The Philippines: Past and Present Volume I Part 38

Mr. John R. Wilson, the a.s.sistant director of lands, was absent at the moment, but his resignation was demanded on the day of his return. He too was an active, efficient, upright man.

Both of these removals were political acts, pure and simple. Sr. Manuel Tinio was appointed Director of Lands. He is a bright young Ilocano of good character, who had become a "general" in the Insurgent army at twenty-one years of age. He is unfit to hold the place, because, as he has himself frankly said, he knows nothing about the work. He is charged with the duty of administering $7,000,000 worth of friar lands, and the whole public domain of the Philippine Islands, and with such minor duties as the checkmating of the machinations of numerous wealthy Filipinos who seek fraudulently to acquire great tracts through fraudulent claims to unperfected t.i.tles and by other improper means.

While in Honolulu, _en route_ to Manila, Mr. Harrison gave out an interview, which I am credibly informed he has since confirmed in substance. It contained the following statement:--

"For years I have been of the minority in Congress and have seen the Democrats kicked about, trampled upon, and otherwise manhandled by Republicans, so that I must confess it now gives me a saturnine pleasure to see the Democrats in a position to do the same thing to the Republicans."

His early official acts after arrival at Manila confirmed the belief that this was indeed the spirit in which he was facing the grave responsibilities which there confronted him.

It is beyond doubt or cavil that high ideals heretofore have prevailed in the Philippine Civil Service. Are they now to be subst.i.tuted by the methods of the ward politician?

In its report for 1901 the Philippine Commission said:--

"The civil service law has been in operation since our last report, and we see no reason to change our conclusion as to the absolute necessity for its existence, and strict enforcement. Without this law American government in these Islands is, in our opinion, foredoomed to humiliating failure."

I signed that report. I have not since seen any reason to change my mind.

CHAPTER XIV

The Philippine Constabulary and Public Order

During the last thirty years of Spanish rule in the Philippines evil-doers were pursued and apprehended and public order was maintained chiefly by the _guardia civil_. At the time of its organization in 1868 this body had a single division. By 1880 the number had been increased to three, two for Luzon and one for the Visayan Islands.

The _guardia civil_ was organized upon a military basis, its officers and soldiers being drawn from the regular army of Spain by selection or upon recommendation. Detachments were distributed throughout the provinces and were commanded according to their size by commissioned or non-commissioned officers. Central offices were located in district capitals; company headquarters were stationed in provincial capitals, and detachments were sent to places where they were deemed to be necessary.

Under ordinary conditions they rendered service as patrols of two men each, but for the purpose of attacking large bands of outlaws one or several companies were employed as occasion required.

The _guardia civil_ had jurisdiction over all sorts of violations of laws and munic.i.p.al ordinances. They made reports upon which were based the appointments of munic.i.p.al officers, the granting of licenses to carry firearms, and the determination of the loyalty or the disloyalty of individuals.

They were vested with extraordinary powers. Offences against them were tried by courts-martial, and were construed as offences against sentinels on duty. Penalties were therefore extremely severe.

Officers of the _guardia civil_ on leave could by their own initiative a.s.sume a status of duty with the full powers and responsibilities that go with command. This is contrary to American practice, under which only dire emergency justifies an officer in a.s.suming an official status unless he is duly a.s.signed thereto by competent authority.

The _guardia civil_ could arrest on suspicion, and while the Spanish Government did not directly authorize or sanction the use of force to extort confessions, it was not scrupulous in the matter of accepting confessions so obtained as evidence of crime, nor was it quick to punish members of the _guardia civil_ charged with mistreatment of prisoners.

Reports made by the _guardia civil_ were not questioned, but were accepted without support even in cases of the killing of prisoners alleged to have attempted to escape, or of men evading arrest.

This method of eliminating without trial citizens deemed to be undesirable was applied with especial frequency in the suppression of active brigandage, and latterly during the revolution against Spain. Prisoners in charge of the _guardia civil_ were always tied elbow to elbow. They knew full well that resistance or flight was an invitation to their guards to kill them, and that this invitation was likely to be promptly accepted.

In the investigation of crime the members of this organization arrested persons on suspicion and compelled them to make revelations, true or false. Eye-witnesses to the commission of crime were not needed in the Spanish courts of that day. The confession of an accused person secured his conviction, even though not made in the presence of a judge. Indirect and hearsay evidence were accepted, and such things as writs of habeas corpus and the plea of double jeopardy were unknown in Spanish procedure.

The _guardia civil_ could rearrest individuals and again charge them with crimes of which they had already been acquitted. I have been a.s.sured by reliable Filipino witnesses that it was common during the latter days of Spanish sovereignty for persons who had made themselves obnoxious to the government to be invited by non-commissioned officers to take a walk, which was followed either by their complete disappearance or by the subsequent discovery of their dead bodies.

It naturally resulted that the members of the _guardia civil_ were regarded with detestation and terror by the people, but their power was so absolute that protest rarely became public. The one notable exception was furnished by Dr. Rizal's book ent.i.tled "Noli Me Tangere,"

which voiced the complaints of the Filipinos against them. There is not a vestige of doubt that hatred of them was one of the princ.i.p.al causes of the insurrection against Spain.

In 1901 the American government organized a rural police force in the Philippines. It was called the Philippine constabulary. The insurrection was then drawing to a close, but there were left in the field many guerilla bands armed and uniformed. Their members sought to excuse their lawless acts under the plea of patriotism and opposition to the forces of the United States. In many provinces they combined with professional bandits or with religious fanatics. Various "popes"

arose, like Papa Isio in Negros. The Filipinos had become accustomed to a state of war which had continued for nearly six years. Habits of peace had been abandoned. The once prosperous haciendas were in ruins. War and pestilence had destroyed many of the work animals, and those which remained continued to perish from disease. Asiatic cholera was sweeping through the archipelago, and consternation and disorder followed in its wake.

Under such circ.u.mstances the organization of a rural police force was imperatively necessary. Unfortunately the most critical situation which it was to be called upon to meet had to be faced at the very outset, when both officers and men were inexperienced and before adequate discipline could be established.

The law providing for its establishment was drawn by the Honourable Luke E. Wright, at that time secretary of commerce and police and later destined to become governor-general of the Philippines and secretary of war of the United States.

It was intended that the constabulary should accomplish its ends by force when necessary but by sympathetic supervision when possible, suppressing brigandage and turning the people towards habits of peace. The fact was clearly borne in mind that the abuses of the _guardia civil_ had not been forgotten and the new force was designed to meet existing conditions, to allay as rapidly as possible the existing just rancour against the similar organization established under the Spanish regime, and to avoid the evils which had contributed so much toward causing the downfall of Spanish sovereignty. The law was admirably framed to achieve these ends.

The officers of the constabulary were selected chiefly from American volunteers recently mustered out and from honourably discharged soldiers of the United States army. Some few Filipinos, whose loyalty was above suspicion, were appointed to the lower grades. This number has since been materially augumented, and some of the original Filipino appointees have risen to the rank of captain.

It was inevitable that at the outset there should be abuses. The organization was necessarily born at work; there was no time to instruct, to formulate regulations, to wait until a satisfactory state of discipline had been brought about. There were not barracks for housing the soldiers; there were neither uniforms, nor arms, nor ammunition. There was no system for rationing the men. All of these things had to be provided, and they were provided through a natural evolution of practical processes, crystallizing into form, tested by the duties of the day. The organization which grew up was a true survival of the fittest, both in personnel and in methods. The wonder is not that some abuses occurred, but that they were so few; not that there were occasional evidences of lack of efficiency, but that efficiency was on the whole so high from the beginning.

The several provinces were made administrative units, the commanding officer in each being designated as "senior inspector." The men who were to serve in a given province were by preference recruited there, and a departure was thus made from the usual foreign colonial practice.

In 1905 the total force was fixed at one hundred companies with a nominal strength of two officers and fifty men each. Under special conditions this rule may be departed from, and the size of the companies or the number of officers increased.

Each province is divided by the senior inspector into sections, and the responsibility for patrol work and general policing rests on the senior company officer in each station. The provinces are grouped into five districts, each commanded by an a.s.sistant chief who exercises therein the authority, and performs the duties appropriate to the chief for the entire Philippines. The higher administrative positions have always been filled by detailing regular officers of the United States army.

The constabulary soldiers are now neatly uniformed, armed with Krag carbines and well disciplined. They show the effect of good and regular food and of systematic exercise, their physical condition being vastly superior to that of the average Filipino. They are given regular instruction in their military duties. It is conducted in English.

The Philippine constabulary may be defined as a body of armed men with a military organization, recruited from among the people of the islands, officered in part by Americans and in part by Filipinos, and employed primarily for police duty in connection with the establishment and maintenance of public order.

Blount's chapters on the administrations of Taft, Wright and Smith embody one prolonged plaint to the effect that the organization of the constabulary was premature, and that after the war proper ended, the last smouldering embers of armed and organized insurrection should have been stamped out, and the brigandage which had existed in the Philippines for centuries should have been dealt with, by the United States army rather than by the constabulary.

Even if it were true that the army could have rendered more effective service to this end than could have been expected at the outset from a newly organized body of Filipino soldiers, the argument against the organization and use of the constabulary would in my opinion have been by no means conclusive. It is our declared policy to prepare the Filipinos to establish and maintain a stable government of their own. The proper exercise of police powers is obviously necessary to such an end.

From the outset we have sacrificed efficiency in order that our wards might gain practical experience, and might demonstrate their ability, or lack of ability, to perform necessary governmental functions. Does any one cognizant of the situation doubt for a moment that provincial and munic.i.p.al affairs in the Philippine Islands would to-day be more efficiently administered if provincial and munic.i.p.al officers were appointed instead of being elected? Is any one so foolish as to imagine that the sanitary regeneration of the islands would not have progressed much more rapidly had highly trained American health officers been used in place of many of the badly educated and comparatively inexperienced Filipino physicians whose services have been utilized?

Nevertheless, in the concrete case under discussion I dissent from the claim that more satisfactory results could have been obtained by the use of American troops.

The army had long been supreme in the Philippines. Every function of government had been performed by its officers and men, if performed at all. Our troops had been combating an elusive and cruel enemy. If they were human it is to be presumed that they still harbored animosities, born of these conditions, toward the people with whom they had so recently been fighting. Had the work of pacification been then turned over to them it would have meant that often in the localities in which they had been fighting, and in dealing with the men to whom they had very recently been actively opposed in armed conflict, they would have been called upon to perform tasks and to entertain feelings radically different from those of the preceding two or three years.

A detachment, marching through Leyte, found an American who had disappeared a short time before crucified, head down. His abdominal wall had been carefully opened so that his intestines might hang down in his face.

Another American prisoner, found on the same trip, had been buried in the ground with only his head projecting. His mouth had been propped open with a stick, a trail of sugar laid to it through the forest, and a handful thrown into it.

Millions of ants had done the rest.

Officers and men who saw such things were thereby fitted for war, rather than for ordinary police duty.

The truth is that they had seen so many of them that they continued to see them in imagination when they no longer existed. I well remember when a general officer, directed by his superior to attend a banquet at Manila in which Americans and Filipinos joined, came to it wearing a big revolver!

Long after Manila was quiet I was obliged to get out of my carriage in the rain and darkness half a dozen times while driving the length of Calle Real, and "approach to be recognized" by raw "rookies,"

each of whom pointed a loaded rifle at me while I did it. I know that this did not tend to make me feel peaceable or happy. In my opinion it was wholly unnecessary, and yet I did not blame the army for thinking otherwise.