The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 27

I put Jake Smith out of business, as you gentlemen all know, for his inhuman methods of avenging the Balangiga ma.s.sacre in Samar, and I am just as much opposed to cruelty as any of you Senators can be. But Bell in Batangas is an altogether different case from Smith in Samar. All this about the odor of decomposing bodies wafted from reconcentration camps, and "clouds of vampire bats swirling out on their orgies over the dead," that Senator Bacon's army friend, whoever he may be, wrote the Senator, relates to Samar, and never did have any application to Bell's methods in Batangas. Bell did a clean job in a minimum of time and with a minimum sacrifice of life, and, while he did have those reconcentration camps in Batangas, he saw to it religiously that n.o.body starved, and that all those people received daily medical treatment.

For the correctness of the picture of conditions presented in the above hypothetical talk, I of course intend to be understood as vouching. If such a talk could have been had in 1903 by President Roosevelt with Senator Bacon and those of his colleagues who shared his views, the Albay situation might have been handled creditably. But the Administration was in no position to be frank with the Opposition. No Administration has ever yet during the last fourteen years been in a position to be frank with the Senate and the country concerning the situation at any given time in the Philippines, because at any given time there was always so much that it could not afford to re-open and explain. Mr. Root, for instance, might have been questioned too closely as to why, when Secretary of War, he had gone around the country in the fall of 1900 speaking for Mr. McKinley, and talking about "the patient and unconsenting millions" so anxious to be rid of "Aguinaldo and his band of a.s.sa.s.sins," when at that very time his (Mr. Root's) generals in the Philippines were engaged in activities, the magnitude of which may be inferred from a telegram sent from Was.h.i.+ngton to General Wood at Havana, asking if he could possibly spare the 10th Infantry, and adding:

Imperative that we have immediate use of every available company that we can lay our hands on for service in the Philippines, [414]

although at West Point in 1902 he told the cadets how n.o.bly the army had labored in putting down "an insurrection of 7,000,000 people." No, the Administration in 1903 simply could not afford to be frank concerning the situation in the Philippines. I need not recapitulate here any more of the long train of reasons why, because they have all been fully explained in the preceding chapters. Of course President Roosevelt had no such guilty knowledge of the facts as Mr. Root. He was not in constant daily contact with army officers at the War Department, familiar with the actual situation in the Philippines, as Mr. Root was. He was simply "sticking to Taft." Somewhere along about the time the military folk in the Philippines were scoffing at the unnecessary sacrifice of life incident to the lack of a strong government, President Roosevelt had written his warm personal friend, Hon. George Curry, now a member of Congress from New Mexico, who had been a captain in his regiment before Santiago, was then an official of the civil government of the Philippines, and later Governor of New Mexico, by appointment of Mr. Roosevelt: "Stick to Taft, George"

or words to that effect. Mr. Roosevelt's att.i.tude was simply that of an intensely loyal friend of Mr. Taft who simply a.s.sumed that the Philippine Government was not going to tolerate impotence in the matter of protecting life and property. But everybody at both ends of the line was too deep in the mire of all the long and systematic withholding of facts from the American public which had been occurring ever since 1898, and which it has been the aim of the preceding chapters to illuminate by the light since becoming available in the published official records of the Government. Hence, in the hypothetical conference above supposed, President Roosevelt was in no position to take any high ground. He would have had to admit that the civil government of 1901 was set up too soon in order to stand by half-baked notions dished out in 1900 by the Taft Commission in aid of his own and Mr. McKinley's campaign for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, respectively. In other words the truth about the Philippines from the beginning might, and probably would, have seriously jeopardized the Roosevelt presidential chances in 1904. So Governor Taft was left to his own resources in struggling with the problem of law and order in the Islands, intimately understanding the obvious bearing, just suggested, of what he might do out there, on the election of 1904. What then did Governor Taft do to meet the situation in 1903? Chronological order, as well as other considerations making for clearness, would suggest that I begin by telling what he did not do.

In May, 1903, I was sent to the province of Surigao to try some cases arising out of what has ever since been known in that out-of-the-way region as "the affair of March 23d" (1903). In his annual report for 1903, pages 29 and 30, in describing the Surigao affair, Governor Taft correctly states that a band of outlaws came into the town of Surigao on the day above named, killed Captain Clark, the officer in charge of the constabulary, took the constabulary's guns, while they were all away at their mid-day meal, scattered about the town, and departed. But Mr. Taft's report disposes of the whole incident in a most casual way. As a matter of fact the gist of it was that a heroic little band of Americans under Mr. Luther S. Kelly, the provincial treasurer, an old Indian scout of the Yellowstone country, hastily gathered the seven American women then in the town, one of them in a delicate condition, into the stone government house, and stood off those semi-civilized sensual brigands until reinforcements arrived. Governor Taft's failure adequately to present the gravity of the episode in his account of it does not argue well for the subsequent solicitude he might feel about other American women in other remote provinces which he was anxious to keep on his "pacified list," to say nothing of politically negligible native life therein. [415]

Nor does this report include any of the material facts showing the ineffectiveness of the rank and file of the constabulary to cope with the situation, or the general feeling of insecurity I found in the province as to how far the whole population might be in sympathy with the brigands. As a matter of fact, after that Surigao affair, Governor Taft had to turn the army loose in the province to go and get back and restore to his constabulary the seventy-five to one hundred stand-of-arms the brigands had so rudely and impolitely taken away from them, and I held court there for a month trying the people who were captured and brought in, with Colonel Meyer, of the 11th Infantry, one of the most thorough and able soldiers of the United States Army, and seven hundred soldiers of his regiment acting as deputy sheriffs, and yet all the time the province was under "civil"

government, nominally. Colonel Meyer got the men who killed Clark, and, upon due and ample proof, I hung them, but Surigao was never taken for a day from the list of provinces enjoying "the peace and protection of a benign civil government." The writ of habeas corpus was never suspended for a moment.

In the report above quoted from, Governor Taft remarks that if the prompt steps he did take (he had already described the prompt sending of the military to the scene) had not been taken, "the trouble might have spread." But the Surigao affair seemed to teach the civil government nothing in the matter of subsequent protection of life, nor did it lessen their persistence in relying on their constabulary for due extension of such protection in time of need.

By June, 1903, another scheme was invented for avoiding calling on the military. When you are in a foreign country building a new government on the ruins of an old one, you naturally find out as much as you can about how the old one met its problems. The Spaniards had had the same problem in their day about not ordering out the military, because they did not have any military to order out. They were too poor to garrison the various provinces. They had long followed the plan, from time to time, of reconcentrating in the main towns of disturbed districts all the country population they could get to come in, and then acting on the a.s.sumption that all who did not come in were public enemies. This meant that when the country people came in, they simply looked out for themselves, while away from their homes, and farms, as best they could. Of course n.o.body at all looked after the farms, and n.o.body provided medical attention for the reconcentrados, or sanitary attention for the reconcentration camps. This general plan was formally sanctioned by the Commission, in so far as the following law sanctioned it. The law was enacted, June 1, 1903. It is section 6, of Act 781, which was an act dealing with all the constabulary problems, of which this was one. It read:

In provinces which are infested to such an extent with ladrones or outlaws that the lives and property of residents in the outlying barrios [416] are rendered wholly insecure by continued predatory raids--

think of permitting a country to get into any such condition when you have an abundance of American troops on hand available to prevent it--

and such outlying barrios thus furnish to the ladrones or outlaws their sources of food supply, and it is not possible with the available police forces constantly to provide protection to such barrios--

there being all the time "available police forces," in the shape of regular troops, amply able to handle these unsettled conditions, which were the inevitable aftermath of lawlessness consequent on five or six years of guerrilla warfare--

it shall be within the power of the Governor-General, upon resolution of the Philippine Commission, to authorize the provincial governor to order that the residents of such outlying barrios be temporarily brought--

observe the length of time this may last is not limited--

within stated proximity to the poblacion, or larger barrios, of the munic.i.p.ality, there to remain until the necessity for such order ceases to exist.

To house and ration the reconcentrados, the following provision is made by the statute we are considering:

During such temporary residence, it shall be the duty of the provincial board, out of provincial funds, to furnish such sustenance and shelter as may be needed to prevent suffering among the residents of the barrios thus withdrawn.

The act also provides that during the course of the reconcentration, where the province does not happen to have the necessary ready cash, it may apply to the Commission, in distant Manila, for an appropriation to meet the emergency. What is to be done with those who starve during the temporary deficit, it does not say. If you must have reconcentration, to leave it to such agencies as the above, with the native police and constabulary as understudies, in lieu of availing yourself of the superb equipment of the American army, with all its facilities for handling great ma.s.ses of people, as they did, for instance, after the San Francisco fire, is like preferring the Mulligan Guards to the Cold-stream Guards. Furthermore, there is no escape from the logic of the fact that reconcentration is essentially a war measure. The difference between what is lawful in war and what is lawful in peace is not a technical one. In war the innocent must often suffer with the guilty. In peace the theory at least is that only the guilty suffer. Hence it is that our Const.i.tution is so jealous that in time of peace no man's life, liberty, or property, shall be taken from him without "due process of law," a provision which becomes inoperative in war times, being superseded by martial law. I know that the early question, "Does the Const.i.tution follow the flag?" was answered by the Supreme Court of the United States in the negative as to the Philippines. But the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, under which we were governing the Philippines in 1903, and still govern them, known as the Philippine Government Act, extended to the Islands all the provisions of the Bill of Rights of our Const.i.tution except the right of jury trial and the individual right to go armed--"bear arms." It specifically said in section 5:

No law shall be enacted in said Islands which shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

It hardly needs argument to show that to bundle the rural population of a whole district out of house and home, and make them come to town to live indefinitely on such public charity as may drain through the itching fingers of impecunious town officials, abandoning meantime their growing crops, and the household effects they cannot bring with them, is depriving people of their property, and restraining them of their liberty, without due process of law. In fact, in 1905, in the case of Barcelon vs. Baker, vol. v., Philippine Report, page 116, during an insurrection in Batangas, to control which, the presidential election of 1904 being then safely over, the writ of habeas corpus had been suspended and martial law declared, the Supreme Court of the Philippines held that detention of people as reconcentrados under such circ.u.mstances "for the purpose of protecting them" was not an illegal restraint of their liberty, because the ordinary law had been suspended. This decision held it to be both the prerogative and the duty of the Governor-General to suspend the writ of habeas corpus when the public safety so required.

I refuse to believe for a moment that President Taft, the former wise and just judge, in whom is now vested by law the mighty power of filling vacancies on the highest court in this great country of ours, will seriously contend that that reconcentration law is not in direct violation of the above quoted section of the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, for the government of the Philippines, and therefore null and void. The truth is, it was a piece of careless legislation, dealing with conditions that were essentially war conditions, under a government which was forever vowing that peace conditions existed, and determined not to admit the contrary. The civil government was like Lot's wife. It could not look back.

The Act of Congress of 1902 had made the usual provision permitting the governor to declare martial law in a given locality in his discretion. But the reconcentration law pa.s.sed by the Philippine Commission was a way of avoiding the exercise of that authority, so as to keep up the appearance of peace in the provinces to which it might be applied, regardless of how many lives it might cost. In its last a.n.a.lysis the reconcentration law was at once an admission of a duty to order out the military and a declaration of intention to neglect that duty. I suppose the eminent gentlemen who enacted it justified it on the idea of teaching the natives how to maintain order themselves by letting them stew in the dregs of their own insurrection. Yet no one can read the Commission's own description of the widespread lawlessness which so long ran riot after the guerrilla warfare degenerated into brigandage, without seeing, from their own showing, how obvious was their duty to have waited, originally, until law and order were restored, by not interfering with the war itself until it was over, and by keeping the country properly garrisoned for a decorous and sufficient period after it was over, until something like real peace conditions should exist, on which to begin the work of post-bellum reconstruction. After all, it all gets us back to the original pernicious programme outlined in President McKinley's annual message to Congress of December, 1899, wherein was announced the intention to send out the Taft Commission, which message also announced, in effect, that it was Mr. McKinley's purpose to begin the work of reconstruction as fast as the patient and unconsenting millions "loyal to our rule" should be rescued from the clutch of the hated Tagals.

Recurring again to the reconcentration law itself, the moral quality of executive action putting it in operation was not unlike that which would attach should the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, in lieu of ordering the state troops to the scene of great strike riots in half a dozen towns around Boston, issue a proclamation something like this:

The situation has grown so serious that your local police force, as you see, is wholly inadequate to cope with the situation. You will all, therefore, thrust your tooth-brushes, night-gowns, and a change of clothing, into the family grip, and a.s.semble on the Boston Common and in the public gardens, there to remain until the necessity for this order ceases to exist, and we will there take the best care of you we can, as was done in the case of the San Francisco fire. As governor I am unwilling to order out the military.

If any lawyer on the Commission gave any thought at the time to the validity of the reconcentration law, in its relation to the "due process of law" clause of the Philippine Government Act, which none of them probably did, he must simply have justified the means by the benevolence of the end, on the idea that he knew so much better than Congress possibly could, the needs of the local situation. But if you read this law in the light of a knowledge of its practical operation, there is more suggestion between its lines of Senator Bacon's friend's "corpse-carca.s.s stench" and "clouds of vampire bats softly swirling out on their orgies over the dead" than there is of benevolence. It really was unsportsmanlike for the Commission to have entrusted reconcentration to the native police and constabulary the native governors had, and it was wholly indefensible for them to take the liberty of violating an act of Congress in order to live up to their pet fiction about the war being "entirely over."

After the term of court at Surigao in the month of May, 1903, I was sent to Misamis province, where I remained until September, handling an insurrection down there. This province also was nominally in a state of peace, i.e., there was no formal recognition of the existence of the insurrection by suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Curiously enough, as I wrote Governor Taft afterwards, the Misamis crowd of disturbers of the peace were genuine insurrectos. Their movement was not so formidable as the Ola insurrection in Albay I dealt with later, but they were by no means unmitigated cut-throats. I have often wondered how they managed to be so respectable at that late date. They did not steal, as did most of the outlaws of 1903. Their avowed purpose was to subvert the existing government. The use of this word "insurrection" in connection with these various disturbances recalls a pertinent incident. In 1904 there was a vacancy on the Supreme Bench of the Islands. Some of my friends, members of the bar of my district, got up a pet.i.tion to the then Governor-General setting forth in most partial terms my alleged qualifications for the place. Now in the Philippines, in the candor of informal social intercourse, all of us always called a spade a spade, i.e., we called an insurrection an insurrection, instead of referring to the disturbance in the guarded and euphemistic terms which you find in all the official reports intended for home consumption. So in their pet.i.tion, these gentlemen recited, among my other supposed qualifications, that I had held court in three different provinces "during insurrections in the same."

The Albay insurrection was the worst one I had to deal with during Governor Taft's administration as Governor of the Philippines. This was the insurrection headed by Simeon Ola. The first appearance of this man Ola in the official reports of the Philippine Government in connection with the Albay disturbances of 1902-3 is in the report of the colonel commanding the constabulary for the district which included Albay, Col. H. H. Bandholtz, dated June 30, 1903. [417] This report contains a sort of diary of events for the year preceding the date of it. An entry for October 28, 1902, begins:

Early this month negotiations were opened with Simeon Ola, chief of the ladrones in this province, with a view of inducing him to surrender.

Think of this great government negotiating with the leader of a band of thieves who were openly and flagrantly defying its authority! The entry proceeds:

After many promises and conferences extending over a period of forty days, during which hostilities were suspended, Ola broke off negotiations and withdrew his entire force and a large number of additional recruits that he had secured during the armistice.

Before Ola finally surrendered he is supposed to have had a total command ranging at various times from a thousand to 1500 men. And I think Colonel Bandholtz must have had in the field opposed to him, first and last, at least an equal number of native forces. Ola also makes an official reappearance in the report of the Governor of Albay Province for 1904. [418] It there appears that reconcentration was begun in Albay as part of the campaign against Ola and his forces, in March, 1903, and continued until the end of October of that year. Says this report of the Governor of Albay concerning reconcentration:

Naturally, the effect of this unusual volume of persons in a limited area was disease and suffering for want of food and ordinary living accommodations.

The Governor does not say how large the "unusual volume of persons"

was that was herded into the reconcentration zones, nor does he furnish any mortality statistics. n.o.body kept any. How much there was of the awful mortality and "clouds of vampire bats softly swirling out on their orgies over the dead," that Senator Bacon's army friend correspondent encountered in Samar does not affirmatively appear. The number of people affected by reconcentration in Albay and an adjacent province that caught the contagion of unrest and had to be given similar treatment, was about 300,000. [419]

In his report for 1903, in describing the Ola insurrection of 1902-3, Governor Taft says: "A reign of terror was inaugurated throughout the province." He then goes on to state that to meet it he applied the reconcentration tactics. In the same report he describes what is to my mind the most humiliating incident connected with the whole history of the American Government in the Philippines, viz., Vice-Governor Wright's visit to Albay in 1903, apparently in pursuance of the peace-at-any-price policy that the Manila Government was bent on. Governor Taft says of the civil government's dealings with His Excellency, the Honorable Simeon Ola, the chief of the brigands, that General Wright and Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a Filipino member of the Commission, went down to Albay and "talked to the people," the idea apparently being that those poor unarmed or ill-armed creatures should go after the brigands. This was to avoid ordering out the military, and summarily putting a stop to the reign of terror as became the dignity of this nation. I think these talks had something to do with the origin of the charge afterwards made that immunity was promised Ola and the men who finally did surrender with him. Of course General Wright made no such promises. But the idea got out in the province that the word was, "Get the guns," the inference being that if Ola and his people would come in and surrender their guns they would be lightly dealt with. In his book Our Philippine Problem, Professor Willis, at page 140, gives what purports to be an agreement signed by Colonel Bandholtz, dated September 22, 1903, whereby Bandholtz promises Ola immunity, and also promises a number of other things which are on their face rankly preposterous. Ola was much on the witness stand before me during that term of court, and, everything "came out in the wash." He was represented by competent, intelligent, and fearless Filipino counsel, and they did not suggest the existence of any such doc.u.ment. No proof of any offer of immunity was adduced before me. I think Ola simply finally decided to throw himself on the mercy of the government, on the idea that there would be more joy over the one sinner that repenteth than over the ninety and nine that are already saved. He was probably as much afraid that Governor Taft would order out the military as the wretched pacificos were that he would not. He immediately turned state's evidence against all the men under him of whose individual actings and doings he had any knowledge, the prosecuting attorney making, with my full approval, a promise to ask executive clemency as a reward. This was in keeping with the practice in like cases customary in all jurisdictions throughout the English-speaking world.

The magnitude of the Ola insurrection may be somewhat appreciated from the financial loss it occasioned. Says Governor Taft, in his report for 1903:

The Governor [of Albay] estimates that hemp production and sale have been interfered with to the extent of some ten to twelve millions of dollars Mexican [which is equivalent to five or six million dollars American money]. [420]