if Washington proposes to carry out the fundamental principles of its constitution, it is most improbable that an attempt will be made to colonize the Filipinos or annex them.[4]
In short, the Aguinaldo proclamation of January 5th suggests with a briefness which Filipino familiarity with the great mass of facts already laid before the reader in the preceding chapters made appropriate, all the causes for which the Malolos Government was ready, if need be, to declare war, and winds up by boldly serving General Otis with notice that if the Americans try to take Iloilo and the Visayan Islands “my government is disposed to open hostilities.”
On January 9th President McKinley cabled out to General Otis asking if it would help matters to send a commission out to explain to the Filipinos our benevolent intentions. This idea thus suggested materialized, a few weeks later, in the Schurman Commission, of which more anon. The next day, January 10th, General Otis answered endorsing the sending of “commissioners of tact and discretion,” and adding:[4]
Great difficulty is that leaders cannot control ignorant classes.[5]
As a matter of fact the leaders were leading. They were not arguing with the tide. They were merely riding the crest of it. Actually, General Otis would have stopped “The Six Hundred Marseillaise Who Knew How to Die”—the ones whose march to Paris, according to Thomas Carlyle, inspired the composition of the French national air, “The Marseillaise”—and tried to parley with the head of the column on the idea of getting them to abandon their enterprise and disperse to their several homes. He also says, in the cablegram under consideration:
If peace kept for several days more immediate danger will have passed.
In other words, he was holding off the calf as best he could pending the ratification of the treaty. From the text itself, however, of General Otis’s report, it is clear enough, that even he was getting anxious to give the Filipinos a drubbing as soon as the treaty should be safely passed. Referring to a message from the President enjoining avoidance of a clash with the Filipinos he says (p. 80):
The injunction of his Excellency the President of the United States to exert ourselves to preserve the peace had an excellent effect upon the command. Officers and men * * * were restless under the restraints * * * imposed, and * * * eager to avenge the insults received. Now they submit very quietly to the taunts and aggressive demonstrations of the insurgent army who continue to throng the streets of the business portion of the city.
See the lamb kick the lion viciously in the face, and observe the lion as he first lifts his eyes heavenward and says meekly: “Thy will be done. This is Benevolent Assimilation”; and then turns them Senate-ward and murmurs: “I cannot stand this much longer, kind sirs. Say when!” The way war correspondent John F. Bass puts the situation about this time in a letter to his paper, Harper’s Weekly, was this:
Jimmie Green[6] bites his lip, hangs on to himself, and finds comfort in the idea that his time will come.