CHAPTER X

OTIS AND AGUINALDO (Continued)

A word spoken in due season, how good is it!

Proverbs xv., 23.

In the last chapter we saw the debut of the Benevolent Assimilation programme at Iloilo. We are now to observe it at Manila. General Otis says in his report for 1899 [175]:

After fully considering the President's proclamation and the temper of the Tagalos with whom I was daily discussing political problems and the friendly intentions of the United States Government toward them, I concluded that there were certain words and expressions therein, such as "sovereignty," "right of cession," and those which directed immediate occupation, etc., * * * which might be advantageously used by the Tagalo war party to incite widespread hostilities among the natives. * * * It was my opinion, therefore, that I would be justified in so amending the paper that the beneficent object of the United States Government would be clearly brought within the comprehension of the people.

Accordingly, he published a proclamation as indicated, on January 4th, at Manila. In a less formal communication concerning this proclamation, viz., a letter to General Miller at Iloilo, General Otis comes to the point more quickly thus:

After some deliberation we put out one of our own which it was believed would suit the temper of the people. [176]

The only thing in the Otis proclamation specifically directed toward soothing "the temper of the people" was a hint that the United States would, under the government it was going to impose, "appoint the representative men now forming the controlling element of the Filipinos to civil positions of responsibility and trust" (p. 69). And this, far from soothing Filipino temper, was interpreted as an offer of a bribe if they would desert the cause of their country. The bona fides of the offer they did not doubt for a moment. In fact it caught a number of the more timid prominent men, especially the elderly ones of the ultraconservative element preferring submission to strife. But the younger and bolder spirits were faithful, many of them unto death, and all of them unto many battles and much "hiking." [177]

General Otis's report goes on to tell how, about the middle of January, after he had published his sugar-coated edition of the presidential proclamation at Manila, it then at last occurred to him that General Miller might have published the original text of it in full at Iloilo, and, "fearing that," says he, "I again despatched Lieut. Col. Potter to Iloilo"--evidently post-haste. But it appears that when the breathless Potter arrived, the lid was already off. The horse had left the stable and the door was open, as we saw in the preceding chapter. However, as the Otis report indicates in this connection (p. 67), copies of the original McKinley proclamation, as published in full at Iloilo by General Miller, were of course promptly forwarded by the insurgents at Iloilo to the insurgent government at Malolos. So all that General Otis got for his pains was detection in the attempt to conceal the crucial words asserting American sovereignty in plain English. He tells us himself that as soon as the Malolos people discovered the trick, "it [the proclamation] became"--in the light of the Otis doctoring--"the object of venomous attack." His report was of course written long after all these matters occurred, but its language shows a total failure on the part of its author, even then, to understand the cause of the bitterness he denominates "venom." This bitterness grew naturally out of what seemed to the Filipinos an evident purpose of the United States to take and keep the Islands and an accompanying unwillingness to acknowledge that purpose, as shown by the conspicuous discrepancies between the original text of the proclamation as published at Iloilo by General Miller, on January 1st, and the modified version of it given out by General Otis at Manila on January 4th. "The ablest of the insurgent newspapers," says he (p. 69), "which was now issued at Malolos and edited by the uncompromising Luna * * * attacked the policy * * * as declared in the proclamation, and its assumption of sovereignty * * * with all the vigor of which he was capable." The nature of Editor Luna's philippics is not described by General Otis in detail, the only specific notion we get of them being from General Otis's echo of their tone, which, he tells us, was to the effect that "everything tended simply to a change of masters." But in another part of the Otis Report (p. 163) we find an epistle written about that time by one partisan of the revolution to another, whose key-note, given in the following extracts, was doubtless in harmony with the Luna editorials:

We shall not have them (Filipinos enough to conduct a decent government) in 10, 20, or a 100 years, because the Yankees will never acknowledge the aptitude of an "inferior" race to govern the country. Do not dream that when American sovereignty is implanted in the country the American office-holders will give up. Never! If * * * it depends upon them to say whether the Filipinos have sufficient men for the government of the country * * * they will never say it."

Is not the American who pretends that he would have done anything but just what the Filipinos did, had he been in their place, i.e., fought to the last ditch for the independence of his country, the rankest sort of a hypocrite? General Otis was a soldier, and his views may have been honestly colored by his environment. But how at this late date can any fair-minded man read the above extracts illustrative of the temper in which the Filipinos went to war with us without acknowledging the righteousness of the motives which impelled them?

Aguinaldo promptly met General Otis's proclamation of January 4th by a counter-proclamation put out the very next day, in which he indignantly protested against the United States assuming sovereignty over the Islands. "Even the women," says General Otis (p. 70), "in a document numerously signed by them, gave me to understand that after the men were all killed off they were prepared to shed their patriotic blood for the liberty and independence of their country." General Otis actually intended this last as a sly touch of humor. But when we recollect Mr. Millet's description (Chapter IV. ante) of the women coming to the trenches and cooking rice for the men while the Filipinos were slowly drawing their cordon ever closer about the doomed Spanish garrison of Manila in July and August previous, fighting their way over the ground between them and the besieged main body of their ancient enemies inch by inch, while Admiral Dewey blockaded them by sea, General Otis's sly touch of humor loses some of its slyness. "The insurgent army also," he says (p. 70), "was especially affected * * * and only awaited an opportunity to demonstrate its invincibility in war with the United States troops * * * whom it had commenced to insult and charge with cowardice."

The benighted condition of the insurgents in this regard was directly traceable to the Iloilo fiasco. It was that, principally, which made the insurgents so foolishly over-confident and the subsequent slaughter of them so tremendous. Further on in his report General Otis says, with perceptible petulance, in summing up his case against the Filipinos:

The pretext that the United States was about to substitute itself for Spain * * * was resorted to and had its effect on the ignorant masses.

Speaking of his own modified version of the Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, General Otis says (p. 76):

No sooner was it published than it brought out a virtual declaration of war from, in this instance at least, the wretchedly advised President Aguinaldo, who, on January 5th, issued the following

--giving the reply proclamation in full. No man can read the Otis report itself without feeling that if he, the reader, had been playing Aguinaldo's hand he would have played it exactly as Aguinaldo did. To General Otis the government at Malolos--"their Malolos arrangement," he used to call it--seemed quite an impudent little opera-bouffe affair, "a tin-horn government," as Senator Spooner suggested in the same debate on the treaty, in which he called his rugged and fiery friend from South Carolina, Senator Tillman, "the Senator from Aguinaldo," and immediately thereafter, with that engaging frankness that always so endeared him to his colleagues on both sides of the Chamber, removed the sting from the jest by admitting that neither he (Spooner), nor Tillman, nor anybody else in the United States, knew anything about Aguinaldo or his government. But in the calmer retrospect of many years after, we have seen, through the official documents which have become available in the interval, that said government was in complete and effective control of practically the whole archipelago, and had the moral support of the whole population at a time when our troops controlled absolutely nothing but the two towns of Manila and Cavite. Therefore, when we read in the Aguinaldo proclamation such phrases as, "In view of this, I summoned a council of my generals and asked the advice of my cabinet, and in conformity with the opinion of both bodies I" did so and so; "My government cannot remain indifferent to" this or that act of the Americans assuming sovereignty over the islands; "Thus it is that my government is disposed to open hostilities if" etc.; they do not sound to us so irritatingly bombastic as they did to General Otis, distributed under his nose as the proclamation containing them at once was, by thousands, throughout a city of which he was nominally in possession, but nine-tenths of whose 300,000 inhabitants he was obliged to believe in sympathy with the insurgents.

"My government," says the Aguinaldo proclamation, "rules the whole of Luzon, the Visayan Islands, and a part of Mindanao." Except as to Mindanao, which cut absolutely no figure in the insurrection until well toward the end of the guerrilla part of it, we have already examined this claim and found by careful analysis that it was absolutely true by the end of December, 1898.

After a rapid review of how he had been aided and encouraged in starting the revolution against the Spaniards by Admiral Dewey, and then given the cold shoulder by the army when it came, Aguinaldo's manifesto says:

It was also taken for granted that the American forces would necessarily sympathize with the revolution which they had managed to encourage, and which had saved them much blood and great hardships; and, above all, we entertained absolute confidence in the history and traditions of a people which fought for its independence and for the abolition of slavery, and which posed as the champion and liberator of oppressed peoples. We felt ourselves under the safeguard of a free people.

That this statement also was authorized by the facts is evident from the minutes of the Hong Kong meeting of May 4th, already noticed, presided over by Aguinaldo, and called to formulate the programme for the insurrection he was about to sail for the Philippines to inaugurate, in which, after much discussion among the revolutionary leaders it was agreed that while they must be prepared for all possible contingencies, yet,

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. [178]

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: [178]

Great difficulty is that leaders cannot control ignorant classes. [179]

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 [180] bites his lip, hangs on to himself, and finds comfort in the idea that his time will come.

After Aguinaldo's ultimatum of January 5th about fighting if we took Iloilo, General Otis refrained from taking Iloilo, and continued to communicate with the insurgent chieftain, appointing commissioners to meet commissioners appointed by him. These held divers and sundry sessions, whose only result was to kill time, or at least to mark time, while the Administration was getting the treaty through the Senate. The object of these meetings is thus set forth in the military order of January 9, 1899, appointing the Otis portion of the Joint High Parleying Board:

To meet a commission of like number appointed by General Aguinaldo, and to confer with regard to the situation of affairs and to arrive at a mutual understanding of the intent, purposes, aim, and desires of the Filipino people and the people of the United States, that peace and harmonious relations between these respective peoples may be continued. [181]

The minutes of the first meeting of this board, prepared by the Spanish-speaking clerk or recorder, recite the above declared purpose verbatim, in all its verbosity, and then go on to say that our side asked

That the commissioners appointed by General Aguinaldo give their opinion as to what were the purposes, aspirations, aims, and desires of the people of the archipelago.

The next paragraph is almost Pickwickian in its unconscious terseness:

To this request the commissioners appointed by General Aguinaldo made response that in their opinion the aspirations, purposes, and desires of the Philippine people might be summed up in two words "Absolute Independence."

Of course even General Otis does not reproduce this laconic answer as part of his petulant summing up of how little the Filipinos knew, before the outbreak of February 4th, as to what they really wanted. He merely alludes to it as being of record elsewhere. It is one oL the various pieces of jetsam and flotsam that have floated from the sea of those great events to the shores of government publications since. The minutes of these meetings may be found among the hearings before the Senate Committee of 1902. [182]

General Otis's report complains that Aguinaldo's commissioners did not know what they wanted, "could not give any satisfactory explanation" of the "measure of protection" they wanted, they having declared that they would greatly prefer the United States to establish a protectorate over them to keep them from being annexed by some other power. But he fails to state, which is a fact shown by the minutes of the meeting of January 14 (p. 2721), that the Filipino commissioners did say that this was a question which would only be reached between their government and ours when the latter should agree to officially recognize the former. To quote their exact language, which is rather clumsily translated, they said: "The aspiration of the Filipino people is the independence with the restrictions resulting from the conditions which its government may agree with the American, when the latter agree to officially recognize the former."

It is perfectly clear from the voluminous minutes of the proceedings that the Filipinos were only seeking some declaration of the purpose of our government which would satisfy their people that the programme was something more than a mere change of masters. "They begged," says General Otis (p. 82), "for some tangible concession from the United States Government--one which they could present to the people and which might serve to allay excitement." General Otis of course had no authority to bind the government and so could make no promise. But the day this Otis-Aguinaldo parleying board had its second meeting, January 11th, and probably with no more knowledge of its existence than the reader has of what is going on in the Fiji Islands at the moment he reads these lines, Senator Bacon introduced in the United States Senate some resolutions which were precisely the medicine the case required and precisely the thing the Filipinos were pleading for. These resolutions concluded thus:

That the United States hereby disclaim any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said islands except for the pacification thereof, and assert their determination when an independent government shall have been duly erected therein entitled to recognition as such, to transfer to said government, upon terms which shall be reasonable and just, all rights secured under the cession by Spain, and to thereupon leave the government and control of the islands to their people.

They were a twin brother to the Teller Cuban resolution which was incorporated into the resolution declaring war against Spain, being verbatim the same, except with the necessary changes of name, of "islands" for "island," etc.

On January 18th, while the futile parleying board aforesaid was still futilely parleying at Manila, Senator Bacon made an argument in the Senate in support of his resolution, whose far-sighted statesmanship, considered in relation to the analogies of its historic setting, most strikingly reminds us of Burke's great speech on conciliation with America delivered under similar circumstances nearly a century and a quarter earlier. After alluding to the naturalness of the apprehension of the Filipinos "that it is the purpose of the United States Government to maintain permanent dominion over them," [183] Senator Bacon urged:

The fundamental requirement in these resolutions is that the Government of the United States will not undertake to exercise permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands. The resolutions are intentionally made broad, so that those who agree on that fundamental proposition may stand upon them even though they may differ materially as to a great many other things relative to the future course of the government in connection with the Philippine Islands.

Senator Bacon then quoted the following from some remarks Senator Foraker had previously made in the course of the great debate on the treaty:

I do not understand anybody to be proposing to take the Philippine Islands with the idea and view of permanently holding them. * * * The President of the United States does not, I know, and no Senator in this chamber has made any such statement;

and added:

If the views expressed by the learned Senator from Ohio in his speech * * * are those upon which we are to act, there is very little difference between us; and there will be no future contention between us * * * if we can have an authoritative expression from The Law-Making Power of the United States in a joint resolution that such is the purpose of the future. [184]

Says the Holy Scripture: "A word spoken in season, how good is it!" Had the Bacon resolutions passed the United States Senate in January, 1899, we never would have had any war with the Filipinos. [185] They would have presented at the psychologic moment the very thing the best and bravest of the Filipino leaders were then pleading with General Otis for, something "tangible," something "which they could present to their people and which would allay excitement," by allaying the universal fear that we were going to do with them exactly as all other white men they had ever heard of had done with all other brown men they had ever heard of under like circumstances, viz., keep them under permanent dominion with a view of profit.

In his letter accepting the nomination for the Presidency in 1900, Mr. McKinley sought to show the Filipinos to have been the aggressors in the war by a reference to the fact that the outbreak occurred while the Bacon resolution was under discussion in the Senate. This hardly came with good grace from an Administration whose friends in the Senate had all along opposed not only the Bacon resolution but also all other resolutions frankly declaratory of the purpose of our government. The supreme need of the hour then was, and the supreme need of every hour of every day we have been in the Philippines since has been, "an authoritative expression from the law-making power of the United States"--not mere surmises of a President, confessedly devoid of binding force, but an authoritative expression from the law-making power, declaratory of the purpose of our government with regard to the Philippine Islands. Secretary of War Taft visited Manila in 1907 to be present at the opening of the Philippine Assembly. In view of the universal longing which he knew existed for some definite authoritative declaration as to whether our government intends to keep the Islands permanently or not, he said:

I cannot speak with authority * * *. The policy to be pursued with respect to them is, therefore, ultimately for Congress to determine. * * * I have no authority to speak for Congress in respect to the ultimate disposition of the Islands. [186]

This bitter disappointment of the public expectation and hope of something definite, certainly did not lessen the belief of the Filipinos that we have no notion of ever giving them their independence. Had the Senate known what the Filipino commissioners were so earnestly asking of the Otis commissioners in January, 1899, the Bacon resolution would probably have passed. In fact it is demonstrable almost mathematically that, had the Administration's friends in the Senate allowed that resolution to come to a vote before the outbreak of February 4th, instead of filibustering against it until after that event, it would have passed. As stated in the foot-note, the roll-call on the final vote on it, which was not taken until February 14th, showed a tie--29 to 29, the Vice-President of the United States casting the deciding vote which defeated it. Much dealing with real life and real death has blunted my artistic sensibilities to thrills from the mere pantomime of the stage. But as here was a vote where, had a single Senator who voted No voted Aye, some 300,000,000 of dollars, over a thousand lives of American soldiers killed in battle, some 16,000 lives of Filipino soldiers killed in battle, and possibly 100,000 Filipino lives snuffed out through famine, pestilence, and other ills consequent on the war, would have been saved, I can not refrain from reproducing the vote--perhaps the most uniquely momentous single roll-call in the parliamentary history of Christendom [187]:

Ayes

Bacon Jones of Nevada Bate Lindsay Berry McLaurin Caffery Martin Chilton Money Clay Murphy Cockrell Perkins Faulkner Pettigrew Gorman Pettus Gray Quay Hale Rawlins Harris Smith Heitfield Tillman Hoar Turner Jones of Arkansas

Nays

Allison Mantle Burrows Morgan Carter Nelson Chandler Penrose Deboe Platt of Connecticut Fairbanks Platt of New York Frye Pritchard Gear Ross Hanna Shoup Hawley Simon Kyle Stewart Lodge Teller McBride Warren McEnery Wolcott McMillan

In January, 1899, the out-and-out land-grabbers had not yet made bold to show their hand, the friends of the treaty confining themselves to the alleged shame of doing as we had done with Cuba, on account of the supposed semi-barbarous condition of "the various tribes out there," leaving the possibility of profit to quietly suggest itself amid the noisy exhortations of altruism. It was not until after the milk of human kindness had been spilled in war that Senator Lodge said at the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900:

We make no hypocritical pretence of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. We believe in Trade Expansion.

Speaking (p. 82) of the meetings of what for lack of a better term I have above called the Otis-Aguinaldo Joint High Parleying Board, General Otis says in his report:

Finally, the conferences became the object of insurgent suspicion, * * * and * * * amusement.

The Filipino newspapers called attention to the fact that large reinforcements of American troops were on the way to Manila, and very plausibly inferred that the parleying was for delay only. By January 26th the politeness of both the American and the Filipino commissioners had been worn to a frazzle, and they adjourned, each recognizing that the differences between them could ultimately be settled only on the field of battle, in the event of the ratification of the treaty.

January 27th, General Otis cabled to Washington a letter from Aguinaldo, of which he says in his report: "I was surprised * * * because of the boldness with which he therein indicated his purpose to continue his assumptions and establish their correctness by the arbitrament of war" (p. 84). General Otis was "surprised" to the last. Aguinaldo's letter is not at all surprising, though extremely interesting. It sends General Otis a proclamation issued January 21st, announcing the publication of a constitution modelled substantially after that of the United States, even beginning with the familiar words about "securing the blessings of liberty, promoting the general welfare," etc., and concludes with an expression of confident hope that the United States will recognize his government, and a bold implication of determination to fight if it does not. On the evening of February 4th an insurgent soldier approaching an American picket failed to halt or answer when challenged, and was shot and killed. Nearly six months of nervous tension thereupon pressed for liberation in a general engagement which continued throughout the night and until toward sundown of the next day, thus finally unleashing the dogs of war. In the Washington Post of February 6, 1899, Senator Bacon is quoted as saying:

I will cheerfully vote all the money that may be necessary to carry on the war in the Philippines, but I still maintain that we could have avoided a conflict with those people had the Senate adopted my resolution, or a similar resolution announcing our honest intentions with regard to the Philippines.

Said the New York Criterion of February 11, 1899:

Whether we like it or not, we must go on slaughtering the natives in the English fashion, and taking what muddy glory lies in this wholesale killing until they have learned to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions will follow.

The Washington Post of February 6, 1899, may not have quoted Senator Bacon with exactitude. But what the Senator did say on the floor of the Senate is important, historically. Under date of February 22, 1912, Senator Bacon writes me, in answer to an inquiry:

I enclose a speech made by me upon the subject in the Senate February 27, 1899, and upon pages 6, 7, and 8 of which you will find a statement of my position, and the reasons given by me therefor. Of course you cannot go at length into that question in your narration of the events of that day, but my position was that, while I did not approve of the war, and did not approve of the enslavement of the Filipinos, and while if I had my way I would immediately set them free, at the same time, as war was then flagrant, and there were then some twenty odd thousand American troops in the Philippine Islands, we must either support them or leave them to defeat and death. I do not know how far you can use anything then said by me, but if you make allusion to the fact that I was willing to supply money and troops to carry on the war in the Philippines, I would be glad for it to be accompanied by a very brief statement of the ground upon which I based such action.

The above makes it unnecessary to quote at length from the speech referred to, which may be found at pp. 2456 et seq of the Congressional Record for February 27, 1899. However, there is one passage in the speech to which I especially say Amen, and invite all whose creed of patriotism is not too sublimated for such a common feeling to join me in so doing. Senator Bacon will now state the creed:

The oft-repeated expression "our country, right or wrong" has a vital principle in it, and upon that principle I stand.

The Senator immediately follows his creed with these commentaries:

In this annexation of the Philippine Islands through the ratification of the treaty, and in waging war to subjugate the Filipinos, I think the country, acting through constitutional authorities, is wrong. But it is not for me to say because the country has been committed to a policy that I do not favor and have opposed, in consequence of which there is war, that I will not support the government.

Under the civilizing influence of Krag-Jorgensen rifles and the moral uplift of high explosive projectiles, what our soldiers used to call, with questionable piety, "the fear of God," was finally put into the hearts of the Filipinos, after much carnage by wholesale in battle formation and later by retail in a species of guerrilla warfare as irritating as it was obstinate. But they have never yet learned to respect our intentions, because under the guidance of three successive Presidents we have studiously refrained from any authoritative declaration as to what those intentions are. We are loth to hark back to the only right course, a course similar to our action in Cuba, because of the expense we have been to in the Philippines. But we also know that the islands are and are likely to continue, a costly burden, a nuisance, and a distinct strategic disadvantage in the event of war; and that Mr. Cleveland was right when he said:

The government of remote and alien people should have no permanent place in the purposes of our national life.

The mistaken policy which involved us in a war to subjugate the Filipinos, following our war to free the Cubans, will never stand atoned for before the bar of history, nor can the Filipinos ever in reason be expected to respect our intentions, until the law-making power of the government shall have authoritatively declared what those intentions are--i. e., what we intend ultimately to do with the islands. Senator Bacon's resolutions of 1899 were, are, and always will be the last word on the first act needed to rectify the original Philippine blunder, "announcing" as they would, to use the language attributed to their distinguished author by the Washington Post of February 6, 1899, above-quoted, "our honest intentions with regard to the Philippines." So eager is the exploiter to exploit the islands, and so apprehensive is the Filipino that the exploiter will have more influence at Washington than himself and therefore be able ultimately to bring about a practical industrial slavery, that common honesty demands such a declaration. To doctor present Filipino discontent with Benevolent Uncertainty is a mere makeshift. The remedy the situation needs is simple, but as yet untried--Frankness. The chief of the causes of the present discontent among the Filipinos with American rule is precisely the same old serpent that precipitated the war thirteen years ago, to wit, lack of a frank and honest declaration of our purpose. The trouble then lay, and still lies, and, in the absence of some such declaration as that proposed by the Bacon resolution, will always lie in what seemed then, and still seems, to the Filipinos "an evident purpose to keep the islands and an accompanying unwillingness to acknowledge that purpose." Some may object that one Congress cannot bind another. The same argument would have killed the Teller amendment to the declaration of war with Spain avowing our purpose as to Cuba. Such an argument assumes that this nation has no sense of honor, and that it should cling for a while longer to the stale Micawberism that the Islands may yet pay, before it decides whether it will do right or not, and signalizes such decision by formal announcement through Congress. To men capable of such an assumption as the one just indicated, this book is not addressed. Three successive Presidents, Messrs. McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, have with earnest asseveration of benevolent intention tried without success all these years to win the affections of the Filipino people, and to make them feel that "our flag had not lost its gift of benediction in its world-wide journey to their shores," as Mr. McKinley used to say. But the corner-stone of the policy was laid before we knew anything about how the land lay, and on the assumption, made practically without any knowledge whatever on the subject, that the Filipino people were incapable of self-government. The corner-stone of our Philippine policy has been from the beginning precisely that urged by Spain for not freeing Cuba, viz., "to spare the people from the dangers of premature independence." The three Presidents named above have always been willing to imply independence, but never to promise it. And the unwillingness to declare a purpose ultimately to give the Filipinos their independence has always been due to the desire to catch the vote of those who are determined they shall never have it. In this inexorable and unchangeable political necessity lies the essential contemptibleness of republican imperialism, and the secret of why the Filipinos, notwithstanding our good intentions, do not like us, and never will under the present policy. How can you blame them?

Yet the more you know of the Filipinos, the better you like them. Self-sacrificing, brave, and faithful unto death in war, they are gentle, generous, and tractable in peace. Moreover, respect for constituted authority, as such, is innate in practically every Filipino, which I am not sure can be predicated concerning each and every citizen of my beloved native land. And we can win the grateful and lasting affection of the whole seven or eight millions of them any day we wish to. How? Have done with vague, vote-catching Presidential obiter, and through your Congress declare your purpose!