LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

and potentially most important peoples of the Philippines.

      When in 1901 I received the news that a central government was soon to be established, I was in the Sub-province of Lepanto on my first trip through the wilder and less-known portions of northern Luzon. During each succeeding year I have spent from two to four months in travel through the archipelago, familiarizing myself at first hand with local conditions.

      I have frequently taken with me on these inspection trips representatives of the Bureaus of Forestry, Agriculture, Science and Health to carry on practical investigations, and have made it my business to visit and explore little known and unknown regions. There are very few islands worthy of the name which it has not been my privilege to visit.

      The organization of an effective campaign against diseases like bubonic plague, smallpox, Asiatic cholera and leprosy in a country where no similar work had ever previously been undertaken, inhabited by people profoundly ignorant of the benefits to be derived from modern methods of sanitation, and superstitious to a degree, promptly brought me into violent conflict with the beliefs and prejudices of a large portion of the Filipino population.

      A similar result followed the inauguration of an active campaign for the suppression of surra, foot and mouth disease, and rinderpest, which were rapidly destroying the horses and cattle.

      From the outset I was held responsible for the enforcement of marine and land quarantine regulations, which were at first very obnoxious to the general public.

      When the Pure Food and Drugs Act adopted by Congress for the United States was made applicable to the Philippines without any provision for its enforcement, this not altogether pleasant duty was assigned to me.

      I did not seek appointment to the Philippine service in the first instance. The political influence at my command has never extended beyond my own vote. During a period of twelve years my removal was loudly and frequently demanded, yet I saw President Schurman, Colonel Denby, General Otis, Admiral Dewey, Commissioner Moses, Governor Taft, Governor Wright, Governor Ide, Governor Smith, Secretary Shuster, Commissioner Tavera, Commissioner Legarda and Governor Forbes, all my colleagues on one or the other of the Philippine commissions, leave the service, before my own voluntary retirement on September 15, 1913.

      I had long expected a request for my resignation at any time, and had often wished that it might come. Indeed I once before tendered it voluntarily, only to have President Taft say that he thought I should withdraw it, which I did. I am absolutely without political ambition save an earnest desire to earn the political epitaph, “He did what he could.”

      During my brief and infrequent visits to the United States I have discovered there widespread and radical misapprehension as to conditions in the Philippines, but have failed to find that lack of interest in them which is commonly said to exist. On the contrary, I have found the American public keenly desirous of getting at the real facts whenever there was an opportunity to do so.

      The extraordinary extent to which untrue statements have been accepted at their face value has surprised and deeply disturbed me. I have conversed with three college presidents, each of whom believed that the current expenses of the Philippine government were paid from the United States Treasury.

      The preponderance of false and misleading statements about the Philippines is due, it seems to me, primarily to the fact that it is those persons with whom the climate disagrees and who in consequence are invalided home, and those who are separated from the service in the interest of the public good, who return to the United States and get an audience there; while those who successfully adapt themselves to local conditions, display interest in their work and become proficient in it, remain in the islands for long periods during which they are too busy, and too far from home, to make themselves heard.

      Incidentally it must be remembered that if such persons do attempt to set forth facts which years of practical experience have taught them, they are promptly accused of endeavouring to save their own bread and butter by seeking to perpetuate conditions which insure them fat jobs.

      When I think of the splendid men who have uncomplainingly laid down their lives in the military and in the civil service of their country in these islands, and of the larger number who have given freely of their best years to unselfish, efficient work for others, this charge fills me with indignation.

      The only thing that kept me in the Philippine service for so long a time was my interest in the work for the non-Christian tribes and my fear that while my successor was gaining knowledge concerning it which can be had only through experience, matters might temporarily go to the bad. It has been my ambition to bring this work to such a point that it would move on, for a time at least, by its own momentum.

      I am now setting forth my views relative to the past and present situation in the islands because I believe that their inhabitants are confronted by a danger graver than any which they have before faced since the time when their fate wavered in the balance, while the question whether the United States should acquire sovereignty over them or should allow Spain to continue to rule them was under consideration.

      Felipe Buencamino

      Perhaps the most prolific writer on political subjects whom the Philippines have produced. He was at one time a member of Aguinaldo’s cabinet and accompanied Aguinaldo’s mother and son when they surrendered in order to obtain American protection.

      It is my purpose to tell the plain, hard truth regardless of the effect of such conduct upon my future career. It has been alleged that my views on Philippine problems were coloured by a desire to retain my official position. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, no man who has not served for long and sometimes very weary years as a public official, and has not been a target for numerous more or less irresponsible individuals whose hands were filled with mud and who were actuated by a fixed desire to throw it at something, can appreciate as keenly as I do the manifold blessings which attend the life of a private citizen.

      I trust that I have said enough to make clear my view point, and now a word as to subject-matter. It is my intention to correct some of the very numerous misstatements which have been made concerning past and present conditions in the Philippines. I shall quote, from time to time, such statements, both verbal and written, and more especially some of those which have recently appeared in a book entitled “The American Occupation of the Philippines, 1898–1912,” by James H. Blount, who signs himself “Officer of the United States Volunteers in the Philippines, 1899–1901; United States District Judge in the Philippines, 1901–1905.”

      Judge Blount has indulged so freely in obvious hyperbole, and has made so very evident the bitter personal animosities which inspire many of his statements, that it has been a genuine surprise to his former associates and acquaintances that his book has been taken seriously.

      It should be sufficiently evident to any unprejudiced reader that in writing it he has played the part of the special pleader rather than that of the historian. He has used government records freely, and as is usually the case when a special pleader quotes from such records, the nature of the matter which he has omitted is worthy of more than passing attention. I shall hope to be able to fill some of the gaps that he has left in the documentary history of the events which he discusses and by so doing, very materially to change its purport.

      As public documents have been so misused, and as a new administration is bestowing on Filipinos political offices, and giving them opportunities, for which they are as yet utterly unprepared, thus endangering the results of years of hard, patient, self-sacrificing work performed by experienced and competent men, it becomes necessary to strike home by revealing unpleasant facts which are of record but have not heretofore been disclosed because of the injury to reputations and the wounding of feelings which would result from their publication. In doing this I feel that I am only discharging a duty to the people of the United States, who are entitled to know the truth if the present possibility of Philippine independence is to be seriously considered, and to the several Filipino peoples who are to-day in danger of rushing headlong to their own utter and final destruction.

      At the outset I shall discuss the oft-asserted

Скачать книгу