The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

No, President Taft can never make General MacArthur “the goat” for what General Bell had to do in Batangas Province in 1901–02 to make our “willing” subjects behave. Nor can the ultimate responsibility before the bar of history for the awful fact that, according to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Atlas of the Philippines of 1899, the population of Batangas Province was 312,192, and according to the American Census of the Philippines of 1903 it was 257,715,[28] rest entirely on military shoulders. An attempt to place the responsibility for the prematurity of the civil government on General MacArthur was made by Honorable Henry C. Ide, who was of the Taft Commission of 1900, and later Governor General of the Islands, and is now Minister to Spain, in the North American Review for December, 1907. But Mr. Taft, a man of nobler mould, has at least maintained a decorous silence on the subject except when interrogated by Congress, and when so interrogated, his testimony, above quoted, if analyzed, places the responsibility where it honestly belongs. In 1900 the Taft Commission were not taking much military advice.

Batangas province was first taken under the wing of the peace-at-any-price policy by the Act of the Taft Commission of May 2, 1901, entitled “An Act Extending the Provisions of ‘the Provincial Government Act’[29] to the Province of Batangas.” By the Act of the Commission of July 17, 1901, the provinces of Batangas, Cebu, and Bohol, were restored to military control. When the civil authorities turned those provinces back to military control, they well knew the frame of mind the military were in, and there is no escape from the proposition that they, in effect, said to the military: “Take them and chasten them; go as far as you like. After you are done with them, it will be time enough to pet them again. But for the present we mean business.” General Bell was scathingly criticised on the floor of the United States Senate for what he did in Batangas in 1901–02, but by the time he took hold there it had become a case of “spare the rod and spoil the child.” The substitution by the Commission of kindness, and a disposition to forget what the Filipinos could not forget, for firmness and the policy of making them submit unreservedly to the inevitable,—viz., abandonment of their dream of independence—had created among them a well-nigh ineradicable impression that, for some reason or other, whether due to disapproval in the United States of the so-called “imperial” policy or what not, we were afraid of them. General Bell’s task in Batangas, therefore, was to eradicate this impression all over the archipelago by making an example of the Batangas people.

In General Chaffee’s report for 1902,[30] he prefaces his account of General Bell’s operations in Batangas as follows:

The long-continued resistance in the province of Batangas and in certain parts of the bordering provinces of Tayabas, Laguna, and Cavite, had made it apparent to me and to others that the insurrectionary force keeping up the struggle there could exist and maintain itself only through the connivance and knowledge of practically all the inhabitants; that it received the active support of many who professed friendship for United States authority, etc.

This last was a thrust at Governor Taft’s new-found Filipino friends and advisers, in whose lack of sympathy with the cause of their country the Governor so profoundly believed, but in whose continuing co-operation in the killing of his soldiers General Chaffee believed still more profoundly.

General Bell’s famous operations on a large scale in Batangas began January 1, 1902. The great mistake of the Civil Commission, to which they adhered so long, was in supposing that when the respectable military element of the insurgents was pursued to capture or surrender, these last could and would thereafter control the situation. As a matter of fact, whether they could or not, they did not.

In his celebrated circular order dated Batangas, December 9, 1901, General Bell announced:

To all Station Commanders:

A general conviction, which the brigade commander shares, appears to exist, that the insurrection in this brigade continues because the greater part of the people, especially the wealthy ones, pretend to desire, but do not in reality want peace; that when all really want peace, we can have it promptly. Under such circumstances, it is clearly indicated that a policy should be adopted that will, as soon as possible, make the people want peace and want it badly.

The only acceptable and convincing evidence of the real sentiments of either individuals or town councils should be such acts publicly performed as must inevitably commit them irrevocably to the side of Americans by arousing the animosity of the insurgent element. * * * No person should be given credit for loyalty simply because he takes the oath of allegiance, or secretly conveys to Americans worthless information and idle rumors which result in nothing. Those who publicly guide our troops to the camps of the enemy, who publicly identify insurgents, who accompany troops in operations against the enemy, who denounce and assist in arresting the secret enemies of the Government, who publicly obtain and bring reliable and valuable information to commanding officers, those in fact who publicly array themselves against the insurgents, and for Americans, should be trusted and given credit for loyalty, but no others. No person should be given credit for loyalty solely on account of having done nothing for or against us so far as known. Neutrality should not be tolerated. Every inhabitant of this brigade should be either active friend or be classed as enemy.