Luzon is practically bisected, east and west, by the Pasig River and a lake out of which it flows almost due west into Manila Bay, Manila being at the mouth of the river. Under the Spaniards, all Luzon north of the Pasig had been one military district and all Luzon south of the Pasig another. The Eighth Army Corps always spoke of northern Luzon as “the north line,” and of southern Luzon as “the south line.” The lake above mentioned is called the Laguna de Bay. It is nearly as big as Manila Bay, which last is called twenty odd miles wide by thirty long. On the map, the Laguna de Bay roughly resembles a half-moon, the man in which looks north, the western horn being near Manila, and the eastern near the Pacific coast of Luzon. General Otis had learned that at a place called Santa Cruz, toward the eastern end of the Laguna de Bay, there were a lot of steam launches and a Spanish gun-boat, which, if captured, would prove invaluable for river fighting and transportation of supplies along the Rio Grande de Pampanga and the other streams that watered the great central plain through which the railroad ran and which would have to be occupied later. So as soon as possible after General Lawton arrived and the necessary men could be spared, he was sent with 1500 troops to seize and bring back the boats in question. Of course the country he should overrun would have to be overrun again, because there were not troops enough to spare to garrison and hold it. But for the present, the launches would help. This expedition was successful, leaving the head of the lake nearest Manila on April 9th, and returning April 17th. It met with some good hard fighting on the way, sweeping everything before it of course, inflicting considerable loss, and suffering some. General Lawton’s report mentions, among other officers whose conspicuous gallantry and efficiency in action attracted his attention, Colonel Clarence R. Edwards, now Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department, of whose conduct in the capture of Santa Cruz on the morning of April 10th, he says: “No line of battle could have been more courageously or intelligently led.”[31] The resistance was pretty real to Colonel Edwards then, i.e., the Benevolent Assimilation was quite strenuous, and it continued to be so until his great commander was shot through the breast in the forefront of battle in the hour of victory in December thereafter, and the colonel came home with the general’s body. Since then the colonel has soldiered no more, but has remained on duty at Washington, the birthplace of the original theory that the Filipinos welcomed our rule, charged with the duty of yearning over the erring Filipino who thinks he can govern himself but is mistaken, and also with the still more difficult task of trying to live up to the original theory as far as circumstances will permit. As a matter of fact, the Filipinos would probably have gotten along much better than the Cubans if we had let General Lawton do there what he and General Wood were set to work doing in Cuba shortly after Santiago fell. Public opinion is a very dangerous thing to trifle with, and when, in September, 1899, there was a story going the rounds of the American newspapers that Lawton, the hero of El Caney, the man who had reflected more glory on American arms in striking the shackles of Spain from Cuba than any other one soldier in the army, had called the war in the Philippines “this accursed war,” the War Department got busy over the cable to General Otis and obtained from him a denial that General Lawton had made such a remark. But the public knew its Lawton and what he had done in Cuba, and had a suspicion there might be some truth in the rumor. So the War Department cabled out saying “Newspapers say Lawton’s denial insufficient,” and then repeating the words attributed to him. So General Otis sent another denial that filled the bill.[32] Of course General Lawton made no such remark. He was too good a soldier. It would have demoralized his whole command. But I served under him in both hemispheres, and I will always believe that he had a certain amount of regret at having to fight the Filipinos to keep them from having independence, when they were a so much likelier lot, take it all in all, than the Cubans we saw about Santiago. Moreover, I believe that had it not been then too late to ask him, he would have subscribed to the opinion Admiral Dewey had cabled home the previous summer: “These people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races.”
After the expedition down the lake, General Lawton went on “The North Line.” So let us now turn thither also. For wherever Lawton was, there was fighting.
In the latter half of April, General MacArthur advanced north along the railroad, and took Calumpit, where the railroad crosses the Rio Grande, on April 28th. This was the place where under cover of “the accurate concentrated fire of the guns of the Utah Light Artillery commanded by Major Young”[33] a few Kansas men with ropes tied to their bodies swam the river in the face of a heavy fire from the enemy, fastened the ropes to some boats on the enemy’s side, and were pulled back in the boats, by their comrades, to the side they had come from; the Kansans then crossing the river under the lead of the gallant Funston, and driving the enemy from his trenches. The desperate bravery of the performance, like so many other things General Funston did in the Philippines, was so superb that one forgets how contrary it was to all known rules of the game of war. If it was Providence that saved Funston and his Kansans from annihilation, certainly Providence was ably assisted on that occasion by Major Young and his Utah Battery.[34]
Shortly after this General MacArthur entered San Fernando, the second insurgent capital, which is forty miles or so up the railroad from Manila.
During the month of May General Lawton kept the insurgents busy to the east of the railroad, between it and the Pacific coast range, taking San Isidro, whither the third insurgent capital was moved after Malolos fell, on May 17th. Here he made his headquarters for a time, as did General MacArthur at San Fernando.
It had been supposed that practically the whole body of the insurgent army was concentrated in the country to the north of Manila, but this proved a mistake. They now began to threaten Manila from the country south of the Pasig. Says General Otis:
The enemy had become again boldly demonstrative at the South and it became necessary to throw him back once more.[35]
General Lawton was directed to concentrate his troops in the country about San Isidro, turn them over to the command of some one else, and come to Manila to organize for a campaign on the south line. The details of this expedition belong to a military history, which this is not. The expedition left its initial point of concentration near Manila on June 9th. Its great event was the battle of Zapote River on June 13th. Along this river in 1896 the insurgents had gained a great victory over the Spaniards. They had trenches on the farther side of the river which they deemed impregnable. General Lawton attacked them in these intrenchments June 13th. At three o’clock that afternoon he wired General Otis at Manila giving him an idea of the battle and stating that the enemy was fighting in strong force and with determination. At 3:30 o’clock he wired:
We are having a beautiful battle. Hurry up ammunition; we will need it;
and at 4 o’clock: