention names—simply did not believe that Mr. Taft was honest in his absurd notion. They simply damned “politics” for meddling with war, and let it go at that. But the real epic pathos of the whole thing was that Mr. Taft was actually sincere. He believed that the majority of the Philippine people were for him and his policies. As late as 1905, he seems to have clung to this idea, according to various accounts by Senators Newlands, Dubois, and others, in magazine articles written after their return from a trip to the Philippines in that year in company with Mr. Taft, then Secretary of War. In fact so impressed were they with the general discontent out there, and yet so considerate of their good friend Mr. Taft’s feelings in the matter and his confidence that the Filipinos loved benevolent alien domination, that one of them simply contented himself with the remark:

When we left the islands I do not believe there was a single member of our party who was not sorry we own them, except Secretary Taft himself.