Very truly yours,
Geo. R. Harvey,
Assistant Attorney-General, Philippines Constabulary.
To Hon. James H. Blount,
Judge of First Instance, Catbalogan, Samar, P. I.
These two letters may be found at p. 2532, Congressional Record, February 25, 1908, where they were the subject of remark in the House of Representatives by Hon. Thomas W. Hardwick of Georgia, apropos of Governor Ide’s North American Review article of December, 1907.
A few weeks after the presidential election I saw Mr. Harvey in Manila. We naturally talked about Samar and his two letters to me. The troops had then been ordered out. He referred to his conference with the Governor-General and stated, “Yes, he told me that was the reason,” meaning that the reason for not ordering out the troops was the one assigned in his (Harvey’s) letter to me, viz., “Whatever we do aggressively might be misconstrued and made use of as political capital.”
On October 18, 1904, there was received at Manila the following cablegram concerning the presidential campaign in the United States:
New York, 16th. Judge Parker, in addressing campaign clubs at Esopus the past week returned to the subject of the Philippines in the evident hope of making it a paramount issue of the campaign. He repeated his former declaration that the retention of the Philippines and the carrying out of the policy of the Republican Administration have cost six hundred and fifty millions of dollars and two hundred thousand lives. Secretary of War Taft, in addressing a mass meeting held in Baltimore, Saturday night, ridiculed Judge Parker’s statement and characterized his figures as alarmist.
Of course Judge Parker’s figures were rather high—of which more anon. He was not going to miss anything in the way of a chance of “getting a rise” out of the Administration, by understatement. But some statement from the Philippines at once became a supremely important desideratum, to counterbalance Judge Parker’s over-statement, some optimism to meet the Parker pessimism. Encouraged by the public interest aroused by the figures furnished him, and the consequent apparent uneasiness it created in “the enemy’s camp,” Judge Parker soon had the whole Philippine group of islands going to “the demnition bow-wows.” On October 20th, Secretary of War Taft cabled Governor Wright, then Governor-General of the Islands, a long telegram, quoting Judge Parker as having used, among other language descriptive of the beatitudes we had conferred on our little brown brother, the following: “The towns in many places in ruins, whole districts in the hands of ladrones.”[15]
At that time the whole archipelago was absolutely quiet for the nonce, except Samar. Samar was the only island where Judge Parker’s statement was true, and as to Samar, it was absolutely true. On October 23d Governor Wright wired Secretary of War Taft as follows:
There is nothing warranting the statement that towns are in ruins. It is not true that there are whole districts in the hands of ladrones. Life and property are as safe here as in the United States.[16]