The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

In his Circular Order No. 5, dated Batangas, December 13, 1901,[31] General Bell announced that General Orders No. 100, Adjutant General’s Office, 1863, approved and published by order of President Lincoln, for the government of the armies of the United States in the field, would thereafter be regarded as the guide of his subordinates in the conduct of the war. This order is familiar to all who have ever made any study of military law. Ordinarily, of course, a captured enemy is entitled to “the honors of war,” i. e., he must be held, housed, and fed, unless exchanged, until the close of the war. But where an enemy places himself by his conduct without the pale of the laws of war, i. e., where he does not “play the game according to the rules,” he may be killed on sight, like other outlaws.

Under General Orders No. 100, 1863, men and squads of men who, without commission, without being part or portion of the regularly organized hostile army, fight occasionally only, and with intermittent returns to their homes and avocations, and frequent assumption of the semblance of peaceful pursuits, divesting themselves of the character and appearance of soldiers; armed prowlers seeking to cut telegraph wires, destroy bridges and the like, etc., are not entitled to the protection of the laws of war and may be shot on sight. In other words, the game being one of life and death, you must take even chances with your opponent. General Bell’s defenders on the floor of the Senate simply relied on General Orders No. 100. However, there is nothing about reconcentration in that order. We learned that from the Spaniards. In fact we never did succeed in bringing to terms the far Eastern colonies we bought from Spain, until we adopted her methods with regard to them. Another of the expedients adopted by General Bell in Batangas seems harsh, but it was used by Wellington in the latter end of the Napoleonic wars, and by the Germans in the latter end of the Franco-Prussian War. It was to promise the inhabitants of a given territory that whenever a telegraph wire or pole was cut the country within a stated radius thereof, including all human habitations, would be devastated. It is in General Bell’s Circular Order No. 7 of December 15, 1901,[32] that we find the genesis of the idea of basing tactics used by Weyler in Cuba on Mr. Lincoln’s General Order 100. He there says:

Though Section 17, General Orders 100, authorizes the starving of unarmed hostile belligerents as well as armed ones, provided it leads to a speedier subjection of the enemy, it is considered neither justifiable nor desirable to permit any person to starve who has come into towns under our control seeking protection.

This order goes on to direct that all food supplies encountered be brought to the towns. Of course this does not mean supplies captured from the enemy’s forces, which may lawfully be destroyed at once. To those not familiar with reconcentration tactics it should be explained that reconcentration means this: You notify, by proclamation and otherwise, all persons within a given area, that on and after a certain day they must all leave their homes and come within a certain prescribed zone or radius of which a named town is usually the centre, there to remain until further orders, and that all persons found outside that zone after the date named will be treated as public enemies. General Bell’s order of December 20th, provided that rice found in the possession of families outside the protected zone should, if practicable, be moved with them to the town which was the centre of the zone, that that found apparently cached for enemy’s use should be confiscated, and also destroyed if necessary.

Whenever it is found absolutely impossible to transport it [any food supply] to a point within the protected zone, it will be burned or otherwise destroyed. These rules will apply to all food products.

No person within the reconcentration zones was permitted to go outside thereof—cross the dead line—without a written pass. The Circular Order of December 23d, apparently solicitous lest subordinate commanders might become infected with the Taft belief in Filipino affection, directs that after January 1, 1902, all the municipal officials, members of the police force, etc., “who have not fully complied with their duty by actively aiding the Americans and rendering them valuable service,” shall be summarily thrown into prison.[33] Circular Order No. 19, issued on Christmas Eve, 1901, provided that,

in order to make the existing state o£ war and martial law so inconvenient and unprofitable to the people that they will earnestly desire and work for the re-establishment of peace and civil government,

subordinate commanders might, under certain prescribed restrictions, put everybody they chose to work on the roads.[34] This was an ingenious blow at the wealthy and soft-handed, intended to superinduce submission by humbling their pride. Note also the seeds of affection thus sown for the civil government under the reconstruction period which was to follow. In one of Dickens novels there occurs a law firm by the name of Spenlow and Jorkins. Mr. Spenlow was quite fond of considering himself, and of being considered by others, as tender-hearted. Mr. Jorkins did not mind. When the widow and the orphan would plead with Mr. Spenlow to stay the foreclosure of a mortgage, that benevolent soul would tell them, with a pained expression of infinite sympathy, that he would do all he could for them, but that they would have to see Mr. Jorkins, “who is a very exacting man,” he would say. In the dual American politico-military régime in the Philippines of 1901–02, Governor Taft was the Mr. Spenlow, General Chaffee the Mr. Jorkins. But the former always seemed to harbor the amiable delusion that the Filipinos did not at all consider the firm as the movants in each proceeding against them, and that on the contrary they were sure to make a favorable contrast in their hearts between the kindness of Mr. Spenlow and the harshness of Mr. Jorkins. He seemed blind to the fact that the Filipinos, in considering what was done by any of us, spelled us—U. S.

General Bell’s Circular Order No. 22, also a Christmas Eve product, re-iterates the usual purpose to make the people yearn for civil government, and the usual warning that none of them really and truly want the blessings of American domination and Benevolent Assimilation as they truly should, and adds:

To combat such a population, it is necessary to make the state of war as insupportable as possible; and there is no more efficacious way of accomplishing this than by keeping the minds of the people in such a state of anxiety and apprehension that living under such conditions will soon become unbearable. Little should be said. The less said the better. Let acts, not words, convey intentions.[35]