Part 33 (2/2)

GOVERNOR IDE--1906

The Tariff is a local issue.

General W. S. Hanc.o.c.k.

After Governor Wright left the Islands finally on November 4, 1905, Vice-Governor Henry C. Ide acted as Governor-General until April 2, 1906, when he was duly inaugurated as such. He resigned and left the Islands finally in September thereafter.

All through 1905, Governor Curry, as Governor of Samar, which is the third largest island of the archipelago, wrestled with the Pulajan uprising there, aided, as has been stated in the previous chapter, by the native troops, scouts, and constabulary, and also by the regular army. But at the end of 1905 ”the situation” was not yet ”well in hand.” Since his election to Congress in 1912, Governor Curry has told me that in 1905 many thousands of people of Samar partic.i.p.ated actively as part of the enemy's force in the field during that period. By the spring of 1906 Governor Curry was getting a grip on the situation, and in the latter part of March of that year, some of the main outlaw chiefs agreed to surrender to him. The report of Colonel Wallace C. Taylor, commanding the constabulary of the Third District, which included Samar states [464]: ”After several weeks of negotiating, during which time the camp of the Pulahanes was visited by Governor Curry, and the Pulahan officers visited the settlement at Magtaon”--a settlement in south central Samar--”an understanding was arrived at by which the Pulahanes were to surrender, March 24, 1906. Instead of surrendering as agreed, the Pulahanes, commanded by Nasario Aguilar, made a treacherous attack on the constabulary garrison on the day and hour appointed for the surrender.” The constabulary numbered some fifty men, the pulajans about 130. After the pulajans opened fire they made a rush on the constabulary and a hand-to-hand fight ensued. Colonel Taylor's report continues:

After the first rush the fighting continued fiercely, and when the last of the pulahanes disappeared there remained but seven enlisted men of the constabulary able to fight. Seven more were lying about more or less seriously wounded and twenty-two were dead. Captain Jones received a bad spear thrust in the chest early in the fight, but fought on, regardless. Lieutenant Bowers received a gunshot wound through the left arm, which, however, did not put him out of the fight. Thirty-five dead pulahanes were found on the field and eight more have since been found some distance off. The number of wounded who escaped cannot be determined. The unarmed Americans present with Governor Curry escaped to the river and afterwards rejoined Captain Jones who armed them.

The explanation of this treachery, as given by Governor Curry, is curious and interesting. The outlaws had intended in good faith to surrender as a result of his negotiation with them, but at the last moment there arrived to witness the surrender certain native officials and other natives bitterly hated by the Pulajans and wholly mistrusted by them. Their arrival caused the outlaws to suspect treachery themselves and that was the cause of their change of plans. It was not until the end of the year 1906 that the various energetic campaigns which followed the Magtaon incident finally began to work more or less complete restoration of public order by gradual elimination of the enemy through killings, captures, and surrenders. An idea of the seriousness and magnitude of these operations may be gathered without going into the details, from the annual report for 1906 of General Henry T. Allen commanding the Philippines Constabulary. This report, dated August 31, 1906 [465], states:

At present seventeen companies of scouts and four companies of American troops under Colonel Smith, 8th U. S. Infantry, are operating against the pulahanes, but with success that will be largely dependent upon time and attrition.

General Allen adds: ”The entire 21st Regiment [of Infantry] is also in Samar.” These facts are here given because they relate to the period covered by the certificate of the Philippine Commission of March 28, 1907, heretofore alluded to, and which will be more fully dealt with hereinafter, which stated that ”a condition of general and complete peace” had prevailed throughout the archipelago for two years prior to March 28, 1907. Without a brief exposition of all these matters, it would be impossible to enable the reader to feel the pulse of the Filipino people as it stood at the time of the election of their a.s.sembly in 1907. The fact of our having been unable to discontinue Filipino-killing altogether for any considerable period from 1899 to the end of 1906 is too obviously relevant to the state of the public mind in 1907 to need elaboration.

The Report of the Philippine Commission for 1906 [466] deals at some length with disturbances which occurred in the island of Leyte (area 3000 square miles, population nearly 400,000), beginning in the middle of June. It describes among other things a visit of Governor-General Ide to Tacloban, the capital of Leyte, made in consequence of said disturbances, and conferences held by him there with Major-General Wood, commanding all the United States forces in the Philippines, Brigadier-General Lee, commanding the Department of the Visayas (which included Leyte, headquarters, Iloilo), Colonel Borden, commanding the United States forces in the island of Leyte, Colonel Taylor, the chief of the constabulary of the District, etc. Certainly from this formidable gathering of notables, it is clear that there was about to take place in Leyte what our friends of the Lambs' Club in New York would call ”An all star performance.” Leyte was four to five hundred miles from Manila. Yet so serious was the disturbance that the highest military and civil representatives of the American Government in the archipelago deemed it necessary to meet in the island which was the scene of the trouble with a view of handling it. Yet in the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1906 one finds the usual rotund rhetoric treating the disturbances as of no ”political” significance--which was only another way of claiming that they were not serious. It is difficult to handle this aspect of the matter without imputing to the civil authorities intent to deceive, but to leave such an imputation unremoved would be to miss the whole significance of the matter. As has already been made clear, when Judge Taft, Judge Ide, and their colleagues of the Philippine Commission had left Was.h.i.+ngton for Manila in 1900 Mr. McKinley had a.s.sured them he had no doubt that the better element of the Philippine people, once they understood us, would welcome our rule. As soon as they set foot in the Philippine Islands they had at once begun to act upon the theory that there was no real fundamental opposition to us on the part of the people of the Philippines and had continued obstinately to act upon that theory ever since. Certainly the att.i.tude of the civil government toward the disturbances in Leyte in 1906 is not surprising when the mind adverts for a moment to the panorama of the five more or less sanguinary years already fully described hereinbefore and then takes the following bird's-eye glance at the official reports for those years.

The Report of the Philippine Commission for 1900, (page 17) had said:

A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States.

The Report of the Philippine Commission for 1901 (page 7) had said:

The collapse of the insurrection came in May.

The Report of the Philippine Commission for 1902 (page 3) had said:

The insurrection as an organized attempt to subvert the authority of the United States in these islands is entirely at an end,

referring farther on to ”the whole Christian Philippine population”

as ”enjoying civil government.” If the ”enjoyment” thus described had been genuine, continued, profound, and sincere, it would have been another story. But the net att.i.tude of the civil government toward the general health of the body politic, relatively to public order, reminds one of the cheerful gentleman who remarked of his invalid friend, ”He seems to be 'enjoying' poor health.”

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