Catbalogan, Samar, P. I.,
September 22, 1904.
His honor, the Judge of First Instance of this province,
Catbalogan, Samar, P. I.
Sir:
I have the honor to bring to the knowledge of the court that last night between 12 and 1 o’clock, the accused person Ramon Boroce died in consequence of the disease of beriberi from which he has been suffering; which fact I have the honor to communicate to the court for its superior knowledge.
Very respectfully,
Gonzalo Lucero,
Warden of the Provincial Jail.
Now a jail death-rate of only ten or twelve a month was not at all a bad record for an insurrection in a Philippine province. It would be rank demagoguery at this late date to be a party to anybody’s getting excited about it. I was rather proud of it by comparison with the jail death-rate of the Albay insurrection of the year before, where 120 men had died in the jail in about six months. But it began to get on one’s nerves to have to expect a billet-doux like the above on your desk at the opening of court each day, when the accused person had had no commitment trial and may have been wholly innocent. It all came back to the difference between war and peace, viz., that in war it is to be expected that many innocent persons will suffer, but that in peace only the guilty should suffer. Moreover, in war that admits it is war, your agents, your army, are better able to handle crowds of prisoners than native police and constabulary, and the percentage of innocent who suffer with the guilty in such war will be far less; whereas the contrary is true of war—waged by constabulary checked by courts—which pretends that a state of peace exists, i.e., which pretends there is no need for declaring martial law and calling on your army.
It was this Samar insurrection which convinced me that waging war with courts and constabulary in lieu of the recognized method was, in its net results, the cruelest kind of war, and that the civil government of the Philippines was a failure, in so far as regarded Mr. McKinley’s original injunction to the Taft Commission; where, after alluding to the articles of capitulation of the city of Manila to our forces, which concluded with the words:
This city, its inhabitants * * * and its private property of all descriptions * * * are placed under the special safeguard of the faith and honor of the American Army,