Part 7 (1/2)
Aguinaldo's capital was then at Bacoor, one of the small coast villages you pa.s.s through in going by land from Manila to Cavite. From Manila over to Cavite by water is about seven miles, and by land about three or four times that. The coast line from Manila to Cavite makes a loop, so that a straight line over the water from Manila to Cavite subtends a curve, near the Cavite end of which lies Bacoor. Thus, Bacoor, being at the mercy of the big guns at Cavite, and also easily accessible by a land force from Manila, to say nothing of Dewey's mighty armada riding at anchor in the offing, was a good place to move away from. There it lay, right in the lion's jaws, should the lion happen to get hungry. Aguinaldo had reflected on all this, and had determined to get himself a capital away from ”the city, bay, and harbor of Manila,” that is to say, to take his head out of the lion's jaws. General Otis's demand of September 8th that he move his troops out of the suburbs of Manila determined him to move his capital as well. He moved it to a place called Malolos, in Bulacan province. Bulacan lies over on the north sh.o.r.e of Manila Bay, opposite Cavite province on the south sh.o.r.e. Malolos is situated some distance inland, out of sight and range of a fleet's guns, and about twenty-odd miles by railroad northwest of Manila. Malolos was also desirable because it was in the heart of an insurgent province having a population of nearly a quarter of a million people, a province which, by reason of being on the north side of the bay, was sure to be in touch, strategically and politically, with all Luzon north of the Pasig River, just as Cavite province, the birthplace of Aguinaldo, and also of the revolutionary government, had been with all Luzon south of the Pasig. Should the worst come to the worst--and as has already been indicated, the insurgents played a sweepstake game from the beginning for independence, with only war as the limit--northern Luzon had more inaccessible mountains from which to conduct such a struggle for an indefinite period than southern Luzon. But while the Otis demand of September 8th decided the matter of the change of capital, Aguinaldo could not afford to tell his troops that he was moving them from the environs of Manila because made to. He was going to accept war cheerfully when it should become necessary to fight for independence, but he still had some hopes of the Paris Peace Conference deciding to do with the Philippines as with Cuba, and wished to await patiently the outcome of that conference. Besides, he was getting in s.h.i.+pments of guns all the time, as fast as the revenues of his government would permit, and thus his ability to protract an ultimate war for independence was constantly enlarging by accretion. The Hong Kong conference of the Filipino revolutionary leaders held in the city named on May 4, 1898, at which Aguinaldo presided, and which mapped out a programme covering every possible contingency, has already been mentioned. Its minutes say:
If Was.h.i.+ngton proposes to carry out the fundamental principles of its Const.i.tution, it is most improbable that an attempt will be made to colonize the Philippines or annex them. [130]
On the other hand, the minutes of this same meeting as we saw recognized that America might be tempted into entering upon a career of colonization, once she should get a foothold in the islands. The programme of Aguinaldo and his people was thus, from the beginning, not to precipitate hostilities until it should become clear that, in the matter of land-grabbing, the gleam of hope held out by the American programme for Cuba was illusive. According to the minutes of the meeting alluded to, such a contingency would, of course, ”drive them, the Filipinos * * * to a struggle for their independence, even if they should succ.u.mb to the weight of the yoke,” etc. Such a struggle, as all the world knows, did ultimately ensue. That part of the parleying following Otis's demand of September 8th (that Aguinaldo move his troops) which was not useless was this: In order to ”save their face,” with the rank and file of their army, the Filipino Commissioners asked General Otis ”if I [Otis,]
would express in writing a simple request to Aguinaldo to withdraw to the lines which I designated--something which he could show to the troops.” [131] So, on September 13th, General Otis wrote such a ”request,” and Aguinaldo moved his troops as demanded, but no farther than demanded. He wanted to be in the best position possible in case the United States should finally leave the Philippines to Spain, and always so insisted. Long afterward General Otis insinuated in his report that this insistence, which was uniformly pressed until after the Treaty was signed, was mere dishonest pretence, to cloak warlike intentions against the United States. Yet, as we have seen above, one of our Peace Commissioners at Paris, Judge Gray, just about the same time, was taking that contingency quite as seriously as did Aguinaldo. And early in May, 1898, our Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Long, had cabled Admiral Dewey ”not to have political alliances with the insurgents * * * that would incur liability to maintain their cause in the future.” [132] Before moving his troops pursuant to the Otis demand of September 8th, the Otis ”request” was duly published to the insurgent army, and as the insurgents withdrew, the American troops presented arms in most friendly fas.h.i.+on. ”They certainly made a brave show,” says Mr. Millet (Expedition to the Philippines, p. 255), ”for they were neatly uniformed, had excellent rifles, marched well, and looked very soldierly and intelligent.” ”The withdrawal,” says General Otis (p. 10), ”was effected adroitly, as the insurgents marched out in excellent spirits, cheering the American forces.” Absolute master of all Luzon outside Manila at this time, with complete machinery of government in each province for all matters of justice, taxes, and police, an army of some 30,000 men at his beck, and his whole people a unit at his back, Aguinaldo formally inaugurated his permanent government--permanent as opposed to the previous provisional government--with a Const.i.tution, Congress, and Cabinet, patterned after our own, [133] just as the South American republics had done before him when they were freed from Spain, at Malolos, the new capital, on September 15, 1898. The next day, September 16th, at Was.h.i.+ngton, President McKinley delivered to his Peace Commissioners, then getting ready to start for the Paris Peace Conference, their letter of instructions, directing them to insist on the cession by Spain to the United States of the island of Luzon ”at least.” [134]
In other words, the day after the little Filipino republic, gay with banners and glad with music, started forth on its journey, Mr. McKinley signed its death-warrant. The political student of 1912 may say just here, ”Oh, I read all that in the papers at the time, or at least it was all ventilated in the Presidential campaign of 1900.” Mr. McKinley's instructions to the Paris Peace Commission were not made public until after the Presidential election of 1900. To be specific, they were first printed and given out to the public in 1901, in Senate Doc.u.ment 148, having been extracted from the jealous custody of the Executive by a Senate resolution. It was not until then that the veil was lifted. By that time, no American who was not transcendental enough to have lost his love for the old maxim, ”Right or wrong, my country,” cared to hear the details of the story. The Filipinos and ”our boys” had been diligently engaged in killing each other for a couple of years, and the American people said, ”A truce to scolding; let us finish this war, now we are in it.”
But to return from the death-warrant of the Philippine republic signed by Mr. McKinley on September 16th, to its christening, or inauguration, the day before. Mr. Millet gives an intensely interesting account of the inaugural ceremonies of September 15th, which as Manila correspondent of the London Times and Harper's Weekly he had the good fortune to witness. Says he:
The date was at last * * * fixed for September 15th. A few days before Aguinaldo had made a triumphant entry into Malolos in a carriage drawn by white horses, and there had been a general celebration of his arrival, with speeches, a gala dinner, open air concerts, and a military parade. Mr. Higgins (an Englishman), the manager of the Railway, kindly offered to take me up to Malolos to witness the ceremony of the inauguration of the new government.
* * * The only other pa.s.senger was to be Aguinaldo's secretary * * * a small boyish-looking young man. * * * [135]
It seems there had been a strike of the native employees of the railway up the road.
Mr. Higgins calmly remarked to the secretary that, in his opinion, if the affairs of the Filipino government were managed in the future as they were at present, the proposed republic would be nothing but a cheap farce. The secretary timidly asked what there was to complain about.
Then came a tirade from Higgins, ending with, ”I am going to lay this * * * before Aguinaldo to-day, and I shall expect you to arrange an interview for my friend and myself.” Then, turning to the astonished Millet, he said in English: ”It does these chaps good to be talked to straight from the shoulder. Since they came to Malolos, the earth isn't big enough to hold them.”
This scene on the train is, decidedly, as Thomas Carlyle would say, ”of real interest to universal history.” Mr. Millet's Government was a lion about to eat a lamb, but the head of his nation, Mr. McKinley, clothed with absolute authority in the premises for the nonce, was balking at the diet. Now, Mr. Millet rather admired the British boldness, just as a Northern man likes to hear a Southerner talk straight from the shoulder to a ”darkey.” As soon as the era of good feeling was over, our people quit treating the Filipinos as Perry did the j.a.panese in 1854, and began calling them ”n.i.g.g.e.rs.” In fact the commanding general found it necessary a little later to put a stop to this pernicious practice among the soldiers by issuing a General Order prohibiting it. But Mr. Millet's admiration would have been somewhat toned down had he known what we found out later. The real secret of Higgins's personal arrogance was this. The Filipino government needed his railroad in its business. During the war which followed, the insurgents long controlled a large part of this railway, from Manila to Dagupan, which was the only railway in the Philippines. The railway properties suffered much damage incident to the war, and--just how willingly is beside the question--the company rendered material aid to the insurgent cause. So much did they render, that when Higgins had the a.s.surance later to want our Government to pay the damages his properties had suffered at the hands of the insurgents, our government at Manila promptly turned his claim down. Subsequently the London office of his company actually inveigled the British Foreign Office into making representation to our State Department about the matter--obviously a very grave step, in international law. The claim was promptly turned down by Was.h.i.+ngton also, and, happily, that ”closed the incident.” [136]
Having exploded Mr. Millet's bubble, let us resume the thread of his story:
We reached the station [at Malolos] in about an hour and a half.
* * * The town numbers perhaps thirty or forty thousand people.
* * * From the first humble nipa shack to the great square where the convent stands, thousands of insurgent flags fluttered from every window and every post. * * * Every man had an insurgent tri-color c.o.c.kade in his hat.
Then follows a detailed account of being introduced, after some ceremony, to Aguinaldo, who is described as ”a small individual, in full evening black suit, and flowing black tie.” Higgins made his complaint about the strikers, and Aguinaldo said, ”I will attend to this matter of the strikers,” and then changed the topic, asking if the visitors did not wish to attend the opening of the Congress--which they did.
From Mr. Millet's account, it is evident that, like Admiral Dewey and most of the Americans who first dealt with the Filipinos except Generals Anderson, MacArthur, and J. F. Bell, he failed to take the Filipinos as seriously as the facts demanded. At that time the j.a.panese had not yet taught the world that national aspirations are not necessarily to be treated with contumely because a people are small of stature and not white of skin. Consul Wildman at Hong Kong at first wrote the State Department quite peevishly that Aguinaldo seemed much more concerned about the kind of cane he should wear than about the figure he might make in history. Wildman did not then know, apparently, that canes, with all Spanish-Filipino colonial officialdom, were badges of official rank, like shoulder-straps are with us. The reader will also remember the toothbrush incident hereinbefore reproduced, told by Admiral Dewey to the Senate Committee, in 1902. That incident, naturally enough, amused the Committee not a little. But we who know the Filipino know it was merely an awkward and embarra.s.sed answer due to diffidence, and made on the spur of the moment to cloak some real reason which if disclosed would not seem so childish.
Misunderstanding is the princ.i.p.al cause of hate in this world. When you understand people, hatred disappears in a way strikingly a.n.a.logous to the disappearance of darkness on the arrival of light. The more you know of the educated patriotic Filipino, the more certain you become that the government we destroyed in 1898 would have worked quite as well as most any of the republics now in operation between the Rio Grande and Patagonia. The ma.s.ses of the people down there, the peons, are probably quite as ignorant and docile as the Filipino tao (peasant), and I question if the educated men of Latin America, the cla.s.s of men who, after all, control in every country, could, after meeting and knowing the corresponding cla.s.s in the Philippines, get their own consent to declare the latter their inferiors either in intelligence, character, or patriotism.
But to return to the inauguration. Mr. Millet saw the inaugural ceremonies in the church, and heard Aguinaldo's address to the Congress. Of the audience he says ”few among them would have escaped notice in a crowd for they were exceptionally alert, keen, and intelligent in appearance.” Of this same Congress and government, Mr. John Barrett, who was American Minister to Siam about that time, and is now (1912) head of the Bureau of American Republics at Was.h.i.+ngton--an inst.i.tution organized and run for the purpose of persuading Latin-America that we do not belong to the Imperial International Society for the Part.i.tion of the Earth and that we are not in the business of gobbling up little countries on pretext of ”policing” them--said in an address before the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce on January 12, 1899:
He [Aguinaldo] has organized a government which has practically been administering the affairs of that great island [Luzon] since the American occupation of Manila, which is certainly better than the former administration; he has a properly const.i.tuted Cabinet and Congress, the members of which compare favorably with j.a.panese statesmen.
The present Philippine a.s.sembly had not had its first meeting when I left the Islands in the spring of 1905. It was organized in 1907. In the summer of 1911, I had the pleasure of renewing an old and very cordial acquaintance with Dr. Heiser, Director of Public Health of the Philippine Islands, who is one of the most considerable men connected with our government out there, and is also thoroughly in sympathy with its indefinite continuance in its present form. The Doctor is a broad-gauged man likely to be worth to any government, in matters of Public Health, whatever such government could reasonably afford to pay in the way of salary, and is doubtless well-paid by the Philippine Insular Government. He can hardly be blamed, therefore, for being in sympathy with its indefinite continuance in its present form. Doctor Heiser is a man of too much genuine dignity to be very much addicted to slang, but when I asked him about the Philippine a.s.sembly, I think he said it was ”a cracker-jack.” At any rate, I have never heard any legislative body spoken of in more genuinely complimentary terms than those in which he described the Philippine a.s.sembly. I learned from him incidentally that their ”capacity for self-government” is so crude, however, as yet, that the members have not yet learned to read newspapers while a colleague whose seat is next to theirs is addressing the house and trying to get the attention of his fellows, nor do they keep up such a buzz of conversation that the man who has the floor cannot hear himself talk. They listen to the programme of the public business.
Some five years ago in an article written for the North American Review concerning the Philippine problem, the author of the present volume said, among other things: ”During nearly four years of service on the bench in the Philippines the writer heard as much genuine, impa.s.sioned, and effective eloquence from Filipino lawyers, saw exhibited in the trial of causes as much industrious preparation, and zealous, loyal advocacy of the rights of clients, as any ordinary nisi prius judge at home is likely to meet with in the same length of time.” [137] Any country that has plenty of good lawyers and plenty of good soldiers, backed by plenty of good farmers, is capable of self-government. As President Schurman of Cornell University, who headed the first Philippine Commission, the one that went out in 1899, said in closing his Founder's Day Address at that inst.i.tution on January 11, 1902: ”Any decent kind of government of Filipinos by Filipinos is better than the best possible government of Filipinos by Americans.” The Malolos government which Mr. Millet saw inaugurated on September 15, 1898, would probably have filled this bill. Had the Filipino people then possessed the consciousness of racial and political unity as a people which was developed by their subsequent long struggle against us for independence, and which has been steadily developing more and more under the mild sway of a quasi-freedom whose princely prodigality in spreading education is marred only by its declared programme that no living beneficiary thereof may hope to see the independence of his country, and that the present generation must resign itself to tariff schedules ”fixed” at Was.h.i.+ngton, there is no reasonable doubt that the original Malolos government of 1898 would have been a very ”decent kind of government.”
All through the last four months of 1898, the two hostile armies faced each other in a mood which it needed but a spark to ignite, awaiting the outcome of the peace negotiations arranged for in September, commenced in October, and concluded in December. While they are thus engaged about Manila, let us turn to a happier picture, the situation in the provinces under the Aguinaldo government.