Hawaii Statewide Files History - Books.....Story of the Philippines, Chapters I-VIII

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Book Title and Information: 
The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, 
Including The Ladrones, Hawaii, Cuba and Porto Rico. 
By Murat Halstead. Published: H.L. Barber, Chicago, 
Ill., 1898. Subjects: Natural riches, industrial 
resources, statistics of productions, commerce and 
population; the laws, habits, customs, scenery and 
conditions of the Cuba of the East Indies and the 
Thousand Islands of The Archipelagoes of India and 
Hawaii, with episodes of their early history, personal 
character sketches of and interviews with Admiral 
Dewey, General Merritt, General Aguinaldo and the 
Archbishop of Manila.
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The Story of the Philippines - Chapters I-VIII

CHAPTER I

Admiral Dewey on His Flagship.

A Stormy Day on Manila Bay--Call on Admiral Dewey--The Man in White--He Sticks 
to His Ship--How He Surprised Spaniards--Every Man Did His Duty on May-Day--How 
Dewey Looks and Talks--What He Said About War with Germany in Five Minutes--
Feeds His Men on "Delicious" Fresh Meat from Australia--Photography Unjust to 
Him.

Steaming across Manila Bay from Cavite to the city on an energetic ferry-boat, 
scanning the wrecks of the Spanish fleet still visible where the fated ships 
went down, one of them bearing on a strip of canvas the legible words "Remember 
the 'Maine,'" the talk being of Dewey's great May-day, we were passing the 
famous flag-ship of the squadron that was ordered to destroy another squadron, 
and did it, incidentally gathering in hand the keys of an empire in the Indies 
for America, because the American victor was an extraordinary man, who saw the 
immensity of the opportunity and improved it to the utmost, some one said: 
"There is the Admiral now, on the quarter-deck under the awning--the man in 
white, sitting alone!" The American Consul at Manila was aboard the ferry-boat, 
and said to the captain he would like to speak to the Admiral. The course was 
changed a point, and then a pause, when the Consul called, "Admiral!" And the 
man in white stepped to the rail and responded pleasantly to the greeting--the 
Consul saying:

"Shall we not see you ashore now?"

"No," said the man in white, in a clear voice; "I shall not go ashore unless I 
have to."

Some one said: "This would be a good chance to go. Come with us."

The man in white shook his head, and the ferryman ordered full speed, the 
passengers all looking steadily at the white figure until it became a speck, and 
the fresh arrivals were shown the objects of the greatest interest, until the 
wrecks of the Oriental fleet of the Spaniards were no longer visible, and there 
was only the white walls to see of Cavite's arsenal and the houses of the navy-
yard, and the more stately structures of Manila loomed behind the lighthouse at 
the mouth of the Pasig, when the eyes of the curious were drawn to the mossback 
fort that decorates as an antiquity the most conspicuous angle of the walls of 
"the walled city."

There was a shade of significance in the few words of the Admiral that he would 
not go ashore until he must. He has from the first been persistent in staying at 
Manila. There has been nothing that could induce him to abandon in person the 
prize won May 1st. His order from the President was to destroy the Spanish 
fleet. It was given on the first day of the legal existence of the war, counting 
the day gained, in crossing the Pacific Ocean from the United States to the 
Philippines, when the 180th degree of longitude west from Greenwich is reached 
and reckoned. It was thus the President held back when the war was on; and the 
next day after Dewey got the order at Hongkong he was on the way. The Spaniards 
at Manila could not have been more astonished at Dewey's way of doing, if they 
had all been struck by lightning under a clear sky. They had no occasion to be 
"surprised," having the cable in daily communication with Madrid, and, more than 
that, a Manila paper of the last day of April contained an item of real news--
the biggest news item ever published in that town! It was from a point on the 
western coast of the island of Luzon, and the substance of it that four vessels 
that seemed to be men-of-war, had been sighted going south, and supposed to be 
the American fleet.

What did the Spaniards suppose the American fleet they knew well had left 
Hongkong was going south for? If Admiral Dewey had been a commonplace man he 
would have paused and held a council of war nigh the huge rock Corregidor at the 
mouth of Manila Bay. There is a channel on either side of that island, and both 
were reputed to be guarded by torpedoes. The Spaniards had an enormous stock of 
munitions of war--modern German guns enough to have riddled the fleet of 
American cruisers--and why did they not have torpedoes? They had the Mauser 
rifle, which has wonderful range, and ten millions of smokeless powder 
cartridges. Marksmen could sweep the decks of a ship with Mausers at the 
distance of a mile, and with the smokeless cartridges it would have been mere 
conjecture where the sharpshooters were located. There are rows of armor-
piercing steel projectiles from Germany still standing around rusting in the 
Spanish batteries, and they never did any more than they are doing. It is said--
and there is every probability of the truth of the story--that some of these 
bolts would not fit any gun the Spaniards had mounted. The Admiral paid no 
attention to the big rock and the alleged torpedoes, but steamed up the bay near 
the city where the Spaniards were sleeping. He was hunting the fleet he was 
ordered to remove, and found it very early in the morning. Still the thunder of 
his guns seems to thrill and electrify the air over the bay, and shake the city; 
and the echoes to ring around the world, there is no question--not so much 
because the Americans won a naval victory without a parallel, as that Dewey 
improved the occasion, showing that he put brains into his business. They say--
that is, some people seem to want to say it and so do--that Dewey is a strange 
sort of man; as was said of Wolfe and Nelson, who died when they won 
immortality. Dewey lives and is covered with glory. It has been held that there 
were not enough Americans hurt in the Manila fight to make the victory truly 
great. But the same objection applies to the destruction of Cervera's fleet when 
he ran away from Santiago. General Jackson's battle at New Orleans showed a 
marvelously small loss to Americans; but it was a good deal of a victory, and 
held good, though won after peace with England had been agreed upon. The capture 
of Manila is valid, too. Spain surrendered before the town did. If Dewey had 
been an every-day kind of man, he would have left Manila when he had fulfilled 
the letter of his orders, as he had no means of destroying the Spanish army, and 
did not want to desolate a city, even if the Spaniards held it. He remained and 
called for more ships and men, and got them.

"How is it?" "Why is it?" "How can it be?" are the questions Admiral Dewey asks 
when told that the American people, without exception, rejoice to celebrate him-
-that if one of the men known to have been with him May 1st should be found out 
in any American theater he would be taken on the stage by an irresistible call 
and a muscular committee of enthusiasts, and the play could not go on without "a 
few words" and the "Star Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia," "Yankee Doodle," 
"Dixey" and "My Country, 'tis of Thee"; that the hallelujah note would be 
struck; that cars are chalked "for Deweyville"; that the board fences have his 
name written, or painted, or whittled on them; that there are Dewey cigars; that 
blacksmith-shops have the name Dewey scratched on them, also barn doors; and 
that if there are two dwelling-houses and a stable at a cross-roads it is 
Deweyville, or Deweyburg or Deweytown; that there is a flood of boy babies named 
Dewey, that the girls sing of him, and the ladies all admire him and the widows 
love him, and the school children adore him. The Admiral says: "I hear such 
things, and altogether they amaze me--the newspapers, the telegrams, the letters 
become almost unreal, for I do not comprehend what they say of my first day's 
work here. There was not a man in the fleet who did not do his duty."

The Admiral is told that he need not think to stay away until the people who 
have him on their minds and in their hearts are tired of their enthusiasm; that 
he cannot go home undiscovered and without demonstrations that will shake the 
earth and rend the skies; that the boys will drag the horses from his carriage, 
and parade the streets with him as a prisoner, and have it out with him, giving 
him a good time, until it will be a hard time, and he might as well submit to 
manifest destiny! His country wanted another hero, and he was at the right place 
at the right time, and did the right thing in the right way; and the fact 
answers all questions accounting for everything. Still he has a notion of 
staying away until the storm is over and he can get along without being a 
spectacle. Why, even the ladies of Washington are wild about him. If he should 
appear at the White House to call on the President, the scene would be like that 
when Grant first met Abraham Lincoln.

One rough day on the bay I took passage in a small steam-launch to visit the 
Olympia, where the Admiral's flag floated, to call on him. There was plenty of 
steam, and it was pleasant to get out a good way behind the breakwater, for the 
waves beyond were white with anger, and the boat, when departing from partial 
shelter, had proceeded but two or three hundred yards when it made a supreme 
effort in two motions--the first, to roll over; the second, to stand on its 
head. I was glad both struggles were unsuccessful, and pleased with the order: 
"Slow her up." The disadvantages of too much harbor were evident. The slow-ups 
were several, and well timed, and then came the rise and fall of the frisky 
launch beside the warship, the throwing of a rope, the pull with a hook, the 
stand off with an oar, the bounding boat clearing from four to ten feet at a 
jump; the clutch, the quick step, the deft avoidance of a crushed foot or 
sprained ankle, with a possible broken leg in sight, the triumphant ascent, the 
safe landing, the sudden sense that Desdemona was right in loving a man for the 
dangers he had passed, the thought that there should be harbors less 
fluctuating, a lively appreciation of the achievements of pilots in boarding 
Atlantic liners. The broad decks of the Olympia, built by the builders of the 
matchless Oregon, had a comforting solidity under my feet. The Admiral was 
believed to be having a nap; but he was wide awake, and invited the visitor to 
take a big chair, which, after having accompanied the launch in the dance with 
the whitecaps, was peculiarly luxurious. The Admiral didn't mind me, and had a 
moment's surprise about an observer of long ago strolling so far from home and 
going forth in a high sea to make a call. I confessed to being an ancient 
Wanderer, but not an Ancient Mariner, and expressed disapprobation of the 
deplorable roughness of the California Albatross, a brute of a bird--a feathered 
ruffian that ought to be shot.

The Admiral would be picked out by close attention as the origin of some 
millions of pictures; but he is unlike as well as like them. Even the best 
photographs do not do justice to his fine eyes, large, dark and luminous, or to 
the solid mass of his head with iron-brown hair tinged with gray. He is a larger 
man than the portraits indicate; and his figure, while that of a strong man in 
good health and form and well nourished, is not stout and, though full, is firm; 
and his step has elasticity in it. His clean-shaven cheek and chin are massive, 
and drawn on fine lines full of character--no fatty obscuration, no decline of 
power; a stern but sunny and cloudless face--a good one for a place in history; 
no show of indulgence, no wrinkles; not the pallor of marble, rather the glint 
of bronze--the unabated force good for other chapters of history. It would be 
extremely interesting to report the talk of the Admiral; but there were two 
things about him that reminded me of James G. Blaine, something of the vivid 
personality of the loved and lost leader; something in his eye and his manner, 
more in the startling candor with which he spoke of things it would be premature 
to give the world, and, above all, the absence of all alarm about being 
reported--the unconscious consciousness that one must know this was private and 
no caution needed. A verbatim report of the Admiral would, however, harm no one, 
signify high-toned candor and a certain breezy simplicity in the treatment of 
momentous matters. Evidently here was a man not posing, a hero because his 
character was heroic, a genuine personage--not artificial, proclamatory, a 
picker of phrases, but a doer of deeds that explain themselves; a man with 
imagination, not fantastic but realistic, who must have had a vision during the 
night after the May-day battle of what might be the great hereafter; beholding 
under the southern constellations the gigantic shadow of America, crowned with 
stars, with the archipelagoes of Asia under her feet and broad and mighty 
destinies at command.

It was the next day that he anchored precisely where his famous ship was 
swinging when I sat beside him; and his words to the representative of three 
centuries of Spanish misrule had in them an uncontemplated flash from the flint 
and steel of fixed purpose and imperial force. "Fire another gun at my ships and 
I will destroy your city."

We can hardly realize in America how flagrant Europeanism has been in the Manila 
Bay; how the big German guns bought by Spain looked from their embrasures; how a 
powerful German fleet persisted in asserting antagonism to Americanism, and 
tested in many ways the American Admiral's knowledge of his rights and his 
country's policy until Admiral Dewey told, not the German Admiral, as has been 
reported, but his flag lieutenant, "Can it be possible that your nation means 
war with mine? If so, we can begin it in five minutes." The limit had been 
reached, and the line was drawn; and Dewey's words will go down in our records 
with those of Charles Francis Adams to Lord John Russell about the ironclads 
built in England for the Confederacy: "My Lord, I need not point out to your 
lordship that this is war."

Perhaps the German Admiral had exceeded the instructions of his Imperial 
Government, and the peremptory words of the American Admiral caused a better 
understanding, making for peace rather than for war.

Next to the Americans the English have taken a pride in Admiral Dewey, and they 
are in the Asiatic atmosphere our fast friends. They do not desire that we 
should give up the Philippines. On the contrary, they want us to keep the 
islands, and the more we become interested in those waters and along their 
shores, the better. They know that the world has practically grown smaller and, 
therefore, the British Empire more compact; and they find Russia their foe. They 
see that with the Pacific Coast our base of operations looking westward, we have 
first the Hawaiian Islands for producers and a coal station, naval arsenal, 
dockyards for the renovation and repair and replenishment of our fleets; and 
they see that we have reserved for ourselves one of the Ladrones, so that we 
will have an independent route to the Philippines. The Japanese have cultivated 
much feeling against our possession of Hawaii, the animus being that they wanted 
it for themselves; and likewise they are disturbed by our Pacific movement, 
anticipating the improvement of the most western of the Alutian Islands, an 
admirable station overlooking the North Pacific; all comprehending with Hawaii, 
the Alutian Island found most available, the Ladrone that we shall reserve and 
the Philippines, we shall have a Pacific quadrilateral; and this is not 
according to the present pleasure and the ambition for the coming days, of 
Japan. England would have approved our holding all the islands belonging to the 
Spanish, including the Canaries, and Majorca and Minorca and their neighboring 
isles in the Mediterranean, and take a pride in us. She has been of untold and 
inestimable service to us in the course of the Spanish War, and her ways have 
been good for us at Manila, while the Germans have been frankly against us, the 
Russians grimly reserved, and the French disposed to be fretful because they 
have invested in Spanish bonds upon which was raised the money to carry on the 
miserable false pretense of war with the Cubans. One day while I was on the fine 
transport Peru, in the harbor of Manila, the American Admiral's ship saluted an 
English ship-of-war coming in that had saluted his flag, and also displayed 
American colors in recognition that the harbor of Manila was an American port. 
That was the significance of the flashes and thundering of the Admiral's guns 
and the white cloud that gathered about his ship that has done enough for 
celebrity through centuries.

Admiral Dewey created the situation in the Philippines that the President wisely 
chose by way of the Paris Conference to receive the deliberate judgment of the 
Senate and people of the United States. Dewy has been unceasingly deeply 
concerned about it. His naval victory was but the beginning. He might have 
sailed away from Manila May 2d, having fulfilled his orders; but he had the high 
and keen American spirit in him, and clung. He needed a base of operations, a 
place upon which to rest and obtain supplies. He had not the marines to spare to 
garrison a fort save at Cavite, twelve miles from Manila; and he needed 
chickens, eggs, fresh meat and vegetables; and it was important that the Spanish 
Army should be occupied on shore. Hence, Aguinaldo, who was in Singapore, and 
the concentration of insurgents that had themselves to be restrained to make war 
on civilized lines. One of the points of the most considerable interest touching 
the Filipinos is that the smashing defeat of the fleet of Spain in Manila Bay 
heartened them. They have become strong for themselves. The superiority of the 
Americans over the Spaniards as fighting men is known throughout the islands 
Spain oppressed; and the bonds of the tyrants have been broken. It should not be 
out of mind that the first transports with our troops did not reach Manila for 
six weeks, and that the army was not in shape to take the offensive until after 
General Merritt's arrival, late in July. All this time the American Admiral had 
to hold on with the naval arm; and it was the obvious game of Spain, if she 
meant to fight and could not cope with the Americans in the West Indies, to send 
all her available ships and overwhelm us in the East Indies. At the same time 
the German, French, Russian and Japanese men-of-war represented the interest of 
the live nations of the earth in the Philippines. As fast as possible Admiral 
Dewey was re-enforced; but it was not until the two monitors, the Monterey and 
Monadnock, arrived, the latter after the arrival of General Merritt, that the 
Admiral felt that he was safely master of the harbor. He had no heavily armored 
ships to assail the shore batteries within their range, and might be crippled by 
the fire of the great Krupp guns. It was vital that the health of the crews of 
his ships should be maintained, and the fact that the men are and have been all 
summer well and happy is not accidental. Admiral Dewey took the point of danger, 
if there was one, into his personal keeping, by anchoring the Olympia on the 
Manila side of the bay, while others were further out and near Cavite; and 
throughout the fleet there was constant activity and the utmost vigilance. There 
was incessant solicitude about what the desperate Spaniards might contrive in 
the nature of aggressive enterprise. It seemed incredible to Americans that 
nothing should be attempted. How would a Spanish fleet have fared for three 
months of war with us in an American harbor? There would have been a new feature 
of destructiveness tried on the foe at least once a week.

The Spaniards ashore seemed to be drowsy; but the Americans were wide awake, 
ready for anything, and could not be surprised; so that we may commend as wisdom 
the Spanish discretion that let them alone. The ship that was the nearest 
neighbor of Admiral Dewey for months of his long vigil flew the flag of Belgium. 
She is a large, rusty-looking vessel, without a sign of contraband of war, or of 
a chance of important usefulness about her; but she performed a valuable 
function. I asked half a dozen times what her occupation was before any one gave 
a satisfactory answer. Admiral Dewey told the story in few words. She was a 
cold-storage ship, with beef and mutton from Australia, compartments fixed for 
about forty degrees below zero. Each day the meat for the American fleet's 
consumption was taken out. There was a lot of it on the deck of the Olympia 
thawing when I was a visitor; and the beef was "delicious." I am at pains to 
give Dewey's word. While the Spaniards ashore were eating tough, lean buffalo--
the beasts of burden in the streets, the Americans afloat rejoiced in 
"delicious" beef and mutton from Australia. It was explained that the use of 
cold-storage meat depended upon giving it time to thaw, for if it should be 
cooked in an icy state it would be black and unpalatable, losing wholly its 
flavor and greatly its nourishing quality. Australia is not many thousand miles 
from the Philippines--and one must count miles by the thousands out there. The 
Belgians have a smart Consul at Manila who is a friend of mankind.

One of the incidents in the battle of Manila--all are fresh in the public 
memory--is that Admiral Dewey did not make use of the conning-tower--a steel, 
bomb proof, for the security of the officer in command of the ship--the Captain, 
of course, and the commander of the fleet, if he will.

This retreat did not prove, in the battle of Yalu and the combats between the 
Chileans and Peruvians, a place of safety; but as a rule there is a considerable 
percentage of protection in its use. Admiral Dewey preferred to remain on the 
bridge--and there were four fragments of Spanish shells that passed close to 
him, striking within a radius of fifteen feet. The Admiral, when told there had 
been some remark because he had not occupied the conning-house in the action, 
walked with me to the tower, the entrance to which is so guarded that it 
resembles a small cavern of steel--with a heavy cap or lid, under which is a 
circular slit, through which observations are supposed to be made. "Try it," the 
Admiral said, "and you find it is hard to get a satisfactory view." He added, 
when I had attempted to look over the surroundings: "We will go to the bridge;" 
and standing on it he annotated the situation, saying: "Here you have the whole 
bay before you, and can see everything." I remarked: "The newspaper men are very 
proud of the correspondent of the Herald who was with you on the bridge;" and 
the Admiral said: "Yes; Stickney was right here with us."

There were many reasons for the officer commanding the American fleet that day 
to watch closely the developments. The Spaniards had, for their own purposes, 
even falsified the official charts of the bay. Where our vessels maneuvered and 
the flagship drew twenty-two feet of water and had nine feet under the keel, the 
chart called for fifteen feet only!

It is not a secret that the President wanted Admiral Dewey, if it was not in his 
opinion inconsistent with his sense of duty, to go to Washington. Naturally the 
President would have a profound respect for the Admiral's opinion as to the 
perplexing problem of the Philippines. The Admiral did not think he should leave 
his post. He could cover the points of chief interest in writing, and preferred 
very much to do so, and stay right where he was "until this thing is settled." 
The opinion of the Admiral as to what the United States should do with, or must 
do about, the political relations of the Philippines with ourselves and others, 
have not been given formal expression; but it is safe to say they are not in 
conflict with his feeling that the American fleet at Manila should be augmented 
with gunboats, cruisers and two or three battle-ships. It was, in the opinion of 
the illustrious Admiral, when the Peace Commission met in Paris, the time and 
place to make a demonstration of the sea power of the United States.

The personal appearance of Admiral Dewey is not presented with attractive 
accuracy in the very familiar portrait of him that has been wonderfully 
multiplied and replenished. The expression of the Admiral is not truly given in 
the prints and photos. The photographer is responsible for a faulty selection. 
The impression prevails that the hero is "a little fellow." There is much said 
to the effect that he is jaunty and has excess of amiability in his smile. He 
weighs about 180 pounds, and is of erect bearing, standing not less than five 
feet ten inches and a quarter. His hair is not as white as the pictures say. The 
artist who touched up the negative must have thought gray hair so becoming that 
he anticipated the feast of coming years. The figure of the Admiral is strong, 
well carried, firm, and his bearing that of gravity and determination, but no 
pose for the sake of show, no pomp and circumstance, just the Academy training 
showing in his attitude--the abiding, unconscious grace that is imparted in the 
schools of Annapolis and West Point--now rivaled by other schools in "setting 
up." The Admiral is of solidity and dignity, of good stature and proportions; 
has nothing of affectation in manners or insincerity in speech; is a hearty, 
stirring, serious man, whose intensity is softened by steady purposes and calm 
forces, and moderated by the play of a sense of humor, that is not drollery or 
levity, but has a pleasing greeting for a clever word, and yields return with a 
flash in it and an edge on it.


CHAPTER II

Life in Manila.

Character of the Filipinos--Drivers Lashing Laboring Men in the Streets--What 
Americans Get in Their Native Air--The Logic of Destiny--Manila as She Fell into 
Our Hands--The Beds in the Tropics--A Spanish Hotel--Profane Yells for Ice--Sad 
Scenes in the Dining Room--Major-General Calls for "Francisco"--A Broken-Hearted 
Pantry Woman.

The same marvelous riches that distinguish Cuba are the inheritance of Luzon. 
The native people are more promising in the long run than if they were in larger 
percentage of the blood of Spain, for they have something of that indomitable 
industry that must finally work out an immense redemption for the eastern and 
southern Asiatics. When, I wonder, did the American people get the impression so 
extensive and obstinate that the Japanese and Chinese were idlers? We may add as 
having a place in this category the Hindoos, who toil forever, and, under 
British government, have increased by scores of millions. The southern Asiatics 
are, however, less emancipated from various indurated superstitions than those 
of the East; and the Polynesians, spread over the southern seas, are a softer 
people than those of the continent. However, idleness is not the leading feature 
of life of the Filipinos, and when they are mixed, especially crossed with 
Chinese, they are indefatigable. On the Philippine Islands there is far less 
servility than on the other side of the sea of China, and the people are the 
more respectable and hopeful for the flavor of manliness that compensates for a 
moderate but visible admixture of savagery. We of North America may be proud of 
it that the atmosphere of our continent, when it was wild, was a stimulant of 
freedom and independence. The red Indians of our forests were, with all their 
faults, never made for slaves. The natives of the West Indies, the fierce Caribs 
excepted, were enslaved by the Spaniards, and perished under the lash. Our 
continental tribes--the Seminoles and the Comanches, the Sioux and Mohawks, the 
Black Feet and the Miamis--from the St. Lawrence to Red River and the oceans, 
fought all comers--Spaniards, French and English--only the French having the 
talent of polite persuasion and the gift of kindness that won the mighty 
hunters, but never subjugated them. We may well encourage the idea that the 
quality of air of the wilderness has entered the soil. When, in Manila, I have 
seen the men bearing burdens on the streets spring out of the way of those 
riding in carriages, and lashed by drivers with a viciousness that no dumb 
animal should suffer, I have felt my blood warm to think that the men of common 
hard labor in my country would resent a blow as quickly as the man on horseback-
-that even the poor black--emancipated the other day from the subjugation of 
slavery by a masterful and potential race, stands up in conscious manhood, and 
that the teachings of the day are that consistently with the progress of the 
country--as one respects himself, he must be respected--and that the air and the 
earth have the inspiration and the stimulus of freedom. The Chinese and Japanese 
are famous as servants--so constant, handy, obedient, docile, so fitted to 
minister to luxury, to wait upon those favored by fortune and spurred to execute 
the schemes for elevation and dominance, and find employment in the enterprise 
that comprehends human advancement. It must be admitted that the Filipinos are 
not admirable in menial service. Many of them are untamed, and now, that the 
Americans have given object lessons of smiting the Spaniards, the people of the 
islands that Magellinos, the Portuguese, found for Spain, must be allowed a 
measure of self-government, or they will assert a broader freedom, and do it 
with sanguinary methods. As Americans have heretofore found personal liberty 
consistent with public order--that Republicanism was more stable than 
imperialism in peaceable administration, and not less formidable in war, it 
seems to be Divinely appointed that our paths of Empire may, with advantage to 
ourselves, and the world at large, be made more comprehensive than our fathers 
blazed them out. But one need not hesitate to go forward in this cause, for we 
have only gone farther than the fathers dreamed, because, among their labors of 
beneficence, was that of building wiser than they knew, and there is no more 
reason now why we should stop when we strike the salt water of the seas, and 
consent to it that where we find the white line of surf that borders a continent 
we shall say to the imperial popular Republic, thus far and no farther shalt 
thou go, and here shall thy proud march be stayed--than there was that George 
Washington, as the representative of the English-speaking people, should have 
assumed that England and Virginia had no business beyond the Allegheny 
Mountains, and, above all, no right to territory on the west of the Allegheny 
and Kanawha, and north of the Ohio river, a territory then remote, inhabited by 
barbarians and wanted by the French, who claimed the whole continent, except the 
strip along the Atlantic possessed by the English colonies. Washington was a 
believer in the acquisition of the Ohio country. He was a man who had faith in 
land--in ever more land. It is the same policy to go west now that it was then. 
Washington crossed the Allegheny and held the ground. Jefferson crossed the 
Mississippi, and sent Louis and Clark to the Pacific; and crossing the great 
western ocean now is but the logic of going beyond the great western rivers, 
prairies and mountains then. We walk in the ways of the fathers when we go 
conquering and to conquer along the Eastward shores of Asia.

One of the expanding and teeming questions before the world now, and the 
authority and ability to determine it, is in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army of the United States, is whether Manila shall become an American 
city, with all the broad and sweeping significance attaching thereto. Manila was 
not dressed for company when I saw her, for she had just emerged from a siege in 
which the people had suffered much inconvenience and privation. The water supply 
was cut off, and the streets were not cleaned. The hotels were disorganized and 
the restaurants in confusion. The trees that once cast a grateful shade along 
the boulevards, that extended into the country, rudely denuded of their boughs, 
had the appearance of the skeletons of strange monsters. The insurgent army was 
still in the neighborhood in a state of uneasiness, feeling wronged, deprived, 
as they were, of an opportunity to get even with the Spaniards, by picking out 
and slaying some of the more virulent offenders. There was an immense monastery, 
where hundreds of priests were said to be sheltered, and the insurgents desired 
to take them into their own hands and make examples of them. The Spaniards about 
the streets were becoming complacent. They had heard of peace, on the basis of 
Spain giving up every thing, but the Philippines, and there were expectations 
that the troops withdrawn from Cuba might be sent from Havana to Manila, and 
then, as soon as the Americans were gone, the islanders could be brought to 
submission by vastly superior forces. There were more rations issued to Spanish 
than to American soldiers, until the division of the Philippine Expedition with 
Major-General Otis arrived, but the Americans were exclusively responsible for 
the preservation of the peace between the implacable belligerents, and the 
sanitary work required could not at once be accomplished, but presently it was 
visible that something was done every day in the right direction. There was much 
gambling with dice, whose rattling could be heard far and near on the sidewalks, 
but this flagrant form of vice was summarily suppressed, we may say with strict 
truth, at the point of the bayonet. The most representative concentration of the 
ingredients of chaos was at the Hotel Oriental, that overlooked a small park 
with a dry fountain and a branch of the river flowing under a stone bridge, with 
a pretty stiff current, presently to become a crowded canal. It is of three 
lofty stories and an attic, a great deal of the space occupied with halls, high, 
wide and long. The front entrance is broad, and a tiled floor runs straight 
through the house. Two stairways, one on either side, lead to the second story, 
the first steps of stone. In the distance beyond, a court could be seen, a 
passable conservatory--but bottles on a table with a counter in front declared 
that this was a barroom, as it was. The next thing further was a place where 
washing was done, then came empty rooms that might be shops; after this a narrow 
and untidy street, and then a livery stable--a sort of monopolistic cab stand, 
where a few ponies and carriages were to be found--but no one understood or did 
anything as long as possible, except to say that all the rigs were engaged now 
and always. However, a little violent English language, mixed with Spanish, 
would arouse emotion and excite commotion eventuating in a pony in harness, and 
a gig or carriage, and a desperate driver, expert with a villainous whip used 
without occasion or remorse.

The cool place was at the front door, on the sidewalk, seated on a hard chair, 
for there was always a breeze. The Spanish guests knew where the wind blew, and 
gathered there discussing many questions that must have deeply interested them. 
But they had something to eat, no authority or ability to affect any sort of 
change, and unfailing tobacco, the burning of which was an occupation. The 
ground floor of the hotel, except the barroom, the washroom, the hall, the 
conservatory and the hollow square, had been devoted to shop keeping, but the 
shop keepers were gone, perhaps for days and perhaps forever! Stone is not used 
to any great extent in house interiors, except within a few feet of the surface 
of the earth. Of course, there is no elevator in a Spanish hotel. That which is 
wanted is room for the circulation of air. Above the first flight of stairs the 
steps have a deep dark red tinge, and are square and long, so that each extends 
solidly across the liberal space allotted to the stairway. The blocks might be 
some stone of delightful color, but they are hewn logs, solid and smooth, of a 
superb mahogany or some tree of harder wood and deeper luxuriance of coloring. 
The bedrooms are immensely high, and in every way ample, looking on great spaces 
devoted to wooing the air from the park and the river. The windows are enormous. 
Not satisfied with the giant sliding doors that open on the street, revealing 
windows--unencumbered with sash or glass, there are sliding doors under the 
window sills, that roll back right and left and offer the chance to introduce a 
current of air directly on the lower limbs. One of the lessons of the tropics is 
the value of the outer air, and architecture that gives it a chance in the 
house. It is a precious education. The artificial light within must be produced 
by candles, and each stupendous apartment is furnished with one tallowy and 
otherwise neglected candle stick, and you can get, with exertion, a candle four 
inches long. There is a wardrobe, a wash stand, with pitcher and basin, and a 
commode, fans, chairs, and round white marble table, all the pieces placed in 
solitude, so as to convey the notion of lonesomeness. The great feature is the 
bed. The bedstead is about the usual thing, save that there is no provision for 
a possible or impossible spring mattress, or anything of that nature. The bed 
space is covered with bamboo, platted. It is hard as iron, and I can testify of 
considerable strength, for I rested my two hundred pounds, and rising a few 
pounds, on this surface, with no protection for it or myself for several nights, 
and there were no fractures. There is spread on this surface a Manila mat, which 
is a shade tougher and less tractable than our old style oilcloth. Upon this is 
spread a single sheet, that is tucked in around the edges of the mat, and there 
are no bed clothes, absolutely none. There is a mosquito bar with only a few 
holes in it, but it is suspended and cannot under any circumstances be used as a 
blanket. There is a pillow, hard and round, and easy as a log for your cheek to 
rest upon, and it is beautifully covered with red silk. There is a small roll, 
say a foot long and four inches in diameter, softer than the pillow, to a slight 
extent, and covered with finer and redder silk, that is meant for the neck 
alone. The comparatively big red log is to extend across the bed for the 
elevation it gives the head, and the little and redder log, softer so that you 
may indent it with your thumb, saves the neck from being broken on this relic of 
the Spanish inquisition. But there is a comforter--not such a blessed caressing 
domestic comforter as the Yankees have, light as a feather, but responsive to a 
tender touch. This Philippine comforter is another red roll that must be a quilt 
firmly rolled and swathed in more red silk; and it is to prop yourself withal 
when the contact with the sheet and the mat on the bamboo floor of the bedstead, 
a combination iniquitous as the naked floor--becomes wearisome. It rests the 
legs to pull on your back, and tuck under your knees. In the total absence of 
bed covering, beyond a thin night shirt, the three red rolls are not to be 
despised. The object of the bed is to keep cool, and if you do find the exertion 
of getting onto--not into--the bed produces a perspiration, and the mosquito bar 
threatens suffocation, reliance may be had that if you can compose yourself on 
top of the sheet (which feels like a hard wood floor, when the rug gives way on 
the icy surface and you fall) and if you use the three rolls of hard substance, 
covered with red silk, discreetly and considerately, in finding a position, and 
if you permit the windows--no glass--fifteen feet by twelve, broadcast, as it 
were, to catch the breath of the river and the park; if you can contrive with 
infinite quiet, patience and pains to go to sleep for a few hours, you will be 
cool enough; and when awakened shivering there is no blanket near, and if you 
must have cover, why get under the sheet, next the Manila mat, and there you 
are! Then put your troublesome and probably aching legs over the bigger red 
roll, and take your repose! Of course, when in the tropics you cannot expect to 
bury yourself in bedclothing, or to sleep in fur bags like an arctic explorer. 
The hall in front of your door is twelve feet wide and eighty long, lined with 
decorative chairs and sofas, and in the center of the hotel is a spacious dining 
room. The Spaniard doesn't want breakfast. He wants coffee and fruit--maybe a 
small banana--something sweet, and a crumb of bread. The necessity of the hour 
is a few cigarettes. His refined system does not require food until later. At 12 
o'clock he lunches, and eats an abundance of hot stuff--fish, flesh and fowl--
fiery stews and other condolences for the stomach. This gives strength to 
consider the wrongs of Spain and the way, when restored to Madrid, the 
imbeciles, who allowed the United States to capture the last sad fragments of 
the colonies, sacred to Spanish honor, shall be crushed by the patriots who were 
out of the country when it was ruined. It will take a long time for the 
Spaniards to settle among factions the accounts of vengeance. One of the deeper 
troubles of the Spaniards is that they take upon themselves the administration 
of the prerogatives of him who said "Vengeance is mine." The American end of the 
dining room contains several young men who speak pigeon Spanish, and Captains 
Strong and Coudert are rapidly becoming experts, having studied the language in 
school, and also on the long voyage out. There are also a group of resident 
Englishmen and a pilgrim from Norway, but at several tables are Americans who 
know no Spanish and are mad at the Spaniards on that provocation among other 
things.

There is, however, a connecting link and last resort in the person of a young 
man--a cross between a Jap and Filipino. He is slender and pale, but not tall. 
His hair is roached, so that it stands up in confusion, and he is wearied all 
the time about the deplorable "help."' It is believed he knows better than is 
done--always a source of unhappiness. His name is Francisco; his reputation is 
widespread. He is the man who "speaks English"--and is the only one--and it is 
not doubted that he knows at least a hundred words of our noble tongue. He says, 
"What do you want?" "Good morning, gentlemen"; "What can I do for you?" "Do you 
want dinner?" "No, there is no ice till 6 o'clock." He puts the Americans in 
mind of better days. Behind this linguist is a little woman, whose age might be 
twenty or sixty, for her face is so unutterably sad and immovable in expression 
that there is not a line in it that tells you anything but that there is to this 
little woman a bitterly sad, mean, beastly world. She must be grieving over 
mankind. It is her duty to see that no spoon is lost, and not an orange or 
banana wasted, and her mournful eyes are fixed with the intensity of despair 
upon the incompetent waiters, who, when hard pressed by wild shouts from 
American officers, frantic for lack of proper nourishment, fall into a panic and 
dance and squeal at each other; and then the woman of fixed sorrow, her left 
shoulder thin and copper-colored, thrust from her low-necked dress, her right 
shoulder protected, is in the midst of the pack, with a gliding bound and the 
ferocity of a cat, the sadness of her face taking on a tinge of long-suffering 
rage. She whirls the fools here and there as they are wanted. Having 
disentangled the snarl, she returns to the door from which her eyes command both 
the pantry and the dining-room to renew her solemn round of mournful vigilance. 
The Americans are outside her jurisdiction. She has no more idea what they are 
than Christopher Columbus, when he was discovering America, knew where he was 
going. When Francisco does not know what the language (English) hurled at him 
means he has a far-away look, and may be listening to the angels sing, for he is 
plaintive and inexpressive. He looks so sorry that Americans cannot speak their 
own language as he speaks English! But there are phrases delivered by Americans 
that he understands, such as, "Blankety, blank, blank--you all come here." 
Francisco does not go there, but with humble step elsewhere, affecting to find a 
pressing case for his intervention, but when he can no longer avoid your eye 
catching him he smiles a sweet but most superior smile, such as becomes one who 
speaks English and is the responsible man about the house.

There never was one who did more on a capital of one hundred words. His labors 
have been lightened slightly, for the Americans have picked up a few Spanish 
words, such as, "Ha mucher, mucher--don't you know? Hielo, hielo!" Hielo is ice, 
and after the "mucher" is duly digested the average waiter comes, by and by, 
with a lump as big as a hen's egg and is amazed by the shouts continuing "hielo, 
hielo!" pronounced much like another and wicked word.

"Oh, blanketination mucher mucher hielo!" The Filipinos cannot contemplate 
lightly the consumption of slabs of ice. The last words I heard in the dining-
room of the Hotel Oriental were from a soldier with two stars on each shoulder: 
"Francisco, oh, Francisco," and the little woman with left shoulder exposed 
turned her despairing face to the wall, her sorrow too deep for words or for 
weeping.


CHAPTER III

From Long Island To Luzon.

Across the Continent--An American Governor-General Steams Through the Golden 
Gate--He Is a Minute-Man--Honolulu as a Health Resort--The Lonesome Pacific--The 
Skies of Asia--Dreaming Under the Stars of the Scorpion--The Southern Cross.

Spain, crowded between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was the world's 
"West" for many centuries, indeed until Columbus found a further West, but he 
did not go far enough to find the East Indies. The United States is now at work 
in both the East and West Indies.

Our Manila expeditions steamed into the sunsets, the boys pointing out to each 
other the southern cross. The first stage of a journey, to go half round the 
world on a visit to our new possession, was by the annex boat from Brooklyn, and 
a rush on the Pennsylvania train, that glimmers with gold and has exhausted art 
on wheels, to Washington, to get the political latitude and longitude by 
observation of the two domes, that of the Capitol, and the library, and the 
tremendous needle of snow that is the monument to Washington, and last, but not 
least, the superb old White House.

The next step was across the mountains on the Baltimore and Ohio, the short cut 
between the East and the West, traversed so often by George Washington to get 
good land for the extension of our national foundations. The space between 
Cincinnati and Chicago is cleared on the "Big Four" with a bound through the 
shadow of the earth, between two rare days in June, and the next midnight, the 
roaring train flew high over the Missouri River at Omaha, and by daylight far on 
the way to Ogden. The country was rich in corn and grass, and when one beholds 
the fat cattle, lamentations for the lost buffalo cease. It is a delight to see 
young orchards and farmhouses, and cribs and sheds fortified against tornadoes 
by groves, laid out with irritating precision to confront the whirling storms 
from west and south. The broad bad lands in which the tempests are raised devour 
the heart of the continent.

I made note of the 888-mile post beyond Omaha, but the 1,000-mile telegraph pole 
and tree glided away while I was catching the lights and shadows on a fearfully 
tumbled landscape. The alkali has poisoned enormous tracts, and the tufts of 
sagebrush have a huge and sinister monotony. Looking out early in the morning 
there was in our track a "gaunt grey wolf" with sharp ears, unabashed by the 
roar of the train. His species find occasional scraps along the track and do not 
fear the trains. Then I saw something glisten in the herbage, and it was a 
rattlesnake, if it were not a whisky bottle.

The gigantic lumps of tawny earth, with castellated crags of stone, ghostly 
ruins one would say of cities that perished thousands of years before the bricks 
were made for Babylon. Profound beds for vanished torrents yawned into a scrap 
of green valley, and the glitter of a thread of water. A town blossomed from a 
coal mine, and there was an array of driven wells with force pumps to quench the 
thirst of seething and raging locomotives. A turn in the line and a beautiful 
cloud formation like billows of white roses, massive, delicately outlined 
fantastic spires like marble mountains, carved--ah! the cloud comes out clear as 
if it were a wall of pearl, and there are the everlasting mighty hills with 
their brows of exquisite snow!

These are lofty reservoirs from which the long days glowing with sunshine send 
down streams of water at whose touch the deserts bloom. The eye is refreshed as 
we make a closer acquaintance of the mountains. Where water flows and trees "wag 
their high tops" there is hope of homes. There are canyons that cause one to 
smile at remembrances of what were considered the dizzy gorges of the 
Alleghenies. There is a glow as of molten lead in one corner of a misty valley 
far away. It is Salt Lake, the Dead Sea of America. Beyond this at an immense 
elevation is a lake with the tinge of the indigo sky of the tropics. If one 
could stir a portion of the Caribbean Sea into Lake Geneva, the correct tint 
could be obtained. Thirty miles of snow sheds announce progress in the journey 
to the Pacific. There is still heat and dust, but beside the road are villages; 
and there are even fountains.

Each stream is a treasure, and its banks are rich with verdure. There are sleek 
cows on bright grass. The mountains are no longer forbidding. They take on robes 
of loveliness. The valleys broaden and on the easy slopes there are orchards 
where the oranges glisten. There are clusters of grapes. We have come upon that 
magic land, California. There is golden music in the name. This is a conquest. 
The war in which it was won was not one of philanthropy. We gathered an empire.

General Merritt never minded the weather, whether the wind blew or not, and 
instead of holding his ship for several hours after the appointed time, wanted 
to know five minutes after 10 o'clock whether the time for starting was not 10 
o'clock and by whom the boat was detained. At ten minutes after 10 the gangplank 
was swung free, with a desperate man on it who scrambled on with the help of 
long legs and a short rope. As the ship swung from the dock and got a move on 
there were thousands of men and women exalted with emotion, and there were 
crowded steamers and tugs toppling with swarming enthusiasts resounding with 
brass bands and fluttering with streaming flags. The ladies were especially 
frantic. Spurts of white smoke jetted from forts and there were ringing salutes. 
Steam whistles pitched a tune beyond the fixed stars. The national airs with 
thrilling trumpet tones pierced the din, and a multitude of voices joined with 
the bands giving words and tone to the magnetic storm. How many miles the 
Newport was pursued I cannot conjecture. There were tall ladies standing on the 
high decks of tugs that were half buried in the foam of the bay, but as long as 
they could hold a "Star Spangled Banner" in one hand, and a few handkerchiefs in 
another, their skirts streaming in grace and defiance before the rising gale, 
they sang hosannas, and there were attitudes both of triumph and despair as the 
fair followers, dashed with spray, gave up the chase, passionately kissing their 
hands god-speed and good-by. This was going to the Indies through the Golden 
Gate!

A breakage of dishes, that sounded as though the ship were going to pieces, 
belied the prophesy that beyond the bar there was to be no moaning; and the 
Pacific would not be pacified. However, the reputation of the ocean was good 
enough to go to sleep on, but the berths squirmed in sympathy with the twisting 
and plunging ship. It was not a "sound of revelry by night," to which the 
wakeful listened through the dismal hours, and in the morning there was a high 
sea--grand rollers crowned with frothy lace, long black slopes rising and 
smiting like waves of liquid iron.

The Pacific was an average North Atlantic, and it was explained by the tale that 
the peaceful part of this ocean is away down South where the earth is most 
rotund, and the trade winds blow on so serenely that they lull the navigators 
into dreams of peace that induce a state of making haste slowly and a 
willingness to forget and be forgotten, whether--

Of those who husbanded the golden grain Or those who flung it to the winds like 
rain,

The gulls are not our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and 
the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to 
hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly spectacle glasses.

General Merritt's blue eyes shone like diamonds through the stormy experiences 
while the young staff officers curled up as the scientists did on the floor, and 
smiled a sort of sickly smile! The highest compliment that can be paid them is 
that the group of officers and gentlemen surrounding the commander of the 
expedition to the Philippines, express his own character.

It was funny to find that the private soldiers were better served with food than 
the General and his staff. There was reform, so as to even up the matter of 
rations, but the General was not anxious and solicitous for better food. His 
idea of the correct supper after a hard day's service is a goodly sized sliced 
onion with salt, meat broiled on two sticks, hard tack, a tin cup of coffee, for 
luxuries a baked potato, a pipe of tobacco, a nip of whisky, a roll in a blanket 
and a sleep until the next day's duties are announced by the bugle.

As the gentlemen of the staff got their sea legs, and flavored the narration of 
their experiences with humor, I found myself in a cloudy state and mentioned a 
small matter to the brigadier surgeon, who whipped out a thermometer and took my 
temperature, and that man of science gave me no peace night or day, and drove me 
from the ship into Paradise--that is to say I was ordered to stay at Honolulu. 
Through a window of the Queen's hospital I saw lumps of tawny gold that were 
pomegranates shaking in the breeze, another tree glowed with dates, and a broad, 
vividly green hedge was rich with scarlet colors. I was duly examined by 
physicians, who were thorough as German specialists. I had, in the course of a 
few hours, a nap, a dish of broth, a glass of milk, a glass of ice water and an 
egg nog. That broth flowed like balm to the right spot. It was chicken broth. 
When I guzzled the egg nog I would have bet ten to one on beating that fever in 
a week, and the next morning about 4:30, when there was competitive crowing by a 
hundred roosters, I was glad of the concert, for it gave assurance of a supply 
of chickens to keep up the broth and the eggs that disguised the whiskey.

Two days later I gave up the egg nog because it was too good for me. I knew I 
did not deserve anything so nice, and suspected it was a beneficence associated 
with a cloud on my brow. I had the approval of the hospital physician as to egg 
nog, and he cut off a lot of dainties sent by the Honolulu ladies, who must have 
imagined that I was one of the heroes of the war. Their mission is to make 
heroes happy. I was detained under the royal palms, and other palms that were 
planted by the missionaries, four weeks, and got away on the ship Peru with 
Major-General Otis, and when we had gone on for a fortnight, as far as from the 
Baltic to Lake Erie, we saw some rocks that once were Spanish property.

As we left Honolulu the air was already a-glitter with Star Spangled Banners. 
There are three great points to be remembered as to the annexation of Hawaii:

1. There is not to be a continuance of the slavery of Asiatics in the new 
possession.

2. "Manhood suffrage" is not to be extended to Asiatics, often actually as under 
strictly conventional constitutional construction.

3. The archipelago is to be a United States territory, but not a State of the 
United States. Ex-President Harrison says in his most interesting book: "This 
Country of Ours," which should be one of our national school books:

    "Out of the habit of dealing with the public domain has come the common 
thought that all territory that we acquire must, when sufficiently populous, be 
erected into States. But why may we not take account of the quality of the 
people as well as of their numbers, if future acquisitions should make it proper 
to do so? A territorial form of government is not so inadequate that it might 
not serve for an indefinite time."

It is to be remarked of the Hawaiian Islands that they did not possess the 
original riches of timber that distinguished the West Indies, especially Cuba, 
where Columbus found four varieties of oranges. One of the features of Hawaiian 
forestry is the Royal Palm, but it was not indigenous to the islands. The oldest 
of the stately royalists is not of forty years' growth, and yet they add 
surprising grace to many scenes, and each year will increase their height and 
enhance their beauty.

Hawaiians will be saved from extinction by miscegenation. There will be no harm 
done these feeble people by the shelter of the flag of the great republic. The 
old superstitions prevail among them to an extent greater than is generally 
understood. I had the privilege of visiting an American home, the background of 
which was a rugged mountain that looked like a gigantic picture setting forth 
the features of a volcanic world. Far up the steep is a cave in which the bones 
of many of the old savages were deposited in the days of civil war and inhuman 
sacrifices. The entrance was long ago--in the days the Hawaii people describe as 
"Before the Missionaries." The hole going to the holy cavern was closed, but 
there is still pious watching over the place of bones, and if there are climbers 
of the mountain not to be trusted with the solemn secrets of ancient times, they 
are stalked by furtive watchmen of the consecrated bones, and no doubt the ever 
alert sentinels would resist violation of the sepulchre in the rocks; and the 
natives are careful to scatter their special knowledge that the spot is haunted 
by supernatural shapes and powers. The Americans living in the midst of these 
mysteries are rather proud of the ghosts they never see, but have to put up with 
the haunting guard still ministering to the gods that dwelt in the shrines where 
the shadows of extinct volcanoes fall, long before the masterful missionaries 
planted their first steps in the high places.

After twenty-two days' steaming from San Francisco--Queen's Hospital time not 
counted--we were directly south of China's Yellow Sea, and within a few hours of 
sighting the isle of Luzon.

Only at Honolulu, all the way from San Francisco, was there a sail or a smoke 
not of a vessel of the Philippine expedition. All the long days and nights the 
eye swept the horizon for companionship, finding only that of our associates in 
adventure, and very little of them. Even the birds seem to shrink from the heart 
of the watery world spread between America and Asia; and the monsters of the 
deep are absent. One day, about a thousand miles from California, a story spread 
of a porpoise at play, but the lonely creature passed astern like a bubble. 
Bryant sang of the water fowl that flew from zone to zone, guided in certain 
flight on the long way over which our steps are led aright, but the Pacific 
zones are too broad for even winged wanderers. The fish that swarm on our coast 
do not seem to find home life or sporting places in this enormous sea. Only the 
flying fish disturb the silky scene and flutter with silver wings over the 
sparkling laces that glisten where the winds blow gently, and woo the billows to 
cast aside the terrors of other climes and match the sky of blue and gold in 
beauty; but, unlike the stars, the waves do not differ in glory, and the spread 
of their splendor, when they seem to roll over a conquered universe, appeals to 
the imagination with the solemn suggestion not that order rules but that old 
chaos settles in solemn peace. The days terminate on this abyss in marvelous 
glories. The glowing spectacle is not in the west alone, but the gorgeous 
conflagration of the palaces we build in dreams spreads all around the sky. The 
scene one evening in the vicinity of the sun departing in Asia to light up the 
morning of the everlasting to-morrow touching America with magical riches, was 
that of Niagara Falls ten thousand times magnified and turned to molten gold, 
that burned with inconceivable luster, while the south and north and east were 
illuminated with strange fires and soft lights, fading and merged at last in the 
daffodil sky. Then the west became as a forest of amazing growth, and the ship 
entered its dusky recesses like a hunter for game such as the world never saw--
and we looked upon the slow-fading purple islands that are the northern fringes 
of the greater one of the Philippines, and studied the rather faint and obscure 
Southern Cross and the stately sheen of the superb constellation of the 
Scorpion. It is a pity to have to say that the Cross of the South is a 
disappointment--has to be explained and made impressive by a diagram. It is more 
like a kite than a cross; has a superfluous star at one corner, and no support 
at all of the idea of being like a cross unless it is worked up and picked into 
the fancy. The North Star shines on the other side of the ship, and the Great 
Dipper dips its pointers after midnight, into the mass of darkness that is the 
sea when the sun and moon are gone.

The voyage from Honolulu to the farther Pacific was not so long that we forgot 
the American send-off we got in that Yankee city. The national airs sounded 
forth gloriously and grand. Flags and hankerchiefs fluttered from dense masses 
of spectators, and our colors were radiant above the roofs. There was, as usual, 
a mist on the mountains, and over Pearl Harbor glowed the arch of the most vivid 
rainbow ever seen, and Honolulu is almost every day dipped in rainbows. This was 
a wonder of splendor. The water changed from a sparkling green to a darkly 
luminous blue. From the moment the lofty lines of the coast--our mountains now--
faded, till the birds came out of the west, the Pacific Ocean justified its 
name. The magnificent monotony of its stupendous placidity was not broken except 
by a few hours of ruffled rollers that tell of agitations that, if gigantic, are 
remote.

The two thousand and one hundred miles from California to Honolulu seemed at 
first to cover a vast space of the journey from our Pacific coast to the 
Philippines, but appeared to diminish in importance as we proceeded and were 
taught by the persistent trade winds that blew our way, as if forever to waft us 
over the awful ocean whose perpetual beauty and placidity were to allure us to 
an amazing abyss, from which it was but imaginative to presume that we, in the 
hands of infinite forces, should ever be of the travelers that return. Similar 
fancies beset, as all the boys remember--the crews of the caravels that carried 
Columbus and his fortunes. There were the splendors of tropical skies to beguile 
us; the sea as serene as the sky to enchant us! What mighty magic was this that 
put a spell upon an American army, seeking beyond the old outlines of our 
history and dreams, to guide us on unfamiliar paths? What was this awakening in 
the soft mornings, to the thrilling notes of the bugle? The clouds were not as 
those we knew in other climes and years. We saw no penciling of smoke on the 
edges of the crystal fields touched up with dainty ripples too exquisite to be 
waves--that which is a delight for a moment and passes but to come again, in 
forms too delicate to stay for a second, save in those pictures that in the 
universe fill the mind with memories that arc like starlight. The glancing 
tribes of flying fish became events. We followed the twentieth parallel of 
longitude north of the equator, right on, straight as an arrow's flight is the 
long run of the ship--her vapor and the bubbles that break from the waters 
vanishing, so that we were as trackless when we had passed one breadth after 
another of the globe, as the lonesome canoes of the Indians on the Great Lakes.


CHAPTER IV

Interview with General Aguinaldo.

The Insurgent Leader's Surroundings and Personal Appearance--His Reserves and 
Ways of Talking--The Fierce Animosity of the Filipinos Toward Spanish Priests--A 
Probability of Many Martyrs in the Isle of Luzon.

Practically all persons in the more civilized--and that is to say the easily 
accessible--portions of the Philippine Islands, with perhaps the exception of 
those leading insurgents who would like to enjoy the opportunities the Spaniards 
have had for the gratification of greed and the indulgence of a policy of 
revenge, would be glad to see the Americans remain in Manila, and also in as 
large a territory as they could command.

Spaniards of intelligence are aware that they have little that is desirable to 
anticipate in case the country is restored to them along with their Mausers and 
other firearms, great and small, according to the terms of capitulation. They 
get their guns whether we go and leave them or we stay and they go. It is 
obvious that the insurgents have become to the Spaniards a source of anxiety 
attended with terrors. The fact that they allowed themselves to be besieged in 
Manila by an equal number of Filipinos is conclusive that their reign is over, 
and they are not passionately in favor of their own restoration. Their era of 
cruel and corrupt government is at an end, even if we shall permit them to make 
the experiment. Their assumed anxiety to stay, is false pretense. They will be 
hurt if they do not go home.

The exasperation of the Filipinos toward the church is a phenomenon, and they 
usually state it with uncandid qualifications of the inadequate definition of 
the opinions and policy made by General Aguinaldo. Representations of my 
representative character as an American journalist, that gave me an importance I 
do not claim or assume to have, caused the appearance at my rooms, in Manila, of 
insurgents of high standing and comprehensive information, and of large fortunes 
in some cases. I was deeply impressed by their violent radicalism regarding the 
priests. At first they made no distinction, but said flatly the priests were the 
mischiefmakers, the true tyrants, and next to the half-breed Filipinos crossed 
with Chinese--who are phenomenal accumulators of pecuniary resources--the money-
makers, who profited wrongfully by the earnings of others.

And so "the priests must go," they said, and have no choice except that of 
deportation or execution. In few words, if they did not go away they would be 
killed. When close and urgent inquiry was made, the native priests were not 
included in the application of this rule. The Spanish priests were particularly 
singled out for vengeance, and with them such others as had been "false to the 
people" and treacherous in their relations to political affairs.

The number to be exiled or executed was stated at 3,000. The priests are panicky 
about this feeling of the natives, as is in evidence in their solicitude to get 
away. They at least have no hope of security if the Spaniards should regain the 
mastery of the islands. Two hundred and fifty of them in vain sought to get 
passage to Hongkong in one boat. I was informed on authority that was 
unquestionable that the eviction or extermination of the Spanish priests was one 
of the inevitable results of Filipine independence--the first thing to be done.

It was with three objects in view that I had an interview with General 
Aguinaldo: (1) To ascertain exactly as possible his feeling and policy toward 
the United States and its assertion of military authority; (2) to inquire about 
his position touching the priests, (3) and to urge him to be at pains to be 
represented not only at Washington, but at Paris. As regards the latter point, 
it was clear that the people of the Philippines, whatever they might be, ought 
to be represented before the Paris conference. No matter what their case was, it 
should be personally presented, even if the representatives were witnesses 
against rather than for themselves. In the interest of fair play and the general 
truth the Philippine population should put in an appearance at the seat of the 
government of the United States for the information of the President, and at the 
scene of the conference to testify; and I was sure it would appear in all cases 
that they were at least better capable of governing themselves than the 
Spaniards to govern them. There could be no form of government quite so bad as 
that of the fatal colonial system of Spain, as illustrated in the Philippines 
and in the Americas.

General Aguinaldo was neither remote nor inaccessible. His headquarters were in 
an Indian village, just across the bay, named Bacoor, and in less than an hour a 
swift steam launch carried Major Bell, of the bureau of information, a gallant 
and most industrious and energetic officer, and myself, to water so shallow that 
we had to call canoes to land in front of a church that before the days of Dewey 
was riddled by the fire of Spanish warships because occupied by insurgents. The 
walls and roof showed many perforations. The houses of the village were of 
bamboo, and there were many stands along the hot and dusty street on which fruit 
was displayed for sale.

The General's house was about as solid a structure as earthquakes permit, its 
roof of red tile instead of the usual straw. His rooms were in the second story, 
reached by a broad stairway, at the top of which was a landing of liberal 
dimensions and an ante-room. The General was announced at home and engaged in 
writing a letter to General Merritt--then his rather regular literary exercise. 
There were a dozen insurgent soldiers at the door, and as many more at the foot 
and head of the stairs, with several officers, all in military costume, the 
privates carrying Spanish Mausers and the officers wearing swords. We were 
admitted to an inner room, with a window opening on the street, and told the 
General would see us directly. Meanwhile well-dressed ladies of his family 
passed through the audience room from the General's office to the living rooms, 
giving a pleasant picture of domesticity.

The door from the study opened and a very slender and short young man entered 
with a preoccupied look that quickly became curious. An attendant said in a low 
voice, "General Aguinaldo." He was unexpectedly small--could weigh but little 
over 100 pounds--dressed in pure white, and his modesty of bearing would have 
become a maiden. The first feeling was a sort of faint compassion that one with 
such small physical resources should have to bear the weighty responsibilities 
resting upon him. Major Bell had often met him, and introduced me. The General 
was gratified that I had called, and waited for the declaration of my business. 
He had been informed of my occupation; the fact that I had recently been in 
Washington and expected soon to be there again; was from Ohio, the President's 
state, a friend of his, and had written a book on Cuba, a task which gave me, as 
I had visited the Island of Cuba during the war, an acquaintance with the 
Spanish system of governing colonies.

The interpreter was a man shorter than the General, but not quite so slight. His 
hair was intensely black and he wore glasses. He is an accomplished linguist, 
speaks English with facility and is acknowledged by the priests to be the equal 
of any of them in reading and speaking Latin. It is to be remarked that while 
Aguinaldo is not a man of high education he has as associates in his labors for 
Philippine independence a considerable number of scholarly men. It is related 
that in a recent discussion between a priest and an insurgent, the latter stated 
as a ground of rebellion that the Spaniards did nothing for the education of the 
people, and was asked, "Where did you get your education?" He had been taught by 
the Jesuits.

My first point in talking with Aguinaldo was that the people of the Philippines 
ought to be strongly represented in Paris, and of the reasons briefly presented, 
the foremost was that they sought independence, and should be heard before the 
commission by which their fate would be declared for the present, so far as it 
could be, by a tribunal whose work was subject to revision. The general's 
information was that the Paris conference would be opened September 15, an error 
of a fortnight, and his impression was that the terms regarding the Philippines 
would be speedily settled, so that there could not be time to send to Paris, but 
there had been a determination reached to have a man in Washington.

It is to be taken into account that this interview was before anything had been 
made known as to the mission which General Merritt undertook, and that in a few 
days he set forth to perform, and that the terms of the protocol had not been 
entirely published in Manila. I told the general it was not possible that the 
Philippine problem could speedily be solved, and made known to him that the 
transport China, which holds the record of quick passage on the Pacific, was to 
sail for San Francisco in three days, and he would do well to have his men for 
Washington and Paris go on her if permission could be obtained, as there was no 
doubt it could, and I mentioned the time required to reach Washington and Paris-
-that one could be on a trans-Atlantic steamer in New York six hours after 
leaving Washington, that the Philippine commissioners going to Paris should make 
it a point to see the President on the way, and the whole matter one of urgency, 
but it was certainly not too late to act.

The General said it had been thought a representative of the islands and of the 
cause of the people should go to Washington, but the man was in Hongkong. He 
could, however, be telegraphed, so that he could catch the China at Nagasaka, 
Japan, where she would have to stop two days to take coal. The Washington 
commissioner might go to Paris, but instructions could not reach him before he 
left Hongkong, as it would not be desirable to telegraph them. Upon this I 
stated if it suited his convenience and he would send instructions by me, I was 
going on the China, and would charge myself with the special confidential care 
of his dispatches and deliver them to the commissioner at the coaling station, 
when he should join the ship; and if it was the desire of the General to have it 
done I would telegraph the President that Philippine commissioners were on the 
way. These suggestions were received as if they were agreeable, and esteemed of 
value.

The conversation turned at this point to the main question of the future 
government of the Philippines, and I inquired what would be satisfactory to the 
General, and got, of course, the answer, "Philippine independence." But I said 
after the United States had sent a fleet and destroyed the Spanish fleet and an 
army in full possession of Manila she was a power that could not be ignored; and 
what would be thought of her assuming the prerogative of Protector? She could 
not escape responsibility. His views as to the exact line of demarkation or 
distinction between the rights of the United States and those of the people of 
the islands should be perfectly clear, for otherwise there would be confusion 
and possibly contention in greater matters than now caused friction.

I endeavored to indicate the idea that there might be an adjustment on the line 
that the people of the Philippines could manage their local matters in their own 
way, leaving to the United States imperial affairs, the things international and 
all that affected them, the Filipinos looking to the administration of 
localities. I had asked questions and stated propositions as if it were the 
universal consent that General Aguinaldo was the dictator for his people and had 
the executive word to say; but when it came to drawing the fine lines of his 
relations with the United States as the embodiment of a revolutionary movement, 
he became shy and referred to those who had to be consulted.

His words were equivalent to saying his counselors must, in all matters of 
moment, be introduced. It came to the same thing at last as to his commissioner 
or commissioners to Washington or Paris, one or both, and he also asserted the 
purpose of having the congress elected assemble at a railroad town--Moroles, 
about fifty miles north of Manila--a movement it is understood that is under the 
guidance of others than the General, the bottom fact being that if there should 
be a Philippine Republic Aguinaldo's place, in the judgment of many who are for 
it, would be not that of chief magistrate, but the head of the army. There are 
others and many of them of the opinion that he is not a qualified soldier. The 
congress assembled at Moroles, and has made slow progress.

It may as well be remembered, however, that the distinctions of civil and 
military power have been always hard to observe, in Central and South American 
states, whose early Spanish education has been outgrown gradually, and with 
halting and bloody steps. General Aguinaldo, then engaged in evolving a letter 
to General Merritt, has since issued proclamations that yield no share to the 
United States in the native government of the islands. But there are two things 
definitely known, as if decreed in official papers, and probably more so; that 
the Filipinos of influential intelligence would be satisfied with the direction 
of local affairs and gladly accept the protectorate of the United States on the 
terms which the people of the United States may desire and dictate.

The greater matter is that whenever it is the fixed policy of the United States 
to accept the full responsibility of ruling the Philippines, neither Aguinaldo 
nor any other man of the islands would have the ability to molest the steady, 
peaceable, beneficent development of the potentiality of our system of justice 
to the people, and the preservation by and through the popular will of the union 
of liberty under the law, and order maintained peaceably or forcibly according 
to needs.

In continuation of his explanation that he had to refer matters to others called 
his counselors, disclaiming the presumption in my questions of his personal 
responsibility for the conduct of the native insurrection, General Aguinaldo 
said with the greatest deliberation and the softest emphasis of any of his 
sayings, that the insurgents were already suspicious of him as one who was too 
close a friend of the Americans, and yielded too much to them, and that there 
was danger this feeling might grow and make way with his ability to do all that 
he would like in the way of keeping the peace. There were, he said, inquiries to 
the effect: What had the insurgents got for what they had done in the capture of 
Manila? Were they not treated by the Americans with indifference?

Major Bell interposed to say that the Americans were in the Philippines not as 
politicians, but as soldiers, and had the duty of preserving order by military 
occupation, and it was not possible there could be maintained a double military 
authority--two generals of equal powers in one city under martial law. There 
must be one master and no discussion. The United States could take no secondary 
attitude or position--would treat the insurgents with great consideration, but 
they of necessity were exclusively responsible for the carrying out of the 
provisions of the capitulation.

This was exactly to the point, and the interpreter cut his rendering of it, 
using but few words, and they did not cheer up the General and those about him. 
Evidently they want to know when and where they realize. It had been noticeable 
that the greater importance Aguinaldo attaches to what he is saying the lower 
his voice and the more certainly he speaks in a half whisper with parted lips, 
show-in teeth and tongue; and he has a surprising faculty of talking with the 
tip of his tongue, extended a very little beyond his lips. There was something 
so reserved as to be furtive about his mouth, but his eyes were keen, straight 
and steady, showing decision, but guarding what he regarded the niceties of 
statement. However, his meaning that there were insurgents who were finding 
fault with him was not so much indicative of a rugged issue as a confession of 
impending inabilities.

He had nothing to say in response to Major Bell's explicit remark about the one-
man and one-country military power, but the action of the insurgents in removing 
their headquarters--or their capital, as they call it--to a point forty miles 
from Manila, proves that they have come to an understanding that the soldiers of 
the United States are not in the Philippines for their health entirely, or 
purely in the interest of universal benevolence. The Filipinos must know, too, 
that they could never themselves have captured Manila. It is not inapt to say 
that the real center of the rebellion against Spain is, as it has been for 
years, at Hongkong.

I reserved what seemed the most interesting question of the interview with the 
Philippine leader to the last. It was whether a condition of pacification was 
the expulsion of the Catholic priests as a class. This was presented with 
reference to the threats that had been made in my hearing that the priests must 
go or die, for they were the breeders of all trouble. Must all of them be 
removed in some way or another? If not, where would the line be drawn? The lips 
of the General were parted and his voice quite low and gentle, the tongue to a 
remarkable degree doing the talking, as he replied, plainly picking words 
cautiously and measuring them. The able and acute interpreter dealt them out 
rapidly, and his rendering gave token that the Filipinos have already had 
lessons in diplomacy--even in the Spanish style of polite prevarication--or, if 
that may be a shade too strong, let us say elusive reservation--the use of 
language that is more shady than silence, the framing of phrases that may be 
interpreted so as not to close but to continue discussion and leave wide fields 
for controversy. The General did not refer to his counselors, or the congress 
that is in the background and advertised as if it were a new force.

The words of the interpreter for him were:

    "The General says the priests to whom objection is made, and with whom we 
have a mortal quarrel, are not our own priests, but the Spaniards' and those of 
the orders. We respect the Catholic church. We respect our own priests, and, if 
they are friends of our country, will protect them. Our war is not upon the 
Catholic church, but upon the friars, who have been the most cruel enemies. We 
cannot have them here. They must go away. Let them go to Spain. We are willing 
that they may go to their own country. We do not want them. There is no peace 
until they go."

I said my information was that the objectionable Orders expressly proscribed by 
the insurgents were the Dominicans, Augustines, Franciscans and Recollects, but 
that the Jesuits were not included. This was fully recited to the General, and 
with his eyes closing and his mouth whispering close to the interpreter's cheek 
he gave his answer, and it was quickly rendered:

    "The Jesuits, too, must go. They also are our enemies. We do not want them. 
They betray. They can go to Spain. They may be wanted there, not here; but not 
here, not here."

The question whether the friars must make choice between departure and death was 
not met directly, but with repetitions--that they might be at home in Spain, but 
could not be a part of the independent Philippines; and, significantly, they 
should be willing to go when wanted, and would be. Two Catholic priests--
Americans, not Spaniards--were at this moment waiting in the ante room, to ask 
permission for the priests Aguinaldo has in prison to go back to Spain, and the 
General could not give an answer until he had consulted his council. Probably he 
would not dare to part with the priests, and an order from him would be 
disregarded. They have many chances of martyrdom, and some of them have already 
suffered mutilation.

Something had been said about my cabling the President as to the Filipinos' 
determination to send a representative to Paris, and I had tendered my good 
offices in bearing instructions to a commissioner from Hongkong to meet the 
China at Nagasaki, the Japanese railway station, where the American transports 
coal for their long voyage across the Pacific. But that matter had been left in 
the air. General Aguinaldo had said he would be obliged if I would telegraph the 
President, and I thought if the decision was that there was to be a Philippine 
representative hurried to Paris, it was something the President would be glad to 
know. I was aware there might be a difficulty in getting permission for a 
special messenger to go on the China to Japan to meet the commissioners going 
from Hongkong, and I would be willing to make the connection, as I had offered 
the suggestion. But it was necessary to be absolutely certain of General 
Aguinaldo's decision before I could cable the President; therefore, as I was, of 
course, in an official sense wholly irresponsible, I could communicate with him 
without an abrasion of military or other etiquette. It was the more needful, as 
it would be a personal proceeding, that I should be sure of the facts. Therefore 
I asked the General, whose time I had occupied more than an hour, whether he 
authorized me to telegraph the President that a commission was going to Paris, 
and desired me to render any aid in conveying information.

The General was troubled about the word "authorized," and instead of saying so 
concluded that I must have a deep and possibly dark design and so he could not 
give me the trouble to cable. The assurance that it would not be troublesome did 
not remove the disquiet. I could not be troubled, either, as a bearer of 
dispatches. The General could not authorize a telegram without consulting. In 
truth, the General had not made up his mind to be represented in Paris, holding 
that it would be sufficient to have an envoy extraordinary in Washington.

Others, without full consideration, in my opinion, concur in this view. I can 
imagine several situations at Paris in which a representative Filipino would be 
of service to the United States, simply by standing for the existence of a state 
of facts in the disputed islands. I dropped the matter of being a mediator, 
having planted the Paris idea in the mind of the Philippine leader, who is of 
the persuasion that he is the dictator of his countrymen, for the sake of his 
country, until he wishes to be evasive, and then he must consult others who 
share the burdens of authority, and told him when taking my leave I would like 
to possess a photograph with his autograph and the Philippine flag. In a few 
minutes the articles were in my hands, and passing out, there were the American 
priests in the ante-room, the next callers to enter the General's apartment. 
Their business was to urge him to permit the Catholic priests held as prisoners 
by the insurgents--more than 100, perhaps nearly 200 in number--to go home.

When the news came that General Merritt had been ordered to Paris, and would 
pass through the Red sea en route, taking the China to Hongkong to catch a 
peninsular and oriental steamer, I telegraphed the fact to General Aguinaldo 
over our military wires and his special wire, and his commissioner, duly 
advised, became, with General Merritt's aid, at Hongkong a passenger on the 
China.

He is well known to the world as Senor Filipe Agoncillo, who visited Washington 
City, saw the President and proceeded to Paris.


CHAPTER V

The Philippine Mission.

Correspondence With Aguinaldo About It--Notes by Senor Felipe Agoncillo--
Relations Between Admiral Dewey and Senor Aguinaldo--Terms of Peace Made by 
Spanish Governor-General with Insurgents, December, 1897--Law Suit Between 
Aguinaldo and Artacho--Aguinaldo's Proclamation of May 24, 1898.

When General Merritt decided to hold the China for a day to take him to Hongkong 
on the way to Paris, I telegraphed Aguinaldo of the movements of the ship, arid 
received this dispatch from the General:

    "War Department, United States Volunteer Signal Corps, sent from Bakoor 
August 29, 1898.--To Mr. Murat Halstead, Hotel Oriente, Manila: Thankful for 
your announcing China's departure. We are to send a person by her if possible, 
whom I recommend to you. Being much obliged for the favor.

    "A. G. Escamilla,"
    "Private Secretary to General Aguinaldo."

On the same day the General sent the following personal letter:

    "Dear Sir: The bearer, Dr. G. Apacible, is the person whom was announced to 
you in the telegram.

    "I am desirous of sending him to Hongkong, if possible, by the China, 
recommending him at the same time to your care and good will. Thanking you for 
the favor, I'm respectfully yours,

    Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy.

    "Mr. Murat Halstead, Manila.

    "Bakoor, 29th August, 1898."

General Aguinaldo proceeded vigorously to make use of his knowledge that the 
China would go to Hongkong for General Merritt and sent his secretary and others 
to me at the Hotel Oriente, but they arrived after I had left the house. They 
came to the China and General Merritt had not arrived and did not appear until 
within a few minutes of the start. Then the deputation from the insurgent 
chieftain had an interview with him, asking that two of their number should go 
to Hongkong on the China to express fully the views of the insurgent government 
to to the commissioner, Don Felipe Agoncillo, chosen to represent the Filipinos 
at Washington and Paris and to ask that he be allowed to go to the United States 
on the China. When the committee saw General Merritt he was taking leave of 
Admiral Dewey, and the General, who had not heard of this movement until that 
moment--the question being entirely new--invited the opinion of the Admiral, who 
said there was "certainly no objection," and on the contrary, it would be very 
well to permit the passage of the deputation to Hongkong and of the commissioner 
appointed from that city to Washington. General Merritt at once in half a dozen 
words gave the order, and the journey began.

General Greene, who reads and translates Spanish with facility and whose Spanish 
speech is plain, treated with marked courtesy the Filipino committee to Hongkong 
and thence the commissioner and his secretary from Hongkong to San Francisco, on 
the way to Washington and Paris. General Greene, while according distinction to 
the representatives of the insurgents, stated to them that his attentions were 
personal and he could not warrant them official recognition at Washington or 
anything more than such politeness as gentlemen receive from each other. The 
commissioner was Don Felipe Agoncillo, and his secretary, Sixto Lopez.

Saturday, September 24, the Salt Lake newspapers contained stories to the effect 
that the Germans had entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with the 
Aguinaldo government and would furnish equipments for an army of 150,000 men. We 
were on the Union Pacific Railroad at the time, and I called the attention of 
Don Felipe Agoncillo to this remarkable intelligence and asked him what he 
thought of it. He said emphatically that it was "Nothing," "No true," "Nothing 
at all," and he laughed at the comic idea. There was also in the Salt Lake 
newspapers a statement that the Aguinaldo 'government' had sent to President 
McKinley a letter strongly expressing good-will and gratitude. There did not 
seem to be much news in this for Don Felipe, but it gave him much pleasure, and 
he, not perhaps diplomatically but enthusiastically, pronounced it good.

What Agoncillo Approved.

The dispatch marked with his approbation by the Philippine commissioner was the 
following from Washington, under date of September 23:

    "The President doubtless would be glad to hear any views these Filipinos 
might care to set forth, being fresh from the islands and thoroughly acquainted 
with the wishes of the insurgents. But it would be plainly impolitic and 
inconsistent for the President, at this date and pending the conclusion of the 
peace conference at Paris, to allow it to be understood, by according a formal 
reception to the delegates, that he had thereby recognized the Philippine 
government as an independent nationality. His attitude toward the Filipinos 
would be similar to that assumed by him toward the Cubans. As the Filipinos have 
repeatedly, by public declaration, sought to convey the impression that the 
United States representatives in Manila have at some time during the progress of 
the war recognized Aguinaldo as an independent ally, and entered into formal co-
operation with him, it may be stated that the government at Washington is 
unaware that any such thing has happened. Admiral Dewey, who was in command of 
all the United States forces during the most critical period, expressly cabled 
the Secretary of the Navy that he had entered into no formal agreement with 
Aguinaldo. If General Otis followed his instructions, and of that there can be 
no doubt, he also refrained from entering into any entangling agreements. As for 
Consul-General Wildman, any undertaking he may have assumed with Aguinaldo must 
have been upon his own personal and individual responsibility, and would be 
without formal standing, inasmuch as he has not the express authorization from 
the State Department absolutely requisite to negotiations in such cases. 
Therefore, as the case now stands, the peace commissioners are free to deal with 
the Philippine problem at Paris absolutely without restraint beyond that which 
might be supposed to rise from a sense of moral obligation to avoid committing 
the Filipinos again into the hands of their late rulers."

Senor Agoncillo, the commissioner of the Philippine insurgents at Paris, made, 
in conversations on the steamer China, when crossing the Pacific Ocean from 
"Nagasaka to San Francisco, this statement in vindication of Aguinaldo, and it 
is the most complete, authoritative and careful that exists of the relations 
between Admiral Dewey and the insurgent leader:

    Brief Notes By Senor Agoncillo

    "On the same day that Admiral Dewey arrived at Hongkong Senor Aguinaldo was 
in Singapore, whither he had gone from Hongkong, and Mr. Pratt, United States 
Consul-General, under instructions from the said Admiral, held a conference with 
him, in which it was agreed that Senor Aguinaldo and other revolutionary chiefs 
in co-operation with the American squadron should return to take up arms against 
the Spanish government of the Philippines, the sole and most laudable desire of 
the Washington government being to concede to the Philippine people absolute 
independence as soon as the victory against the Spanish arms should be obtained.

    "By virtue of this argument Senor Aguinaldo proceeded by the first steamer 
to Hongkong for the express purpose of embarking on the Olympia and going to 
Manila; but this intention of his was not realized, because the American 
squadron left Hongkong the day previous to his arrival, Admiral Dewey having 
received from his government an order to proceed immediately to Manila. This is 
what Mr. Wildman, United States Consul-General in Hongkong, said to Senor 
Aguinaldo in the interview which took place between them. A few days after the 
Spanish squadron had been totally destroyed in the Bay of Manila by the American 
squadron, the latter obtaining a most glorious triumph, which deserved the 
fullest congratulations and praise of the Philippine public, the McCullough 
arrived at Hongkong and her commander said to Senor Aguinaldo that Admiral Dewey 
needed him (le necesitaba) in Manila and that he brought an order to take him on 
board said transport, as well as other revolutionary chiefs whose number should 
be determined by Senor Aguinaldo, and, in fact, he and seventeen chiefs went to 
Cavite on the McCullough.

    "Senor Aguinaldo began his campaign against the Spaniards the very day that 
he received the 1,902 Mauser guns and 200,000 cartridges, which came from 
Hongkong. The first victory which he obtained from the Spaniards was the 
surrender or capitulation of the Spanish General, Senor Pena, who was the 
Military Governor of Cavite, had his headquarters in the town of San Francisco 
de Malabon, and his force was composed of 1,500 soldiers, including volunteers.

    "The revolutionary army in six days' operations succeeded in getting 
possession of the Spanish detachments stationed in the villages of Bakoor, Imus, 
Benakayan, Naveleta, Santa Cruz de Malabon, Rosario and Cavite Viejo.

    "On June 9 last the whole province of Cavite was under the control of the 
provisional revolutionary government, including many Spanish prisoners and 
friars, 7,000 guns, great quantities of ammunition and some cannon.

    "At the same time that the province of Cavite was being conquered other 
revolutionary chiefs were carrying on campaigns in the Batangas, Laguna, 
Tayabas, Nueva Eziza, Bulcau, Batangas, Pampanga and Morong, which were under 
control of the revolutionary army by June 12, and such progress was made by the 
Philippine revolution in the few days of campaign against the Spaniards that by 
August 3 last it held under conquest fifteen important provinces of the island 
of Luzon; these provinces are being governed by laws emanating from the 
provisional revolutionary government and in all of them perfect order and 
complete tranquility reign.

    "It is to be noted that the Spanish government has sent to Senor Aguinaldo 
various emissaries, who invited him to make common cause with Spain against the 
United States, promising him that the government of the Spanish nation would 
concede to him anything he might ask for the Philippine people. But Senor 
Aguinaldo has invariably replied to those emissaries, that it was too late and 
that he could not consider any proposition from the Spanish government, however 
beneficial it might be to the Philippines, because he had already pledged his 
word of honor in favor of certain representatives of the government at 
Washington.

    "In view of this positive resolution of Senor Aguinaldo there began 
forthwith the intrigues of the Spanish enemy directed against the life of Senor 
Aguinaldo.

    Peace Convention of December, 1896.

    "Senor Aguinaldo, in his own name and in that of the other chiefs and 
subordinates, obligated himself to lay down their arms, which, according to an 
inventory, were to be turned over to the Spanish government, thus terminating 
the revolution. His Excellency the Governor and Captain-General, Don Fernando 
Primo de Rivera, as the representative of His Majesty's government in the 
Philippines, obligated himself on his side (1) to grant a general amnesty to all 
those under charges or sentenced for the crime of rebellion and sedition and 
other crimes of that category; (2) to introduce into the Philippines all reforms 
necessary for correcting in an effective and absolute manner the evils which for 
so many years had oppressed the country, in political and administrative 
affairs; and (3) an indemnity of $800,000, payable at the following dates: A 
letter of credit of the Spanish Filipine Bank for $400,000 against the Hongkong 
and Shanghai Bank in Hongkong was to be delivered to Senor Aguinaldo on the same 
day that he should leave Biak-va-Bato, where he had established his 
headquarters, and should embark on the steamer furnished by the Spanish 
government (this letter of credit was in point of fact delivered); $200,000 was 
to be paid to the said Senor Aguinaldo as soon as the revolutionary general, 
Senor Ricarte, should receive his telegram ordering him to give up his arms, 
with an inventory thereof, to the commissioner designated by his excellency the 
Governor and Captain-General, Don Fernando Primo de Rivera; and the remaining 
$200,000 should be due and payable when the peace should be a fact, and it 
should be understood that peace was a fact when the Te Deum should be sung by 
order of his excellency the Governor and Captain-General of the Philippines.

    "Senor Aguinaldo complied in every respect, so far as he was concerned, with 
the peace agreement. But the Spanish government did not observe a similar 
conduct, and this has been deplored and still is deeply deplored by the 
Philippine people. The general amnesty which was promised has remained 
completely a dead letter. Many Filipinos are still to be found in Fernando Po 
and in various military prisons in Spain suffering the grievous consequences of 
the punishment inflicted upon them unjustly and the inclemencies of the climate 
to which they are not accustomed. Some of these unfortunates, who succeeded in 
getting out of those prisons and that exile, are living in beggary in Spain, 
without the government furnishing them the necessary means to enable them to 
return to the Philippines.

    "In vain has the Philippine public waited for the reforms also promised. 
After the celebration of the compact of June and the disposition of the arms of 
the revolutionists the Governor-General again began to inflict on the 
defenseless natives of the country arbitrary arrest and execution without 
judicial proceedings solely on the ground that they were merely suspected of 
being secessionists; proceedings which indisputably do not conform to the law 
and Christian sentiments.

    "In the matter of reforms the religious orders again began to obtain from 
the Spanish government their former and absolute power. Thus Spain pays so 
dearly for her fatal errors in her own destiny!

    "In exchange for the loftiness of mind with which Senor Aguinaldo has 
rigidly carried out the terms of the peace agreement, General Primo de Rivera 
had the cynicism to state in the congress of his nation that he had promised no 
reform to Senor Aguinaldo and his army, but that he had only given them a piece 
of bread in order that they might be able to maintain themselves abroad. This 
was reechoed in the foreign press, and Senor Aguinaldo was accused in the 
Spanish press of having allowed himself to be bought with a handful of gold, 
selling out his country at the same time. There were published, moreover, in 
those Spanish periodicals caricatures of Senor Aguinaldo which profoundly 
wounded his honor and his patriotism.

    "Senor Aguinaldo and the other revolutionists who reside in Hongkong agreed 
not to take out one cent of the $400,000 deposited in the chartered bank and the 
Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the only amount which Senor Aguinaldo received from 
the Spanish government on account of the stipulated indemnity, but to use it for 
arms in order to carry on another revolution in the Philippines, in case the 
Spanish government should fail to carry out the peace agreement, at least in so 
far as it refers to general amnesty and reforms. All the above named 
revolutionists, Senor Aguinaldo setting the example, resolved to deny themselves 
every kind of comfort during their stay in Hongkong, living in the most modest 
style, for the purpose of preventing a reduction by one single cent of the above 
named sum of $400,000, which they set aside exclusively for the benefit of their 
country.

    Law Suit between Don J. Artacho and Don E. Aguinaldo.

    "Senor Artacho, induced by the father solicitor of the Dominicans and the 
Consul-General of Spain, filed in the courts of that colony a summons against 
Don E. Aguinaldo, asking for a division of the above-mentioned $400,000 between 
those revolutionary chiefs who resided in Hongkong. Artacho and three others, 
who joined the revolution in its last days and rendered little service to it, 
were the only ones who desired a division of this money; whereas forty-seven 
revolutionaries, many of whom were most distinguished chiefs, were opposed to 
it, supporting the resolution which Senor Aguinaldo had previously taken in 
regard to it. Senor Aguinaldo, in order to avoid all scandal, did everything 
possible to avoid appearing in court answering the summons of Artacho, who, 
realizing that his conduct had made himself hated by all Filipinos, agreed in a 
friendly arrangement to withdraw his suit, receiving in exchange $5,000; in this 
way were frustrated the intrigues of the solicitor of the Dominican order and of 
the Spanish Consul, who endeavored at any cost to destroy the $400,000 by 
dividing it up.

    "Artacho is now on trial before a judicial court on charges preferred by 
various revolutionists for offenses which can be proved; he has no influence in 
the revolutionary party."


    Proclamation of General Aguinaldo.

    May 24th, 1898.

    Filipinos:

    The Great Nation North America, cradle of true liberty and friendly on that 
account to the liberty of our people, oppressed and subjugated by the tyranny 
and despotism of those who have governed us, has come to manifest even here a 
protection which is decisive, as well as disinterested, towards us considering 
us endowed with sufficient civilization to govern by ourselves this our unhappy 
land. To maintain this so lofty idea, which we deserve from the now very 
powerful Nation North America, it is our duty to detest all those acts which 
belie such an idea, as pillage, robbery and every class of injury to persons as 
well as to things. With a view to avoiding international conflicts during the 
period of our campaign, I order as follows:

    Article I. The lives and property of all foreigners, including Chinese and 
all Spaniards who either directly or indirectly have joined in taking arms 
against us are to be respected.

    Article II. The lives and property of those who lay down their arms are also 
to be respected.

    Article III. Also are to be respected all sanitary establishments and 
ambulances, and likewise the persons and things which may be found either in one 
or the other, including the assistants in this service, unless they show 
hostility.

    Article IV. Those who disobey what is prescribed in the preceding articles 
will be tried by summary court and put to death, if such disobedience shall 
cause assassination, fire, robbery and violation.

    Given at Cavite, the 24th of May, 1898.

    Emilio Aguinaldo.


It is to be remarked of this semi-official statement that Admiral Dewey did not 
make any promises he could not fulfill to Aguinaldo; did not assume to speak for 
the President or the army of the United States, but gave guns and ammunition to 
the insurgents, who aided him in maintaining a foothold on the shore. The 
insurgents did not win Dewey's victory, but aided to improve it. Without the aid 
of the American army Manila might have been destroyed, but could not have been 
captured intact. General Merritt settled the question of the status of the 
insurgent army with respect to the capture of Manila in a summary and sound way 
when he said there could be but one military authority in a military government, 
and as the commanding general of the Philippine expedition of the United States, 
he was that authority.


CHAPTER VI

The Proclamations of General Aguinaldo.

June 16th, 1898, Establishing Dictatorial Government--June 20th, 1898, 
Instructions for Elections--June 23d, 1898, Establishing Revolutionary 
Government--June 23d, 1898, Message to Foreign Powers--June 27th, 1898, 
Instructions Concerning Details--July 23d, 3898, Letter From Senor Aguinaldo to 
General Anderson--August 1st, 1898, Resolutions of Revolutionary Chiefs Asking 
for Recognition--August 6th, 1898, Message to Foreign Powers Asking Recognition.

One of the most critical questions in the situation of the Philippines is the 
precise position of the leader of the insurgents, General Aguinaldo. His 
utterances in his official character of leader of the natives who for years have 
been in rebellion against Spain, have been but fragmentary, as they have come 
before the people. We give for the public information the consecutive series of 
proclamations.

    No. 1.

    To the Philippine Public:

    Circumstances have providentially placed me in a position for which I can 
not fail to recognize that I am not properly qualified, but since I can not 
violate the laws of Providence nor decline the obligations which honor and 
patriotism impose upon me, I now salute you, Oh, My Beloved People!

    I have proclaimed in the face of the whole world that the aspiration of my 
whole life, the final object of all my efforts and strength is nothing else but 
your independence, for I am firmly convinced that that constitutes your constant 
desire and that independence signifies for us redemption from slavery and 
tyranny, regaining our liberty and entrance into the concert of civilized 
nations.

    I understand on the other hand that the first duty of every government is to 
interpret faithfully popular aspirations. With this motive, although the 
abnormal circumstances of the war have compelled me to institute this 
Dictatorial Government which assumes full powers, both civil and military, my 
constant desire is to surround myself with the most distinguished persons of 
each Province, those who by their conduct, deserve the confidence of their 
province to the end that the true necessities of each being known by them, 
measures may be adopted to meet these necessities and apply the remedies in 
accordance with the desires of all.

    I understand moreover the urgent necessity of establishing in each town a 
solid and robust organization, the strongest bulwark of public security and the 
sole means of securing that union and discipline which are indispensable for the 
establishment of the Republic, that is Government of the people for the people, 
and warding off the international conflicts which may arise.

    Following out the foregoing considerations I decree as follows:

    Article I. The inhabitants of every town where the forces of the Spanish 
government still remain, will decide upon the most efficacious measures to 
combat and destroy them, according to the resources and means at their disposal, 
according to prisoners of war the treatment most conformable to humanitarian 
sentiments and to the customs observed by civilized nations.

    Article II. As soon as the town is freed from Spanish domination, the 
inhabitants most distinguished for high character, social position and honorable 
conduct both in the center of the community and in the suburbs, will come 
together in a large meeting in which they will proceed to elect by a majority of 
votes, the chief of the town and a head man for each suburb, considering as 
suburbs not only those hitherto known as such, but also the center of the 
community.

    All those inhabitants who fulfill the conditions above named, will have the 
right to take part in this meeting and to be elected, provided always that they 
are friendly to Philippine independence and are twenty years of age.

    Article III. In this meeting shall also be elected by a majority of votes, 
three Delegates; one of police and internal order, another of justice and civil 
registry and another of taxes and property.

    The delegate of police and internal order will assist the Chief in the 
organization of the armed force, which for its own security each town must 
maintain, according to the measure of its resources and in the preservation of 
order, government and hygiene of its population.

    The delegate of justice and civil registry will aid the Chief in the 
formation of courts and in keeping books of registry of births, deaths and 
marriage contracts, and of the census.

    The delegate of taxes and property will aid the chief in the collection of 
taxes, the administration of public funds, the opening of books of registry of 
cattle and real property, and in all work relating to encouragement of every 
class of industry.

    Article IV. The Chief, as President, with the head men and the above 
mentioned delegates, will constitute the popular assemblies who will supervise 
the exact fulfillment of the laws in force and the particular interests of each 
town.

    The head man of the center of the community will be the Vice President of 
the assembly, and the delegate of justice its secretary.

    The head men will be delegates of the Chief within their respective 
boundaries.

    Article V. The Chiefs of each town after consulting the opinion of their 
respective assemblies, will meet and elect by majority of votes the Chief of the 
Province and three councilors for the three branches above mentioned.

    The Chief of the Province as President, the Chief of the town which is the 
capital of the Province, as Vice President, and the above named councilors will 
constitute the Provincial Council, which will supervise the carrying out of the 
instructions of this government in the territory of the Province, and for the 
general interest of the Province, and will propose to this government the 
measures which should be adopted for the general welfare.

    Article VI. The above named chiefs will also elect by majority of votes 
three representatives for each one of the Provinces of Manila and Cavite, two 
for each one of the Provinces classified as terminal in Spanish legislation, and 
one for each one of the other Provinces and Politico-Military commands of the 
Philippine Archipelago.

    The above named representatives will guard the general interests of the 
Archipelago and the particular interests of their respective Provinces, and will 
constitute the Revolutionary Congress, which will propose to this government the 
measures concerning the preservation of internal order, and external security of 
these islands, and will be heard by this government on all questions of grave 
importance. The decision of which will admit of delay or adjournment.

    Article VII. Persons elected to any office whatsoever in the form prescribed 
in the preceding article can not perform the functions of the same without the 
previous confirmation by this government, which will give it in accordance with 
the certificates of election.

    Representatives will establish their identity by exhibiting the above named 
certificates.

    Article VIII. The Military Chiefs named by this government in each Province 
will not intervene in the government and administration of the Province, but 
will confine themselves to requesting of the Chiefs of Provinces and towns the 
aid which may be necessary both in men and resources, which are not to be 
refused in case of actual necessity.

    Nevertheless, when the Province is threatened or occupied by the enemy in 
whole or in part, the military chief of highest rank therein may assume powers 
of the Chief of the Province, until the danger has disappeared.

    Article IX. The government will name for each Province a commissioner, 
specially charged with establishing therein the organization prescribed in this 
decree, in accordance with instructions which this government will communicate 
to him. Those military chiefs who liberate the towns from the Spanish domination 
are commissioners by virtue of their office.

    The above named commissioners will preside over the first meetings held in 
each town and in each Province.

    Article X. As soon as the organization provided in the decree has been 
established all previous appointments to any civil office, whatsoever, no matter 
what their origin or source, shall be null and void, and all instructions in 
conflict with the foregoing are hereby annulled.

    Given at Cavite, the 18th of June, 1898.

    Emilio Aguinaldo.

    No. 2.

    For the execution and proper carrying out of what is prescribed in the 
decree of this government concerning the management of the Provinces and towns 
of the Philippine Archipelago, I decree as follows:

    Instructions.

    Concerning the Management of the Provinces and towns.

    (Then follow 45 rules concerning the elections, formation of the police, the 
courts and the levying and collection of taxes.)

    Given at Cavite, 20th of June, 1898.

    Emilio Aguinaldo.

    No. 3.

    Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy,

    President of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, and General in 
Chief of Its Army.

    This government desiring to demonstrate to the Philippine people that one of 
its ends is to combat with a firm hand the inveterate vices of the Spanish 
administration, substituting for personal luxury and that pompous ostentation 
which have made it a mere matter of routine, cumbrous and slow in its movements, 
another administration more modest, simple and prompt in performing the public 
service: I decree as follows:

    Chapter I.

    Of the Revolutionary Government.

    Article I. The dictatorial government will be entitled hereafter the 
revolutionary government, whose object is to struggle for the independence of 
the Philippines until all nations, including the Spanish, shall expressly 
recognize it, and to prepare the country so that a true republic may be 
established.

    The dictator will be entitled hereafter President of the Revolutionary 
Government.

    Article II. Four secretaryships of government are created; one of foreign 
affairs, navy and commerce; another of war and public works; another of police 
and internal order, justice, education and hygiene; and another of finance, 
agriculture, and manufacturing industry.

    The government may increase this number of secretaryships, when it shall 
find in practice that this distribution is not sufficient for the multiplied and 
complicated necessities of the public service.

    Article III. Each secretaryship shall aid the President in the 
administration of questions concerning the different branches which it 
comprises.

    At the head of each one shall be a secretary who shall not be responsible 
for the decrees of the Presidency, but shall sign them with the President, to 
give them authority.

    But if it shall appear that the decree has been promulgated on the 
proposition of the secretary of the department, the latter shall be responsible 
conjointly with the President.

    Article IV. The secretaryship of foreign affairs will be divided into three 
bureaus, one of diplomacy, another of navy and another of commerce.

    The first bureau will study and dispose of all questions pertaining to the 
management of diplomatic negotiations with other powers and the correspondence 
of this government with them. The second will study all questions relating to 
the formation and organization of our navy and the fitting out of such 
expeditions as the necessities of the revolution may require; and the third will 
have charge of everything relating to internal and external commerce, and the 
preliminary work which may be necessary for making treaties of commerce with 
other nations.

    Article V. The secretaryship of war will be divided into two bureaus; one of 
war, properly speaking, and the other of public works.

    The first bureau will be subdivided into four sections: One of campaigns, 
another of military justice, another of military administration, and another of 
military health.

    The section of campaigns will have charge of the appointment and formation 
of the certificates of enlistment and service of all who serve in the 
revolutionary militia; of the direction of campaigns; the preparation of plans, 
works of fortification, and preparing reports of battles; of the study of 
military tactics for the army and the organization of the general staff, 
artillery and cavalry; and finally, of the determination of all other questions 
concerning the business of campaigns and military operations.

    The section of military justice will have charge of everything relating to 
courts of war and military tribunals; the appointment of judges and counsel and 
the determination of all questions of military justice; the section of military 
administration will he charged with the furnishing of food and other supplies 
necessary for the use of the army; and the section of military health will have 
charge of everything relating to the hygiene and healthfulness of the militia.

    Article VI. The other secretaryships will he divided into such bureaus as 
their branches may require and each bureau will be subdivided into sections 
according to the nature and importance of the work it has to do.

    Article VII. The secretary will inspect and supervise all the work of his 
secretaryship and will determine all questions with the President of the 
government.

    At the head of each bureau will be a director and in each section an officer 
provided with such number of assistants as may be specified.

    Article VIII. The President will appoint the secretaries of his own free 
choice and in concert with them will appoint all the subordinate officials of 
each secretaryship.

    In order that in the choice of persons it may be possible to avoid 
favoritism, it must be fully understood that the good name of the country and 
the triumph of the revolution require the services of persons truly capable.

    Article IX. The secretaries may be present at the revolutionary congress in 
order that they may make any motion in the name of the President or may be 
interpolated publicly by any one of the representatives; but when the question 
which is the object of the motion shall be put to vote or after the 
interpolation is ended they shall leave and shall not take part in the vote.

    Article X. The President of the government is the personification of the 
Philippine people, and in accordance with this idea it shall not he possible to 
hold him responsible while he fills the office.

    His term of office shall last until the revolution triumphs, unless, under 
extraordinary circumstances, he shall feel obliged to offer his resignation to 
congress, in which case congress will elect whomsoever it considers most fit.

    Chapter II.

    Of the Revolutionary Congress.

    Article XI. The Revolutionary Congress is the body of representatives of the 
Provinces of the Philippine Archipelago elected in the manner prescribed in the 
decrees of the 18th, present month.

    Nevertheless, if any Province shall not be able as yet to elect 
representatives because the greater part of its towns shall have not yet 
succeeded in liberating themselves from Spanish domination, the government shall 
have power to appoint as provisional representatives for this Province those 
persons who are most distinguished for high character and social position, in 
such numbers as are prescribed by the above named decree, provided always that 
they are natives of the Province which they represent or have resided therein 
for a long time.

    Article XII. The representatives having met in the town which is the seat of 
the revolutionary government, and in the building which may be designated, will 
proceed to its preliminary labors, designating by plurality of votes a 
commission composed of five individuals charged with examining documents 
accrediting each representative, and another commission, composed of three 
individuals, who will examine the documents which the five of the former 
commission exhibit.

    Article XIII. On the following day the above named representatives will meet 
again and the two commissions will read their respective reports concerning the 
legality of the said documents, deciding by an absolute majority of votes on the 
character of those which appear doubtful.

    This business completed, it will proceed to designate, also by absolute 
majority, a President, a Vice President, and two secretaries, who shall be 
chosen from among the representatives, whereupon the congress shall be 
considered organized, and shall notify the government of the result of the 
election.

    Article XIV. The place where congress deliberates is sacred and inviolable, 
and no armed force shall enter therein unless the President thereof shall ask 
therefor in order to establish internal order disturbed by those who can neither 
honor themselves nor its august functions.

    Article XV. The powers of congress are: To watch over the general interest 
of the Philippine people, and the carrying out of the revolutionary laws; to 
discuss and vote upon said laws; to discuss and approve prior to their 
ratification treaties and loans; to examine and approve the accounts presented 
annually by the secretary of finance, as well as extraordinary and other taxes 
which may hereafter be imposed.

    Article XVI. Congress shall also be consulted in all grave and important 
questions, the determination of which admits of delay or adjournment; but the 
President of the government shall have power to decide questions of urgent 
character, but in that case he shall give account by message to said body of the 
decision which he has adopted.

    Article XVII. Every representative shall have power to present to congress 
any project of a law, and every secretary on the order of the President of the 
government shall have similar power.

    Article XVIII. The sessions of congress shall be public, and only in cases 
which require reserve shall it have power to hold a secret session.

    Article XIX. In the order of its deliberations, as well as in the internal 
government of the body the instructions which shall be formulated by the 
congress itself shall be observed. The President shall direct the deliberations 
and shall not vote except in case of a tie, when he shall have the casting vote.

    Article XX. The President of the government shall not have power to 
interrupt in any manner the meeting of congress, nor embarrass its sessions.

    Article XXI. The congress shall designate a permanent commission of justice 
which shall be presided over by the auxilliary vice president or each of the 
secretaries, and shall be composed of those persons and seven members elected by 
plurality of votes from among the representatives.

    This commission shall judge on appeal the criminal cases tried by the 
Provincial courts; and shall take cognizance of and have original jurisdiction 
in all cases against the secretaries of the government, the chiefs of Provinces 
and towns, and the Provincial judges.

    Article XXII. In the office of the secretary of congress shall be kept a 
book of honor, wherein shall be recorded special services rendered to the 
country, and considered as such by said body. Every Filipino, whether in the 
military or civil service, may petition congress for notation in said book, 
presenting duly accredited documents describing the service rendered by him on 
behalf of the country, since the beginning of the present revolution. For 
extraordinary services, which may be rendered hereafter, the government will 
propose said notation accompanying the proposal with the necessary documents 
justifying it.

    Article XXIII. The congress will also grant, on the proposal of the 
government rewards in money, which can be given only once to the families of 
those who were victims of their duty and patriotism, as a result of 
extraordinary acts of heroism.

    Article XXIV. The acts of congress shall not take effect until the President 
of the government orders their fulfillment and execution. Whenever the said 
President shall be of the opinion that any act is unsuitable or against public 
policy, or pernicious, he shall explain to congress the reasons against its 
execution, and if the latter shall insist on its passage the President shall 
have power to oppose his veto under his most rigid responsibility.

    Chapter III.

    Of Military Courts and Justice.

    Article XXV. When the chiefs of military detachments have notice that any 
soldier has committed or has perpetrated any act of those commonly considered as 
military crimes, he shall bring it to the knowledge of the commandant of the 
Zone, who shall appoint a judge and a secretary, who shall begin suit in the 
form prescribed in the instructions dated the 20th of the present month. If the 
accused shall be of the grade of lieutenant or higher, the said commandant shall 
himself be the judge, and if the latter shall be the accused, the senior 
commandant of the Province shall name as judge an officer who holds a higher 
grade, unless the same senior commandant shall himself have brought the suit. 
The judge shall always belong to the class of chiefs.

    Article XXVI. On the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, the senior 
commandant shall designate three officers of equal or higher rank to the judge 
and the military court shall consist of the said officers, the judge, the 
councilor and the President. The latter shall be the commandant of the Zone, if 
the accused be of the grade of sergeant or less, and the senior commandant if he 
be of the grade of lieutenant or higher. This court shall conduct the trial in 
the form customary in the Provincial courts, but the judgment shall be 
appealable to the higher courts of war.

    Article XXVII. The superior court shall be composed of six members, who 
shall hold rank not less than brigadier generals, and the judge advocate. If the 
number of generals present in the capitol of the revolutionary government shall 
not be sufficient the deficiency shall be supplied by representatives designated 
and commissioned by congress. The president of the court shall be the general 
having the highest rank of all, and should there be more than one having equal 
rank, the president shall be elected from among them by absolute majority of 
votes.

    Article XXVIII. The superior court shall have jurisdiction in all cases 
affecting the higher commandants, the commandants of Zones and all officers of 
the rank of major or higher.

    Article XXIX. Commit Military Crimes: 1st. Those who fail to grant the 
necessary protection to foreigners, both in their persons and property, and 
those who similarly fail to afford protection to hospitals and ambulances, 
including persons and effects which may be found in possession of one or the 
other, and those engaged in the service of the same, provided always they commit 
no hostile act. 2d. Those who fail in the respect due to the lives, money and 
jewels of enemies who lay down their arms, and of prisoners of war. 3d. 
Filipinos who place themselves in the service of the enemy acting as spies or 
disclosing to them secrets of war and the plans of revolutionary positions and 
fortifications, and those who present themselves under a flag of truce without 
justifying properly their office and their personality; and 4th, those who fail 
to recognize a flag of truce duly accredited in the forms, prescribed by 
international law.

    Will Commit also Military Crimes: 1st. Those who conspire against the unity 
of the revolutionists, provoking rivalry between chiefs and forming divisions 
and armed bands. 2d. Those who solicit contributions without authority of the 
government and misappropriate the public funds. 3d. Those who desert to the 
enemy, or are guilty of cowardice in the presence of the enemy, being armed; 
and, 4th, those who seize the property of any person who has done no wrong to 
the revolution, violate women and assassinate or inflict serious wounds on 
unarmed persons and commit robberies or arson.

    Article XXX. Those who commit the crimes enumerated will be considered as 
declared enemies of the revolution, and will incur the penalties prescribed in 
the Spanish penal code, and in the highest grade.

    If the crime shall not be found in the said code, the offender shall be 
imprisoned until the revolution triumphs unless the result of this shall be an 
irreparable damage, which in the judgment of the tribunal shall be a sufficient 
cause for imposing the penalty of death.

    Additional Clauses.

    The government will establish abroad a revolutionary committee, composed of 
a number not yet determined of persons most competent in the Philippine 
Archipelago. This committee will be divided into three delegations; one of 
diplomacy, another of the navy and another of the army.

    The delegation of diplomacy will manage and conduct negotiations with 
foreign cabinets with a view to the recognition of the belligerency and 
independence of the Philippines.

    The delegation of the navy will be charged with studying and organizing the 
Philippine navy and preparing the expenditures which the necessities of the 
revolution may require.

    The delegation of the army will study military tactics and the best form of 
organization for the general staff, artillery and engineers and whatever else 
may be necessary in order to fit out the Philippine Army under the conditions 
required by modern progress.

    Article XXXII. The government will issue the necessary instructions for the 
proper execution of the present decree.

    Article XXXIII. All decrees of the dictatorial government in conflict with 
the foregoing are hereby annulled.

    Given at Cavite, the 23d of June, 1898.

    Emilio Aguinaldo.

    Instructions.

    Desiring to bring about a proper execution of the decree dated the 23d of 
the present month, and to provide that the administrative measures shall not 
result hereafter in the paralysis of public business, but that, on the contrary, 
it shall constitute the best guarantee of the regularity, promptitude and 
fitness in the transaction of public business, I give the following instructions 
and decree:

    (Then follow ten rules concerning the details of installing the government.)

    Cavite, the 27th of June, 1898.

    Emilio Aguinaldo.

    Message of the President of the Philippine Revolution.

    If it is true, as it is true, that political revolutions properly 
understood, are the violent means which people employ to recover the sovereignty 
which naturally belongs to them, usurped and trampled upon by a tyrannical and 
arbitrary government, no revolution can be more righteous than that of the 
Philippines, because the people have had recourse to it after having exhausted 
all the pacific means which reason and experience could suggest.

    The ancient Kings of Castile felt obliged to consider the Philippines as a 
brother people, united to the Spanish in a perfect participation of aims and 
interests, so much so that when the Constitution of 1812 was promulgated, at 
Cadiz, on account of the War of Spanish Independence, these islands were 
represented in the Spanish Cortez; but the interests of the Monastic 
corporations which have always found unconditional support in the Spanish 
Government, overcame this sacred duty and the Philippines remained excluded from 
the Spanish Constitution, and the people at the mercy of the discretionary or 
arbitrary powers of the Governor-General.

    In this condition the people claimed justice, begged of the metropolis the 
recognition and restitution of their secular rights by means of reforms which 
should assimilate in a gradual and progressive manner, the Philippines to the 
Spaniards; but their voice was quickly throttled and their sons received as the 
reward of their self-denial, deportation, martyrdom and death. The religious 
corporations with whose interests, always opposed to those of the Philippine 
people, the Spanish Government has been identified, scoffed at these pretensions 
and answered with the knowledge of that Government that Spanish liberties have 
cost blood.

    What other recourse then remained to the people for insisting as in duty 
bound on regaining its former rights? No alternative remained except force and, 
convinced of that, it has had recourse to revolution.

    And now it is not limited to asking assimilation to the Spanish Political 
Constitution, but it asks a definite separation from it; it struggles for its 
independence in the firm belief that the time has arrived in which it can and 
ought to govern itself.

    There has been established a Revolutionary Government, under wise and just 
laws, suited to the abnormal circumstances through which it is passing, and 
which, in proper time, will prepare it for a true Republic. Thus taking as a 
sole model for its acts, reason, for its sole end, justice, and, for its sole 
means, honorable labor, it calls all Filipinos its sons without distinction of 
class, and invites them to unite firmly with the object of forming a noble 
society, not based upon blood nor pompous titles, but upon the work and personal 
merit of each one; a free society, where exist neither egotism nor personal 
politics which annihilate and crush, neither envy nor favoritism which debase, 
neither fanfaronade nor charlatanism which are ridiculous.

    And it could not be otherwise. A people which has given proofs of suffering 
and valor in tribulation and in danger, and of hard work and study in peace, is 
not destined to slavery; this people is called to be great, to be one of the 
strongest arms of Providence in ruling the destinies of mankind; this people has 
resources and energy sufficient to liberate itself from the ruin and extinction 
into which the Spanish Government has plunged it, and to claim a modest but 
worthy place in the concert of free nations.

    Given at Cavite the 23d of June, 1898.

    Emilio Aguinaldo.

    To Foreign Governments.

    The Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, on its establishment, 
explained, through the message dated the 23d of June last, the true causes of 
the Philippine Revolution, showing, according to the evidence, that this popular 
movement is the result of the laws which regulate the life of a people which 
aspires to progress and to perfection by the sole road of liberty.

    The said Revolution now rules in the Provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Mindoro, 
Tayabas, Laguna, Morong, Bulacan, Bataan, Pampanga, Neuva-Ecija, Tarlac, 
Pangasinan, Union, Infanta, and Zambales, and it holds besieged the capital of 
Manila.

    In these Provinces complete order and perfect tranquility reign, 
administered by the authorities elected by the Provinces in accordance with the 
organic decrees dated the 18th and 23d of June last.

    The Revolution holds, moreover, about 9,000 prisoners of war, who are 
treated in accordance with the customs of war between civilized nations and 
humane sentiments, and at the end of the war it has more than 30,000 combatants 
organized in the form of a regular army.

    In this situation the chiefs of the towns comprised in the above mentioned 
Provinces, interpreting the sentiments which animate those who have elected 
them, have proclaimed the Independence of the Philippines, petitioning the 
Revolutionary Government that will entreat and obtain from foreign Governments 
recognition of its belligerency and its independence, in the firm belief that 
the Philippine people have already arrived at that state in which they can and 
ought to govern themselves.

    This is set forth in the accompanying documents, subscribed by the above 
named chiefs.

    Wherefore, the undersigned, by virtue of the powers which belong to him as 
President of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines and in the name and 
representation of the Philippine people, asks the support of all the powers of 
the civilized world, and earnestly entreats them to proceed to the formal 
recognition of the belligerency of the Revolution and the Independence of the 
Philippines; since they are the means designated by Providence to maintain the 
equilibrium between peoples, sustaining the weak and restraining the strong, to 
the end that by these means shall shine forth and be realized the most complete 
justice in the indefinite progress of humanity.

    Given at Bacoor, in the Province of Cavite, the 6th day of August, 1898. The 
President of the Revolutionary Government, Emilio Aguinaldo.

    Statement.

    The undersigned chiefs of towns comprising the Provinces hereinafter named, 
elected as such in the manner prescribed by the decree of the 18th and the 
instructions dated the 20th of June last, after having been confirmed in their 
respective offices by the President of the Government and having taken the 
prescribed oath before him, have met in full assembly previously called for that 
purpose for the purpose of discussing the solemn proclamation of Philippine 
independence.

    The discussion took place with the prudence and at the length which so 
important a question demands and, after suitable deliberation, the following 
declarations were unanimously adopted:

    The Philippine Revolution records on the one hand brilliant feats of arms, 
realized with singular courage by an improvised army almost without arms, and on 
the other the no less notable fact that the people, after the combat, have not 
entered upon great excesses nor pursued the enemy further; but have treated him, 
on the contrary, with generosity and humanity, returning at once to their 
ordinary and tranquil life.

    Such deeds demonstrate, in an indisputable manner, that the Philippine 
people was not created, as all believed, for the sole purpose of dragging the 
chains of servitude, but that it has a perfect idea of order and justice, shuns 
a savage life, and loves a civilized life.

    But what is most surprising in this people is that it goes on giving proofs 
that it knows how to frame laws, commensurate with the progress of the age, to 
respect them and obey them, demonstrating that its national customs are not 
repugnant to this progress; that it is not ambitious for power nor honors nor 
riches aside from the rational and just aspirations for a free and independent 
life, and inspired by the most lofty idea of patriotism and national honor; and 
that in the service of this idea and for the realization of that aspiration it 
has not hesitated in the sacrifice of life and fortune.

    These admirable--and more than admirable, these wonderful--deeds necessarily 
engender the most firm and ineradicable convictions of the necessity of leaving 
the Philippines free and independent, not only because they deserve it, but 
because they are prepared to defend, to the death, their future and their 
history.

    Filipinos are fully convinced that if individuals have need of material, 
moral and intellectual perfection in order to contribute to the welfare of their 
fellows peoples require to have fullness of life; they need liberty and 
independence in order to contribute to the indefinite progress of mankind. It 
has struggled and will struggle, with decision and constancy, without ever 
turning back or retrograding before the obstacles which may arise in its path, 
and with unshakable faith that it will obtain justice and fulfill the laws of 
Providence.

    And neither will it be turned aside from the course it has hitherto followed 
by the unjustifiable imprisonment, tortures, assassinations, and the other 
vandal acts committed by the Spaniards against the persons of peaceful and 
defenseless Filipinos. The Spaniards believe themselves released from every 
legal obligation toward the Filipinos for the sole reason that the belligerency 
of the Revolution has not been recognized, taking no account of the fact that 
over and above every law, whether written or prescriptive, are placed with 
imprescriptible characters, culture, national honor and humanity. No; the 
Filipinos have no need ever to make use of reprisals because they seek 
independence with culture, liberty with unconditional respect for the law, as 
the organ of justice, and a name purified in the crucible of human sentiments.

    In virtue of the foregoing considerations the undersigned, giving voice to 
the unanimous aspiration of the people whom they represent, and performing the 
offices received from them and the duties pertaining to the powers with which 
they are invested,

    Proclaim solemnly in the face of the whole world the Independence of the 
Philippines;

    Recognize and respect Senor Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy as President of the 
Revolutionary Government, organized in the manner prescribed by decree of the 
23d and instructions of the 27th of June last, and beg the said President that 
he will ask and obtain from foreign Governments the recognition of its 
belligerency and independence, not only because this act constitutes a duty of 
justice, but also because to no one is it permitted to contravene natural laws 
nor stifle the legitimate aspiration of a people for its amelioration and 
dignification.

    Given in the Province of Cavite the 1st day of August, of the year of our 
Lord 1898, and the first year of Philippine independence.

    Follow the signatures of the local Presidents of the Provinces of Cavite and 
many others.

    The undersigned, Secretary of the Interior, certifies, That the present 
document is a literal copy of the original, which is deposited in the 
Secretaryship under his charge; in proof of which he signs it, with the approval 
of the President of the Revolutionary Government in Bacoor, the 6th day of 
August, 1898.

    El Presidente del G. R., Emilio Aguinaldo. El Secretano del Interior, 
Leandro Ibarra.


Letter from Senor Aguinaldo to General Anderson.

    July 23d, 1898.

    To Brigadier-General T. M. Anderson, U. S. A., etc., etc., Cavite.

    In answer to the letter of your Excellency dated the 22nd of the present 
month, I have the honor to manifest to you the following:

    That even supposing that the effects existing in the storehouse of Don 
Antonio Osorio were subject to capture, when I established myself in the plaza 
(town) of Cavite, Admiral Dewey authorized me to dispose of everything that I 
might find in the same, including the arms which the Spanish left in the 
arsenal. But as he was aware that said effects belonged to the personal property 
(ownership) of a Filipino, who traded with them by virtue of a contribution to 
the Spanish Government, I would not have touched them had not the owner placed 
them at my disposition for the purposes of the war.

    I came from Hong Kong to prevent my countrymen from making common cause with 
the Spanish against the North Americans, pledging, before, my word to Admiral 
Dewey to not give place to (to allow) any internal discord because (being) a 
judge of their desires I had the strong conviction that I would succeed in both 
objects; establishing a government according to their desires.

    Thus it is that at the beginning I proclaimed the dictatorship, and 
afterwards, when some of the Provinces had already liberated themselves from 
Spanish domination, I established a revolutionary government that to-day exists, 
giving it a democratic and popular character, as far as the abnormal 
circumstances of war permitted, in order that they (the Provinces) might be 
justly represented and administered to their satisfaction.

    It is true that my government has not been acknowledged by any of the 
foreign powers; but we expect that the great North American nation, which 
struggled first for its independence and afterwards for the abolition of 
slavery, and is now actually struggling for the independence of Cuba, would look 
upon it with greater benevolence than any other nation. Because of this we have 
always acknowledged the right of preference as to our gratitude.

    Debtor to the generosity of the North Americans, and to the favors which we 
have received through Admiral Dewey, and being more desirous than any other of 
preventing any conflict which would have as a result foreign intervention which 
must be extremely prejudicial not alone to my nation, but also to that of Your 
Excellency, I consider it my duty to advise you of the undesirability of 
disembarking North American troops in the places conquered by the Filipinos from 
the Spanish, without previous notice to this government, because as no formal 
agreement yet exists between the two nations, the Philippine people might 
consider the occupation of its territories by North American troops as a 
violation of its rights.

    I comprehend that without the destruction of the Spanish squadron the 
Philippine revolution would not have advanced so rapidly; because of this I take 
the liberty of indicating to Your Excellency the necessities that before 
disembarking troops you should communicate in writing to this government the 
places that are to be occupied, and also the object of the occupation, that the 
people may be advised in due form and (thus) prevent the commission of any 
transgression against friendship. I can answer for my people, because they have 
given me evident proofs of their absolute confidence in my government, but I 
cannot answer for that which another nation, whose friendship is not well 
guaranteed, might inspire in it (the people); and it is certain that I do this 
not as a menace, but as a further proof of the true and sincere friendship which 
I have always professed to the North American people in the complete security 
that it will find itself completely identified with our cause of liberty.

    I am, with respect,

    Your obedient servant,

    Emilio Aguinaldo.



CHAPTER VII

Interview with the Archbishop of Manila.

Insurgents' Deadly Hostility to Spanish Priests--The Position of the Archbishop 
as He Defined It--His Expression of Gratitude to the American Army--His 
Characterization of the Insurgents--A Work of Philippine Art--The Sincerity of 
the Archbishop's Good Words.

The intense feeling by the Philippine insurgents against the Spanish priests 
made it seem very desirable to see the Archbishop of Manila, and he informed two 
American priests that he would have pleasure in making an expression of his 
views to me to be placed before the people of the United States. He had been 
charged with extreme vindictiveness and the responsibility of demanding that the 
city should be defended to the last extremity, when actually, in the 
consultation of dignitaries that took place, and the surrender of the capital 
was demanded by General Merritt and Admiral Dewey, he declared the situation 
hopeless and that it was a plain duty to prevent the sacrifice of life. He was 
overruled by the peculiar folly that has caused Spain in the course of the war 
to inflict heavy and avoidable losses upon herself. Indeed, the war originated 
in the Spanish state of mind that it was necessary to open fire and shed blood 
for the honor of the arms of Spain. The Spanish officers knew they could not 
save Manila from the hands of the Americans while the command of the sea by our 
fleet was indisputable and we had unlimited reserves to draw upon to strengthen 
the land forces, irrespective of the swarms of insurgents pressing in the rear 
and eager to take vengeance for centuries of mismanagement and countless 
personal grievances. It was the acknowledgment of the Spanish Captain-General, 
when he received the peremptory summons from Merritt and Dewey to give up the 
city, that there was no place of refuge for the women and children, the sick and 
the wounded; and yet it was insisted that the honor of Spain required bloodshed-
-not much, perhaps, but enough to prove that the army of Spain was warlike. When 
the American army had been reinforced so as to have 8,000 men ready to take the 
field, General Merritt and Admiral Dewey had a conference and agreed to send the 
Spaniards in authority a formal notification that in forty-eight hours they 
would bombard and assail the defenses of the city of Manila if it were not 
surrendered. The Spanish reply was that the Americans could commence operations 
at once, but there was no place where the women and children, the wounded and 
the sick could go to find a place of security. This was tantamount to a 
declaration that the Spaniards were sliding into a surrender, but wanted to make 
a claim to the contrary.

The residence of the Archbishop is within the walled city and a very substantial 
edifice, the stone work confined to the lower story and hardwood timber freely 
used in massive form instead of stone. His grace was seated at a small table in 
a broad hall, with a lamp and writing material before him. He is imposing as a 
man of importance and his greeting was cordial to kindliness. He said his 
acknowledgments were personally due the American people for the peace of mind he 
had enjoyed during the occupation of the city by the army of the United States, 
for its establishment of order and the justice in administration that relieved 
good citizens from oppression and alarm. He was glad to have Americans know his 
sensibility on this subject, and wanted me to convey his sentiments to the 
President.

When asked what it was that caused the insurgents to be so ferocious against the 
priests and resolved on their expulsion or destruction he said the rebels were 
at once false, unjust and ungrateful. They had been lifted from savagery by 
Catholic teachers, who had not only been educators in the schools but teachers 
in the fields. The same Catholic Orders that were singled out for special 
punishment had planted in the islands the very industries that were sources of 
prosperity, and the leaders of the insurgents had been largely educated by the 
very men whom now they persecuted. Some of the persecutors had been in Europe 
and became revolutionists in the sense of promoting disorder as anarchists. It 
was the antagonism of the church to murderous anarchy that aroused the 
insurgents of the Philippines to become the deadly enemies of priests and church 
orders. It was true in Spain, as in the Philippines, that the anarchists were 
particularly inflamed against the church. His grace did not seem to have heard 
of the American anarchist, but the European revolutionist has received a large 
share of his attention.

He produced a box of cigars, also a bottle of sherry, and chatted comfortably 
and humorously. There was one thing then that he had in his heart--that his 
anxiety for peace and appreciation of order as enjoyed under the American 
military government should be recorded and responsibly reported to the people of 
the United States. The American priests had informed him that I was a friend of 
long standing of President McKinley, and he again enjoined that I should declare 
his sentiments to the President. A beautiful work of wood carving was shown on 
an easel, which had a frame of hard wood, the whole, easel and frame, with 
elaborately wrought ornamentation, cut out of one tree. It was at once strong 
and graceful, simple and decorative. The picture was a gold medallion, raised on 
a plate of silver, an excellent likeness of his grace. It was evident that the 
refinements of art were known to "these barbarians of the Philippines," for 
their works testified.

His grace announced that he would return my call, and his convenience being 
consulted, the time was fixed for him to appear at 11 o'clock the next day, 
Sunday, and he came accordingly, accompanied by three priests, the chaplain of 
the First California, Father Daugherty who sailed with General Merritt to 
Manila, and Father Boyle, the superintendent of the famous observatory founded 
by the Jesuits, who was a typical Irishman of a strong and humorously hearty 
type. Father Boyle had one of the most perfect methods of speaking English in 
the Irish way that I have ever heard, and admitted that he had resided in 
England long enough to be born there; and this was great fun. It is not too much 
to say that the institution he represented is illustrious.

The cathedral of Manila is within the walled city and of immense proportions. It 
was shattered by an earthquake, and in its reconstruction wood rather than 
marble was used for the supporting pillars within, but no one would find out 
that the stately clusters of columns were not from the quarries rather than the 
forests, unless personally conducted to the discovery. Here 2,000 Spanish 
soldiers, held under the articles of capitulation, were quartered, consumed 
their rations and slept, munching and dozing all around the altar and pervading 
the whole edifice. The other great churches, five in number, in the walled city, 
were occupied in the same way. The Archbishop was anxious to have the soldiers 
otherwise provided with shelter, and if not all of them could be restored to 
their ordinary uses it was most desirable, in his opinion, the cathedral should 
be.

It is estimated that 2,000 of the American soldiers in the expeditionary force 
are Catholics, and Father Daugherty was anxious to preach to them in English. 
During the call upon me by the Archbishop this subject was discussed, and the 
suggestion made that the Americans had tents in great number that they did not 
occupy and that would probably not be preserved by keeping them stored in that 
hot and trying climate. They might be pitched on the Luneta, which is beside the 
sea, and the town thus relieved of 13,000 men, who, herded in churches, produced 
unsanitary conditions. This seemed reasonable, and the policy of the change 
would have a tendency to develop an element of good-will not to be despised and 
rejected. It might be that the cathedral alone could be cleared without delay or 
prejudice with a pleasant effect, and if so why not? His grace was certainly 
diplomatic and persuasive in stating the case, and his attendants were animated 
with zeal that the Americans should have the credit of re-opening the cathedral 
for worship. It was true the Spanish garrison first occupied it, but if the 
necessity that its ample roof should protect soldiers from the torrential rains 
had existed perhaps it had ceased to be imperative. The matter was duly 
presented to the military authorities, and the objection found to immediate 
action that the Spanish prisoners of war should not for the time be located 
outside the walled city. They must be held where they could be handled.

Coincident with the call of the Archbishop came Captain Coudert, of the 
distinguished family of that name in New York, and his grace was deeply 
interested in that young man and warmly expressed his gratification in meeting 
an American officer of his own faith. The Archbishop is a man of a high order of 
capacity, and his influence has been great. His position is a trying one, for it 
would be quite impossible for him to remain in Manila if the insurgents should 
become the masters of the situation. The claim of hostile natives that the 
Spanish priests have an influence in matters of state that make them a ruling 
class is one that they urge when expressing their resolve that the Friars must 
go. The Spanish policy, especially in the municipal governments, has been to 
magnify the office of the priests in political functions. The proceedings of a 
meeting of the people in order to receive attention or to have legal standing 
must be certified by a priest. It is the Spanish priest that is wanted in 
matters of moment, and the laws make his presence indispensable. The Spanish 
priests are, therefore, identified in the public mind with all the details of 
misgovernment. The civilized Filipinos profess christianity and faith in the 
native priests, carefully asserting the distinction. In his conversation with 
me, General Aguinaldo repeatedly referred to the necessity of consulting his 
advisers, and said he had to be careful not to offend many of his followers, who 
thought he had gone very far in his friendship for the United States. He gave 
emphasis to the assertion that they were "suspicious" of him on that account. It 
was my judgment at first that the General, in stopping short when a question was 
difficult and referring to the Council he had to consult, was showing a capacity 
for finesse, that he really had the power to do or to undo, though he has not a 
personal appearance of possible leadership. Now this, even, has been modified. 
His Council seems to be the real center of power. When I was talking with 
Aguinaldo there were two American priests waiting to propose the deportation of 
his prisoners who were priests, and he had to refer that question. The Council 
has decided to keep the priests in confinement, and it is remarked that the 
General desired to give up his prisoners and was false in saying he favored 
sending them to Spain. There are misapprehensions in this association. He has no 
doubt thought well of holding fast his most important hostages. If he personally 
desired to release the priests, he probably would not venture to do it. He is 
not so silly as to believe in his own inviolability by bullets, and digestion of 
poisons; and those who are such savages as to confide in these superstitions are 
not unlikely to try experiments just to strengthen their faith. The potentiality 
of Aguinaldo as a personage is not so great as has been imagined, and if he 
attempts a rally against the American flag he will be found full of weakness.

The Archbishop, I was told, had much pleasure in meeting an American he was 
assured would attempt to be entirely just, and present him according to his own 
declarations to the people of the United States. He knew very well, 
unquestionably, the stories circulated in the American camps, that his voice had 
been loudest and last in urging hopeless war, in telling impossible tales of 
visionary Spanish reinforcements, and denouncing the Americans as "niggers" and 
"pigs." It is a fact that Spaniards have cultivated the notion among the rural 
Filipinos, that Americans are black men, and pigs is their favorite epithet for 
an American. The radical enemies of His Grace are, no doubt, responsible for 
unseemly stories about his animosities, for that he and those around him were 
sincere in their respect for, and gratitude toward the American army of 
occupation, for its admirable bearing and good conduct, was in itself too 
obviously true to be doubted.


CHAPTER VIII

Why We Hold the Philippines.

The Responsibility of Admiral Dewey--We Owe It to Ourselves to Hold the 
Philippines--Prosperity Assured by Our Permanent Possession--The Aguinaldo 
Question--Character Study of the Insurgent Leader--How Affairs Would Adjust 
Themselves for Us--Congress Must Be Trusted to Represent the People and Firmly 
Establish International Policy.

If Admiral Dewey, after obeying the order of the President to destroy the 
Spanish fleet at Manila, had steamed away and sought a station to get coal to 
drive him somewhere else, there would have been no Philippine question on the 
other side of the world from Washington City. The Admiral desired to keep open 
telegraphic communication, and made a proposition to that effect, but the 
Spanish authorities curtly refused. Then the cable was cut by order of the 
Admiral, a section removed, and both ends marked by buoys. Reflection caused the 
Spaniards to regret that they had not consented to keep open the cable, that it 
might be used under restrictions by both belligerents. They mentioned their 
change of mind, and were told they were too late. The American Admiral may have 
been apprehensive, and he had reason to be, that the Spaniards, knowing they 
would be crushed in the West Indies if they risked a decisive naval engagement 
there, might send all their available ships of war to the Philippines, and 
secure a superiority of force, possibly to destroy their enemies at Manila. It 
is clear now that this is what the Spaniards ought to have tried to do. The 
Americans were committed to the blockade of Cuba, occupying all the vessels of 
war they had at hand, and the whole fleet of Spain could have been in the Suez 
Canal, on the way to Manila when the movement was known to our navy department. 
Then Admiral Dewey would, of course, have been warned by way of Hong Kong and a 
dispatch boat, that he should put to sea and take care of his men and ships. The 
result might have been the temporary restoration of the Philippines to Spain. 
Our Admiral, six hundred miles from Hongkong, the closest cable connection, 
could not afford to leave Manila in direct communication with Madrid. It was for 
this reason and not that he desired to keep out of way or orders, as some able 
publicists have kindly promulgated, that the Admiral cut the cable.

The gravest of his responsibilities came upon him after his victory freed the 
harbor of declared enemies, and placed the great city at his mercy. If the 
Spaniards used their big Krupp guns against his ships, he could bombard the city 
and burn it. He held the keys to the Philippines, with Manila under his guns, 
and the question before him then was the same before the country now. The 
question that incessantly presses is, whether the Dewey policy is to be 
confirmed, and the logic of the stay in the harbor, and the dispatch of troops 
to take the town made good. We hold the keys of the Philippines. Shall we 
continue to do so? This question transcends in immediate importance--inevitable 
consequence--remote as well as near, all the war with Spain has raised. So broad 
a matter should not be rested on narrow grounds, nor decided with haste. It 
ought to be scrutinized in all its bearings, and all susceptibilities and 
material affairs regarded, for it will affect all the people for all time.

What are the Philippines? They are the richest prize of soil and climate that 
has been at hazard in the world for many years--one that would be seized, if it 
could be done without war, by any of the great nations other than our own 
without hesitation. The only scruple we need entertain, the sole reason for 
deliberation, is because it is a duty of the government to be sure when there 
are imperial considerations to be weighed, that the people should be consulted. 
It was on this account distinctly, that the President knew the issue of the 
permanency of the possession of the Philippines was one of peculiar novelty and 
magnitude, that he permitted it to exist. Spain must have been as acquiescent in 
this as in yielding the independence of Cuba, and the concession to us without 
any intermediate formality of Porto Rico. It is not inconsistent with the policy 
of magnanimity that is generally anticipated after the victory of a great power 
over a lesser one, that we should hold the Philippines. We have only to keep the 
power we have in peace, and let it work as a wholesome medicine, and all the 
islands of the group of which Manila is the central point, will be ours without 
conflict. In our system there is healing for wounds, and attraction for the 
oppressed. The holding of the islands by Spain would signify the continued 
shedding of blood, and drainage of the vital resources of the peninsula. As 
against Spain the Philippines will be united and desperate unto death, while 
they would without coercion walk hand in hand with us, and become the greatest 
of our dependencies--not states, but territories.

It would be an act of mercy to Spain to send her soldiers and priests from the 
Philippines, home. Even if we consent that she may keep her South Sea 
possession, she will lose it as she has all the rest, for the story of the 
Philippines is that of Spanish South and Central America, and the modern story 
of Cuba is the old one of all countries South and West of the Gulf of Mexico and 
around by way of the Oceans to Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Chili, and 
the rest had the same bloody stream of history to trace, and sooner or later the 
tale must all be told. Since Spain has already surrendered Cuba and Porto Rico, 
the record of the Philippines is the last chapter of her colonial experiences, 
by which she has dazzled and disgusted the world, attaining from the plunder of 
dependencies wealth that she invested in oppressive warfare to sustain a 
depraved despotism and display a grandeur that was unsound, sapping her own 
strength in colonial enterprises that could not be other than without profit, 
because the colonies were the property of the crown, and the prey of caste.

The Spanish nation was forbidden by their government, not of the people or for 
the people, to profit by the colonies, and the viceroys, the captain-generals, 
and the whole official class were corrupted, and inefficient in all things, 
except methods of tyranny to procure a harvest of gold and silver not from the 
mines of the metals alone, but from the industries, whatever they were. The 
people at large were allowed no share in their own earnings, beyond a 
subsistence so scanty that deep humiliation and grievous hardship were the 
fateful rewards of labor.

It was because the colonial policy of Spain impoverished and degraded the 
Spaniards at home, through the injustice, greed and profligacy of those abroad, 
that the huge structure, once so great an imposition upon mankind, a rotten 
fabric so gilt that the inherent weakness was disguised, has finally fallen into 
universal and irretrievable ruin.

It is well Spain should retain the Canaries and the Balearic group, for they are 
as Spanish as any peninsular province, and legitimately belong therefore to the 
kingdom. The application of this principle excludes Spain from the Philippines, 
and their des- [NOTE: gap in original] been committed by the failure of war to 
our hands. There is no nation that will dispute our peaceable possession of the 
Philippines. Any other nation's proprietorship will be challenged. Our 
authoritative presence in the islands will be a guarantee of peace. Any other 
assertion of supremacy will be the signal for war. Our assumption of sovereignty 
over the islands would quickly establish tranquility. Any other disposition of 
the burning questions now smoldering will cause an outburst of the flames of 
warfare. The Spaniards in Manila have been transient. They are not rooted in the 
soil. They all come and go like Captain-Generals, a mere official class, with 
the orders of the Church participating actively in secular concerns, more active 
as politicians than as teachers of religion. In the view of the native 
population it is as indispensable that the priests of Spain shall return to 
their native land as that the soldiers should go. The deportation of these 
people would remove classes of consumers and not affect unfavorably a productive 
industry, or the prosperity of a self-sustaining community, and there would be 
but rare instances of the severance of family ties.

It will be said of the affirmation that, the avowal of the possession of the 
Philippines as a responsibility without end would be a peace measure, and 
anything else make for war, does not take into account the attitude of the 
Philippine Dictator, by proclamation, General Aguinaldo, and his followers. We 
desire to speak with respect of the General, for he has shown in trying times, 
under strong temptations, the presence in his character of personal integrity in 
public matters, and reference is made to his refusal to consent to the division 
among insurgents alleged to be leaders, of the money paid by the Spaniards for 
the disarmament of the rebels, when two years ago there was an agreement upon 
the terms of a truce. This money transaction has been referred to as the sale of 
their cause by Aguinaldo and his associates, as if they, as individuals, had 
pocketed the usufruct of the bargain. The money was paid by Spain as an earnest 
of her sincerity, the Captain-General representing the force and good faith of 
the kingdom, in granting reforms to the Philippines. On condition of insurgent 
disarmament the people of the island were to be allowed representation in the 
Spanish Cortes, the orders of the Church were to be removed from relations to 
the Government that were offensive to the people. There was a long list of 
articles of specification of the reforms that were to be granted, the usual 
liberality of words of promise always bestowed by Spain upon her colonists. The 
representatives of Spain denied nothing that was asked; and to give weight to 
the program of concessions, there was paid in hand to Aguinaldo, through a 
transaction between banks in Manila and Hongkong, four hundred thousand dollars, 
the first installment of eight hundred thousand dollars agreed upon. [In another 
chapter of this story of the Philippines will be found Senor Filipe Agoncillo's 
personal account of this affair.] The Spaniards probably understood that they 
were bribing the insurgents and paying a moderate sum to cheaply end the war; 
and it did not cost the authorities of Spain anything, for they exacted the 
money from the Manila Bank of Spain, and still owe the bank. Aguinaldo's 
understanding, acted upon, was different. He accepted the money as a war fund, 
and has held and defended it for the purchase of arms, and resumed hostilities 
when all promises of reform were broken, and nothing whatever done beyond the 
robbery of the bank to bribe the rebel chiefs, which was the Spanish 
translation. Of course, it was claimed by the enemies of Aguinaldo that he was 
bought and paid for, but he has maintained the fund, though there were those 
professors of rebellion, who made claims to a share of the money. The second 
installment of the money that the rebels were to have been paid is yet an 
obligation not lifted, and the hostilities were revived as soon as the craft of 
the Spanish negotiators in promising everything because they meant to do 
nothing, became obvious. The actual proceedings in this case can be summed up in 
a sentence: The Spaniards took four hundred thousand dollars out of the Bank of 
Spain and gave it to the insurgents, for a temporary armistice. General 
Aguinaldo, though he appears very well in refusing to employ the money paid by 
Spain as a bribe for himself, has not the elements of enduring strength as the 
leader of the insurgents. As against the Spaniards he can keep the field, and 
carry on a destructive guerilla warfare, hopeless on both sides, like that going 
on in Cuba, when that island was invaded by the American army. But as against 
American rule the Philippines would cease to be insurgents. The islanders will 
not be controlled by sentimentalism. Government by the United States would 
differ from that by Spain, as the two nations are different in character, in the 
nature of their political institutions, in their progressive movement. America 
is all active and free, and her freedom would be extended to the islanders. The 
transformation would be one from the paralysis of despotism to the life of 
liberty. The words despotism and freedom would instantly have a distinct 
business meaning. Make known in the city of Manila that the Americans will 
abandon it, and the reviving hopes of the men of affairs would be instantly 
clouded, and the depression deepen into despondency and despair. Let it be the 
news of the day that the Americans will stay, and the intelligence of the city 
would regard its redemption as assured, every drooping interest revive, and an 
era of prosperity unknown under the dismal incompetency of Spain, open at once. 
It is legitimate that there should be freedom of speech as to the details of the 
proceedings. If our Government should do what Admiral Dewey did when he was the 
master of Manila, because he had annihilated the Spanish fleet and had the power 
to destroy the city--cast anchor and stay where we are already in command--the 
task is neither so complex nor costly as its opponents claim. Our territorial 
system is one easy of application to colonies. We have had experience of it from 
the first days of our Government. There is no commandment that a Territory shall 
become a State in any given time, or ever. We can hold back a Territory, as we 
have Arizona and New Mexico, or hasten the change to Statehood according to the 
conditions, and the perfect movement of the machinery requires only the presence 
in Congress of dominant good sense. Congress is easily denounced, but no one has 
found a substitute for it, and it is fairly representative of the country. 
Congress will never gamble away the inheritance of the people. It will probably, 
in spite of all shortcomings, have its average of ability and utility kept up. 
Congress may go wrong, but will not betray. Our outlying possessions must be 
Territories until they are Americanized, and we take it Americans know what that 
word means. If a specification is wanted as a definition, we have to say the 
meaning is just what has happened in California since our flag was there. In the 
case of the Philippines, if we stick, and we do not see how we can help doing 
so, the President will, in regular course, appoint a Territorial Governor, and 
as a strong Government capable of quick and final decisions must be made, the 
Governor should be a military man, and have a liberal grant, by special Act of 
Congress, of military authority. He should be a prompt, and all around competent 
administrator. He will not have to carry on war offensive or defensive. He need 
not be in a hurry to go far from Manila. He will not be molested there. The 
country will gravitate to him. The opponents of the Republican form of 
Government, as it is in the United States and the Territories of the Nation will 
become insignificant in the Philippines. They will have no grievances, except 
some of them may not be called at once to put on the trappings of personal 
potentiality. General Aguinaldo would find all the reforms the Spanish promised 
when they paid him four hundred thousand dollars to prove their good intentions, 
free as the air. He could not make war against the benignancy of a Government, 
Republican in its form and its nature, which simply needs a little time, some 
years maybe, before erasing the wrongs that have had a growth of centuries. The 
American Governor-General need not send out troops to conquer districts, 
coercing the people. The people will soon be glad to see the soldiers of the 
United States, the representatives of the downfall and departure of the 
instruments of Spain. Aguinaldo and his party have a Congress. It might be an 
approved beginning of a Territorial Legislature, and the insurgent General might 
be the presiding officer. There would be abundant reason for the auspicious 
exercise of all his rights in the public service. As for the cost of the 
Philippines under our Government, that would fall upon the treasury of the 
United States. There can be no doubt that it would be for several years a 
considerable sum, but the public men who favored peace for the liberation of 
Cuba, did not make counting the cost the most prominent feature of the war they 
advocated, but accepted the fact that the national honor and fame, the glory of 
heroism and deeds of daring and sacrifice, are priceless, and their achievement 
beyond price. There is to be said under this head, that the Philippine Islands 
are of natural riches almost without parallel. The great isle of Luzon teems 
with productions that have markets the world over, and it is commonplace for the 
savages in the mountains to come out of their fastnesses with nuggets of gold to 
make purchases. Cotton, sugar, rice, hemp, coffee and tobacco, all tropical 
fruits and woods, are of the products. There is profusion of the riches that 
await the freedom of labor and the security of capital, and the happiness of the 
people. Under American government the Philippines would prosper, and it would be 
one of our tasks to frame legislation. The laws of Congress would be the higher 
code of law, and the Philippines would desire, and be invited, of course, to 
send their ablest men to be Territorial representatives in the Congress of the 
United States. In the name of peace, therefore, and in behalf of the dignity and 
authority of this Nation--in mercy to the Spaniards, in justice to the 
Filipinos, it is due ourselves, and should have the favor of all who would see 
our country expand with the ages, and walking in the footsteps of Washington and 
Jefferson, finding the path of empire that of freedom and taking our place as a 
great Power, accepting the logic of our history, and the discharge of the duties 
of destiny--we should hold on to the Philippines--and when the great distance of 
those islands from this continent is mentioned, remember that the Pacific may 
now be crossed in as few days as was the Atlantic forty years ago.

The labor questions and the silver questions even come into the Philippines 
problem to be scanned and weighed. In Eastern Asia, which we have invaded, and a 
part of which we have appropriated for a time, the people use silver for the 
measure of value, and in the islands that interest us, as they do not deal in 
the mysteries of rupees, but in dollars, the facts in the case are plainly 
within the common understanding. In Manila the Mexican dollar goes in ordinary 
small exchanges, payment of wages and settlement of bills, for fifty cents; but 
the banks sell the Mexicans twenty-one of them for ten gold dollars--an American 
eagle! So far as the native people go, labor and produce are counted in silver, 
and the purchaser, or employer gets as much for a silver dollar as for a gold 
dollar. The native will take ten dollars in gold for ten dollars only in all 
settlements of accounts, and would just as willingly--even more so, accept ten 
Mexican dollars as ten American dollars in gold coin. Salaries are paid and 
goods delivered according to the silver standard. Of course, in due time this 
state of things will pass away, if we hold to the gold standard, but as the case 
stands the soldiers and sailors of our army and fleet, paid under the home 
standard, receive double pay, and get double value received for clothing, 
tobacco and whatever they find they want--indeed, for the necessaries and 
luxuries of life. The double standard in this shape is not distasteful to the 
boys.

We have both theories and conditions confronting us in these aspects of the 
silver and labor questions. The Oriental people are obdurate in their partiality 
for silver. It is the cheaper labor that adheres to the silver standard, 
partially, it is held, because silver is the more convenient money for the 
payment of small sums. But labor cannot be expected, at its own expense, to 
sustain silver for the profit of capital, or rather of the middle man between 
labor and capital. Labor, so far as it is in politics in this country, should 
not, without most careful study and deliberation, conclude that its force in 
public affairs would be abated, and its policy of advancing wages antagonized by 
the absorption of the Philippines in our country. On the contrary, the 
statesmanship that is representative of labor may discover that it is a great 
fact, one of the greatest of facts, that the various countries and continents of 
the globe are being from year to year more and more closely associated, and that 
to those intelligently interested, without regard to the application of their 
views of justice or expediency, in the labor and silver questions--the 
convictions, the fanaticisms, of the vast silver nations--and enormous 
multitudes of the people of Asia, touching the silver standard--and the possible 
progress of labor, as a guiding as well as plodding ability increases 
incessantly in interest, and must grow in inheritance. As the conditions of 
progressive civilization are developed our interests cannot be wholly dissevered 
from those of the Asiatics. We would be unwise to contemplate the situation of 
to-day as one that can or should perpetuate itself. Suppose we accept, the 
governing responsibility in the Philippines. It is not beyond the range of 
reasonable conjecture that American labor can educate the laborers of the 
Philippines out of their state of servitude as cheap laborers, and lead them to 
co-operate rather than compete with us, and not to go into the silver question 
further than to consent that it exists, and is in the simplest form of 
statement, whether the change in the market value of the two money metals is 
natural or artificial. It is necessary in common candor to state that the most 
complete solution of the money metal embarrassments would be through the co-
operation of Asia and America. Europe is for gold, Asia for silver, and the 
Americas divided. Japan is an object lesson, her approximation to the gold 
standard has caused in the Empire an augmentation of the compensation of labor. 
This is not wholly due to the change in the standard. The war with China, the 
increase in the army and navy, and the absorption of laborers in Formosa, the 
new country of Japan, have combined with the higher standard of value, to 
elevate wages. All facts are of primary excellence in the formation of the 
policies of nations.

The Story of the Philippines - End of Chapters I-VIII