CHAPTER XXI

GOVERNOR SMITH--1907-9

Oh, but Honey, dis rabbit dess 'bleeged ter climb dis tree.

Uncle Remus.

"On September 20, 1906," says the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1907, [468] "the resignation of the Hon. Henry Clay Ide as Governor-General became effective, and on that date the Hon. James F. Smith was inaugurated as Governor-General of the Philippine Islands."

The year 1907 will be known most prominently to the future history of our Far Eastern possession as the year of the opening of the Philippine Assembly, which momentous event occurred on October 16th. But in the departments both of Politics and Psychology it should be known as the year of the Great Certificate. The Great Certificate was a certificate signed by certain eminent gentlemen on March 28, 1907, which made the preposterous affirmation that a condition of general and complete peace had prevailed throughout the archipelago, except among the non-Christian tribes, for the two years immediately preceding. Taken in its historic setting, that certificate can by no possibility escape responsibility, as "accessory after the fact" at least, to the pretence that a similar condition had prevailed ever since President Roosevelt's final war-whoop of July 4, 1902, published to the American troops in the Islands on the day named. That war-whoop, it will be remembered, was in the form of a presidential proclamation congratulating General Chaffee and "the gallant officers and men under his command" on some "two thousand combats, great and small," and declaring, in effect, that Benevolent Assimilation was at last triumphantly vindicated, and that opposition to American rule was at an end. The certificate of March 28, 1907, appears at pages 47-8 of the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1907, part 1. If we consider what is now going on in the Islands as "modern" history, and the days of the early fighting as "ancient" history, this certificate will serve as the connecting link between the two. It furnishes the key-note to all that had happened during the American occupation prior to 1907, and the key-note of all that has happened since. Therefore, though somewhat long, it is deemed indispensable to clearness to submit here in full the text of

THE GREAT CERTIFICATE OF 1907

Whereas the census of the Philippine Islands was completed and published on the twenty-seventh day of March, nineteen hundred and five, which said completion and publication of said census was, on the twenty-eighth day of March, nineteen hundred and five, duly published and proclaimed to the people by the governor-general of the Philippine Islands with the announcement that the President of the United States would direct the Philippine Commission to call a general election for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly, provided that a condition of general and complete peace with recognition of the authority of the United States should be certified by the Philippine Commission to have continued in the territory of the Philippine Islands for a period of two years after said completion and publication of said census; and

Whereas since the completion and publication of said census there have been no serious disturbances of the public order save and except those caused by the noted outlaws and bandit chieftains, Felizardo and Montalon, and their followers in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas, and those caused in the provinces of Samar and Leyte by the non-Christian and fanatical pulahanes resident in the mountain districts of the said provinces and the barrios contiguous thereto; and

Whereas the overwhelming majority of the people of said provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Samar, and Leyte have not taken part in said disturbances and have not aided or abetted the lawless acts of said bandits and pulahanes; and

Whereas the great mass and body of the Filipino people have, during said period of two years, continued to be law-abiding, peaceful, and loyal to the United States, and have continued to recognize and do now recognize the authority and sovereignty of the United States in the territory of said Philippine Islands: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Philippine Commission in formal session duly assembled, That it, said Philippine Commission, do certify, and it does hereby certify, to the President of the United States that for a period of two years after the completion and publication of the census a condition of general and complete peace, with recognition of the authority of the United States, has continued to exist and now exists in the territory of said Philippine Islands not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes; and be it further

Resolved by said Philippine Commission, That the President of the United States be requested, and is hereby requested, to direct said Philippine Commission to call a general election for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly of the people of said territory in the Philippine Islands, which assembly shall be known as the Philippine Assembly.

Let us examine these amiable liberties thus taken with the facts of history by men of irreproachable private character, briefly analyzing their action. Such an examination and analysis are indispensable to a clear understanding by a great free people whose proudest boast is love of fair play, of whether the Filipino people, or any appreciable fraction of them, have ever in the least consented, or do now in the least consent, to our rule, as the small minority among us interested in keeping the Islands, have systematically sought, all these years, to have this nation believe. As the above certificate of 1907 was the last hurdle that Benevolent Assimilation had to leap on the Benevolent Hypocrisy course over which we had to gallop in order to get from the freeing of Cuba to the subjugation of the Philippines, let us glance back for a moment at the first hurdle or two, leapt when Mr. Taft was in the Philippine saddle.

Judge Taft had said on November 30, 1900:

A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States [469];

and, pursuant to that idea, he had set up his civil government on July 4, 1901. He never did thereafter admit that he was mistaken in his original theory, but kept on trying to fit the facts to his theory, hoping that after a while they would fit. He "clung to his policy of disinterested benevolence with a tenacity born of conviction," to borrow a phrase from Governor-General Smith's inaugural address of 1907. But in this same inaugural address of Governor Smith of 1907, you find, for the first time in all the Philippine state papers, a frank admission of the actual conditions under which the civil government of 1901 was in fact set up. Says he:

While the smoke of battle still hung over the hills and valleys of the Philippines and every town and barrio in the islands was smoking hot with rebellion, she [the United States] replaced the military with a civil regime and on the smouldering embers of insurrection planted civil government. [470]

That confession, made with the bluntness of a most gallant soldier, is as refreshing in its honesty as the Roosevelt war-whoop of 1902. There shall be no tiresome repetition here concerning the original withholding of the facts from the American people in 1898-9, but to place in juxtaposition Secretary of War Root's representations to the American public in the year last named, and the actual facts as stated earlier in the same year by General MacArthur, one of our best fighting generals, during the thick of the early fighting, in an interview already noticed in its proper chronological place, will forever fix the genesis of the original lack of frankness as to conditions in the Philippines which has naturally and inexorably made frankness as to those conditions impossible ever since. As late as October 7, 1899, Mr. Root--who had not then and has not since been in the Philippines--had said in Chicago, in a speech at a dinner of the Marquette Club:

Well, against whom are we fighting? Are we fighting the Philippine nation? No. There is none. There are hundreds of islands, inhabited by more than sixty tribes, speaking more than sixty different languages, and all but one are ready to accept American sovereignty.

As early as the beginning of April, 1899, just after the taking on March 31st of the first insurgent capital, Malolos, General MacArthur, who commanded our troops in the assault on that place, had said, in an interview with a newspaper man afterwards verified by the General before the Senate Committee of 1902 as substantially correct:

When I first started in against these rebels, I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. * * * I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon * * * was opposed to us * * *. But after having come thus far, and having been brought much in contact with both insurrectos and amigos, [471] I have been reluctantly compelled to believe that the Filipino masses are loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he heads. [472]

The presidential election of 1900 had been fought out, in the midst of considerable bitterness, on the idea that the Root view was correct and the MacArthur view was altogether mistaken. So that after 1900, the McKinley Administration was irrevocably committed to the Root view. [473] The Philippine Government had, after 1900, diligently set to work to live up to the Root view, and to fit the facts to the Root view by prayer and hope, accompanied by asseveration. Hence in 1901 the alleged joyous sobs of welcome with which the Filipino people are, in effect, described in the report of the Philippine Commission for that year as having received the "benign" civil government, said sobs or other manifestations having spread, if the Commission's report is to be taken at its face value, "like wild-fire." Hence also the attempt of 1902 to minimize the insurrection of 1901-2, in Batangas and other provinces of southern Luzon, conducted by what Governor Luke E. Wright, in a speech delivered at Memphis in the latter part of 1902, called "the die-in-the-last-ditch contingent." Hence the quiet placing of the province of Surigao in the hands of the military in 1903 without suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the failure to order out the army in Albay in 1903 and in Samar in 1904. Hence also the prompt use of the army in Samar, Batangas, and Cavite in 1905, after the presidential election was safely over. Hence also the seething state of sedition which smouldered in the Visayan Islands in 1906, punctuated by the outbreak in Leyte of that year.

The psychologic processes by which the distinguished gentlemen who signed the Great Certificate of March 28, 1907, got their own consent to sign it make the most profoundly interesting study, relatively to the general welfare of the world, in all our Philippine experiments so far. They are the final flowering of the plant Political Expediency. They are the weeds of benevolent casuistry that become from time to time unavoidable in a colonial garden tended by a republic based on the consent of the governed and therefore by the law of its own life unfitted to run any other kind of a government frankly. These processes find their origin in the provisions of the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, known as the Philippine Government Act. Three days after President Roosevelt approved the Act, he issued his proclamation of July 4, 1902, above noticed, declaring the insurrection at an end. Section 6 of that Act provided:

Whenever the existing insurrection in the Philippine Islands shall have ceased, and a condition of general and complete peace shall have been established therein, and the fact shall be certified to the President by the Philippine Commission, the President, upon being satisfied thereof, shall order a census of the Philippine Islands to be taken by said Philippine Commission.

This census was intended to be preliminary to granting the Filipinos a legislature of their own, but as a legislature full of insurrectos would of course stultify its American sponsors before all mankind, it was announced in effect, in publishing the census programme, that no legislature would be forthcoming if the Filipinos did not quit insurrecting, and remain "good" for two years. If they did remain good for two years after the census was finished, then they should have their legislature. During the lull of "general and complete" peace which, in the fall of 1902, followed the suppression of the Batangas insurrection of 1901-2, and preceded the Ola insurrection of 1902-3 in the hemp provinces of southern Luzon, the Commission made, on September 25, 1902, the certificate contemplated by the above Act of Congress, and the taking of the census was accordingly ordered by the President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt, by a proclamation issued the same day. [474] Section 7 of the aforesaid Act of Congress provided:

Two years after the completion and publication of the census, in case such condition of general and complete peace with recognition of the authority of the United States shall have continued in the territory of said islands not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes, and such facts shall have been certified to the President by the Philippine Commission, the President upon being satisfied thereof shall direct said Commission to call, and the Commission shall call, a general election for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly of the people of said territory in the Philippine Islands, which shall be known as the Philippine Assembly.

On March 27, 1905, the President of the United States was duly advised that the census had been completed, and on March 28th, the presidential proclamation promising the Filipinos a legislature two years later if in the meantime they did not insurrect any, was duly published at Manila. It is true that there is no Philippine state paper signed by anybody, either by the President of the United States, or the Governor-General of the Philippines, or any one else, certifying to a condition of "general and complete peace" between the certificate to that effect made by the Philippine Commission on September 25, 1902, above mentioned, which authorized commencing the census (and was justified by the facts), and the presidential promise of March 28, 1905, that if they would "be good" for two years more, they should have a legislature. But the whole manifest implication of the representations of fact sought to be conveyed by the action both of the Washington and the Manila authorities at the date of the presidential promise of March 28, 1905, is that a condition of general and complete peace had obtained ever since the last certificate to that effect, the certificate of September 25, 1902. Yet, as we saw in the chapter covering the last year of Governor Wright's administration, besides the Samar disturbances that lasted all through 1905, a big insurrection was actually in full swing in Cavite, Batangas, and Laguna provinces, on March 28, 1905, had then been in progress since before the first of the year, and continued until the latter part of 1905, the then Governor-General, Governor Wright, having, by proclamation issued January 31, 1905, declared Cavite and Batangas to be in a state of insurrection, ordered the military into those provinces, and suspended the writ of habeas corpus. President Roosevelt's proclamation of March 28, 1905, can by no possibility be construed as saying to the Filipinos anything other than substantially this: "You have not insurrected any since my proclamation of July 4, 1902. If you will be good two years more, you shall have a legislature." What then was the Philippine Commission to do at the end of those two years, peppered, as they had been, with most annoying outbreaks in various provinces not inhabited by "Moros or other non-Christian tribes." During the presidential campaign of 1904 the Commission had committed themselves, as we have seen, to the proposition that nothing serious was going on at that time in Samar. So how could they take frank official cognizance on paper of the reign of terror let loose there by their delay in ordering out the army until after the presidential election, a delay which, like a delay of fire-engines to arrive at the scene of a fire, had permitted the Samar outbreak to gain such headway that it took two years to finally put it down? Then there was the outbreak of 1906 in Leyte, described in the last chapter, as to which even the Commission had admitted in their annual report for that year [475]:

Possibly its [Leyte's] immediate vicinity to Samar has had to do with the disturbed conditions.

In other words, possibly, a fire may spread from one field of dry grass to another near by.

As to the Cavite-Batangas-Laguna insurrection of 1905, in an executive order dated September 28, 1907, [476]--noticed in a previous chapter, but too pertinent to be entirely omitted here--wherein are set forth the reasons for withholding executive clemency from the condemned leaders of that movement, Governor-General Smith describes in harrowing terms "a reign of terror, devastation, and ruin in three of the most beautiful provinces in the archipelago," wrought by the condemned men, who he says "assumed the cloak of patriotism, and under the titles of 'Defenders of the Country,' and 'Protectors of the People' proceeded to inaugurate" said reign of terror. These men were most of them former insurgent officers who had remained out after the respectable generals had all surrendered. This Cavite-Batangas-Laguna insurrection was the very sort of thing which the conditional promise of a legislature made by Congress to the Filipino people in Sections 6 and 7 of the Act of July 1, 1902--the Philippine Government Act--had stipulated should not happen. This is no mere dictum of my own. In the case of Barcelon against Baker, 5 Philippine Reports, pp. 87 et seq., already very briefly noticed in a previous chapter, the Supreme Court of the Islands had, in effect, so held. Section 5 of the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, had provided that if any state of affairs serious enough should arise, the Governor of the Philippines should have authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus "when in cases of rebellion, insurrection, or invasion the public safety may require it." Sections 6 and 7 of the same Act had provided, on the other hand, that if a condition of general and complete peace should prevail for a stated period the Filipinos should have a legislature. In the case of Barcelon against Baker the Supreme Court held that the situation contemplated by Section 5 of the Act of Congress had arisen in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas. That, of course, automatically, so to speak, made the postponement of the Philippine Assembly a necessary logical sequence, under the provisions of Sections 6 and 7. These Sections 6 and 7 promised the Filipinos a legislature in the event the conditions contemplated by Section 5 should not arise. Barcelon, who was one of the (non-combatant) reconcentrados restrained of his liberty at Batangas, claimed that his detention as such reconcentrado by the defendant in the habeas corpus proceeding, the constabulary officer, Colonel Baker, was unlawful, in that, he being charged with no crime, such detention deprived him of his liberty without due process of law. The Philippine Commission, however, had declared, by virtue of the authority vested in it by Section 5 of the Act of Congress aforesaid, that a state of insurrection existed in Cavite and Batangas, and accordingly the Governor-General had suspended the writ of habeas corpus and declared martial law in those provinces. The Attorney-General representing the Philippine Commission before the court rested the Government's case on the proposition that the petitioner was not entitled to claim the ordinary "due process of law" because "open insurrection against the constituted authorities" existed in the provinces named. And the Supreme Court upheld his contention. In so holding, they say, among other things (page 93), in construing Section 5 of the Act of Congress we are considering:

Inasmuch as the President, or Governor-General with the approval of the Philippine Commission, can suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus only under the conditions mentioned in the said statute, it becomes their duty to make an investigation of the existing conditions in the archipelago, or any part thereof, to ascertain whether there actually exists a state of rebellion, insurrection, or invasion, and that the public safety requires the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. When this investigation is concluded, and the President, or the Governor-General with the consent of the Philippine Commission, declares that there exists these conditions, and that the public safety requires the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, can the judicial department of the Government investigate the same facts and declare that no such conditions exist?

They answer "No!" The head note of the decision is as follows:

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus may be suspended in the Philippine Islands in the case of rebellion, insurrection, and invasion, when the public safety requires it, by the President of the United States, or by the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands with the approval of the Philippine Commission.

Thus the Supreme Court of the Islands squarely held that on the fourth day of August, 1905 (the day the writ of habeas corpus was made returnable), open insurrection existed against the constituted authorities in the Islands, in the provinces named, and had existed since the Executive Proclamation of January 31st, previous, declaring a state of insurrection, and on that ground denied the writ. Yet the Commission certified on March 28, 1907, that a state of general and complete peace as contemplated by the Act of Congress conditionally promising a legislature, had prevailed for the two years preceding. In other words the Philippine Commission declared a state of insurrection to exist in certain populous provinces, and was upheld by the Supreme Court of the Islands in so doing, and later certified to the continuance of a state of general and complete peace covering the same period.

All the uncandid things--uncandid in failure to take the American people into their confidence--that have been done by all the good men we have sent to the Philippines from the beginning, have been justified by those good men to their own consciences on the idea that, because the end in view was truly benevolent, therefore the end justified the means. As a matter of fact, American Benevolent Assimilation in the Philippines has, in its practical operation, worked more of misery and havoc, first through war, and since through legislation put or kept on the statute books by the influence of special interests in the United States with Congress, "than any which has darkened their unhappy past" to use one of Mr. McKinley's early expressions deprecating doing for the Philippines what we did for Cuba. [477]

But let us see just how much the Philippine Commission that signed the peace certificate of March 28, 1907, swallowed, and how they swallowed it. It will be observed that they sugar-coated their certificate with a lot of whereases. The first of these recites President Roosevelt's promise of March 28, 1905, that the Filipinos should have a legislature two years thereafter "provided that a condition of general and complete peace with recognition of the authority of the United States should be certified by the Philippine Commission to have continued in the territory of the Philippine Islands for a period of two years" after the proclamation. Whereas number two, it will be noted, goes on to state that there have been "no serious disturbances of public order save and except" those in Cavite, Batangas, Samar, and Leyte, [478] the magnitude of which has been fully described in previous chapters. Of the Cavite-Batangas insurrection, the only one they had previously formally admitted to be an insurrection, they say it was "caused by certain noted outlaws and bandit chieftains [naming them], and their followers." Obviously this was hardly sufficient to show that an insurrection they had once officially recognized as such was not in fact such at all. So in order to justify a statement that "a condition of general and complete peace" had continued in these two great provinces of Cavite and Batangas, which they had but shortly previously declared to be in a state of insurrection, and been upheld by the Supreme Court in so doing, they resort to the old Otis expedient of 1898-9, worked on the American people through Mr. McKinley to show absence of lack of consent-of-the-governed. This expedient, as we have seen in the earlier chapters of this book, consisted in vague use of the word "majority." It had stood Judge Taft in good stead in the campaign of 1900, because when he then said that "the great majority of the people" were "entirely willing" to accept American rule, there was no earthly way to disprove it in time for the verdict of the American people to be influenced by the unanimity of the Filipinos against a change of masters in lieu of independence. It was the only possible expedient for an American conscience, because every American naturally feels that unless he can, by some sort of sophistry, persuade himself that "the majority" of the people want a given thing, then the thing is a wrong thing to force upon them. So the ethical hurdle the Commission had to leap in order to sign the certificate of 1907 was cleared thus:

The overwhelming majority of the people of said provinces have not taken part in said disturbances and have not aided and abetted the lawless acts of said bandits.

As a matter of fact, the report of the American Governor of Cavite--and conditions were conceded to be identical in the two provinces of Cavite and Batangas--shows that the reason it was so hard to suppress the Cavite-Batangas troubles of 1905 was that the people would not help the authorities to apprehend the outlaws. No doubt the King of England would have signed a similar certificate as to the people of the shires and counties in which Robin Hood, Little John, and Friar Tuck, held high carnival. Of course I do not mean to libel the fair fame of that fine freebooter Robin Hood and his companions by placing the rascally leaders of the bands of outlaws now under consideration in the same jolly and respectable class with those beloved friends of the childhood of us all. But the Cavite-Batangas "patriots" of 1905 could never have given the authorities as much trouble as they did if the people had not at least taken secret joy in discomfiture of the American authorities. Until finally suppressed, all such movements as these always grew exactly as a snow-ball does if you roll it on snow. Says Governor Shanks, a Major of the 4th United States Infantry, who was Governor of Cavite, in 1905 in his report for that year, [479] in explaining the uprising under consideration, and the way it grew: "The Filipino likes to be on the winning side." Certainly this is not peculiar to the Filipino. Governor Shanks proceeds:

The prestige acquired (by the uprising) at San Pedro Tunasan, Paranaque, Taal, and San Francisco de Malabon had great weight in creating active sympathy for ladrone bands and leaders. Something was needed to counterbalance the effect of their combined successes, and the appearance of regular troops was just the thing needed.

This explains how "the overwhelming majority" of which the certificate of 1907 speaks was obtained in Cavite. It took six months to obtain said "majority" at that. I suppose the campaigning of the American regulars might be credited with obtaining the "majority," and the reconcentration of brother Baker of the constabulary might be accorded the additional credit of making the majority "overwhelming." If you have, as election tellers, so to speak, a soldier with a bayonet on one side, and a constabulary officer with a reconcentration camp back of him on the other, you can get an "overwhelming majority" for the continuance of American rule even in Cavite province.

Through men I commanded during the early campaigning, I have killed my share of Filipinos in the time of war; and after the civil government was set up I had occasion to hang a good many of them, under what seemed to me a necessary application of the old Mosaic law, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life." But I thank God I have never been a party to the insufferable pretence that they, or any appreciable fraction of them, ever consented to our rule. This, however, is the whole theory of the Philippine Commission's certificate of March 28, 1907. It is curious how generously and supremely frank a brave soldier will get when he forgets to be a politician. In one of his state papers of 1907 Governor-General Smith [480] speaks of General Trias, who had been Lieutenant-General of the insurgent army in the days of the insurrection, and next in rank to Aguinaldo himself, as one "whose love of country had been tested on many a well fought field of honorable conflict." Contrast this tribute to the respectability of the original Philippine war for independence against us with the long list of stale falsehoods already reviewed in this volume, on the faith of which, in the presidential campaign of 1900, the American people were persuaded that to deny to the Filipinos what they had accorded to Cuba was righteous! The leaders of the Cavite-Batangas uprising of 1905 had been officers of the insurgent army, and that was the secret of their hold upon the people of those provinces. It is true that they must have been pretty sorry officers, and that they were ladrones (brigands). They were cruel and unmitigated scoundrels working for purely selfish and vainglorious ends. But it was the cloak of patriotism, however, infamously misused, that gained them such success as they attained in 1905. Says the American Governor of Cavite province in his annual report for 1906 [481]:

The province should be most carefully watched. I am convinced that ladrone leaders do not produce conditions, but that the conditions and attitude of the public produce ladrones.

So much for the Cavite-Batangas hurdle. And now as to the Samar and Leyte hurdle.

The signers of the certificate of 1907 justify their certificate as to Samar and Leyte on a very ingenious theory. The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, already cited, which had provided for the taking of a census preliminary to the call of an election for delegates to a legislature, had recognized the crude ethnological status of the Moros and other non-Christian tribes. These had never had anything whatever to do with the insurrection against us. Therefore in making the continuance of a state of general and complete peace for a prescribed period a condition precedent to granting the Filipinos a legislature, the Act of 1902 had limited that condition precedent to "the territory of said Islands not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes." In fact President Roosevelt's proclamation of September 25, 1902, already noticed, ordering the taking of the census on the theory that a state of general and complete peace then existed, explains that this theory is entirely consistent with trouble among the Moros and other non-Christian tribes because they, it says, quoting from a statement of the Philippine Commission previously made to the President, "never have taken any part in the insurrection." The Moros and other non-Christian tribes were, so to speak, in no sense assets of the Philippine insurrection. All the rest of the population was--that is, if there was anything in the veteran General MacArthur's grim jest of 1900, prompted by Governor Taft's half-baked opinion to the contrary, that "ethnological homogeneity" was the secret of the unanimity of the opposition we met, and that somehow people "will stick to their own kith and kin." When the Philippine Government Act of 1902 was drawn nobody pretended for a moment that there were any non-Christian tribes either in Samar or Leyte. The whole population of those Islands were valuable assets of the insurrection. If any one doubts it, let him ask the 9th Infantry. You will find in the Census of 1903 that there are no non-Christian tribes credited either to Samar or Leyte. [482] When the Philippine Government Act of 1902 was drafted, the exception about Moros and other non-Christian tribes was intended to except merely certain types of people as distinct from the great mass of the Philippine population as islands are from the sea. The fact is, no person connected with the Philippine Government either before or after the certificate under consideration, ever thought of classifying the ignorant country people of the uplands and hills of Samar or Leyte, as "non-Christian tribes." The Philippine Census of 1903 does not so classify them. The very volume of the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1907 in which the certificate aforesaid appears, does not. In that volume, [483] the report of the Executive Secretary deals elaborately with the subject of non-Christian tribes. Professor Worcester of the Philippine Commission has for the last twelve years been the grand official digger-up of non-Christian tribes. He takes as much delight at the discovery of a new non-Christian tribe in some remote, newly penetrated mountain fastness, as the butterfly catcher with the proverbial blue goggles does in the capture of a new kind of butterfly. The Executive Secretary's report, out of deference to the professor, omits no single achievement of his with reference to his anthropological hobby. It treats, with an enthusiasm that would delight Mrs. Jellyby herself, of "the progress that was made during the fiscal year in the work of civilizing non-Christian tribes scattered throughout the archipelago." It gives an alphabetical list of all the provinces where there are non-Christian tribes, and, under the name of each province it gives notes as to the progress during the year with those tribes. Neither Samar nor Leyte appear in that list of provinces. So that the Samar "Pulajans," or "Red Breeches" fellows,--"fanatical" Pulajans, they are called in the certificate--were "non-Christian tribes" for peace certificate purposes only. One thing which makes it most difficult of all for me to understand how these gentlemen got their consent to sign that certificate is that each non-Christian tribe in the Philippines has a language of its own, whereas the country people of the uplands and mountains of Samar and Leyte who are labelled--or libelled--"non-Christian tribes" in the certificate of 1907, were no more different from the rest of the population of those islands than, for instance, the ignorant mountain people of Virginia or Kentucky are different, ethnologically, from the inhabitants of Richmond or Louisville. In his report for 1908, [484] Governor-General Smith himself makes this perfectly clear, where he describes the Samar Pulajan, or mountaineer, thus:

The Pulajan is not a robber or a thief by nature--quite the contrary. He is hard working, industrious, and even frugal. He had his little late [485] of hemp on the side of the mountain, and breaking out his picul [486] of hemp, he carried it hank by hank for miles and miles over almost impassable mountain trails to the nearest town or barrio. There he offered it for sale, and if he refused the price tendered, which was generally not more than half the value, he soon found himself arrested on a trumped-up charge, and unless he compromised by parting with his hemp he found himself, after paying his fine and lawyer's fees, without either hemp or money.

The non-Christian tribes, on the other hand, never have anything to do with the civilized people. The Act of Congress of 1902, therefore, had no sort of reference to the simple, ignorant, and ordinarily docile mountain folk who tilled the soil, revered the priests, paid their cedula or head tax like all the rest of the population of the Islands, and carried their agricultural products from season to season, their hemp and the like, to the coast towns to market. In other words, inclusion of the Samar "Pulajans," or "Red Breeches" brigade, and the Leyte bandits, in the peace certificate of 1907, as "non-Christian tribes" was an afterthought, having no foundation either in logic or fact. It was a part of Benevolent Assimilation. This is clearly apparent from President Roosevelt's message to Congress of December, 1905. [487] You do not find any buncombe about "non-Christian tribes" in that message. In there reviewing the Samar and other insurrections of 1905 in the Philippines, you find him dealing with the real root of the evil with perfect honesty, though adopting the view that the Filipino people were to blame therefor, because we had placed too much power in the hands of an ignorant electorate, which had elected rascally officials. "Cavite and Samar," he says, "are instances of reposing too much confidence in the self-governing power of a people." If we had let the Filipinos go ahead with their little republic in 1898, instead of destroying it as we did, they knew and would have utilized the true elements of strength they had, viz., a very considerable body of educated, patriotic men having the loyal confidence of the masses of the people. But we proceeded to ram down their throats a preconceived theory that the only road to self-government was for an alien people to step in and make the ignorant masses the sine qua non. Yet if there was one point on which Mr. McKinley had laid more stress than on any other, in his original instructions of April 7, 1900, to the Taft Commission, that point was the one consecrated in the following language of those instructions:

In all the forms of government and administrative provisions which they are authorized to prescribe, the commission should bear in mind that the government which they are establishing is designed not for * * * the expression of our theoretical views, etc.

Of course the ignorant electorate we perpetrated on Samar as an "expression of our theoretical views" proved that we had "gone too fast" in conferring self-government, or, to quote Mr. Roosevelt, had been "reposing too much confidence in the self-governing power of a people," if to begin with the rankest material for constructing a government that there was at hand was to offer a fair test of capacity for self-government. But President Roosevelt's message, above quoted, shows you that the "ignorant electorate" was merely an ignorant electorate, and not a non-Christian tribe, as the Philippine Commission later had the temerity to certify they were. Now the plain, unvarnished, benevolent truth is just this: The Commission knew that nobody in the United States, whether they were for retaining the Islands or against retaining them, had any desire to postpone granting a legislature to the Philippine people. So in their certificate they simply included everybody who had given trouble in Samar and Leyte as "non-Christian tribes." The only justification for this was that they had in fact acted in a most un-Christianlike manner,--i.e., for people who devotedly murmur prayers to patron saints in good standing in the church calendar. In making their certificate, the Commission simply ignored the various uprisings of the preceding two years. They simply said, generously, "Oh, forget it." They knew nobody in the United States begrudged the Filipinos their conditionally promised legislature, or cared to postpone it. The leading Filipinos begged the authorities to "forget" the various disturbances that had occurred since the publication of the census, and there was a very general desire in the Islands to let bygones be bygones, wipe the slate, and begin again. Any other attitude would have meant that the legislature would have to be postponed. Then the opposition in the United States would want to know why, and by 1908 Philippine independence might become an issue again. In the eyes of the Commission, the end, being benevolent, justified stretching the language of the Act of 1902 as if it had been the blessed veil of charity itself--i.e., the end justified the means. In fact it did--almost--justify the means. But not quite. The moral quality of the Great Certificate of 1907 was not as reprehensible as General Anderson's dealings with Aguinaldo, already described, which, like the certificate, were a necessary part of the benevolent hypocrisy of Benevolent Assimilation of an unconsenting people. Yet General Anderson is an honorable man. It was not as bad as General Greene's juggling Aguinaldo out of his trenches before Manila in a friendly way, and failing to give him a receipt for said trenches, as he had promised to do, because such a receipt would show co-operation and "might look too much like an alliance." This also was done on the idea that the end justified the means. Yet General Greene is an honorable man. The signers of the great peace certificate of 1907 are all honorable men. But they signed that certificate, just the same. "Judge not that ye be not judged." All I have to say is, I would not have signed that certificate. I would have said: "No, gentlemen, the end does not justify the means. The Philippine Assembly must be postponed, if we are going to deal frankly with Congress and the folks at home. The conditions Congress made precedent to the grant of an assembly have not been met, and we each and all of us know it. We owe more to our own country and to truth than we do to the Filipinos. The Act of Congress of 1902 did not vest in the Philippine Commission authority to pardon disturbances of public order. It imposed upon the Commission an implied duty to report such disturbances, fully and frankly. It is not true that there has been a continuing state of general and complete peace in these Islands for the last two years, and I for one will not certify that there has been."

The truth is, the attitude of the signers of the certificate was like that of Uncle Remus, when interrupted by the little boy in one of his stories. When Uncle Remus gets to the point in the rabbit story where the rabbit thrillingly escapes from the jaws of death, i.e., from the jaws of the dogs, by climbing a tree, the rapt listener interrupts: "Why, Uncle Remus, a rabbit can't climb a tree." To which Uncle Remus replies, with a reassuring wave of the hand, "Oh, but Honey, dis rabbit dess 'bleeged ter climb dis tree."

Should any of my good friends still in the Philippines feel disposed to censure such levity as the above, I can only say, as Kipling writes from England to his Anglo-Indian friends in a foreword to one of his books:

I have told these tales of our life For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise,--but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth.

Moreover, my authority to speak frankly about these matters is also aptly stated by the same great poet thus:

I have eaten your bread and salt, I have drunk your water and wine, The deaths ye died I have watched beside And the lives that ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease, One joy or woe that I did not know, Dear friends across the seas?

The above reflections are not placed before the reader to show him what a pity it is that the writer was not a member of the Philippine Commission at the time of their certificate of 1907, or to show what a fine thing for our common country it would be if he were made a member of that Commission now. He is, personally, as disinterested as if Manila were in the moon, for he cannot live in the tropics any more. The effect of a year or so of residence there upon white men invalided home for tropical dysentery and then returning to the Islands is like the effect of water upon a starched shirt. However, it is believed that the facts of official record collected in this chapter up to this point are a demonstration of this proposition, to wit: What the Philippine Government needs more than anything else is that the minority party in the United States should be represented on the Commission. By this I do not mean representation by what are called, under Republican Administrations, "White House" Democrats, nor what under a Democratic Administration, if one should ever occur, would probably be called "Copperhead Republicans." I mean the genuine article. A Democrat who has cast his fortunes with the Philippines is no longer a Democrat relatively to the Philippines, because the Democratic party wants to get rid of the Philippines and the Democrat in the Philippines of course does not. How absurd it is to talk about former Governors Wright and Smith, as "life-long Democrats," by way of preliminary to using their opinions as "admissions." In the law of evidence, an "admission" is a statement made against the interest of the party making it.

The first election for representatives in the Philippine Assembly was held on July 30, 1907, and on October 16th thereafter the Assembly was formally opened by Secretary of War, William H. Taft. The various "whereases" hereinabove reviewed, importing complete acquiescence in American rule since President Roosevelt's Proclamation of July 4, 1902, were first duly read, and then the Assembly was opened. Of course, no man could have been elected to the Assembly without at least pretending to be in favor of independence, and all but a corporal's guard of them were outspoken in favor of the proposition. As the present Governor-General Mr. Forbes, said, while Vice-Governor, in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1909:

To deny the capacity of one's country for * * * self-government is essentially unpopular.

When he visited the Philippines to open their Assembly in 1907, Mr. Taft had said nothing definite and final on the question of promising independence since his departure from the Islands in 1903. His then benevolent unwillingness to tell them frankly he did not think they had sense enough to run a government of their own, and that they were unfit for self-government, has already been reviewed. For two years after 1903 Governor Wright had made them pine for the return of Mr. Taft. They longed to hear again some of the siren notes of the celebrated speech "the Philippines for the Filipinos." They had gotten very excited and very happy over that speech. Of course they would not have gotten very excited over independence supposed to be coming long after they should be dead and buried. During the two dark frank years of Governor Wright's regime, they had frequently been told that they were not fit for independence. So that when Secretary of War Taft had visited the Islands in 1905 they all had been on the qui vive for more statements vaguely implying an independence they might hope to live to see. During the visit of 1905 the time of the visiting Congressional party was consumed principally with tariff hearings, and comparatively little was said on the subject uppermost in the minds of all Filipinos. It is true that Mr. Taft said then he was of the opinion that it would take a generation or longer to get the country ready for self-government, but he said it in a tactful, kindly way, and did not forever crush their hopes. So when he went out to the Islands to open the assembly in 1907, the attitude of the whole people in expectation of some definite utterances on the question of a definite promise of independence at some future time, was just the attitude of an audience in a theatre as to which one affirms "you could hear a pin fall." In this regard Mr. Taft's utterances were as follows [488]:

I am aware that in view of the issues discussed at the election of this assembly I am expected to say something regarding the policy of the United States toward these islands. I cannot speak with the authority of one who may control that policy. The Philippine Islands are territory belonging to the United States, and by the Constitution, the branch of that government vested with the power and charged with the duty of making rules and regulations for their government is Congress. 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.

After that there was some talk about "mutually beneficial trade relations" and "improvement of the people both industrially and in self-governing capacity." But with regard to the "process of political preparation of the Filipino people" for self-government the Secretary said that was a question no one could certainly answer; and so far as he was concerned he thought it would take "considerable longer than a generation." Somewhere in the early Philippine State papers there is a quotation used by Mr. Taft from Shakespeare about "Keeping the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope." The Filipinos have eagerly read for the last twelve years every utterance of Mr. Taft's that they could get hold of. If any of those embryonic statesmen of the first Philippine Assembly, familiar with the various Taft utterances, had looked up the context of the Shakespearian quotation above alluded to, he would have found it to be as follows:

And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd, That palter with us in a double sense: That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope. [489]

Since the announcement by Secretary of War Taft at the opening of the Philippine Assembly in October, 1907, of the policy of indefinite retention of the Islands with undeclared intention, the Filipinos have of course clearly understood that if they were ever to have independence they must look to Congress for it. But they know Congress is not interested in them and that they have no influence with it, and that the Hemp Trust, the Tobacco Trust, and the Sugar Trust, have. So that since 1907, both the American authorities in the Philippines and the Filipinos have settled down, the former suffused with benevolence--hardened however by paternalistic firmness, the latter stoically, to the programme of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. No conceivable programme could be devised more ingeniously calculated to engender race hatred. The Filipino newspapers call the present policy one of "permanent administration for inferior and incapable races." The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, known as the Philippine Government Act, which is the "Constitution," so to speak, we have given the Filipinos, accords "liberty of the press" in the exact language of our own Constitution. The native press does not fail to use this liberty to the limit. Naturally the American press does not remain silent. So here are a pair of bellows ever fanning the charcoals of discontent. And the masses of the Filipino people read the Filipino papers. If they cannot read, their children can. In one of the reports of one of the American constabulary officials in the Philippines, there is an account of the influence of the native press too graphic to be otherwise than accurate. He says one can often see, in the country districts, a group of natives gathered about some village Hampden, listening to his reading the latest diatribe against the American Occupation. Never was there such folly in the annals of statesmanship. In their native papers, the race situation of course comes in for much comment. Now the most notorious and inflexible fact of that race situation is that the colonial Anglo-Saxon does not intermarry with "the yellow and brown" subject people, as the Latin colonizing races do. It would be an over-statement of the case to say that the Filipinos to-day had rather have the Spaniards back as their overlords instead of us. In 1898, they "tasted the sweets of liberty," to use an expression of one of their leaders, and I am perfectly sure that to-day the desire of all those people for a government of their own is so genuine and universal as that it amounts to a very hopeful positive factor in the equation of their capacity for self-government. But there is no doubt that many of the Filipinos after all have a very warm place in their hearts for the Spanish people. How could it be otherwise when so many of the Filipinos are sons and grandsons of Spaniards? Much of like and dislike in life's journey is determined pre-natally. On the other hand, the American women in the Philippines maintain an attitude toward the natives quite like that of their British sisters in Hong Kong toward the Chinese, and in Calcutta toward the natives there. The social status of an American woman who marries a native,--I myself have never heard of but one case--is like that of a Pacific coast girl who marries a Jap. This is merely the instinct of self-defence with which Nature provides the weaker sex, just as she provides the porcupine with quills. But look at the other side of the picture. When an American man marries a native woman, he thereafter finds himself more in touch with his native "in-laws" it is true, but correspondingly, and ever increasingly, out of touch with his former associations. This is not as it should be. But it is a most unpleasant and inexorable fact of the present situation. In an address delivered at the Quill Club in Manila on January 25, 1909, Governor Smith, after reciting the various beneficent designs contemplated by the government and the various public works consummated (at the expense of the people of the Islands) deplored, in spite of it all, what he termed "the growing gulf between the races." Said he:

An era of ill feeling has started between Americans and Filipinos, and, I hesitate to say it, race hatred.

Cherchez la femme! You find her, on the one hand, in the American woman whose attitude has been indicated, and you find her, on the other, in the refined and virtuous native woman, who finds her American husband's relations to his compatriots altered--queered--since his marriage to her, no matter how faithful a wife and mother she may be. This is the unspeakably cruel situation we have forced upon the Filipino people--whom I really learned to respect, and became much attached to, before I left the Islands--and President Taft knows it as well as I do. Yet he does not take the American people into his confidence. He simply worries along with the situation, wishing it would get better, but knowing it will get worse. That this situation is a permanent one is clearly shown by all the previous teachings of racial history. In his Winning of the West, written in 1889, speaking of the French settlers in the Ohio valley before 1776, and the cordial social relations of the dominant race with the natives--relations which have always obtained with all Latin races under like circumstances--Mr. Roosevelt says (vol. i., page 41):

They were not trammelled by the queer pride which makes a man of English stock unwilling to make a red-skinned woman his wife, though anxious enough to make her his concubine.

Men of English stock have changed but little in the matter of race instinct since 1776. If we had a definite policy, declared by Congress, promising independence, the American attitude in the Philippines toward the Filipinos would at once change, from the present impossible one, to our ordinary natural attitude of courtesy toward all foreigners, regardless of their color.

On May 7, 1909, the Honorable James F. Smith took his departure from the Philippine Islands forever and turned over the duties of his office to the Honorable W. Cameron Forbes, as Acting President of the Commission and Governor-General. As in the case of Governors Wright and Ide, so in that of Governor Smith, no reason is apparent why the Washington Government should have been willing to dispense with the services of the incumbent. This was peculiarly true in the case of General Smith. He was but fifty years of age when he left the Islands in 1909. He has rendered more different kinds of distinguished public service than any American who has ever been in the Philippine Islands from the time Dewey's guns first thundered out over Manila Bay down to this good hour. Going out with the first expedition in 1898 as Colonel of the 1st California Regiment, he distinguished himself on more than one battlefield in the early fighting and in recognition thereof was made a brigadier-general. Subsequent to this he became Military Governor of the island of Negros, that one of the six principal Visayan Islands which gave less trouble during the insurrection and after than any other--a circumstance doubtless not wholly unrelated to General Smith's wise and tactful administration there. Later on during the military regime he became Collector of Customs of the archipelago. The revenues from customs are the principal source of revenue of the Philippine Government and the sums of money handled are enormous. The customs service, moreover, in most countries, and especially in the Philippines, is more subject to the creeping in of graft than any other. General Smith's administration of this post was in keeping with everything else he did in the Islands. When the civil government was founded by Judge Taft in 1901, he was appointed one of the Justices of the Supreme Court and filled the duties of that office most creditably. Thence he was promoted to the Philippine Commission, which is, virtually, the cabinet of the Governor-General. Still later he became Vice-Governor, and finally Governor, serving as such from September, 1906, to May, 1909. Any other government on earth that has over-seas colonies and recognizes the supreme importance of a maximum of continuity of policy, would have kept Governor Smith as long as it could have possibly induced him to stay, just as the British kept Lord Cromer in Egypt. Governor Smith was succeeded by a young man from Boston, who had come out to the Islands four years before, and who, prior to that time, had never had any public service in the United States of any kind, had never been in the Philippine Islands, and probably had never seen a Filipino until he landed at Manila.

General Smith is now (1912) one of the Judges of the Court of Customs Appeals at Washington.