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The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912. James H. Blount
Читать онлайн.Название The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912
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isbn 4057664137654
Автор произведения James H. Blount
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Издательство Bookwire
The speech of the provincial governor was followed, says the Wilcox-Sargent report (same page) by speeches from “the other officers who constitute the provincial government, the heads of the three departments—justice, police, and internal revenue. Every town in this province has the same organization.” Article III. of Aguinaldo’s decree of June 18th, previous, providing an organic law or constitution for his provisional government (see Chapter II., ante) had provided precisely the organization which Wilcox and Sargent thus saw working at Aparri and throughout the Cagayan valley in October, 1898. The importance of all this to the question of how the Filipinos feel toward us to-day, in this year of grace, 1912, and to the element of righteousness there is in that feeling, is too obvious to need comment. Americans interested in business in the Philippines come back to this country from time to time and give out interviews in the papers declaring that the Filipinos do not want independence. What they really mean is that it makes no difference whether they want it or not, they are not going to get it. And it is precisely these Americans, and their business associates in the United States, who have gotten through Congress the legislation which enables them to give the Filipino just half of what he got ten years ago for his hemp, and other like legislation, and the Filipinos know it. The gulf in the Philippines between the dominant and the subject race will continue to widen as the years go by, so long as indirect taxation without representation continues to be perpetrated at Washington for the benefit of special interests having a powerful lobby. If the American people themselves are groaning under this very sort of thing, and apparently unable to help themselves, what is the a priori probability as to our voteless and therefore defenceless little brown brother. Like the sheep before the shearer, he is dumb. But to return to our travellers and their journey.
A Norwegian steamer came into port [meaning the harbor of Aparri] that afternoon, and this seemed our only hope. She was chartered by two Chinamen * * *. At first they refused us permission to embark, and declined to put in at any port on the west coast. No sooner was this related to Colonel Tirona than he sent notice that the ship could not clear without taking us and making a landing where we desired. This argument was convincing.
Colonel Tirona provided them with a letter addressed to Colonel Tiño at Vigan, the chief town of the west coast of Luzon and the capital of the province of Ilocos Sur, which province fronts the China Sea. Messrs. Wilcox and Sargent proceeded aboard the Norwegian steamer from Aparri westward, doubling the northwest corner of Luzon, and steaming thence due south to the nearest port. Vigan was the Filipino military headquarters of the western half of northern Luzon, just as Aparri was at the same time of the eastern half. On the west coast the travellers were treated always courteously, but with considerable suspicion. The explanation is easy. That region is in closer touch with Manila, and with what is going on and may be learned at the capital, than is the Cagayan valley which our tourists had just left. They bade the commanding officer at Vigan good-bye, November 13, 1898. Passing south through Namacpacan (which the command I was with took a year or so later), they came to San Fernando de Union, some twenty miles farther south along the coast road. Here they met Colonel Tiño and presented their letter from Tirona. He gave them a dinner, of course. How a Filipino does love to entertain, and make you enjoy yourself! Talk about your “true Southern hospitality”! You get it there. “Speeches were made, and great things promised by the Philippine republic in the near future” says Mr. Wilcox. After the dinner and speech-making came the inevitable dance. After that Colonel Tiño started them off on their journey southward toward Manila duly provided with carriages. Passing Aringay on November 18, 18983 our travellers finally reached Dagupan, the northern terminus of the Manila-Dagupan Railway, and there took a train for Manila, 120 miles away.
In his report covering the fall of 1898, General Otis always scoldingly says of the Filipinos that in all the parleyings of his commissioners with Aguinaldo’s commissioners before the outbreak, the latter never did know what they really wanted. The truth was they believed the Americans were going to do with them exactly as every other white race they knew of had done with every other brown race they knew of, but they did not tell General Otis so. Mr. Wilcox, a more friendly witness of that same period states their position thus at page twenty of the report to Admiral Dewey: “They desire the protection of the United States at sea, but fear any interference on land.” “On one point they seemed united, viz., that whatever our government may have done for them, it had not gained the right to annex them,” adding, in relation to the physical preparations to make good this contention, in the event of war, “The Philippine Government has an organized force in every province we visited.”
The whole tone of the Wilcox-Sargent report and the subsequent Wilcox book is an implied reiteration, after intimate, extended, and friendly contact with the people of all Luzon north of the Pasig River, of Admiral Dewey’s telegram sent to the Navy Department, June 23, 1898: “The people are far superior in intelligence and capacity for self-government to the people of Cuba and I am familiar with both races.” In fact Messrs. Wilcox and Sargent do not raise the question of “capacity for self-government” at all, any more than Commodore Perry did when similarly welcomed in 1854 by the Japanese.
1 The six main Visayan Islands. Mohammedan Mindanao is always dealt with in this book as a separate and distinct problem.
2 Senate Document 196, 56th Cong., 1st. Sess., p. 14.
3 Here the author’s commanding officer, Major Batson, was shot a year and a day later while directing with his usual clear-headed intrepidity the fire of a part of his battalion to protect the crossing of the rest of it over the Aringay River, we being at the time in hot pursuit of Aguinaldo, whose rear-guard made a stand in the trenches on the other side of the river.
Chapter VII
The Treaty of Paris
No man can serve two masters.
Matthew vi., 24.
Confine the Empire within those limits which nature seems to have fixed as its natural bulwarks and boundaries.
Augustus Cæsar’s Will.
This is a tale of three cities, Paris, Washington, and Manila.
Article III. of the Peace Protocol signed at Washington, August 12, 1898, provided:
The United States will occupy and hold the city, bay, and harbor of Manila, pending the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace which shall determine the control, disposition, and government of the Philippines.1
The “Papers relating to the Treaty with Spain” including the telegraphic correspondence between President McKinley and our Peace Commissioners pending the negotiations, were sent to the Senate, January 30, 1899, just one week before the final vote on the treaty, but the injunction of secrecy was not removed until January 31, 1901—after the presidential election of 1900. They then were published as Senate Document 148, 56th Congress, 2d Session. It was not until then that the veil was lifted. The instructions to the Peace Commissioners were dated September 16, 1898. The Commissioners were: William R. Day, of Ohio, Republican, just previously Secretary of State, now (1912) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States;