The appeal to Otis to permit commencement of operations was without avail. Otis was the Manila agent of the Aldrich Old Guard in the Senate, in charge of the pending treaty. He would simply send the disgusted Miller messages not to be hasty, assuring him that the firing of a shot at Iloilo would mean the precipitation of general conflict about Manila and all over the place, and that this would be “most disappointing to the President of the United States, who continually urges extreme caution and no conflict.”[10]
The Administration was counting senatorial noses at the time, and that its anxiety was justified is apparent from the fact already noted, that on the final vote whereby the treaty was ratified it had but one vote to spare. So General Miller sat sunning himself on the deck of his transport, and watching the insurgents working like ants at their fortifications, and vainly wishing his 2500 men could get ashore at least long enough to stretch themselves a bit. John F. Bass, correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, left Iloilo, returned to Manila, and wrote his paper on January 23d: “I returned to Manila well knowing that there was nothing more to be done in Iloilo until the Senate voted on the Treaty of Peace.”
On the eighth day after General Miller had asked permission of the Iloilo village Hampdens to enforce the orders of the President of the United States, the “Federal Government of the Visayas,” through its President, Señor Lopez, finally deigned to notice Mr. McKinley’s proclamation. It said under date of January 9th:
General: We have the high honor of having received your message, dated January 1st, of this year, enclosing letter of President McKinley. You say in one clause of your message: “As indicated in the President’s cablegram, under these conditions the inhabitants of the island of Panay ought to obey the political authority of the United States, and they will incur a grave responsibility if, after deliberating, they decide to resist said authority.” So the council of state of this region of Visayas are, at this present moment, between the authority of the United States, that you try to impose on us, and the authority of the central government of Malolos.
Then follows this remarkable statement of the case for the Filipinos:
The supposed authority of the United States began with the Treaty of Paris, on the 10th of December, 1898. The authority of the Central Government of Malolos is founded in the sacred and natural bonds of blood, language, uses, customs, ideas, (and) sacrifices.[11]
General Otis was fond of throwing cold water on any particularly eloquent Filipino insurrecto document he had occasion to put in his reports by saying that Mabini was “the brains of” the Malolos Government—meaning the only brains it had[12]—and that he probably wrote such document, whatever it might be. But here is a piece of real eloquence, originating away down in the Visayan Islands, as far away from Malolos as Colonel Stark and his “Green Mountain Boys” were from Washington and Hamilton in 1776 and after. What then is the explanation of composition so forceful in its impassioned simplicity, and in the light of subsequent events, so pathetic? There is but one explanation. It came from the heart. It was the cry of the Soul of Humanity seeking its natural affiliations. It was the language of what Aguinaldo’s early state papers always used to call the “legitimate aspirations of” his people—legitimate aspirations which we later strangled. The reason of the writer’s earnestness is that a few months later he helped do some of the strangling. Thirteen years afterwards, a thorough acquaintance with the Filipino side of the matter, derived from an examination of the information which has been gradually accumulated and published by our government during that time, causes him to say, “Father forgive me, for I knew not what I did.” The 35,000 volunteers of 1899 knew nothing about the Filipinos or their side of the case. We were like the deputy sheriff who goes out with a warrant duly issued to arrest a man charged with unlawful breach of the peace. It is not his business to inquire whether the man is guilty or not. If the man resists arrest, he takes the consequences.
On the second day after the above defiance of the President of the United States was served up to General Miller, that gallant officer having dutifully swallowed it, sent an officer ashore on a diplomatic mission. The name and rank of this military ambassador were Acting Assistant Surgeon Henry DuR. Phelan, who clearly appears to have been a man of keen insight and considerable ability. His written report to General Miller of what transpired is a document of permanent interest and importance to the annals of men’s struggles for free institutions.[13] It states that at the meeting the spokesman of the Filipinos, Attorney Raimundo Melliza, began by saying that “all the Americans owned was Manila.” That was unquestionably true, so our ambassador, it seems, did not gainsay it. Dr. Phelan suggested that the Americans had sacrificed lives and money in destroying the power of Spain. The spokesman, Attorney Melliza, replied that “they also had made great sacrifice in lives, and that they had a right to their country which they had fought for, and that we are here now to take from them what they had won by fighting; that they had been our allies, and we had used them as such.” Dr. Phelan’s report goes on to say: “I replied that military occupation was a necessity for a time, * * * and that as soon as order was assured it would be withdrawn * * *. They smiled at this.” Well they might. Fourteen years have elapsed since then, and the law-making power of the United States has never yet declared whether the American occupation of the Philippine Islands is to be temporary, like our occupation of Cuba was, or permanent, like the British occupation of Egypt is. True, Dr. Phelan said “military” occupation, but the smile was provoked by the suggestion of temporariness. After the committee smiled, they remarked:
We have fought for independence and feel that we have the power of governing and need no assistance. We are showing it now. You might inquire of the foreigners if it is not so.
Dr. Phelan’s report proceeds: